Notices by Jane Doe (janef0421@mastodon.nz)

The main reason to have free public transport in an energy crisis is fuel conservation, not any sort of cost relief. If something is free, more people use it. The more people use public transport, which is more fuel-efficient than private vehicles, the less fuel is consumed. That reduces the intensity of the crisis.

Many people would not directly benefit because public transport is not practical for them. Some people who are relatively wealthy would directly benefit. I don’t think either of those facts are relevant, because the policy is not being proposed on the basis that it would relieve costs for individuals.

I cannot for the life of me figure out what the logic behind Trump’s tariff policy is. It goes against every modern theory of economic development that I am aware of.

It does seem to be a total rejection of America’s prior economic position - Extracting value from the world economy via control of the reserve currency. That requires trade deficits, and those have been totally rejected.

This will totally reorient the world economy.

#USPol #Geopolitics

@quinn @PenguinJunk @ErgonWolf Nuclear’s lifetime cost is quite competitive and it uses less material resources than alternatives.

@PenguinJunk @quinn @ErgonWolf There’s no limit on how much nuclear waste can be stored, it just means more facilities need to be built and maintained. Also, a lot of it would be reprocessed once the most economical ores were extracted, so the problem wouldn’t get out of hand.

My employer is moving to trying to release every two-week sprint, and I’m kind of skeptical of the arrangement. Rapid releases make sense, but when you’re pairing that with fixed timelines, the unpredictable nature of development means you’ll either have people working too hard to meet the timeline, or the releases will have ad-hoc feature sets based on whatever was done by the deadline, neither of which is good.

More broadly, I don’t think the fixed sprint process makes sense. I understand the iteration; Having a bundle of related work that can be planned together and then analysed, both by the developers and external stakeholders makes sense. I also get that having fixed work periods is easier for management, though I feel it would be better to have more flexible management. But I seriously doubt you can impose the latter on the former and maintain its advantages.