The hottest Costs Substack posts right now

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Mass Timber is Great, but It Will Not Solve the Housing Shortage

Construction Physics • 13153 implied HN points • 13 Mar 24
💼 Business Construction Housing Costs Canada
  1. Mass timber construction is advantageous for tall buildings due to its fire resistance and carbon sequestration, but it may not significantly increase housing construction volume in the US compared to traditional methods.
  2. While mass timber is praised for its safety and environmental benefits, it faces challenges such as higher initial costs and more complex processing steps, making it less competitive than light-framed wood construction in the US.
  3. Canada's experience with mass timber, despite a supportive ecosystem, shows that residential mass timber construction may not see a significant uptick in the US housing market even with continued growth and cost reduction.

On Klein on Construction

Construction Physics • 10021 implied HN points • 18 Feb 23
🔬 Science Construction Regulations Productivity Costs Technology
  1. Construction industry productivity issues may be due to organized special interests influencing the process with complex regulations and stakeholder approvals.
  2. Regulations have increased costs in construction through additional input requirements and negotiation delays.
  3. Increased regulation in the construction industry might not be causing productivity stagnation more than in other sectors, but it is a significant factor to consider.

Insuring Progress

Model Thinking • 259 implied HN points • 07 Jan 24
💼 Business Regulation Innovation Costs Urban Development Technology
  1. Replacing process-based regulations with outcome-based regulations can help boost British growth in sectors like childcare, energy, and housing
  2. Introducing Mandatory Insurance Schemes in sectors with low-probability, high-downside events can incentivize safety compliance and ensure victims get compensated
  3. Outcome-based regulations can lead to cost-effective safety procedures, technological innovation, and more resilient policy reforms, thereby helping Britain move forward in various industries

Rethinking Public Procurement

Arpitrage • 574 implied HN points • 15 Sep 23
💼 Business Costs Infrastructure Software Reform
  1. Government procurement often involves unnecessary costly requirements and limited bidder outreach, leading to high expenses and poor quality outcomes.
  2. High infrastructure costs in the US are exacerbated by procurement problems and a legal system that limits state power.
  3. Failure in government procurement, like outdated unemployment insurance systems, results in costly software upgrades and limited benefits for recipients.
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Roundup: OpenAI's Sora

philsiarri • 44 implied HN points • 24 Feb 24
🕹 Technology AI Entertainment Costs Research Impacts
  1. OpenAI's Sora is a text-to-video model that can create videos in response to prompts, extend existing videos, and generate videos from images, but it remains unreleased as of February 2024.
  2. While Sora has potential in marketing, content creation, training, and education sectors, filmmakers believe it won't replace Hollywood due to issues like temporal consistency and artifacts.
  3. Concerns exist around the release, access, cost, and potential negative impacts of Sora, as Tyler Perry even halted studio expansion due to the tool.

What about the cost?

Everything is Light • 668 implied HN points • 01 Apr 23
🌞 Climate & Environment Clean Energy Policy Costs Renewables Nuclear power
  1. Comparing the costs of different energy sources is more complex than just looking at the upfront costs of individual components.
  2. The Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) metric is not sufficient for assessing cost-effectiveness because it overlooks various factors like system costs and reliability.
  3. It's essential to consider the true costs of energy sources, including factors like backup power needs, disposal costs, and environmental impacts, to make informed and effective energy policy decisions.

Why Health Insurance Systems are Mismanaged

In My Tribe • 455 implied HN points • 01 Jul 23
🏥 Health Politics Health Insurance Incentives Costs Government Market
  1. Incentives in health insurance systems can be misaligned, leading to issues like services being rationed for those with expensive illnesses.
  2. Government can create artificial pools within health insurance to avoid selection games, but challenges in insurer-provider conflicts may persist.
  3. Integrating health insurance with health care, like in HMOs, can help manage costs, but compensation methods for HMOs and providers remain contentious.

The Assassination of HS2 by the Coward Rishi Sunak

S(ubstack)-Bahn • 180 implied HN points • 08 Oct 23
🌍 World Politics Infrastructure Transportation Government Costs Legislation
  1. HS2 was a major rail project in the UK, but was dramatically cancelled by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
  2. Political will is crucial in controlling the costs and completing high-speed rail projects.
  3. Comparison drawn between the cancelled HS2 project in the UK and the challenges faced by the California High-Speed Rail project.

ALARA

Gordian Knot News • 241 implied HN points • 05 Apr 23
🔬 Science Energy Regulation Costs Bureaucracy
  1. ALARA philosophy in nuclear regulation aims for minimal radioactive emissions.
  2. ALARA can lead to increased costs and hinder technological advancements in nuclear power.
  3. ALARA's focus on reducing radiation exposure may lead to excessive regulation and operational costs.

Stage 2: Nuclear Power's Economics Suck

Gordian Knot News • 219 implied HN points • 19 Mar 23
💼 Business Energy Economics Regulations Costs Market
  1. Nuclear power in the West is incredibly expensive and time-consuming to build, hindering its potential to combat global issues like climate change.
  2. Historically, nuclear power has been cost-competitive with coal, but rising costs due to regulations and construction delays have made it less viable.
  3. The core issue with nuclear power's economics lies in the perception of any radioactive release as intolerable, leading to excessive safety measures that drive up costs.

Why Databricks Bought Mosaic and The Rapidly Decreasing Costs of AI

Unsupervised Learning • 2 HN points • 29 Jun 23
🕹 Technology AI Machine Learning Costs Cloud Infrastructure Business Models
  1. Training costs for AI models have decreased significantly, making it more cost-effective for companies to build their own models.
  2. Inference costs for AI models have also decreased, creating more affordable options for companies utilizing AI features.
  3. The decreasing costs of AI models are leading to increased competition and more attractive business models for startups building on foundation models.

Test Week: Scale and Speed

Joshua Gans' Newsletter • 0 implied HN points • 19 Aug 20
🏥 Health & Wellness Testing Costs Mitigation Strategy
  1. Widespread testing for Covid-19 requires cheap tests and fast results to isolate infected individuals quickly.
  2. Lowering costs and increasing speed of testing are essential for successful mitigation of Covid-19 spread.
  3. Using a strategic testing approach, combining low-cost, rapid tests with high sensitivity tests, can significantly enhance the effectiveness of mitigation strategies.

Death by RAG Evals

ScaleDown • 0 implied HN points • 31 Jan 24
🕹 Technology AI Evaluation LLMs Metrics Costs
  1. Evaluating RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) systems is challenging due to the need for assessing accuracy, relevance, and context retrieval.
  2. Human annotation is accurate but time-consuming, error-prone, and not suitable for real-time systems.
  3. The evaluation process for RAG systems can be resource-intensive, time-consuming, and costly, impacting latency and efficiency.

Sky-High Risks: The Hidden Dangers of Airplane WiFi

IntelEdge360 with Bidemi Ologunde • 0 implied HN points • 25 Mar 24
🕹 Technology Cybersecurity Costs Regulations User Experience
  1. Airplane WiFi can pose significant cybersecurity risks, highlighting the need for comprehensive strategies to protect operations, data, and passenger privacy.
  2. Airplane WiFi operates through air-to-ground (ATG) and satellite connectivity, with various speeds and costs associated with each system.
  3. Implementing in-flight WiFi presents challenges such as costs, regulatory hurdles, and user experience variations, but advancements are working towards better connectivity and affordability.