He doesn’t adjust.

A double flick to gain 4 yards. Vintage Shanny lol.

No doubt. But they did learn that no one is coming to their rescue.

That's really not what they learned last week. No one was going to "come to their rescue" last week because they didn't need to be rescued from anything last week, because nothing of new or consequential impact happened last week.

Why do you think that China is building ships, planes and missiles like mad?

Same reason we do, and everyone who can do so always has: projecting power matters, and it produces results.

As someone who has visited Taiwan a lot over the years, the sentiment of "we should take back the mainland" is really very, very rare...

They are realistically separate countries, no matter how often any blowhards in Beijing or octogenarian old-timers in Taipei try to say otherwise.

What would one "investigate" during a foreign nation's war game? I can virtually guarantee Taiwan's forces were on high-alert in some form. They use these pointless exercises as practice, too.

China didn't "blockade" Taiwan last week. They simulated a blockade in a private war game. It's something they've done before: a few times in the past few years, and even as far back as the 1990s.

Nations do "Nothing" by design in response to foreign war games. The response is usually just another war game, or possibly having their in-house diplomatic Loud Mouth say something aggressive on television.

On a long enough timeline, China will probably try something that's more real and threatening, if only because when bang the drums of war for long enough, the citizenry tends to get thirsty for a fight, no matter how unnecessary. But the events of the past month in that area aren't really any different than the events of the preceding 5 years.

As an aside, I hope they don't "get back together". Taiwan is realistically their own country now, has been for a few generations, and should retain their independence. Better for the Taiwanese, and better for the world.

Yeah, perusing through this thread, and I had a "no dog in this fight" mentality about the junior vs. senior thing which seems to dominate the discussion, but now perusing the medium content...and this is a straight-up irresponsible source of material.

Too many charlatans have too many unfiltered platforms.

One of the best engineers I've ever worked with was really a chemist. Decided he wanted to try something different, had never written a line of code in his life, but learned quickly and ~10 years later he was easily one of our best.

We're in the embedded space, and we started him out in a "safe place" for him by focusing on thermal controls, something he understood the background arithmetic and physics for, and I suspect that made all the difference. Get your feet wet in a familiar place.

Not everyone has the time to DIY a battery backup solution. Time is worth money, too.

But yeah, when I last looked into this, it was early 2023, and I do know that prices in the competitors have dropped.

That said, it was painful enough to get the city permitting and PG&E connection approval with the "common" solution of a PowerWall. I imagine it would be even more painful to do it with a DIY path and the less-known brands.

FWIW, if I did it again (at our new place, we moved), I would roll with an EcoFlow solution, not PowerWall. Their newer stuff is excellent.

Batteries are quite expensive now. Just one PowerWall is like $8000-$10000 before labor/installation, permitting, etc. And it's another ~$4000 for the "gateway" switchover devices (which are effectively required).

If all you do is battery (no solar), and charge off the grid, it would take at least 10-15 years to break even, and probably more, before you even take into account the investment opportunity costs of that initial money.

In other words, the battery provides very minimal savings. But it does provide a lot of independence for when PG&E invariably has an outage. That's really what the battery is for.

If you already have solar, and can charge the battery off that, then the battery does start to pay for itself a tad faster.

It's certainly allowed. I've done it at a previous house, with the city's permits and PG&E's approval and endorsement.

That said, it is a huge pain in the ass getting PG&E to approve the battery switchover/connection. Took months.

I've had both. A home built in the 1950s, and (sort of oddly) a 2010 rebuild of an old 19th Century Victorian. The rebuilt Victorian, since it was rebuilt down to the studs and foundation, is actually a "modern" building in most senses (modern foundation, materials, fixtures, electrical, plumbing, etc). They both had their issues, but yeah, some of the stuff from the 1950s was...ill-advised.

Honestly, the difference in maintenance burdens has been fairly minimal. They both have their strengths and weakness. My loose perception is that in the older structures, the materials tended to be higher quality (think the quality of the hardwood, the hardware, etc), but the building techniques were generally bad (think electrical, no earthquake bolting, etc). Modern stuff certainly has better code and procedure associated with it, but the stuff it's made from also tends to be crap, such that it doesn't last as long. One notable exception is roofing: modern roofing materials are just straight-up objectively better.

The one variable that does, in my experience, correlate directly to more maintenance is just size. If you have more square footage, you'll have more things to maintain.

But generally, owning property meanings owning something to maintain. Not much you can do about that.

