What if it is not the terrorists naming them? What if it is a good samaritan trying to warn the pilot but this is the only way they can get a message out?
> What if it is a good samaritan trying to warn the pilot but this is the only way they can get a message out?
Then you quietly divert to the nearest airport. Asking for the speaker to be turned off on PA and then chugging all the way back to Newark makes it plain nobody was acting seriously.
A hypothesis I had on why some countries have more conglomerates than US is that access to capital and funds are much harder in those countries in comparison to US. When access to capital is comparatively more limited, more innovations falls to the party that has comparatively easier access to capital (conglomerates) and therefore reinforcing their position as conglomerate.
While I understand the risk of sharing sensitive information (e.g. bank login) with a 3rd party. But the current situation is such that your bank currently monopolize your bank information to improve your loan offer, to give you better service at better rate based on their understanding of your bank transaction history.
Currently, there is no aligned format for sharing your bank transaction history with other financial institution of your choice. Your current bank is the one who purposely makes it hard (only allowing you to share it through the same bank login) so that you are more locked-in in their eco system.
I used to work with Plaid as a provider, and you will notice certain banks who really do not like their customers using Plaid in sharing their bank transaction history with competitors will often have unscheduled maintenance that Plaid wouldn’t work so that you as a user would find friction using someone else and stay with only using products within their ecosystem.
I think the real question is less about why are we using Plaid to share our transaction information. If we are to have an open format to share our banking transaction history, what should be that format and what would be the lock and key for it?
I am curious how electricity is priced. Why are more and more utility providers charge based on ‘infrastructure cost’ or ‘fixed platform fee’ instead of usage fee?
Within the US, energy prices for are typically split into supply and distribution rates with taxes and fees added to each of these. There are typically a large number of these fees that are passed through to the consumer, but just are bundled together to reduce confusion. An example fee is one for keeping power plants idle as extra capacity for when it's needed. Electricity has a nationwide market with different prices for spot prices vs long term although if you are big enough you can also get a direct contract to hedge your energy supply prices.
The complaint here is that PJM is spending money on upgrading the long range wires and passing that fee in a way that's not calculated for usage but instead it's likely divided evenly amongst member states. If you're upgrading wires in PA why should Maryland pay for that? These would taking in new/higher fees being passed to consumers.
The long range transmission lines are different than short term transmission lines. The long range ones appear someone to hit electricity from a power plant in California for a business in Baltimore.
And the counterpoint is that for the resident of Maryland, paying a little now to upgrade long distance transmission lines will save them money in the long run, because it will allow them to benefit from cheap solar power from California in the evenings and cheap solar from new York in the mornings.
More transmission = more places to find lower prices.
> Why are more and more utility providers charge based on ‘infrastructure cost’ or ‘fixed platform fee’ instead of usage fee?
Because unlike many commodities, electricity, once generated, is hard to store, yet supply must match demand in real time. You need to meet peak demand, even if normal usage is not as high. If you pay purely for usage, that might not send enough price signals to ensure that you have the necessary capacity when you need it. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/enn/explainer-how-capac... has a more detailed overview of how markets are being structured to provide capacity, separate from actual generation.
Hmmm, if you take a brick and mortar store, they have fixed costs to renovate and decorate the store, and they likely have capacity of the store that is not used during non-peak period as well. They charge for item sold, to cover for all costs they incurred for capacity of the store even during non-peak period as well. Is this an equivalent comparison? Don’t businesses generally roll in the fixed costs into their price and charge per unit still?
> I am curious how electricity is priced. Why are more and more utility providers charge based on ‘infrastructure cost’ or ‘fixed platform fee’ instead of usage fee?
This is also happening in Australia. I wonder if it is a similar story in the US, or not.
In Australia, rooftop solar and batteries have become so widespread, many properties have dramatically reduced their consumption of power from the grid. This poses a problem when electricity usage costs are used, not just to cover the power consumed, but also the grid infrastructure, much of which are fixed costs which are incurred irrespective of actual usage. In response, the regulator is looking at changing the billing structure to increase the fixed part of the bill which you pay irrespective of how much power you use.
What happens (in Australia and in California) if rooftop solar and battery technology really have a huge breakthrough and the capacity of the major power generators were never utilized in the lifetime of those generators? Do consumers just ‘bail out’ the power generation companies?
