actuallyalys

I think this is right. For example, GPS is tremendously useful, but you can use it for free. Similarly, while there are commercial weather services, a lot of people access the ad-supported versions[0] or get it from their government’s weather agency.

[0]: which obviously provide some revenue, but much less than the value provided.

Honestly, even if Python had replaced C++, it was originally created in the 90s, so it's already a "decades-old" technology. Python 3.0 came out 17 years ago.

Yes, minorities who join the fascists as tokens rarely are rewarded long term.

I found this whole piece strikingly disingenuous and manipulative, and your post captures why.

I think what makes fascism appealing to some people is that it seemingly offers an explanation and solution for why their immense talent, real or perceived, has been overlooked. Justine Tunney probably has more actual talent than the vast majority of the fascists of this type but she shares the same core of grievance.

I think it’s telling too that she doesn’t really mention that many open source maintainers, if they’re paid at all, don’t get paid enough. I’m not saying every pitch for open source funding has to include this but to omit that and also to brag about being in the 99.9997th percentile certainly makes it seem like she’s indifferent to the many talented open source maintainers who are in the same boat, most of whom do not have her destructive, nihilistic, and bigoted politics.

I don’t usually push LÖVE to its limits because I tend to make simple games as a hobby but I do keep an eye on its framerate and often it‘s in the 100s of frames per second. So it may not be impressive (in sense of winning benchmarks) but it’s rarely perceivably slow.

The same thing happened when the same researcher did studies on Covid using similar datasets. There’s likely some generalizability but part of the reason the absolute risk is so high is because VA patients are a group already at high risk. It’s partly a failure of science journalism this caveat gets missed but seems like it is also one Al-Aly is happy to allow.

I did notice that the writer says he was commissioned to cowrite a report that will be the basis for a lawsuit against the tax:

Four Norwegian entrepreneurs have commissioned yours truly, Dr. Laura Melusine Baudenbacher and Professor Dr. Dr. Mads Andenas to write a comparative law study on the Norwegian wealth tax. This report will be the basis for a class action against the Norwegian state.

I assume the fact it’s submitted to a court will dissuade the authors from making totally unsubstantiated claims, but it still seems like there’s a strong financial incentive for them to reach negative conclusions about the tax.

I mean, it's frequently the case that guidelines for new situations are really just a reapplication of existing principles. But often specificity is needed so people realize which guidelines are applicable.

This feels like a good tradeoff as far as gadgets go. It doesn’t take finding that many objects for it to make up the energy cost to manufacture the AirTag.

They do require periodic battery replacements but I imagine it’s still a net savings or pretty negligible cost. I’d love to see a more formal analysis, though.

I feel like this idea would work better at a somewhat larger scale, like a small to medium datacenter heating an apartment or office building. The downside is for any of these systems is that when it's too hot outside that heat becomes a liability so you'd have to have the infrastructure to divert heat as well. The other downside is that you'd be replacing a very well understood technology with minimal maintenance requirements with a relatively complex technology with more extensive and complex maintenance requirements.

I think you're right that it's very unlikely to be a common thing. However, so many people use Gmail (including with setups like Thunderbird like you note) that it's totally possible someone really did get banned due to a total fluke.

While the article is correct about the basic fact about an AI bubble driving up memory costs, which in turn makes it harder to purchase laptops and other consumer technology, there's a lot of dubious economics shoehorned in. I'm not sure why this article is here when so many other articles have been written about the memory shortage. (That being said, I don't think it's flag-worthy, just mediocre.)

People here do seem to miss that they added this relatively big feature. The problem for Microsoft is that Google Docs also has collaborative editing, and in my experience, it actually works better.

The pace has probably slowed down, but problem isn't so much that they're not adding anything, it's that the additions are either somewhat niche (e.g., new Excel formulas), don't work as well as they should (e.g., syncing), or are confusing (e.g., the new Outlook that lives alongside "classic" Outlook).

As much as I like Python and personally prefer it to R, I don’t really disagree. But I’m not sure R is a great language for data science either—it has its own weaknesses, e.g., writing custom loops (or functional equivalents with map or reduce) was pretty clunky last I tried it.

The other thing is that a lot of R’s strengths are really the tidyverse’s. Some of that is to R’s credit as an extensible language that enables a skilled API designer to really shine of course, but I think there’s no reason Python the language couldn’t have similar libraries. In fact it has, in plotnine. (I haven’t tried Polars yet but it does at least seem to have a more consistent API.)

