The data center owners are exploring these options because they started getting rejected by municipalities when trying to bring (more) power into their data centers.

If they build near a power plant or have one built as part of their data center then the municipality has no jurisdiction.

It also means both sides can ignore state utility regulations, price mandates, etc. This is not part of the grid it is a private direct connection.

And what exactly is stopping them from implementing this in browsers?

Meeting rooms to hammer out different approaches can work well. However personally I ran into the trap of having a strong opinionated personality drowning out other opinions. Eventually my manager suggested and I agreed with that I spoke last at any of those kinds of meetings. I still try to do that to this day to allow everyone's opinions to get heard.

Writing documents and then going over the documents in sync and async fashions can accomplish the same thing. It is different but gets you the same results IMO.
I also prefer documents because they survive long term. Too many conversations in front of a whiteboard don't get written down.. Years later your trying to figure out why did we go left instead of right.. And none of the people involved in that whiteboard conversation remember or are even around.

If you have certain points which are super contentious you can always have a meeting (remote or in person) to hammer those points out.

Before the pandemic I was suspicious of remote work. Now I think it works better for knowledge workers. I think it will take time but in the end most people will come to the same conclusion.

Guess someone rewatched Dark Angel and thought it was a good idea.

>Nope. A properly-designed office is a space specifically and professionally arranged for one thing: to increase the productivity of work.

That has never been the case in my experience. You want an office space that increases productivity? Individual offices for everyone. With a proper door and walls that gives privacy for everyone.

When we had cubicles it was decided too much space was being wasted. Lets go to open office and high density seating. Cram more people into the same space. No walls between people. So your constantly looking into someones face, their movements distracting you. When they are on the phone you hear it. If they have a conversation at their desk you hear it. That lowered my productivity. Noise cancelling headphones helped but didn't completely solve that problem.

Being able to walk up to my desk and interrupt whenever they want lowered my productivity. Sending an email or a message is better. Find a good stopping point then changing focus rather than just ripping you out of your focus randomly.

Those that want to go to the office should feel free to go. No one is stopping them. But so far I haven't heard a strong argument why WFH, that we have been doing for the last 3 years, is less productive than when we were in the Office.

IMO this boils down to highly social people vs not very social people. And developers tend to be not very social people. People managers tend to be highly social people. Will be interesting to see how it plays out in the end. But in tech at least the highly social are the vast minority.

>Though you can do that by just shutting your office door

I haven't been in a situation where there was an office door for decades. High Density Seating has been the norm for me for over a decade.

As for remote tools - Screen sharing within meetings. Remote collab document writing tools.

Personally I'm a much bigger fan of writing a document, then having a discussion over the document. record the meeting, update the document, repeat until everyone is satisfied.

An impromptu in person meeting where no one writes anything down has far less impact long term compared to a document and meeting recording(s).

It will take time for gaming to switch over but there are steps being made to utilize vector instructions.

Unity DOTS is one example. It is a complete reorganization of how you represent things in memory but it does give significant performance boosts when used properly.

I was given a vic-20 when my uncle upgraded to a C64.

Then I asked for a C64 for Christmas... And got a Plus4. But I did learn quite a bit on that Plus4.
Finally did get a C64 for another Christmas.
Then an Amiga 500 in college.
Then so many PCs.

Once you get a system running smoothing it doesn't take much to keep it on course - if you know what your doing.
I can manage a tech team well. What I can't manage is poor management above me. Which is why I am NOT a manager anymore.

I've had a few managers over the years that pulled off managing both sides well. They did a lot of work behind the scenes deflecting BS coming from outside the team. And managing the change in direction that occasionally had to happen. They also figured out how to get the best out of the team members they had.

I have always treasured those managers. I have always been sad when they have left.

Missed a couple

1984: Commodore 16 / Commodore Plus 4

Way back when I actually had a Plus 4 (Asked for a C64 and my parents not knowing any better got a Plus 4).
Wasn't compatible with much. But as someone who was interested in programming it did have a better version of basic.
Unfortunately they both bombed in the US mainly because of the incompatibility.
I did eventually get my C64 a year or 2 later :)

This is really only a threat to long haul trucking. And it's really not even a threat IMO.

Drivers are paid a premium for long haul trucking because it sucks. Your on the road, not seeing family, friends, etc.

The delivery speed improvement comes when the legal framework catches up with the technology and you don't need a safety driver anymore. That truck can drive 24/7 from coast to coast. Human drivers have driving hour limits, etc. Most likely they will put remote driving into these trucks for the odd cases where someone needs to manually handle something. We can do it for flying drones across the planet. A semi shouldn't be that hard.

Now what happens to all these long haul truckers? They can do local deliveries. They can do dangerous things that the self-driving can't. i.e. ice road trucking, mountainous areas, delivery of big things that require alot of human coordination, etc. The jobs will still be there, they will just be different and hopefully better ones.

As far as I know these big companies have not been convicted of breaking the tax code.

Unfortunately the people in charge of that tax code are the same people who benefit the most from having the tax code the way it is.

With things the way they are I don't see any major reforms of the tax code ever.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

The best way I have heard it explained is that the direction we are going there is more energy available which makes weather worse in either direction.

More energy into a hot system means more evaporation, more droughts, more water in the atmosphere for large storms.

You also get larger gradients in weather systems which makes wind stronger. Having more hurricanes in a season is just one symptom of that.

More energy into a cold system means more water in the atmosphere to turn into snow/ice.

Ice reflects more energy back into space than blue water.

Once we hit a blue ocean event we will no longer have that ice to sink energy as part of it's phase transition from ice to water. I think the polite way to put it is weather will get "interesting" after that.

We shall be discussing placement of braces. Same line or next line?

Personally I prefer code formatters to make it consistent to the projects style.
If you don't like how the code formatter did it... Tough that is the standard we are following and enforcing.

It also allows you to reformat it for your personal preference during development.. Then back to standard for review/commit.

Facial recognition technology at scale is what worries me. I feel most people have the same basic concern although we may disagree on the scale where the problem starts.

Deploying this technology to gate keep against people who have or have threatened to hurt/kidnap/kill/etc someone that is going to be the center of attention at an event I don't see an issue with. To me that is a focused proactive attempt to prevent a situation balanced with that persons desire to continue on as normal as possible.

Now you start throwing in everyone who has a warrant in the city/county/state/country/world I get concerned.

As you load up more and more faces it is far too easy to abuse the system. And it is far too tempting of a system to abuse.