tocs3

I think it is important because the case was not about guilt or innocence. It was about the governments right to search without any cause. If the case was about whether there was enough cause for the search we would be having a much different discussion here.

I should probably have said this in my original comment.

Near the top of the article:

“Today’s decision leaves Americans’ most sensitive information open to search at the border without any suspicion at all,”

I think this is just an extension of a general we, as government officials protecting American freedoms, can do what we want and will justify it later if we have to policy.

It should probably be noted that this specific case led to a conviction of an actual crime (Bank fraud and money laundering).

What are the things that campaigns spend money on that really makes a difference in outcomes. Is it plastic signs in peoples yards, advertising, paying for news stories. I have a hard time believing voters hear candidate X raised more money and then they vote for candidate X. Still, I also know that raising more money is a good indicator of who will win. Why?

There is a cap to how much and insurance company can make (health insurance for instance are capped at 20% of premiums). To make more money next year they can sign up more policy holders or make sure costs go up. Companies also often have a large stake in the fix it shops/clinics/hospitals so they recoup much of their cost that way. Market capture, if it cost more to buy insurance than to fix it/absorb the cost without insurance why would you buy insurance. It is useful for the insurance companies to see costs increase.

Sure there can be good arguments for having insurance. Insurance companies are part of the financial sector and will be working to make more money. That is a fine incentive for the insurance industry but for the insurance consumer it is a reason to be skeptical and careful.

Sure there are valid uses for insurance. It is just the incentives are all wrong for the insurance companies.

Holding actual people liable sounds like a more effective option. The insurance would just be included into the cost of doing business and make everything more expensive. Insurance makes everything worse.

Holding actual humans liable (with appropriate levels of harshness) would make actual humans more likely to take preventative steps. Holding shareholders somewhat liable (maybe extra taxes on sales of a companies stock) might be useful also.

I would like to see it go into more philanthropic endeavors. Of course, setting aside for a reasonably comfortable future is important also. Some luxuries are always nice but are they really going to be that great when you get old enough to need assistance and there is no one around with the time or education to help.

I do not know but I think I am happy about this. I have savings. I worry though inflation will rise and make the money worth less.

I think it is not just colors.

This is slightly disappointing finding for me. I tend to walk a little slow (and do everything a little slow). Mybe I can be an outlier.

You can do the same with wood, just do not glue it. On the other hand there is something to be said for making something that looks a certain way (even if it is hidden in the final presentation) for the enjoyment of the craft person. On the other other hand, it can cost more and be more time consuming.

I have not been to Mexico City or Vancouver but would like to see both.

It seems much of the US (and maybe the rest of the world, I don't know) is becoming very homogenized. Especially along large roads and highways. This is not a new or startling observation, but I do miss the diversity that I remember from my younger years.

I think the democrats are just little behind the times. It is getting ease to just make direct payments to politicians theses days.

My reply here is just bout the one quote. I more or less agree with the sentiment of your post. But..

Isn't the goal of tetris to not build the wall!?!?

I think the point of the game tetris is to build a wall or at least could be thought of that way. Each line that you completed and moves off the bottom of the screen is a completed section of wall and the goal is to make a hole free wall for as long as you can.

I really like this and may have to try to make a poster.

I think it is more like human values are so all over the place that there is no real meaning in the phrase. For all my life I have heard, from humans, everything from peace and love to destroy all humanity. Then there is everything found in fiction.

So, what is going on here. It seems like I have been reading similar stories. Are researchers giving a prompt like "Do your worst. Hack into some business" or giving free access to a bunch of tools and prompting "Do something interesting". Is this like the blackmailing LLM that was given compromising emails and told to do what you have to to not get turned off. I am sort of assuming they did not just turn on a computer and run a model and it started to act on it's own initiative.

It looked a little interesting but I am not so sure I really like it. It does not seem to really explain so much as show another way to represent things. Such as In 1+2×3 why does 2×3 go first? My understanding of things is that it is conventional order of operations. I was not sure what to do with the Algebra Explorer. I could move things around but not sure what that shows.

