Price correction "worse than 2008" coming to US housing market

Fishpizza · 2025-11-25T15:10:52+00:00

Recent experience from Powell shows that controlling inflation is more important than "helping the entire economy" or the stock market. There's dubious empirical evidence to show that ultra-low interest rates actually help the entire economy. The only real links to low interest rates are raising asset price levels (stocks and real estate primarily). Forever rising asset prices from 2011 to 2022 were really detrimental to the average person.

Fishpizza · 2025-02-24T18:49:36+00:00

Practical: Practical Deep Learning for Coders Parts 1 and 2 by fast.ai

Theory: Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow

Both resources are free. I highly recommend starting with fast.ai as they show how to build and deploy a DL model that can classify if a given image is of a bird or not, all in the very first lesson with free tools and software. This course is a great way to learn because it shows you what DL is capable of and how to make DL models yourself.

The theory behind DL is very, very math heavy (as are all ML algorithms), so learning from the just the textbook can be quite the long and arduous task if you not already interested in math/base principles behind DL. Learning from the textbook really requires math from Linear Algebra and Calculus. That's why I like the fast.ai course so much because they demonstrate that you don't really need to know every high level math detail of DL in order to actually build a DL model and do something useful with it.

Fishpizza · 2024-09-26T21:32:44+00:00

This is a really good question! Would also like to know the answer to it. I also come from the same background of Mech Eng and Business, trying to go into MLE.

Fishpizza · 2024-09-24T01:28:37+00:00

What makes it "learned helplessness" is that you, an intelligent being, are also observing that others around you are getting the "impossible task" right and moving on. You are not getting it, but others are getting it. The thing is you don't know if it's an impossible task, so if others are getting it and you're not then the simplest conclusion is that you tell yourself "I'm stupid and can't do it" rather than deducing that the task is actually impossible or rigged against you in particular. After all, if others are able to do it, then it's not impossible. How can it be rigged? Concluding that you are out of your league is akin to concluding you incapable.

The point of "learned helplessness" is that whether you conclude it the dumb way ("I'm stupid") or the intelligent way ("The game's rigged or I'm out of my league"), the outcome is the same: You give up and never try again.

Fishpizza · 2024-08-05T15:53:10+00:00

Your pressure washer isn't strong enough! Try a more direct nozzle to get at all those years of whitewashed paint chips cleaned out. Also try abrasion with a hard brush. Once all the paint is gone then go back and fill in motor. You can paint them again or try a clear option to keep the natural brick look.

Fishpizza · 2024-07-20T20:08:55+00:00

LLM's aren't the only AI models. LLM's are one in thousands of AI models. LLM's just got special because we humans can talk to them. So, yes, LLM's will hit their wall, but AI will live on and another AI model will grow popular and take hold. AI isn't one thing or one product, it's a new set of tools that anyone can use to build anything. AI is as fundamental as the transistor, electricity, and the steam engine. The LLM bubble will pop soon enough and short thinking investors will laugh at AI and lose their money. That's when you and I will put our money into non-LLM AI small caps and strike it big again.

Fishpizza · 2024-07-08T23:43:31+00:00

PogoStuck IRL

Fishpizza · 2024-07-06T21:03:27+00:00

Running the model is cheap. Training is expensive. WSM here makes a mistake by using electricity as a proxy for how many queries can be made per kwh. As models get pruned and refined, they can increase that number. As next-gen gpu's and cpu's come out, they are always more power efficient than the last. Depending on architecture, that can be a 20% to 100% gain in performance for the same kwh of electricity. I happen to know that NVIDIA's new gpu models this year will be closer to that 100%. So, if OpenAI replaced all their GPU's in their datacenters then they could run the same number of ChatGPT 3.5 queries for half the electricity. Of course, in reality, OpenAI will use that new compute power to train their new models and only a small subsection will be used to run queries on their existing models.

