I'm going to second aerovistae. I think there are plenty of glaring differences between Uber and Tesla that make your comparison just amount to throwing shade:
1. First, I haven't heard many people argue that they think Musk's end state isn't viable. That is, Musk has already proven you can build a great electric car, the question is just whether he can solve the production issues and scale up (especially battery production) fast enough before he runs out of money. But if he does get there before he runs out of money, people agree he will have huge moats around his business with his technology, brand desirability and the gigafactory. Contrast this with Uber, where a lot of people think that in the end state (when VC money stops subsidizing every ride) that it will essentially be a commodity business with very poor economic fundamentals.
2. Uber has had story after story of fundamental problems with their corporate culture, while everything I've read about Tesla appears to be almost the exact opposite.
I'm not disputing the 10% number (though I don't know what all it includes - does it include drug delivery systems, like what is under discussion in OP's article?). I'm disputing the overall conclusion in that paper that "drug costs aren't really worth focusing on." I also dispute the assertion that other areas of health care aren't also being focused on for cost insanity. 10% is still a huge number, and if you happen to be one of the unlucky souls dependent on a medicine that goes up in price by many multiples it's a gigantic deal to you.
I think that's kind of the point, though, that OSes and shells have gotten to the point where all that complexity is hidden behind an easy installation. With modern web frameworks, all the "guts" are still fully exposed, warts and all.
It kind of reminds me of the state of Linux in the mid-late 90s, where you'd have "install fests" with a roomful of 25 people and it took a whole day to get Linux installed on your machine (and your sound still didn't work, that took another afternoon).
From these links, main number seems to be "Nearly 10 million Americans, or 4.1 percent of the adult population, used prescription opioid painkillers for nonmedical reasons in 2012-2013". Numbers I've seen for marijuana were about 11.5% in a year, though that was for 2001.
So certainly higher usage for marijuana, but definitely not "many orders of magnitude"
The "fun facts" he listed re: the board members were just that - interesting tidbits (that I was personally intrigued to find out) but yes, not relevant to other aspects of the case.
The fact that "Carmack was enthralled with VR" is very much relevant to the story of why Carmack decided to spend so much effort (apparently using some Zenimax's resources according to the post) to work on technology that at the time wasn't immediately relevant to what Zenimax was doing.
But with this technology it seems like it would be straightforward to build a slightly larger, more practical house. Though I agree, I think building a house with at least one actual bedroom would have made a better demo.
I think this is a dubious statement. The bifurcation of American society, with increasing concentration of wealth in cities, and increasingly desolate rural areas, has only accelerated in recent years.
The fact is that most in demand knowledge workers want to live in central urban areas. You say you can have commute "only 20 mins longer than your average Long Island commuter" - does that mean your door-to-door time is over an hour each way? No thank you, I'd much rather live in a small apartment with a 15 minute walkable commute.
Most of those other professions you listed have much more meaningful and standardized certifications than software. A board certified cardiologist has already demonstrated real proficiency by going through the process to get certified. In software, the whole reason for these complicated hiring processes is that no one really trusts software certifications, and even company pedigree is not always a reliable signal.
The main issue, as others have pointed out, is that the network effects and barriers to entry with Uber are quite low, so even if they beat Lyft they won't be able to jack up prices well above cost. In Austin, Uber and Lyft left after city voters passed driver fingerprinting requirements, and a flood of new companies entered the market. These new apps and companies had problems at first, but I currently use RideAustin (a non-profit, mind you) frequently, and despite being slightly more expensive than Uber is currently, the experience is pretty much indistinguishable.
Huh? Your answer surprises me, as I can think of tons of examples. Designers are often asked to provide a portfolio to show the work they are capable of. Same thing for photographers. In a previous life I was a ballet dancer, and the whole purpose of auditions is to demonstrate that you are a competent dancer.
I generally prefer an existing portfolio of code (e.g. github repos) to see the kind of code someone produces, but if you aren't able to show some fairly extensive examples of your work, homework is usually a bunch better assessment of your skills than what can be accomplished in a ~45 min interview.
Random question: Did you just hand-cut the svg code for the graph on the left side of the page? I took a quick look through the source code and didn't see any evidence of a specific tool.
The reason I ask is that that kind of behavior, where you click on the node and it highlights the paths to that node but grays out everything else, is super useful for complicated architecture diagrams where you want to put a ton of stuff in one diagram, but still be able to see where edges go when you have a big spider web of connections. I've been looking for diagramming software that would create these clickable kinds of diagrams for my company, but haven't found anything that exactly fits the bill (Most tools I've found generate static diagrams, and some mind mapping software I've seen doesn't totally fit the bill, either).
No, I understood the article to state that washed eggs shouldn't be stored unrefrigerated at all (except to bring up to room temp just before cooking). The "1 week for unrefrigerated eggs" referred to eggs that still had their cuticle.
I'm sure this is a stupid question, but would it be possible to build essentially a large "siphon", so that the discharge of the water didn't result in erosion directly below the spillway?
Seems like it would be pissing in the ocean (or I guess that analogy in reverse?), but when I saw the newsreels of the helicopters dropping bags of rocks into the spillway hole, that also seemed like it would take a couple thousand of those drops to make a difference.
Just wanted to say thanks for this writeup. This is really excellent, to the point I was passing around your blog post in lieu of the GCP announcement.