It looked a little like the graphical programming that I have looked at in the past. Maybe it should move a little more in that direction.

I was listening to a math podcast a while back and someone said "I am a conservative" and then was quick to add "with a small c". That might be an important distinction.

We live in a big modern world there some options that are not really available. As if we are stuck in a really wide raging river. We are not going to be going upstream regardless our desires. Saying stop I want out is not really an option.

Some things I would like to see are pedal controlled devices. Something like a pedal controlled wheelchair, not powered by the pedals just control the forward and back motion. My mother with sever arthritis can still pedal but has a very hard time walking. It would be a little exercise doing something that needs to be done (getting around). A pedal controlled remote control lawnmower would be nifty also.

This is a little "Follow your dreams", not really bad or wrong just a little narrow minded. Some good companion thoughts might be found in Grant Sanderson's commencement speech a few years ago (https://www.3blue1brown.com/lessons/harvey-mudd-speech/)

Ok, I do not know how knowledgeable this guy Terence Tao is. The first line in the paper is:

As any car driver knows, it is possible to maneuver a car into a tight parking spot, or to perform a U-turn in a narrow street, by performing a sequence of forward and backward motions.

I have seen some car drivers not seem to know just how small a space a car can get into:)

The notion (right or wrong) is that consumers payed for the tariffs. Target may have not passed on the cost at the time but they still made a $1B profit. Now they are getting $1B on top of that. The consumers that might have payed lower prices (Target could have lowered prices if the tariffs were not in effect) do not get any kind of refund.

I am not so sure the United States as a whole will even notice. Looking around I am not really sure that the US is even noticing that the US has a space program.

I have been a bit isolated for the past few years and do not really talk to many people. Maybe I am wrong, but many of the people I talk to seem to barely know that SpaceX is launching rockets in South Texas (I'm in TX). I have never heard anyone talk about China and thier space program. Do people talk about this stuff or is it only nerdy types that read HN?

In some sense "understanding" (understanding if it is true, if it is important, how to use it) is about the only bottleneck in math. Any theorem that you can write down or imagine is already true, false, not provable already. In some ways we can already start iterating through all the theorems. We will never get to the end (or really get very far down the line) and most all of them be trivial (I think the Busy Beaver[1] project is a fascinating example, ymmv).

I am wary of AI in all aspects I am seeing it in but in many ways in mathematics seems to me the least troubling. It will change things in and the field will not be the same. Blacksmithing has not really gone away. You can still work as a farrier, if you like that sort of things. The tools that replaced a man working over a forge with a big hammer are part of a giant industry that is still producing works for the modern world.

[1]: https://bbchallenge.org/8226493

If I need a mathematical solution to my problem (my fusion reactor is not working) it is not quite good enough to know that some theorem is correct. I need to know how it applies.

If I want to use some argument about history (US Civil War fought for human rights, states right, protect interests of wealth) there may not be a simple/single correct answer. I could ask an expert historian to help me build my argument (whatever it might be) or maybe a chatbot. Would it matter, I am still getting the answer I want? Maybe law is field that is in the most danger. We have always had lawyers arguing every side of every case, often pointing to the same laws to justify their argument.

The field of math (and other hard sciences) might stand to benefit from AI. It might be a powerful new tool. Tractors did not destroy agriculture.

Art, political science, history, others, do not have right answers to all questions. I am not saying AI replacing these fields would be a good thing. I think it could easily be a disastrous thing. Just saying if a field is going to disappear it might be because there are no right ways to do it and many may just opt for the easy and cheap answers.

Maybe the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series was predictive in pointing out the problems of ill defined questions (The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything).

Paywalled, but I did see that it looks like Mathematics is the predicted profession to be taken over (I could be wrong).

It seems to me something like history might be more at risk. In mathematics a wrong result can be checked. With something like history checking answers is not always so easy.

I do not live in Austin but I also know that Canyon Lake, Wimberley, and Bulverde libraries all have nice maker spaces.