The Verge

This is the second time this year that Tesla has encouraged off-peak charging during a Texas heatwave. The company pushed a similar alert in May 2022

Good job Texas grid.

The Verge

I just don’t have the words.

Mass shootings in 2022: U.S. sees more than 200 so far - The Washington Post

Vox

This legislation — which will inevitably be blocked in the Senate — is an acknowledgment of the importance of this issue, and a way for Democrats to show voters that they are trying to take action in the wake of recent mass shootings

Los Angeles Times

No longer will the state add freeway lanes solely to allow more cars and trucks to use them, said Toks Omishakin, secretary of the California State Transportation Agency, which oversees the state’s transportation network.

A really good start. But only just the first step.

Vox

Even as the antiwork counterculture grows, so do calls to “get back to work.” Conservative politicians have been saying this all along, but now President Joe Biden has joined the chorus, saying in his State of the Union address this year, “It’s time for Americans to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again.”

Absolutely not. The commute is, or was, an hour out of my day. Everyday. The benefit did not, for me, outweigh the cost. This was missed time with my kids and spouse, doing house chores, and even relaxing. Also the implication that we ever “stopped working” because we aren’t at the office is down right offensive.

Vox

The new law, which goes into effect immediately, will force the state’s two remaining abortion clinics in Louisville to close due to onerous new requirements on doctors, forcing Kentuckians to look elsewhere for abortion care.

And it comes as Republican-led legislatures across the country are passing seemingly unconstitutional, draconian anti-abortion laws in anticipation of a coming Supreme Court decision widely expected to eliminate Americans’ right to an abortion. Oklahoma, for example, recently passed a law similar to Kentucky’s that imposes a near-total ban on abortions except in cases where the pregnant person’s life is in danger — though it isn’t slated to go into effect for another few months.

I will be voting, petitioning, calling, writing, volunteering every person, entity, business that is complicate in this vile attack of personal rights on health care and services. 🤬

Ars Technica

Tesla framed Diaz’s suffering as “‘garden variety’ emotional distress that was ‘fortunately mild and short-lived,'” Orrick wrote. “The record roundly rejects that watered-down revisionism. It is difficult to see how Tesla reached that interpretation of the evidence other than ignoring it. Tesla’s proffered figure of $300,000 is, accordingly, untethered to record evidence. The jury reasonably found that this was a case of severe emotional distress.”

Orrick decided that compensatory damages “will be remitted to $1.5 million, the highest award supported by the evidence. The punitive damages award must also be remitted under Supreme Court precedent imposing constitutional limitations on punitive damages. But again, I will not reduce it to the one-to-one ratio to compensatory damages that Tesla urges. I conclude that, on these facts, the Constitution permits a punitive-damages award of $13.5 million—nine times the amount of compensatory damages.”

Diaz will have the option of accepting or rejecting the new amounts totaling $15 million. Tesla can then challenge the ruling in a federal appeals court.

I would say that barely covers the damage. With Tesla lawyers arguing some garbage revisionist law, I would have happily doubled that amount.

Ars Technica

“If we are forced to let unvetted apps onto iPhone, the unintended consequences will be profound,” Cook said. “And when we see that, we feel an obligation to speak up—and to ask policymakers to work with us to advance goals that I truly believe we share, without undermining privacy in the process.”

Still not buying it.

WAPO

U.S. fortunes largely will rest on the shoulders of 23-year-old Christian Pulisic, a menacing attacking threat who signed with Chelsea for a $73 million transfer fee in 2019 — a record for an American — and went on to help the English Premier League side win the 2020-21 UEFA Champions League. After a then-teenage Pulisic tried and failed to carry the United States to the 2018 tournament, the Hershey, Pa., native finally will get his chance to shine on the World Cup stage.

Really looking forward to this years cup 🏆

From Hypercritical

At each decision point, I’ve adjusted my life to fit within my maximum capacity by curtailing “unnecessary” activities. My family and my day job were necessities. Everything else was optional. As I’ve gotten older, my maximum capacity has decreased, of course, and I have exceeded my limits on many occasions. But for the most part, I’ve been able to keep it together.