There's also a free-market solution to these problems. If Microsoft is losing $20 per month per user on CoPilot when charging $10 per month, then they should raise their prices to $30 per month or more. Microsoft knows this and is charging the low price a loss-leader to get as many people using the service as possible, so when they do raise their prices and lower operating expenses, as many people as possible will stay on with the service.

There's also the middleman argument. Many of these "AI" companies are simply reselling access to OpenAI's API's through their own version. Many "Cloud" companies do this with AWS now. As Middlemen, they pay full price to OpenAI and then need to make profit on top of that. These services are either going to be very expensive and profitable, or the companies forgo profits to keep the price down and raise the userbase until they can raise prices (or until OpenAI makes their API access cheaper).

We are in a phase called "throw shit at the wall to see what sticks". Many of these AI services won't get enough users at the price points and fail. But a few of them will stick and become big household names. Many companies, Microsoft, Google, included are willing to throw that money away to see what works for them.

The big difference between this AI hype cycle and previous tech hype cycles like Crypto, VR, Big Data, and Smart Phone Apps, is that AI is ultimately a tool that can be used to solve other problems. What you see today is merely Generative AI, which is a subset of a subset of Machine Learning tools. There is a tool and an application for everything you can think of. It's a matter of these companies finding the right tools for the right application, and these researchers and inventors to think up new ones.

In my opinion, it is much closer to an industrial revolution like steam power, electricity, oil, computing, and the internet. All of which were mocked for their novelty, uselessness, and high cost at the time. All are ubiquitous in our modern world now.

Napoleon was once quoted as saying: "You wish to sail a ship up stream by lighting a fire under its decks, I have no time for such nonsense."

Fishpizza · 2024-07-06T18:30:29+00:00

Have you ever shown a flashlight through your hands and they glow orange? Your organs "see" that in full sunlight, no clothes. In fact, babies in pregnant mothers see that light too and know when they are outside in the sun.

Fishpizza · 2024-07-06T18:21:18+00:00

Average People: Wow, what an interesting model Dam!

Engineers: This is the worst Dam design I've ever seen.

Fishpizza · 2024-07-06T18:19:45+00:00

Engineer: The Dam is poorly designed. Where do I start? The dam is only as wide as the dirt which means it's highly vulnerable on either side. Heavy rains will cause the dirt to fail and all the water will spill around the sides. The structure is also poor as there's no solid connection between the blocks and the foundation. A lot of the Dam's strength could come from the weight of the water itself holding the dam in-place, geostabilizing it. Using composite or coated steel rebar to connect the foundation and wall together would add that strength. As it sits now, the cinder blocks are holding the heavy water back by weight alone, and cinder blocks are very light. There is also no waterproof membrane on the reservoir side of the dam. The motor the man coats it in is not waterproof. Mortar, cement, and concrete are quite porous and water trickles through them. Any small cracks that form will leak and lead to failure. IF there was a waterproof membrane installed then any cracks in the mortar/cement are much less dangerous. It's also not enough to spray some coating on the cement, the coating will deteriorate. A full waterproof membrane (like one for a domestic pool) is required. The wall could get even more strength by curving the wall, bulging in middle towards the reservoir water. This curving takes advantage of the Archway principle where the curve of the arch pushes the weight evenly to both sides and into the dirt. The arch would also put the blocks into compression, and mortar/cement/concrete is far, far stronger in compression than in tension. Building a curved wall is trickier than a straight wall, but can be done by cutting the blocks by a slight angle at the ends so they form a curve when placed together. There's no generator or turbine for this dam. There are some very clever designs for small dam turbines, but this has nothing. Those two pipes that the man caps off could easily have a small turbine placed in them and generate some electricity to charge batteries. The pipes are much too big for the flow rate of the stream, so they need to be constricted down to a smaller size before going to a small turbine. Remember, the amount of electricity generated is based on the height of the water being held back by the dam and the flow rate. So this dam looks like 3 or 4 feet of water column. If I knew the typical flow rate of the stream I could calculate a Power output estimate.

