ink_13

The step that a lot of people leave out is the revising: it is worth the human hours to go over the outputs of AI for this kind of thing with a fine-tooth comb to make sure it is usable, readable, accurate, etc.

If US backed NGOs were distributing life saving medications (e.g. for HIV-AIDS via PEPFAR, to give only one example) and then that distribution was withdrawn, causing recipients to die because they could no longer access medication, what other conclusion should we draw?

Probably not. As you point out, it's a typesetting tool like LaTeX, not a page layout tool.

You could probably write a template that does the right thing, but that's true of LaTeX as well.

For the sake of completeness, the Four Colour Theorem was proved with the aid of a computer in 1976, although there were, er, quibbles with the original published result not finally put to bed until 1989. It was the first major theorem to be proved with computer assistance (Appel and Haken broke the theorem down to ~1400 configurations that were all computer verified).

For certain values of "reality". It doesn't take a financial analysis to tell you that it is bananas that Tesla (~1.3T) is worth more than four times as much as Toyota (280B), and yet.

I bet you could build a fully off-grid DC that didn't guzzle water for less money than launching a rocket today, and there would be thousands of people lining up down the block to sell you more than enough land to do it a thousand times for cheap. This just isn't happening yet because it is still quite possible to build on-grid DCs supplied with fresh water for cooling despite what some people would have you believe.

And then when you build on the ground you could even send people to it to swap hard drives and GPUs when they inevitably fail or upgrade them to keep them current. At lower rates of failure than they would in space because we have a planetary magnetosphere protecting us from cosmic rays.

In our downside scenario, orbital data centers won’t work or offer any advantage over terrestrial ones

Technologically, will they work? Shovel enough money at the problem and there's no reason they shouldn't. Rack up some GPUs in a shipping container, attach a couple of solar panels to the outside, zip-tie a Starlink to the door. Except for the little problem of heat. Space isn't cold, it's more of a giant Thermos bottle, and they gotta park in full sunlight, which is famously the only thing supplying the heat that keeps the entire planet alive. Good luck to them with their radiator setup.

But economically? There's no chance. Too expensive to get into space, too many auxiliary systems required, no maintenance is possible, and, given the lead time of prepping payloads for launch versus the rate of new developments in AI hardware, likely badly behind the times if not outright obsolete on the day of liftoff.

There is no shortage of land despite what some in the media would have you believe. Those same solar panels work at ground level. DCs don't have to be water guzzlers or grid destabilizers. They'd be better off by every metric solving terrestrial problems for the same money.

Of course they won't work. It's ludicrous that we have to even entertain the thought of otherwise.

Curious parallel to iRobot (Roomba): first mover in new product segment, became genericized name for things in that segment, in the end, (possibly in GoPro's case) could not compete in that segment

5,3/4 4-8,11 1 4,5,6,9-11 */2

What's so hard about "At 5 minutes past the hour and every 4 minutes, starting at 3 minutes past the hour, at 04:00 AM through 08:59 AM and 11:00 AM, on day 1 of the month, every 2 days of the week, only in April, May, June, and September through November"?

(I used https://crontab.cronhub.io/ to decode it, to be fair)

I tried to figure out how to buy that exact kettle recently because I typically store mine away in a cupboard (and so a "cordless" kettle with separate base is just an annoyance to me) and couldn't find it anywhere.

I had to settle for a Proctor-Silex branded unit that was only sold by Home Depot online. It does not have a detachable cord.

Not so much replicas as the original maker selling additional editions

TBH if you're the kind of person who wants one might as well go to the source

Hey, wait a minute, you're the guy who got Linux to run on a 4004 by writing a MIPS emulator[1]! If there's anyone who's been down a similar path before it'd have to be you.

[1] https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=35.%20Linux4004

Oh cool, a product of Waterloo's Craig Kaplan, most famous for his work on the discovery of the einstein monotile

I don't have children and I prefer permanent Standard Time because I have the apparently weird belief that noon should be at noon.

(i.e. the time 12:00PM should be when the sun is overhead)

I'm not a "capitalism gives you brain worms" kind of person, but the idea that it is somehow better to literally change the location of the sun in the sky because the holy hours of 9-5 are sacrosanct is so strange to me.

This is it. Ultimately the best interfaces are designed for experts, not beginners. "Usability" at some point became confused with "approachability", probably because like in so many other areas, growth was prioritized over retention. It's OK if complex software is hard to use at first if that enables advanced users to work better.

Really, the most efficient interfaces are the old-style pure text mode mainframe forms, where a power user can tab through fields faster than a 3270-style terminal emulator can render them.

Thanks for posting. That's actually a much more interesting story.

(2024)

Just FYI article is two years old

An AI agent cannot be held accountable

So... things where the producer doesn't respect the audience? Because any such analysis would be worth as much as a 4.5 hour atonal bass solo.

What are you going to do instead? I am very close to moving from a 20-year-old GMail address to a custom domain and was planning to use Proton as the email host.

Let's not overlook podcasts

Old recipes are more memory cues for experienced cooks than the modern step-by-step guide for amateurs we are used to. They're scanty in detail because they assume quite a lot of existing knowledge.

It's the difference between "a chicken stew flavoured with turmeric and cumin, then rice enough to cook in and fully absorb the broth" and "first, take 500g of boneless skinless chicken thighs..."

What's the name of the book?

Pixel phones exist (and have for some time!) yet people still buy iPhones

Dismantling USAID has condemned hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) to literal death through a loss of famine relief and life saving medications for diseases like HIV and tuberculosis. It has diminished the soft power of the United States, destroyed the credibility of the country for a generation or more, and didn't even save that much money. It has profited the average American not at all and likely made everyone less safe.

I have no idea what kind of person thinks that was a good idea.

What are you vaccinating your dog against that you need to purchase multiple doses from overseas?

Is there even a dog?

I suggest you start with his dishwasher content

I believe these images are also used in the "About This Mac" window, although of course most highlighted in the article are long obsolete by now.

Given the propensity of LLMs to hallucinate references, I'm not sure that really solves anything

As I write this comment, it's up 8.23% today alone (from ~322 to ~348).

TSLA is a meme stock at this point to which ordinary expectations do not apply. The price is unmoored from what the company does. _By the book_ I agree, it should be shorted, but I wouldn't.