We're software developers, yah? You monitor how your software performs in real life. You see what rabbit holes it gets stuck in, and you rearrange the system or design features so it doesn't get stuck. It's constant firefighting, trying to get the software to flow in reality rather than getting all tripped up. That's what software welfare is. If AI gets to the point where having a bank account would let function better, you can bet we'll give it the right to have personal bank accounts.

Study Abroad programs are notoriously party schools. Even if the school itself is decent, the study abroad portion makes it easy to not get an academic education.

Answers, $0.01. Answers with thought, $1. Correct answers, $100. Snide remarks are still free.

(There was a poster something like this in the 1980s, but I can't find any reference to it. I don't remember how the saying originally went.)

The real win of tax software is downloading all the data rather than typing it in. I wrote my congresscritters at least once saying that the free tax software is great and should do this, but also how I wanted those TurboTax parasites to die. Having the IRS publish tax-filing software that does the downloading is such an obvious win for the people. And, so, obviously something Trump will shut down, since he shuts down everything by-the-people-for-the-people about the government.

Incidentally, the right way to download the data is not to give TurboTax the username and password to your bank accounts, which would enable it to drain your bank accounts if it wanted to. The right way is for the bank to give you a specialized username/password for just downloading the forms with the data, which you then give to the tax filing software. I had a bank account that used to do it the right way, but they got bought and merged, so this year it required giving the whole-account username and password.

You overestimate the liberal arts content of a four-year compSci degree.

Interesting! I responded by getting a new computer and reimaging it to Linux... I hadn't considered plain switching the old Windows computer to Linux.

I don't think it's practical. Anytime I change my home computer, I want the old and new one working at the same time for awhile while I iron out the workflow with the new one. Switching from Windows to Linux is a bigger-than-normal change in workflow.

A software coding agent should do the job of a system software engineer. It'd be a co-worker not a tool. If it's good and fast enough you can fire all the human workers.

For example: the project at work precreates containers at a constant rate. Precreated containers depend on the state of the system, so they age out after awhile as the system changes. If the rate were dynamic based on past behavior, it'd use less resources most of the time and avoid running out during emergencies. There's also some control code that does... something... when there are creation failures. The AI agent ought to be able to read the existing code, implement dynamic precreation, its code should be terse and readable, it should be able to explain and defend its code when we code review it, it should obey the existing system conventions, it shouldn't introduce more bugs than a human would. It should be able to code review other people's and agent's code. If it's good, it should look at the system and point out that dynamic precreation should be done in the first place.

When I see such code changes proposed by AI agents, I'll believe the hype, but not until then. Sort of like a self-driving car is one that can substitute for a human driver.

Most of those problems could and should be solved in Antarctica (or Texas). Cheaper and faster. Isolation, recyling, minimizing resupplies, growing crops. Living in microgravity can't be solved on earth, but the solution to that one is to have a rotating habitat and not live in microgravity.

Once Musk's starships are going strong, hook twelve together in a torus and spin them and you've got a minimal rotating habitat. But why? What problems can be solved on that that you can't solve cheaper and faster on earth? Living in microgravity would no longer be a problem needing solving. Mining and manufacturing in microgravity are still things you can only do in space.

While Trump and Musk's random dismantling of the government is both cruel and stupid, and this is clearly a conflict of interest for Musk, Musk is right on this one. The ISS has always been extremely low return on investment and should have been abandoned pretty much every step along the way. If the money going to it was kept in NASA and redirected to more interplanetary probes, OMG, that would be a fantastic thing! But this seems more like a stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day sort of thing.

The biggest thing learned from Skylab, and ISS confirms it, is that zero gravity is awful on humans. Space habitats need to have rotational artificial gravity.

The article was about using facial recognition technology to automatically adjust prices, which sounds like it would work with you.

I think the really useful place to build habitats is in high earth orbit, and eventually solar orbit. To do that it's best to mine the moon for material and put it in high earth orbit. If you focus on a colony on the moon, there's not much need to get the material off the moon. If you want to go to Mars, you need some stepping stone to get there. High earth orbit is a better place than the moon for that.

It is hard to convince most people that colonizing high earth orbit is better than colonizing planets. I've tried. But if you aim at Mars, you give people what they expect, and you have to build the high earth orbit habitats as a stepping stone in the plan.

So, yay, have a goal of Mars. Give Mars lots of press coverage. As long as building habitats in high earth orbit from material mined from the moon is a big part of the plan, I'm happy. Even (especially) if they don't get much outside attention themselves. If Musk tries to colonize Mars entirely from material launched from earth I'll start frowning.

I've been seeing a lot of articles painting tiktok in a good light recently. And actual tiktok advertisements too. This article sounds like another such infomercial. It used to be all tiktok articles were about how evil it was. I don't think I've ever looked at tiktok myself, so I've no opinion about its goodness or evilness, but it seems like media is being coordinated here.

The reported amount per hour assumes employees work 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.

Are they talking about DVD readers or hard disk drives? I thought it was HDDs at first, but the second paragraph seems to be about DVD readers.

What metric are they using when they say 100x better?

System 2 reasoning, though, I know what that is, from that book "Thinking, Fast and Slow". System 1 is looking at an angry person and knowing they are angry. Fast and effortless for people. System 2 is looking at a multiplication problem then doing the long division in your head and getting the right answer. Slow and exhausting for people. Attaching System 2 to an AI is pretty easy: give them access to a calculator (and proof engine, and Wolfram Alpha) and have them use it when appropriate. I'm surprised it isn't already standard.