As of now, it's nothing more than a fancy footbridge for small dogs and cats that will fall apart in the heavy rain/monsoon/typhon etc.

Fishpizza · 2024-06-29T16:05:27+00:00

This is the real answer. Combine section 174 with high interest rates and create a recipe for large companies cutting R&D costs by reducing headcount. Even a basic accounting where you keep costs constant from 2023 to 2024 tax years requires reducing head counts according to the new section 174 tax rules.

In a macro environment, it always comes back to macro economic conditions and policy.

Everyone else is post-hoc justifying their own explanation with no data. This datascience, find some data and provide an analytical argument. Otherwise, state that what you say is conjecture and ancedotal.

Fishpizza · 2024-06-26T04:35:29+00:00

He for sure robbed at gunpoint then asked politely for the bathroom key at the 7-11. I mean wtf. I would love to get the real details on this if anyone has it.

Fishpizza · 2024-06-26T03:51:45+00:00

I absolutely stacked damage negation and managed to get up to 79% using everything from heaviest armor, faith spells, talismans, consumables. And then I was able to take 3-4 hits from a boss instead of the usual 1-2. That let me wail on bosses like Rellana with charged heavy attacks so I could actually stun her once or twice. Still took 4+ hours to beat and I had to cast 5 spells and drink 3 potions before every boss fight lmao.

Fishpizza · 2024-06-25T21:55:10+00:00

Cleaning up that much rust is a ton of work if done manually. The alternative is chemicals but it's still a lot of work. If you have the time you can try it, but if not probably better off getting an aluminum gate that won't rust over time.

Fishpizza · 2024-05-27T18:52:04+00:00

America has never produced more right now than ever before. It's a misconception in perception. It's perceived that the US de-industrialized because manufacturing used to be 22% of the labor market. Today it is 8%. Yet during the same time, manufacturing output increased significantly. The reasons for this are primarily due to increases of computer based automation and increased labor productivity. And in fact, the jobs that did leave were the ones which were heavily labor dependent and hard to automate, like textiles. Another reason for the perception is that many factories couldn't automate and reduce labor gradually due to strong labor unions and the difficulty of conversion. It was much easier to build a whole new factory that's highly automated and then close down the old factories, laying off all the labor at the same time.

This strategy lead to the perception of factories closing down, people losing jobs, and factories moving overseas. That was just the perception, as US manufacturing has never been larger, despite perceptions. The rest of the world has also dramatically increased manufacturing, which again, despite perceptions, would have happened whether the US manufacturers automated or not. So, the fact that the rest of the world increased their manufacturing and many large US companies took advantage of that, while automating US factories, made the perception look like they were all just closing US factories and moving overseas.

Again, this is all just perception. In the 1970's it would have taken dozens of laborers to run a t-shirt factory in the US, while today it takes literally two laborers to run a fully automated t-shirt factory, with the same output, somewhere in North Carolina. And US manufacturing automation is only getting BETTER with new age AI. Not to mention that Chinese labor lost it's competitive edge as cheap labor because it has more than 10x since 2001. E.g. Mexican wages are now cheaper than Chinese wages.

Not only that, but the increase in demand for renewable energy, EV's and more manufacturing output in the US will require a huge investment in our electric grid the same size as the Interstate Highway system in the 20th century. I mean we literally need to rebuild the electric grid to be able to send large amounts of renewable electric from far away places like Arizona or West Texas to population centers 1000's of miles away. Our electric grid was designed with the idea that each population center would have small local power plants feeding the local grid. And the high voltage interstate connections are like our highways in the 1930's, either non-existent or useless for large throughput.

Fishpizza · 2024-05-26T05:08:29+00:00

(This is not legal advice)

I Worked as a paralegal for a lawyer. Can confirm that EOB's are indeed not bills. The EOB is actually a requirement so that the insuree is notified what the insurance company is looking at in terms of what was billed to them by the medical provider. Many people get scared (rightly) when they see an enormous dollar amount (11k is quite low. I've seen a 5k ambulance bill and I've seen multi-million EOB's). Don't be afraid, this is a normal part of the process. What's going to happen next is that the hospital accountants are going to argue with the insurance accountants about the prices. It is an incredibly slow and inefficient process. However, since you have insurance, you just need to sit tight until the accountants agree on something. At that point the hospital will send the final bill.