That's mostly incorrect. In Maryland, like in most places in the country, the distribution infrastructure is controlled by regulated monopolies that buy power on the market from generators. Your bills separate out the fees for usage and the fees for distribution, and the Maryland PSC has to approve both.
Yes, but the cost per kilowatt is at least partially based on capex recovery. That might be approved by the PSC but what they approve are capex projects and the recovery of them.
Because there's this belief that a for-profit company will naturally be more efficient. No idea if that's actually true in practice though. Or if efficiency > the profits the company takes.
I don't know of any large community ran utilities, just small ones. I'm guessing the scale starts being a problem eventually.
They can be efficient, but I ly if the incentives align towards the desired definition of efficiency.
If you give a company a natural monopoly and protection from competition. Then it's most efficient way to make money is just to raise rates
They basically are. It really isn’t anything resembling an open market. They are effectively extensions of the state that happen to be funded by user fees rather than general funds.
Thank you for sharing this.
I get that the company making the capital investment wants to get a return of 10% from their investment.
The part I don’t understand is, why aren’t the return on investment being covered by the increased usage from the data centers (while the rate per usage stays flat)?
If the increase in usage (with rates staying flat) is insufficient to cover for the return on investment, then who is making the decision to take the risk for making these capital investment? The risk taker can definitely ‘pay’ for an over confidence in the market.
If it is because the increased usage of the grid as a whole reaches a step function requiring more investment, the system can have a gradually increasing usage price rate.
I am trying to find out if someone in the system is trying to eat up the benefits and publicly say “it’s because of AI” or maybe I am not understanding the situation well.
1) the first MW is cheaper to generate than the 100th. Newer plants. Cheaper fuels. More efficient. You run your good stuff always, for peak it’s on demand.
2) the cost of the old plants are already paid for, if adding a new data center requires a new plant; may add a big cost with a 50 year payback.
I'm not familiar with the Maryland power grid, but I've observed in other places that putting data centers in places with older / inadequate grids can / will require upgrades to handle the new load.
Sometimes, large corporation values consistency above one-off excellence. It’s how they build their brand (the promise of consistency).
I won’t be surprised if the people in rooms tasting coffee is also looking for coffee that is too good for one-off but hard to be replicable in the various stores they have.
Consistency and predictability is considered extremely important for large franchise operations (or corporate-run chains). People want exactly the same sausage patty and egg croissant in St. John's Newfoundland as they can get in San Diego, California.
Quoting Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash:
The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder ― its DNA ― xerox it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left- turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines.
In olden times, you’d wander down to Mom’s Café for a bite to eat and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left your hometown. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be something you didn’t recognize. If you did enough traveling, you’d never feel at home anywhere.
But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk into a McDonald’s and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald’s is Home, condensed into a three-ringed binder and xeroxed. “No surprises” is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin.
The people of America, who live in the world’s most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto.
Is the reason they reached 2B/mo partially contributed by the fact that their users feel like they get unlimited use of it?
If ‘feeling like it is unlimited use’ is a huge part that creates the 2B/mo, this change of limit might jeopardize it.
That being said, Anthropic can be diverting capacity to train the next model, and if it is significantly better, people would start flocking back again.
I wonder if cities would want to create even more short term pick up and drop off points on the road for USPS, UPS, FedEx, DoorDash, Uber, Lyft, Waymo and other similar short term parking needs, this would mean removing some long term street parking options and potentially conflict with some bike lanes in some areas.
Would cities be willing to give up on the parking fines revenue they are generating right now? How should cities be incentivized to change with the changing mobilities needs of the people living inside dense cities?
From my personal experience, Uber had been doing this since before ChatGPT became a thing.
It seems like Uber is just experimenting with what number before the ‘%’ sign is going to nudge people to buy more.
Yes, low-end disruption can totally disrupt a company’s revenue source and therefore its ability to continue to innovate and sustain its valuation…
Claude Design doesn’t even need to be better than Figma, it just needs to be able to take some of its customers away.
In the US, phone numbers used to be locked in similar to this too. But then regulations changed and now everyone can port their phone number away to some other providers.
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