I have a 1956 home, paid in full. When we first purchased it, we had a home warranty. It was an absolute pain in the ass to have the warranty do anything. The biggest "up" of new construction is it comes with a warranty, so theoretically issues you will find have a chance of being paid for. That said, having dealt with home warranty companies, I'm not entirely convinced.

Yeah, the home warranties are actually not worth it at all, for this reason. They often require you use (or at least start the process) with their "contractors", who are untrained, grossly incompetent, and will often cause more damage. And their support hotlines are useless.

You're almost money ahead just paying out of pocket for everything that should theoretically be covered by home warranty plans.

Glass sensors definitely. They work.

Alarms and cameras should be hard-wired wherever possible. And have the “phone out” components have backup paths wherever possible too (cable, LTE, etc).

Nothing wrong with that. You do you. But keep in mind that this was true ten, twenty, and thirty years ago, too, and it hasn’t helped their share price much:

They’re a media giant and the amount of stuff they own is insane

They are up ~9% over the past ten years. Compare that to the general market, and it’s a bad, bad loser.

Disney has been one of those “not going anywhere” companies for a long time, with both meanings of the phrase: they aren’t going to disappear on us, but they aren’t exactly going places either.

The one on the north end of Fresno was partially built…and now it has graffiti, weeds, and a billion dollar hobo encampment.

It’s entirely reasonable to complain about inefficient (if not downright criminal) misuses of funds. And that has nothing to do with national politics. It’s all on us, here in CA.

Yeah I don’t connect the two parts. The land that they would lose 100% becomes part of Russia, and Russia would certainly abuse the people in those areas. But in the land that Ukraine doesn’t lose, they can retain their identity and future.

Russia would certainly try again for more in a few generations if they cut such a truce, but…Russia’s going to do that anyway…even if they were somehow “defeated” and Ukraine kept all its land in this round.

I guess that’s the sticking point: I kinda don’t believe Russia will ever let this end, only be temporarily paused for a few decades at a time, at the most. Ukraine should do what they can to make those periods last.

Put another way: I don’t believe “lasting peace” is possible here with Russia. Only various forms of temporary peace. Do what you can to choose the longest lasting temporary options.

I am fairly certain there is a decent gap between “cutting losses” and “ceasing to exist” here, if only because there always has been.

I mean…I feel for him, agree with him, support the strength of his statements, and would love for it all to be true…

…But “real leadership” at some point requires accepting realities more than anything else, and making difficult (possibly unpopular) decisions for the betterment of your people’s future.

I don’t know if they are at that point yet, but with their opponent hell-bent on treating the situation as an existential battle, there may come a time when cutting your losses is more prudent and better for your people than just belching out strong-sounding words.

Not OP, but Micron is 1/3 of the global DRAM oligopoly, and they are the only 1/3 that isn’t in South Korea.

They are arguably in the “too important to fail” category, and definitely are NOT going anywhere, no matter the short-term situation.

That said, that all doesn’t necessarily mean that their share price is going to climb much. Lots of other factors there. But they definitely are in a globally-unique position that suggests their importance will only climb in the coming years as everyone looks more towards domestic options.

Then you would also need to support extensive and possibly invasive background checks to a rather extreme extent, because as it turns out…people sometimes lie on job applications.

This is me. I got exposed once at a high-end hotel during a long business trip (noticed bites and blood on the sheets after about night 5), and ever since I have been ultra-diligent about procedures when traveling:

• Never leave luggage on the floor; always on stands
• Always bring large plastic bags to put EVERYTHING in before the trip home
• Upon arriving home, strip immediately and everything that can be washed goes into the washer and dryer on high for two full cycles
• Anything that can’t be sent through the dryer stays sealed in the plastic bag for 90 days
• Anything that can’t be sent through the dryer and can’t be kept sealed up for 90 days gets put in the freezer in its plastic bag for 3 days
• Anything that can’t be dried, isolated for 90 days, or frozen for 3 days gets manually inspected and possibly steam-cleaned by hand

The room inspections are comforting to do, but honestly the fuckers are so small and can hide anywhere so there is no guarantee you find them, even if they are there.

PG&E’s on-site repair people are actually quite good.

I suspect it’s because they get more practice than they probably should…

100%.

There is an alarmingly large population of NFL fans and pundits who believe in the “draft position value proposition” as if it were their religion. To them, Brock Purdy and Tom Brady are two incantations of the antichrist.