While it sounds like this blogger doesn't want to bother (and perhaps experimenting with AI is itself the appeal), I personally appreciate when authors read their posts instead of delegating the task to AI.

I suppose there could be a use for programming for computers that would otherwise be ewaste, although I'm not sure how much ewaste is out there that can run DOS but not, say, Linux or a BSD. Lots has already been trashed or recycled, and my impression is that retrocomputing enthusiasts are thinning out the market as well.

Now‘s not the best time to try Pop OS!, unfortunately, as they’ve been focused on Cosmic. They’re making progress, though, so I hope the benefits of Cosmic will pan out, and we’ll soon be in the best time to try Pop OS!.

I’ve seen some on electronic street-level signs in Atlanta when I visited. So there is some genuine advertising.

Do you work for local government? I’ve heard of cities using Excel for this but not Sheets (although I’m not surprised).

I’ve mostly used LibreOffice for personal use and other cases where I don’t want to use Big Tech, but you could try OnlyOffice. I’ve also been interested in Grist, which is more like AirTable but programmed in Python and (relevant to your request) self-hostable.

Edit: Depending on your reasons for avoiding big tech, you may want to research the owner of Only Office, which was a Russian company but apparently isn’t anymore? You might want to also try CryptPad, which is based off of OnlyOffice and recommended elsewhere in the comments (which reminded me).

It's also easier for a small, closed group to keep their conflicts private.

I like the mountain and house myself. The wide shot isn’t a bad photo but it is pretty cluttered and the parts don’t really work together like you say.

I think there likely are ways to effectively include the people, by getting to a angle where you can isolate a couple of them and include the mountain. I suspect you could also get a good shot with the wide angle by moving closer to the people, although this would emphasize the people more than the mountain.

It seems situational. Someone with your skin at noon absolutely benefits from a higher SPF. Someone with even slightly darker skin [0] going out a few hours before sunset might still want to wear sunscreen, especially if they’re going to be in direct sun the whole time, but a high SPF doesn’t seem very critical.

That being said, I am not a dermatologist, and it’s easy to underapply sunscreen so erring on the side of higher SPFs probably makes sense.

[0]: Note that even people with a lot of melanin still need sunscreen: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/why-its-important-ev...

The relevant comparison is to annual construction, not the total inventory. Looking at recent data, variations of 0.5 percent (~700,000) have happened, but they were due to large shocks like Covid or post-Covid inflation.

This argument feels analogous to saying “there’s no way a granola bar can affect your hunger, its calorie count is negligible compared to all the calories your body has stored.”

The U.S. has underbuilt housing for some time [0], so it seems likely that cutting production in half would have a significant effect, even if it’s partly offset by lower demand in the form of lower immigration.

[0] https://investors.zillowgroup.com/investors/news-and-events/...

Yeah, as interesting as the concept is, the lack of frame to frame consistency is a real problem. It also seems like the computing requirements would be immense—the article mentions burning through $10 in seconds.

The main use of this I could see is transparency. I imagine you could test prompts and increase your confidence the released system prompts are actually the ones in use.

Also, assuming they continue to release their old models, I suppose this could be used to get more insight on what caused the MechaHitler incident.

Grok is bad for the world. xAI’s data center is producing a huge amount of pollution in Memphis [0]. Additionally, Elon Musk’s attempts to create an AI that is not “woke” have led to it spewing far-right conspiracy theories [1], although generally for short periods of time before fixes are released.

[0] https://www.selc.org/news/resistance-against-elon-musks-xai-...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/14/elon-musk...

As far as I can tell, coal is middle of the pack in terms of energy efficiency [0] and less than half of the energy is captured as electricity, which doesn’t seem particularly incredible in relative or absolute terms.

Although comparing fossil fuel efficiency to renewable energy efficiency is a bit odd in one sense because while you’re technically wasting energy with renewables, there will always be more tomorrow, at least on human time scales.

[0] https://www.pcienergysolutions.com/2023/04/17/power-plant-ef...

I don’t think there’s a single reason LLMs aren’t good at journalism, but this explanation seems like a secondary factor at best. I mean, some journalism isn’t surprising at all but the confirmation the expected thing happened and exactly how it happened is useful.