It hasn’t always felt great to be running “at maximum capacity” (or slightly beyond) for two and a half decades, but it has always felt like the right thing to do during this critical part of my life.

By 2022, I had returned to thinking not only that it’s possible for me to quit my day job, but that it’s necessary for me to do so.

And so, on March 25, 2022, I left my “normal” job. I am now officially self-employed.

If John, why not you or me?

From WSJ

Wy­att Decker, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of Op­tum Health, the unit that fo­cuses on pro­vid­ing health­care, said the com­pany sees ris­ing de­mand from pa­tients and fam­i­lies for home-based care. “This trend has re­ally only just be­gun, of how much care can truly be de­liv­ered in the home,” he said in an in­ter­view. “We can give care in the home, which is a lower-cost set­ting…than nurs­ing homes or more ad­vanced care fa­cil­i­ties.”

At no point would I ever believe that a health insurance company is interested, in any way, at actually lowering costs.

From WSJ

As the language is finalized behind closed doors, most tech companies and their lobbyists are resigned to passage of the so-called Digital Markets Act. Other provisions in the DMA are aimed at the likes of Amazon.com Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc.

The DMA’s most existential threat to Apple comes with a provision that would allow software makers access to the iPhone—through so-called sideloading—outside of the rules and payment scheme of Apple’s App Store. One recent draft of the DMA, overwhelmingly approved in December by a 642-8 European Parliament vote, included sideloading.

The first thing to come to mind is Apple’s Dutch dating solution. To require app makers open their books and pay Apple 27% tribute. They feel, down to their very bone, that they deserve a portion of every transaction that passes through an iPhone.

One in four Black Americans live in high-poverty neighborhoods, compared to one in 13 white Americans, but the gap goes further. Opportunity Insights, a nonprofit organization that focuses on social mobility, found in a report that race is a major factor for generational mobility even within neighborhoods, and Black-white gaps are even larger in low-poverty neighborhoods.

While guaranteed income alone won’t be a magic fix to the historical injustices around race in the US, cash transfers that reduce contemporary income gaps can begin to make a dent in racial wealth inequalities. To think about it another way, if cash transfers had been given to low-income families in 1960, it would’ve lessened the racial income gap back then, which in turn would have compounded into a smaller racial wealth gap today. We didn’t do that in 1960, but we can start today.

Until we address the growing wealth gap in a variety of ways, possibly guaranteed income, we can not begin to really fix the ongoing damage of systematic racial inequality.

This risk was on full display in January, when the developer of two JavaScript libraries with more than 22 million downloads pushed an update that caused more than 21,000 dependent apps to spew gibberish, prefaced by the words “Liberty Liberty Liberty.” An infinite loop produced by the update sent developers scrambling as they attempted to fix their malfunctioning apps. The disk-wiping function was added to node-ipc versions 10.1.1 and 10.1.2. Following the outcry over the wiper, the developer released updates that removed the malicious function. Snyk recommends that developers stop using the package altogether. If that’s not possible, the company advises the use of an npm package manager to override the sabotaged versions and pin a known good version

Tough times continue in open source and package management.

CAMERA

Which brings us to the camera, which I find to be crushingly disappointing. Image quality is astonishingly poor, and Center Stage is glitchy.

Apple says the Studio Display uses the same 12 megapixel ultra-wide camera as in recent iPads — including the new iPad Air. Here are two images of me at my desk, on a sunny afternoon. This one is from the new iPad Air’s front-facing camera:

Absolutly blistering review from John

But Rayburn’s experience shows that’s not always the case. Miners are looking at remote sites, which in some cases will require millions of dollars in grid upgrades, Naylor said.

Utilities across Texas are fielding proposals. American Electric Power Co. is weighing requests from 75 to 100 Bitcoin miners to connect primarily across West Texas and is evaluating the need for upgrades to handle the mines. Golden Spread Electric Cooperative, which serves the Texas Panhandle and Central Plains, is studying inquiries from two dozen miners.

Imagine having so little regulation that crypto miners fine it advantageous to build there. Meanwhile power utilities continue to struggle under cold weather conditions. 🤨

The risks may pay off because crypto miners have pledged to shut down in times of crisis to conserve power, Naylor said. The biggest Bitcoin miner in Texas, Riot Blockchain, did so in February and last year, and others, such as Compute North LLC and Bitdeer Technologies Holding Co., have committed to shutting if needed.