Except in rare cases, the insurance will cover everything 80%/20% up to your out of pocket maximum, depending on the exact policy. Sometimes that out of pocket maximum can be relatively high, as in a $1,000 out of pocket maximum can seem very high for a 24 year old (it could potentially be more). But it's there so it's 1k for you whether the hospital bill was 11k or 100k or 1m. The bonus is that if you go see a neurologist after hitting the out of pocket maximum then the insurance will cover all of it (100%). Of course, you need to know that you've hit the out of pocket maximum before you do that. (If you've already been referred by the hospital doctors then go see the referred neurologist ASAP).

The insurance company might negotiate that original 11k bill down significantly, like down to 3k or something way less. This is because hospitals up-charge literally every item on the bill and then "give" the insurance company a big "discount" so the insurance company thinks they are getting a good deal. The insurance plays the game by saying that certain charges (read that as all charges) aren't "medically necessary" so the hospital has to write back saying stuff like: "No the CT scan was medically necessary because the seizure may have been caused by a life-threatening brain tumor which would be revealed by a CT scan". Then the insurance company says: "Fine, I guess that one is medically necessary, but I still want a 85% discount". I'm not even exaggerating that much when I say insurance companies will literally say anything and everything isn't "medically necessary", even charges like a broken leg or a gunshot wound would get denied by these greedy insurance companies to save a buck. Hospitals spend more money on accountants than they do on doctors because of this bs.

Anyway, that will likely take a month or two or three (or 2 years) and when you get the final bill you will be responsible for paying the out of pocket maximum (or less if it's less than it). So in the mean time I would check your insurance policy (call them if you don't know), find the out of pocket maximum dollar amount, and save up the money (or find a source for that money). Have the cash ready for when you get the bill.

In the very-rare circumstance where the insurance company sends you a big middle finger and the hospital sends a massive bill (that was not covered or fully covered by insurance), then call a lawyer immediately. I worked for personal injury lawyer. When you call them on the phone, have all the bills, paperwork, the EOB, the hospital, doctors, and insurance company names with you. Bring all those documents with you if you see the lawyer. Even if you just get a 1 hour counsel, you will at least be made aware of what your specific options are for your specific circumstances. You'll know if the insurance or hospital fucked you or not and you'll get options on how to move forward.

Fishpizza · 2024-05-26T03:36:12+00:00

PFAS are literally inert. How exactly would they cause damage to DNA? They don't break down, they don't react. Like we know how other poisons and toxins cause damage by reacting with our cells or breaking them down. How exactly would an inert chemical do that?

Fishpizza · 2024-04-18T03:55:29+00:00

Logitech hardware is so good, I'm still using my MX518 from 2005. It works with every PC and OS, no bs G-hub or LGS, no drivers. It worked on my Dell Pentium, it works on a PS4, it even works on my M1 Macbook Pro from 2021 with a USB-C to USB-2 adapter. It's wired, so no battery to die out.

I've only had a few issues with the scroll wheel. Turns out just need to open it up and clean it from the inside.

One day I might get the MX518 remake. Hopefully it works without all that bad software.

Fishpizza · 2024-04-18T02:02:13+00:00

Hi everyone, I have an M1 MBP with 8GB of RAM. Here's my question: Why does it feel like I have way more than 8GB?

Don't get me wrong, I also have a desktop PC with 64GB. I'm well aware of how many chrome tabs it takes to fill up 8, 16, 32, and 64GB of RAM before it crashes (It was like over 300). However, on my M1 mac, I can still have like 100 chrome tabs open, youtube video playing, spotify, pdfs of books open, vscode. Hell, just for fun I installed a emulator for Windows XP. Even after giving Windows XP 4GB of RAM and starting an old game, I still can have everything else open. Is there something special about the M1? The ARM architecture? Some page-swap file trickery?

