fangorn

FT's "Why birth rates are falling everywhere all at once" was published, and discussed, recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48168928

https://www.ft.com/content/fba35eca-df3a-4ad6-b42d-eb08eb7c9...

https://archive.is/6VpWy

Spoiler: smartphones, social media, housing.

The hilarious question is: will you fail the AI certification for using AI during the exam? What if it's a competing AI?

So, "Gnu is Not Unix, Dawg"?

That's the real joke...

Let's hope you're right, but you might be underestimating the "$200 per month (robo)engineer can only do it like this, therefore this is the way to do it" factor.

If you often find yourself saying "but you didn't specify humanity must survive this!" maybe you're part of the problem ;)

I believe originally it was a name for PTSD, that's an even more curious association. In case it wasn't obvious, tortoise-related puns can be taken too far :)

Patrick Boyle explains: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=QkuAXOMYwA4

Pick your poison, as usual, but Patrick Boyle's "How The Japanese Economic Miracle Led to Lost Decades" suggests the fall was entirely of their (Japan's) own making: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=12ddOpt7Hio

He's got plenty of videos on China too.

I recently concocted a (conspiracy) theory that relicensing of HC projects is a ploy to get IBM (or some other company happy to rain on IBM's parade) to finally make an offer. Mitchell leaving the company features in the theory as well. Basically it seems like since at least 2021 HC leadership and/or investors are exploring exit strategies that will bring in the beeeelions.

When cloud was a young buzzword there was a popular test: replace "in the cloud" with "on the internet" and see if you want to continue.

- We store pictures of our kids [in the cloud|on the internet].

- We store all our proprietary code [in the cloud|on the internet].

- We store all our secrets [in the cloud|on the internet].

- We store all the sensitive customer information that we could be fined millions for losing [in the cloud|on the internet].

It still is a good test, but I guess this ship has sailed...

Maybe it's nothing, or maybe it's freudian, but email existed before Google, so did calendar. Youtube was an acquisition. Maps, well, there are great alternatives now that do not require anal-probe-level surveillance to find an address or a route.

Just publicly fund the services that are useful to people. If "government" (i.e. us) can pay for a square for people to meet at, why not "digital spaces"?

And if someone's thinking "but government will use this data to surveil people!" - this ship has sailed, they have access to everything that's not e2ee, and even that's not guaranteed.

Government is practically the only body that can be expected to follow laws and act with people's best interest in mind. Some governments even do, just need a non-dystopian one...

And yes, there's commercial space in government/local authority-operated places. That's fine, just make sure to boot those that decide to install the equivalent of cameras and microphones on their storefront.

I guess that's the proof things are going backwards in the UK, they've recently gotten rid of no. 1 - "Freedom of Movement": https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-and-s...

It's only impossible until someone finds a way...

From what I've been told, you need to "change something" in order to get promoted at Google. Doesn't much matter what, as long as it's a visible change, presumably at least marginally improving things.

And that illustrates what releasing half-baked stuff and not caring much about tech debt is all about - visibility. This seems to be true across industries. Not releasing something, even if it's not ready gives impression of not doing enough, not delivering, always being late, etc. Releasing stuff shows you (the manager) are the person who delivers. If it's crap, you'll get even more resources to throw at fixing stuff that's already delivered. And you're the hero again (even if it's "techies" who did 80-hour weeks to make it happen).

This doesn't even break down too much in physical product world. "Deliver" could mean sales, first to the market, we'll add copy&paste in 3.0, and so on...

Sounds like we need a G.E.C.K.!

Ian Levy, UK National Cyber Security Centre’s departing Technical Director, discusses life, the universe, and everything.

From TFA:

"researchers stress that this cross-sectional study does not allow for cause-and-effect analyses, and that it could be that children who are good at these types of cognitive tasks may choose to play video games."

France takes up 643801 km2, so are you sure Paris is in the 11mln km2 ballpark?

yewtu.be / Invidious for the win!

Material science is great, but the hype... The structure is not really like enamel, the process is impractical for use in dentistry, but that's OK, because they haven't even checked if it can be used for dentistry (adhesion to real enamel). At least it could be used for <insert wild claims here>, someday, maybe, if, who knows.

So the advice here is to "stop trying to predict the future" and "make sure you have a resilient portfolio". That's as useful as saying "if you want to be smart, don't be stupid, simple!". Looks like marketing fillers are reaching new bottoms recently.

They are already working on it: https://www.iter.org/ ;)

You might want to have a look at http://lng.sourceforge.net/

And if that shopkeeper starts following you around everywhere you go, noting what you do, what you buy, what you read, with whom, and then shares this with whomever they want, for profit, isn't that stalking, isn't that person basically a creep? And if they did it with all of their customers? And since it's physically impossible for a single person to do that then they will build an army of robots that will do that for them, is that still OK? Because that's already a reality we live in.

SOAP server (in PHP 4) to send fax messages using Hylafax.

So basically "Think of the children!". Their fingers must no longer be exposed to exhaustive clicking of EU-mandated pop-ups...

If eroding, still woefully inadequate, data protection, instead of simply mandating improvements to deliberately broken UIs, is the first thing future "Information Commissioner" intends to do, God Save The Queen's Browsing History!

Too much of a good thing... I can picture a scenario, admittedly science fiction for now, when carbon capture is so lucrative it's removed to an extent plants don't have enough of it. Not to say carbon capture is bad, just that humans + greed = unintended consequences, every time.

Watchy... McWatchface? I hope it's intentional!