init2null

There's inefficiency in any system. Engines, motors, fusion power, and transistors. We can calculate their efficiency, and the numbers aren't impressive if that's all you care about. Maybe it's better to ask how they compare to other methods of doing work. This is the cost of the system, and it's either worth it or it isn't.

The US medical system is a public-private partnership, and it's likely the most expensive system in the world for what the benefits it provides (see "List of countries by total health expenditure per capita" on Wikipedia). The government can only optimize here if it's willing to rein in the for-profit middlemen.

To paraphrase a quote, I'd be tempted to call an obsession with efficiency a hobgoblin of little minds. Or maybe it's just an excuse to cut programs.

Not everyone is willing to pay for 4K, 120 Hz, and quality raytracing. There is a market for less than premium experiences. I wanted some marginal CUDA for Blender, so I got a 3060. This experience is anything but insignificant to me.

My Hisense with Google TV has proven to be decent. I never connected the TV to the internet and went with an external Apple TV instead. It always starts on the last video input. I was able to refuse all the EULAs and was still left with all the visual niceties that I don't use like upscaling and motion smoothing.

You are very fortunate if you've never witnessed the suffering of those who are less blessed with mental soundness, intelligence, or health.

That's why we've created social safety nets, because sometimes pure capitalism simply isn't worth the human suffering it costs. I wish everyone could have your degree of success. Believe it or not, pretty much everyone wants it.

And just so you know, it's $21,000 in Washington State, #4 most expensive state for housing. It's less or more restrictive in many other states.

Anyone that makes $21,000 a year is making too much to get Medicaid. This not-so-wealthy person's insurance is almost free, but they are required to pay for all medical expenses up to their out of pocket maximum, which is typically around $15,000. Also bear in mind that Medicaid has opportunities to place a lien if there's any hope of recouping the medical expenses.

I think there's still room for improvement.

That's a rude and somewhat inaccurate response.

Photoshop has autosave that works well, even for files with hundreds of layers, so it can be done. That being said, I can see that it's less useful when someone chooses not to save.

As for export, a single-layer file should be considered saved when one exports to lossless. A multi-layer file needs a different prompt, and I note Gimp has that now. It flags the file as "Exported to xxxxxx.png" in the Quit dialog.

Sequelitis and remakes have persuaded me that some people really want intellectual baby food. I'm worried that the majority really just wants content to pass the time. Let's hope creative indie movies will continue to flourish, as we may just end up depending on them.

Once it starts raining you have access to all the bodies you need on the ship. Rewatch every flashback and take notes. Details really matter, and those flashbacks are crime scenes that need to be studied fully. Pay special attention to clips in quick succession, as a clue from another flashback may show the means of death or the killer.

I'd argue that erotic sources are nothing new. Consider swimsuit calendars and pinup girls. You could even look at the shows from the sixties and seventies to find people being chosen for sex appeal. For instance, there's the classic question for Gilligan's Island: Ginger or Mary Ann. The debate was literally over their relative sex appeal. This isn't a new trick.

I'd suggest that perhaps the style of seduction has changed, but the negative response is wholly new, at least among the targeted recipients.

This deals with one of our primary human drives. It's very easy to condemn those showing bad behavior in public, but too often it's motivated by a lack of access to privacy or mental illness. As long as no harm is intended, I don't really feel this is one of our larger concerns.

That can only work when there's a commitment to treat customers well. Otherwise, it's just a user base waiting to be sold to the highest bidder. And that's most likely a dating giant that will use the brand in an attempt to milk profit from the users in the least pleasant way possible. It isn't a technical problem.

I think it's due to the toxicity of dating apps in general. But Grindr gets more freedom to treat users poorly since the overall user success rate is better than on mixed sites like Tinder, at least in the short term. It's also tougher to find someone IRL without an app when you're in the 5%. They have a captive audience for now.

I get forced into political (and yes, religious) conversations. I avoid when I can, but sometimes it's less of a drive-by political swipe and more of a head-on collision into that load of toxic sludge. My coworkers feel comfortable forcing others into those conversations since everyone they spend time with seems to agree. Those that don't get socially shunned. They don't always tolerate silence either, so I find ways to work with them.