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Jem Young, Engineering Manager at Netflix, shares his perspective on engineering team leadership. He talks about his experience going from an individual contributor to leading an engineering team, including some of the roadblocks and challenges new managers often encounter. Jem also describes some of the perspectives on team leadership he’s developed by working with and watching other leaders at Netflix. Finally, they talk about the changes in the career trajectories of individual contributors, and how ICs can grow in their careers whether they choose to take the management path or not.

Had an absolute fantastic time talking with Jem.

A Russian projectile hit the Zaporizhzhia plant in southeastern Ukraine overnight, igniting a fire that caused widespread alarm but triggered no release of radioactive material. Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, warned of the “risks that we may all incur” if fighting around nuclear sites rages on. The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv tweeted: “It is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant,” and President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of “nuclear terror.”

03/04/2022 at 11:12 a.m. EST

I fear things getting a lot worse before they get any better. 😞

Under a land value tax system, proponents say property owners would be clamoring to be allowed to develop their land more intensely — leading to more homes being built.

Here’s the theory: Taxing land reduces the profit that comes from just owning a piece of property. Instead, you are incentivized to put that land to work. Let’s take a plot of land near Times Square. That land is so valuable, basically anything you do with it will turn a massive profit so no need to develop it for its most valuable use.

However, if a land tax were to be levied, the owner of that land would need to make sure that the property on that land was actually profitable since the government is taxing away some or all of the land rents that could be charged.

In a 2015 Slate article, Henry Grabar illustrated this point well, pointing to the case of a parking lot charging drivers $40 per day for parking and accruing under $10,000 in property taxes. That parking lot, Grabar writes, sits next to a seven-story building that requires more than a quarter of a million in taxes annually.

This is an interesting idea for trying to help with the current and ongoing housing crisis across America. As a homeowner, I believe the constant push back on building multi tent homes in local areas needs to be stopped. It is far outside the bounds for me to condemn or veto housing options in my neighborhood simply because I don’t like it, or it will “devalue my own property” 🙄, and the most offensive “because we don’t want ‘those’ type of people here”.

I propose four key ingredients:

Definition: What is “performance” beyond page speed? What, in particular, is “web performance”? Purpose: What is web performance trying to accomplish as a discipline? What are its goals? Principles: What fundamental truths are guiding the discipline and moving it forward? Practice: What does it look like to work on web performance? How do we do it?

Worth a read for sure.

Post-Dispatch reporter Josh Renaud had been facing the threat of prosecution since his discovery that the state website’s HTML source code exposed the full Social Security numbers of teachers and other school employees in unencrypted form. Renaud merely viewed the website’s HTML and converted the Social Security numbers into plain text, and he gave the state time to close the gaping security hole before publishing his findings. Despite Renaud helping the state improve its security, Parson called the journalist a “hacker,” sought criminal charges, and threatened a civil suit.

One would hope that the behavior of an elected official such as this would be grounds for immediate dismissal by their constituents as “unfit for office”

That seems like a really odd and specific action by the state legislature.

Rep. Susan Humphries, a Republican from Wichita and the chair of the budget committee, defended the committee’s move to strip the medical board of funding, calling the board’s medical investigations “political,” the Capital-Journal reported. “If it has become a political issue in this board, do we need a political answer to that,” Humphries said.

Oh. Now that makes sense.

Ms. Wilson, 30 years old, is among the more than 900,000 people who quit jobs in state and local education last year, according to federal data. Resignations from private education, meanwhile, neared 600,000. According to LinkedIn, the share of K-12 teachers on the site who quit to start nonteaching roles climbed 66% from November 2020 to November 2021, as the pandemic turned in-school education upside down.

That we have not treated this profession with more respect and such poor pay for so long is absolutely disgusting.

“The success of digital product development relies on collaboration, speed and constant experimentation, all of which a collective bargaining arrangement could stifle,” Ms. Rhoades Ha said in a statement.

Anytime a business is against something (like unions), it’s not out of kindness or empathy. It is a calculated decision based solely profit.