Aaron Levie strikes me as one of the sharpest and most prescient people in SV. I think you must be 100% correct that he's a true nerd about this stuff, or else he could have gone on to a thousand different things outside of Box by now.. he would probably be an incredible VC (I think I recall he was one of the first seed investors in Stripe as a result of cornering Patrick Collison at a house party, talking his ear off, and thoroughly impressing Collison).
The property tax is calculated based on the last transaction price of the home, so despite it being estimated at $15m today, the owner would be paying tax on a much lower value (assuming they purchased it many years ago).
Unfortunately the speed of AI/ML is so crazy fast. I don't know a better way to keep track other than paying attention all the time. The field also loves memey names. A few years ago everyone was naming models after Sesame Street characters, there were the YOLO family of models. Conference papers are not immune, in fact they are greatest "offenders".
The means of suicide are probably too much for the average person to succumb to even in the face of a very hard life. The fact that assisted suicide is broadly illegal in the US is something that I've always found ridiculous. No one asked to be brought into the world, and we should be able to check out on our own terms (in planned, thoughtful, assisted way) without resorting to painful/tragic means.
I've been seriously considering neon for a new application. This definitely gives me pause... maybe plain ol' Postgres is going to be the winner for me again.
I haven't studied the CLA situation in order to know if a rug pull is on the table but Tofu and Valkey have shown that where there's a will there's a way
The whole point to you, but the whole point to me was having scale-to-zero because Aurora Serverless hurp-durp-ed on that. And I deeply enjoy the ability to fix bugs instead of contacting AWS Support with my hat in my hand asking to be put on some corporate backlog for 2073
Thankfully, you can continue to pay Databricks whatever they ask for the privilege of them hosting it for you
Can’t speak for anyone but myself and my experience anecdotally, having used Databricks: I consider them to be the Oracle of the modern era. Under no circumstances would I let them get their hooks into any company I have the power from preventing it.
Why do think so? Databricks notebook product I have used in couple of companies is pretty solid. I have done any google research but they are generally known to be very high talent dense kind of place to work.
Serverless in the context of Postgres means to decouple storage and compute, so you could scale compute "infinitely" without setting up replica servers. This is what Neon offers, where you can just keep hitting their endpoints with your pg client and it should just take whatever load (in principle) and bill you per request.
Supabase gives you a server that runs classic Postgres in a process. Scaling in this scenario means you increase your server's capacity, with a potential downtime while the upgrade is happening.
You are confusing _managed_ Postgres for _serverless_.
If a government truly wanted to fix a housing "crisis", wouldn't a ban on any type of corporate entity from buying single-family homes be an efficient solution? E.g., LLC's can no longer purchase single-family homes. Only real, live human individuals can purchase single-family homes. They could also try to implement some type of ban on any single individual person from purchasing more than 1 (or choose a number) single-family home.
I am a realtor and sit on my state's realtor association legislative steering committee, which this year sough to work with legislators on a bill that would limit mass corporate control over housing units... it's surprisingly more complicated than it first appears, and an area where realtors take a view that might be contrary to consumer expectations - we generally like the idea of limitations on corporate ownership, as it in theory creates the greatest opportunity for individual homeownership...
Anyway, some of the scenarios we ran into are things like the 2008 mortgage crisis - what happens if you end up in a market where there is a lot of inventory that no one can afford to hold? In my market, it's starting to look like a lot of builders (read: corporations) built too many houses either that weren't what consumers wanted or demand has shrunk (it is a town with a lot of federal jobs that are evaporating at the moment...). So can a builder hold that inventory indefinitely (assuming they can afford that) as a corporation? Likewise, people often don't want to hear this, but landlords do create efficiencies in the market - there are people out there that either don't want to own a home or can't qualify for a mortgage, and a landlord makes it possible to provide housing for those people as a kind of intermediary. We can argue over what it takes to qualify for a mortgage, but that's really a separate issue. We of course get into the issue of vacation homes or even situations like can I as an individual own a place for my business and a home - after all, they are both real estate, so how tight can we make these rules around ownership? Point being - the basic idea is sound, and some states like CA apparently already have laws on the books, but it's a more complicated matter than just one person == one house.
Why would that be a solution? What's the difference between the LLC that buys a bunch of homes and the LLC the builds bunch of homes. When the homes are done being built the LLC has morphed from an LLC that builds homes to an LLC that bought a bunch of homes.
The solution to me is to stop preventing people and companies from building homes.
Effectively, goverments and nimbyism prevent houses from being built. Even when some laws change to supposedly allow it other laws continue to prevent it. It's got nothing to do with LLCs buying existing houses, it's got to do with not enough houses period.
The solution lies in eliminating the entire concept of investment properties, and to classify single-homes as purely places to live. You do realize that part of "not enough" houses is due to corporate entities / investment vehicles / investors owning many properties.
And the types of cities (dense, highly-desirable urban cities like SF, London, Paris) where the NIMBY people complain most often also happen to be the most common markets for these investors to purchase/own multiple homes.
> You do realize that part of "not enough" houses is due to corporate entities / investment vehicles / investors owning many properties.
No, I do not realize this. This is only possible because of limited supply. If the supply was not limited by government and nimbys then it would not be profitable for "corporate entities / investment vehicles / investors owning many properties."
It's also irrelevant, no amount of preventing "corporate entities / investment vehicles / investors owning many properties." will do anything to keep prices low as long as demand is high and supply is low.
I agree that the core problem of housing affordability is that housing serves a dual role as an investment and a place to live. But I think this policy will not do very much and in isolation would even be counterproductive.
Why focus on single family homes? If corporate ownership is as bad as you are framing it then why is it OK for someone who lives in an apartment to be advantage of? Worse still, these entities would still want to invest in real estate so presumably they would invest even more in multi-family properties. If their ownership is what causes unaffordability, are you not making things even worse for people who live in multi-family housing?
One cause of the UK's 'housing crisis' (or rather un-affordability), just like other countries I suppose, is simply that if I buy other properties, I get: capital appreciation on the asset, and return on investment (by renting it out).
Offer me a £500k passive investment that makes the same returns with the same guarantees, and I'll take that over a house.
Except they don't. No other investment comes close for the British middle classes with that sort of extra cash. And the UK government will tax you to the hilt on everything else.
Exacerbating the problem, is that you can get a bank loan for additional properties.
Zoning is a US thing. The article refers to the UK housing problem and we don't really have that problem, but I suppose that might fix the US market.
UK houses are a good investment, in fact the best investment for £500k, and also their price is additionally inflated by 'cheap money' and dual incomes.
Can't quite afford that house that's current 'under offer' at £500k? You might be able to find a bank that will lend you just that little bit more. 5.5x your salary? No problem. Congratulations, the bank has just helped push house prices that little bit higher. In the UK in the 1970s the single income 3x mortgage multiplier was on its last legs. Now it's 4+ times your joint salary. Madness.
I bought my house (in CA) in 2019, and my property tax bill is ~$30k/yr. My literal nextdoor neighbor's property tax bill is less than $1k/yr (it last sold in the 1960s and has been passed down within the same family).