Given that I'm in my thirties, I'm not exactly in the audience being discussed here. But I've become skilled at lying about politics to my small-town coworkers and my older relatives. Telling someone the truth means I respect them enough to take the risk.

Fair enough. If you ever decide to do the proofreading yourself, you may find a prompt like this useful:

"Consider the following message. Distill the main thrust of the message, and list any implied statements made within. Be particularly sensitive to any negative connotations, and summarize the writer's feelings towards the reader:"

Perhaps I'm naive or old fashioned, but I prefer this unpolished version. You clearly have an unclosed parenthesis that's attached to a rough sentence, but two minutes of rephrasing will serve you well in improving both your writing and your speech. If you must use it, I'd suggest asking for suggestions rather than rewrites.

Writing is not just about syntax, but also about communicating who you are. This is your true voice.

This is giving me flashbacks to the days of bad fonts and bad rendering. Back when using the web on Linux was a totally different and grossly inferior experience.

At least we can still simu late it whenwe get n0staIgic.

You will always hurt sometimes. Either it's the pain of disconnection, or it's the pain of loss. The former is subtle and easy to ignore, but it's always there. At least it certainly was for me.

I've now simply decided to look pain in the eye and embrace it. It is inevitable and important in forming relationships. At least you have mostly fond memories to look back on at the end of it.

Yes, everyone loves it, but it fails the surprisingly sane criteria. Try uploading a video to YT on 9. Or even do a cloud phone backup. Why do we tolerate connections that force us to be nothing but consumers online? Creation needs real upstream bandwidth.

Starlink is also painfully expensive. I've sent them several customers, but I know what it is: a last chance for rural people who've been abandoned to rotting DSL lines. That being said, line of sight is impressively competitive both on bandwidth potential and the most important factor to casual users, cost.

I always find it interesting that Civilization (especially 5+) is basically a board game with added fog of war. These specs seem a little extreme given that fact. That being said, anyone who's played older versions knows that the AI needs every cycle it can get. I'd love to see smarter multithreaded strategy for the AI. Its combat skills border on embarrassing.

They've done fairly well with TV. They can do prestige TV without the insane budget. Old HBO is dead, and there's room for Apple to fill that role if corporate PR doesn't meddle too much.

The price difference could be a large part of a romantic trip to Europe. The desire for such showcase possessions is tough for me to understand.

A ring rich in gold, platinum, rubies, or emeralds would at least hold its value well by comparison.

Google was aggressively apolitical back in the early years, but Yandex is thoroughly tangled up in politics just like the others. There are no search engines that just naively show results today.

No one today realistically sees the internet as being beyond government control. The ones that do get arrested stepping off their jets. That libertarian fantasy is just dead.

29% of people report having been diagnosed with depression in their lifetimes [1]. Major depression seems to be more like 8.3% [2], but once you start restricting someone's freedoms based on their state of minds, the treatment itself becomes stigmatized.

If I'm ever asked in an attempt to limit my rights, I'll say that I never have and I'll be convincing. The only proper way to implement this kind of policy is by using police reports based on credible threats towards others.

Self-harm isn't something that needs more policing; let's stick to better treatment there.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-n...

[2] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/major-depression

Biggest advancements in launch technology would surely be correct. Scientific research isn’t in their domain and should never be. There’s just too much political influence there.

I've never had that happen and wouldn't appreciate it. Corrupted configuration maybe?

I meant changing it in Preferences though, and not a drop-down like it used to be. You can add completely new engines, change defaults, and even give them keywords for quick searches without any undocumented change.

There's no excuse for not making search engine management as simple and flexible as Firefox does, especially on the desktop, but I appreciate the hoops you jump through to keep hacks available for browsers with less user choice.

A 10% risk of death of a massive gamble compared to the alternatives. I can only hope this leads to a more useful solution than immune system replacement. I expect many would prefer a life of daily medication, or even shots every few months, which looks to be a promising form of treatment.

The underlying APIs can enforce permissions. I don’t care if LLM prompt engineering causes the bank assistant to say that John Doe has 500K in his bank account. As long as it isn’t real data, there’s far less risk.

This is more or less how it works for human customer phone support, who are also limited by narrow permissions. And as we know, they are also skilled at confabulating in the interest of customer happiness.