tallowen

6 ms·

1.
by tallowen 5mo ago
Bike Lanes have turned out to be an interesting edge case. Waymos are currently dropping off and picking up passengers in a bike lane which is not legal (because it is dangerous) however many ride share drivers also do this. As somebody who
2.
by tallowen 8mo ago
A person who drives 12k miles per year in an small vehicle will need about 4000 kWh of electricity or about 600 gallons of gas. Australians are able to buy solar panels that will generate that amount of electricity for a generation for the
3.
by tallowen 9mo ago
AC has higher losses over a transmission wire because of the changing magnetic field that it induces which creates losses.
4.
by tallowen 11mo ago
To me this feels a little like saying "the federal government doesn't know when people are born because births are registered with local governments". In practice this is all a matter of state capacity to keep track of this i
5.
by tallowen 11mo ago
A car sale is an activity that is already registered with the government. It doesn't seem impossible for the data about an electric vehicle sale and it's purchase price to make its way to the IRS. The IRS could create an API to sh
6.
by tallowen 11mo ago
My lessons from working on IRS direct file lead me to believe there are a couple reasons: 1) How the welfare state is administered - as an example, the US does a child tax credit as part of the tax code, other countries have agencies that a
7.
by tallowen 11mo ago
It's nice to see an open sourced implementation of the US tax code! This was part of the IRS Direct File codebase that allowed people to file their taxes for free, directly with the IRS. It was canceled earlier this year by the Trump a
8.
by tallowen 11mo ago
> Not to disparage, but how did you come to that conclusion? I did some math and you're clearly right. I think I imagined that with driver-less vehicles leaving much more frequently (10s per minute) one could catch up to the capacit
9.
by tallowen 11mo ago
Thanks for sharing this, I had understood prior to this video that the combo of self driving tech + dedicated tunnels might have capacity that rival a light rail system like Seattle has but that's clearly not the case in the current sy
10.
by tallowen 11mo ago
I had a different takeaway - that a lot of folks on here read Ben Thomson and respect his work! It sounds like Ben is pretty bullish on OpenAI and maybe he's convinced folks through his work to agree with this take.
11.
by tallowen 1y ago
Although these systems are similar in goals, they are pretty different in terms of how they're structured: - Direct File: Was built by the US government to make tax filing easier - Free File: Is a subsidy from the US government to tax
12.
by tallowen 1y ago
The US tax code isn't created to work like this. Direct file asked many questions about things like dependent children, whether you're blind and whether you have an HSA - all things that are relevant to your taxes that aren't
13.
by tallowen 1y ago
In fact it did do that! Direct File imported W2s, 1099-INTs and other data during the filing season that ended in April. https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f...
14.
by tallowen 1y ago
There is a bunch of code to import w2s from the SSA in this codebase - this did happen this year for direct file. That being said, big issues remain: - Employers don't tell the federal government about state tax information and when th
15.
by tallowen 1y ago
I think this is great to think about however I think many of the same lessons may still apply and can and should be applied now in a forward looking way: From the article: > Whereas the Netherlands clearly differentiates roads and street
16.
by tallowen 2y ago
There are a bunch of things that still are language or language architecture specific. How you do manage web servers and starting / stopping processes Traditionally, PHP/Ruby/Python have had a process per request model but
17.
by tallowen 2y ago
Portland's trams don't move anywhere close to 35mph as the OP mentioned. Portland's trams are quite capacity constrained due to needing to navigate the short blocks and many intersections of downtown Portland. Dedicated trave
18.
by tallowen 2y ago
Plain hybrids currently do sell better than PHEVs or EVs. I'm not sure in which "best of both worlds" a standard hybrid is better than a PHEV - a PHEV allows for cheaper fuel (grid electricity) when it's available. That
19.
by tallowen 2y ago
The current salary cap for any programmer (or any non executive level roll) that is a federal employee is currently $191,900. I’m glad the hiring requirements are being updated but I’m concerned that making the lower bands easier to join wi
20.
by tallowen 2y ago
This news feels in stark contrast to apples announcements this week. The price of tech hardware is not keeping up with the target 2-3% inflation. Will higher pricing for software make up for lost (in real terms) revenue for hardware?
21.
by tallowen 2y ago
As someone who has lived in the southwest, it can't be understated how important the issue of water is. One thing to keep in mind is that most estimates place human consumption of water at below 20% - a ton of the water of the basin go
22.
by tallowen 2y ago
I agree that it could be worse! Facebook has significant (if not more) time spent and I found adding features to news feed a heck of a lot easier than adding features that interacted with google search. Generally a lot of this had to do wit
23.
by tallowen 2y ago
I think I have heard similar things from other googlers and I think there might be two factors on why I think this: - I worked on Google Assistant which was responsible for integrating many services. This meant I had to work with other peop
24.
by tallowen 2y ago
I always find these comments about interesting, having worked at Facebook and Google, I never quite felt this way about Google's Monorepo. Facebook had many of the features you listed and quite performantly if not more so. Compared wit
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by tallowen 2y ago
From the recreational perspective (summer hiking / back-country skiing) - the forests are night and day difference. Having a map of what has been logged and what has not often is the difference between forests that are easy to travel t
26.
by tallowen 2y ago
I think we now know about a lot more externalities of this kind of logging than we did generations ago. For example, much of the hydrological basis that provide drinking water to the Seattle metro area was aggressively logged 100 years ago
27.
by tallowen 2y ago
What size should a parking spot be? Who should pay for a larger one? Over the last number of years, it feels like large vehicles have become more commonly used but most built infrastructure remains the same. I notice this at the city owned
28.
by tallowen 3y ago
My experience living in Montana has been that wireless internet providers can be great but they don’t provide great low latency service. It creates a perception that one can’t live in certain areas and do remote work since it’s too hard to
29.
by tallowen 3y ago
In talking to my teacher friends, one thing that I hadn't understood is how being the parent of a child has changed due to mobile devices since I was a child. Parents obviously worry about their children. Parents exist in a community o
30.
by tallowen 3y ago
I think solar is becoming popular because it is so much cheaper where it works. One point of disagreement is that you are saying "you need more energy in the winter". Right now, for example, tomato paste is made in a facility that

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