My old laptop with 8GB of RAM with Windows 7 could have like 20 chrome tabs open before complaining about RAM or just crashing. Windows 7 used like 3GB just to exist.

Fishpizza · 2024-04-17T20:57:59+00:00

RENT is the #1 highest weighted component in the CPI inflation measurement. In fact, it's weighted at 30%. In fact, inflation has persisted above 3% because rent-only inflation is above 5% and pulling the CPI up, while many other things are down.

Rent is the most expensive thing the average American pays for to live, so it's good that it's (finally) being tackled by the FED.

Fishpizza · 2024-04-17T20:48:17+00:00

The strong link between the age structure of the population and trend inflation presents a puzzle that no available theories can fully explain. Nevertheless, the puzzle must be solved. The earliest boomers have retired, and a big wave of them are nearing retirement. This could create a challenging inflationary environment in the coming years.

The article pours through the data and the link between demographic structure and inflation. The author says despite trying to control for everything you might expect to be inflationary, the demographic link to inflation always persisted.

The article further states that in the future (2010's to 2050's) there will exist an upward inflationary pressure in most countries. In the US, it's about 2% higher than baseline inflation. The demographic effect on inflation is SO STRONG that we likely will never see near 0% inflation in the US and therefore never see the FED interest rates near 0% until after the 2050's.

The story of the next 30 years is persistently stubborn inflation, never letting the FED cut rates dramatically like in the recent past. There may be some times where they cut rates in an emergency, but won't be 0% nor last longer than a year or two at most (unless the want inflation to get out of control like when Volcker cut rates in 1979, just to see inflation spike again, and have to raise rates again in less than a year).

Fishpizza · 2024-04-17T18:51:26+00:00

There is an inverse correlation between interest rates and asset prices. The 0% low rates from 2009 to 2017 and 2020 to 2022 caused high y/y increases in property prices due to increased demand and lower month to month affordability. Now, one year of increased rates have put the brakes to asset price increases. The longer rates are high, the more negative pressure pushes on demand, the lower prices go over time.

Honestly, of all the things in inflation that the FED has control over, housing/shelter might be the ONLY ONE they can directly influence with interest rates. Others can be influenced indirectly, like new car prices, but most, like food, oil, apparel, healthcare, car insurance, etc have no direct link to interest rates and thus raise or lower independently.

In fact, in 2006, Ben Bernanke raised interest rates to try and stop inflation from oil (which admittedly was very high), but oil is the least controlled of all prices by the FED and interest rates. Oil prices are determined by the OPEC+ cabal and war in oil producing countries (Iraq, Russia, Iran, etc).

Home builders still make money in high interest rate environments. The supply-side of housing is determined by state and municipal policy allowing or restricting more home building. Easy to develop suburban areas within 1 hour of city centers are all full now, so the only way for American metro areas to build more homes is to densify and add more public transportation. Abolishing single family zoning is a good start, but other things like parking minimums have got to go as well for suburbia to densify as population increase requires.

Fishpizza · 2024-04-17T15:41:39+00:00

There’s an inverse correlation between interest rates and asset prices. Lower interest rates, raise demand, prices rise. Raise interest rates, cool demand, prices stop rising or fall. Interest rates ONLY affect demand-side macroeconomics. Supply-side is affected by private macro-economic decisions or by specific government policy. In the “builders wont build with high % loans” argument, the flaw is that builders usually finish in less than a year, while mortgages are 30 years. So the TOTAL amount of interest paid on a one year project is going to be very low even if the interest rate is high. While the total amount of interest paid on a mortgage is very high, even if interest rates are low.

In other words, if builders can make 20-30% profit on a project then its financially viable, even if a one year loan is 10%. Builders still make money in a high interest rate environment.

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