mocana

My reaction: why is the U.S. government trying to kneecap science in this country? This is a feel good story for sure. But advancing science should not have to rely on unfunded researchers pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. For every story of a scientist that figured out how to keep going after their funding was pulled there are 10 figuring out if they should apply to law or medical school.

Ok. A serious question. I frequently hear that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity. Then why are they using gas turbines? Is it because they can generate more power with a smaller real estate footprint?

Q: Is this a good government policy? A: Yes.

Q: Does the government have the expertise, integrity, and credibility to regulate AI models? A: Color me sceptical.

We have the dumbest bullies in the world running the country. What did they expect? Tariffs. Threatening to turn the country into a state. Harassing Canadians living in the U.S. And very purposefully kneecapping the EV market in the U.S. forcing automakers to roll back their investment while the Chinese continue to lower their costs and refine the technology. I can only hope that that the damage to the U.S. and it's standing in the world is not totally irreparable. A lot of the damage is, I am afraid, permanent.

If one of the most widely used UI libraries in the world cannot sustain a small team of developers, why would anybody attempt to start a company around an open source library? Does not speak well of the open source business model. At least for software libraries.

I am unhappy about Tesla's slide. My car is indeed worth less as there uncertainty about the company's ability to provide parts and services long term. More importantly, Tesla was an American company making cars in the U.S. and leading the world in production and technology of EVs. Musk has stupidly pissed away Tesla's position and ceded it to Chinese companies. Perhaps this sounds overly nationalistic, but leading in one of the key industries of the coming decades in the U.S. would have been good for the country.

They have arrested some. Have heard of Teslas getting keyed too. My sense is that Elon being less in the spotlight recently has allowed some of the anger he provoked to cool off. But the brand damage, I am afraid, is permanent. https://www.wcvb.com/article/tesla-vandalism-incidents-conti...

https://youtu.be/NpFpfOemGR0?si=eMK0rMeRrv-gIKCT

And how much worse would Tesla sales be without tariffs and protectionism in the U.S. and Europe? It is sad to see how Musk has pissed away Tesla's technological leadership. Those BVD and Huawei cars make the Tesla product look outdated at this point.

Elon built up Tesla, to his great credit. He also has gone out of his way to undermine the car business. He enthusiastically endorsed getting rid of the EV car credit, publicly stating that it would help Tesla. And his DOGE antics have turned the Tesla brand toxic in the eyes of so many people in the US and around the world. (I own a Tesla and had many people advice me to sell it or to put a sticker on it to avoid vandalism). There is no doubt that an important part of Elon's businesses has been setting big bold and exciting goals that attract great talent. Is there any indication that Elon has messed up talent recruitment like he messed up the Tesla brand for consumers?

Their characterization of their customer base mostly rings true to me. My white teenage kids love the stuff.

Don't know about GenX though. A common definition of GenX is born between 1965 and 1980. Speaking for all GenX males of the world, the stuff tastes overly sweet to me and don't want to risk a higher A1C on carbonated sugar water. Bleh!

So? Big deal. Tesla is going to have FSD this year. Elon said so.

Kind of weird to dump on Khan like he was liar and a flunky. My kids have benefitted by his very clear educational videos as have millions of kids around the world, many of which no doubt are economically and "genetically"(?!!!) disadvantaged.

I think the game console controller is getting undue attention. Those things are super-durable and reliable! If it can handle years of Donkey Kong, Galaga and Frogger at the hands of obnoxious teenagers it can handle a mini-submarine at the hands of adults.

Article a reminder of why CSS is so difficult to work with. Turns out I knew all these precedence rules, however when time comes to look at an element and figure out how to make it, say, wider, figuring out WHERE to add that rule is a challenge.

Learn from the article: If you focus on one Math at a time you will do better in each of them.

A lot of good books in this thread and I have read many of them, but in retrospect these 3 titles have had the greatest effect on me: The End of Faith by Sam Harris: Crystallized a lot of things I have been thinking about over the years. Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett: Really delved deep into what evolution is and the way it affects how everything in the world works. Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life by Jon Kabat Zinn: What is mindfulness? Why is it important and how can you apply it to your every day life (like the subtitle says). Bearded guru in a cave at top of mountain is optional.

You need to adjust your circadian clock. Not an overnight solution, but exposure to bright lights in the morning for at least 30 minutes is what worked for me. Real sunlight is best, but full spectrum lamp (e.g. Happy Light) shining close to your face in the a.m. is effective too. And in the p.m. avoid bright lights, particularly blue light is helpful. I have yellow goggles and LED bulbs that I turn to red at night. (Neighbors have teased me about what the red lights means!)

This will be a good case study to find out how real "Cancel Culture" concerns are. Because if you are looking for a reason to be offended, the Muppets will give you one. Females being portrayed as pigs, Swedish chefs with speech impediments, depiction of mental disease for laughs, etc. Article also refers to situations such as Johnny Cash singing in front of confederate flag. Yet, there is not one ounce of malice or meanness anywhere to be seen. It is one big wacky party to which everyone is invited. We'll see what happens.

Whoa! Have loved Evan's playing for ever but have not heard him speak before, let alone have him speak about his own creative approach. It is indeed inspiring beyond improvisational music!

Being trying to figure out how many of these machines are deployed in the U.S.

I welcome the CIA's attempt at modernizing. Let's face it: their recent track record at predicting major social movements has been terrible. The Arab spring, Tianamen square. They found out like the rest of us: cable TV and Internet. Monitoring social networks would seem like a good approach. I am wary of this technology being pointed domestically. Supposedly the U.S. is not in the CIAs purview, but there is probably no legal impediment to "lending" it to the FBI, or Homeland Security or whatever.

I worked at a company that was a Smalltalk shop right through the middle of the 0's. I personally loved Smalltalk for it's simplicity and productivity and miss it to this day. Our company finally let go of it because: 1) We needed to develop web applications and at the time there was no credible web app framework. 2) Licensing was expensive and complicated. We were using Parcplace/ObjectShare and had to deploy on Mac, Windows and different flavors of Unix. Most of our work was for internal consumption but we would also license our work to other companies and they had to call the ParcPlace sales people to negotiate licenses on the runtimes. Everyone hated the hassle and the expense. 3) While developing in Smalltalk was a dream, building and deploying was always a big pain. 4) Java showed up. Sun pushed it hard and aligned it with the development of the web. It was multiplatform, you could do servlets and (cr)applets with it. And it was free!

In my personal opinion, the Java language, base libraries, and development experience were inferior to Smalltalk in just about every way in the 0's (ok, I welcomed static typing, but why did it take more than a decade to get lambdas?). Even Java performance was worse than Smalltalk for a while (the first Java releases were interpreted). But Smalltalk was a fragmented ecosystem that did not adapt to the web and to a well-funded, well-marketed, free competitor (Java) that offered some of the same benefits. Smalltalk was always a niche technology. It is still alive, but the niches are smaller.