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Carbon dust is nasty stuff. I don’t think it’s any better than sand coal or asbestos for your lungs.

Living with a partner should narrow it down

There are benefits if you have different income levels but penalties in the low and the high end. Very high penalties on the low end

I agree the market for 10% better AI isn’t that great but the cost to get there is. An 80% as good model at 10% or even 5% the cost will win every time in the current environment. Most businesses don’t even have a clear use case for AI they just use it because the competition is and there is a FOMO effect

> Most businesses don’t even have a clear use case for AI they just use it because the competition is and there is a FOMO effect

I consult in this space and 80-90% of what I see is chat bots and RAG.


That’s exactly what I’d expect. Honestly Ai chat bots seems unnecessarily risky because you never really know what they might say on your behalf.

Yeah that’s going to be the problem. The pay bands are so low they would be lucky to get people with degrees at all. Definitely not talent

Pay isn’t everything. Government civilian GS employees have an extremely generous benefits package and usually excellent job security. Contractors frequently take pay cuts to work directly as a government employee for these reasons.

That ship has sailed now, though. The benefits and job security can no longer be counted on. Government is gonna have to compete more on salary, or accept worse candidates.

I said usually for job security because I am familiar with the current administration’s actions, and the benefits have not been touched and would take an act of Congress to change. Trust me, there are still lots of talented individuals who are eager to join the government workforce, even now.

For poverty wages? In my city government workers with families almost universally qualify for subsidized housing. People in my experience get half my salary, and then half of that goes to housing. Maybe some C tier talent goes to government but not without wfh, pension or other benefits.

Federal IT workers are hardly working for poverty wages. In addition to their base salaries, they receive additional locality pay, generous benefits like paid time off, retirement benefits, inexpensive health insurance and life insurance, training and advancement opportunities, and the opportunity to receive monetary and time off awards. It’s not FAANG salaries, but they are very well compensated and the working conditions are usually great.

> very well compensated

You'd have to be a GS-14 [0] to be north of $150k base salary.

That's tech team manager / senior manager, with a post-graduate degree, and 7+ years of experience in the field.

[0] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...

> and the working conditions are usually great

Really? Because private sector seems a lot more stable these days.


> the benefits have not been touched and would take an act of Congress to change

There’s a lot of things that are supposed to take an act of Congress to change.


I don’t really trust you on that. Why is the government workforce not more capable if there are lots of skilled people who want to work for them?

> benefits have not been touched…

If you don't count mass firings, sure.


A silver lining in all this upheaval is the reduction of price obfuscation (hopefully) by getting rid of deferred compensation schemes that make it difficult for labor sellers to evaluate the market.

> Government civilian GS employees have an extremely generous benefits package and usually excellent job security.

Had. Not have.


Yep this was true a decade or 2 ago not true anymore. Generous compared to Walmart, sure but not compared to Industry for any type of Technical work.

Yeah, I was referring to the job security aspect, given all the layoffs.

But yes, the federal package is good, but not fantastic. It's on par with what a typical company provides. Salary is decent, too. Not FAANG, but not below industry average. More or less, just like a typical industry job.

State/city jobs tend to have much better benefit packages, but lower pay (often a lot lower). They also tend to be relatively chill workwise.


> tend to be relatively chill workwise

This feels like something that needed past tense.

Some rich asshole I don't know blasting out weekly check-in demands to the org-wide list doesn't sound very chill.


> Some rich asshole I don't know blasting out weekly check-in demands to the org-wide list doesn't sound very chill.

Context? The comment was about city/state jobs, not federal.


A Florida man didn't want to feel left out.

https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2025/governor-ron-desan...


And now they do not have job security.

Last I checked, there was a surplus of tech talent in the US who have been subject to layoffs.

Govt gives benefits and job security, at least till the next opportunity rises.


Doubt it, many mid/low tier industries still struggle to hire because they pay engineering salaries not tech money. Government salaries are easily 30-50% lower

I love the last one

Beautiful and completely unlivable like most architecture works

What makes it unlivable to you?

I did notice the lack of curtains or drapes on the bedroom, which would make it hard to sleep in the summer at a high latitude.


Why do you believe so?

Looking at some virtual tours, it seems to be a fairly solid design. I would probably disagree with a bunch of the furniture, but the architecture itself is fairly close to what I would expect in my ideal home.


Almost always cold, impractical to clean difficult or impossible to maintain hvac not properly integrated or simply areas that look cool but don’t work with how people live their lives.

The current administration does not understand that. I think of American mask producers as an example of how you cloud get really screwed

The eBay experience has improved dramatically. Its far better than Amazon 3rd party

I've actually noticed that; perhaps it's easier to scam/sell crap on Amazon now than eBay - and so eBay becomes actually usable again.

I think the scams are all automated on Amazon so that makes it even easier

What do we export to china besides airplanes?

Crashing Boeing stuff that doesn't even get delivered to Ryan Air? -- so, no: not even that.

Here you go https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports/china

I was a bit surprised about fish being exported from USA to China.


America don’t eat a lot of Fish but we catch a bunch

Almost the entirety of California's citrus crop. A lot of meat. Ginseng root. Probably a few other things.

agriculture and energy

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