Stop being obtuse. Giving up advancements in science and technology is stagnation. Thinking it’s a good idea to not do anything until people are fed and housed is stagnation. Again, it’s not a zero sum game. Those unfed and unhoused people are not that way because of investments in technology and science, and not doing those things will not affect those people

Focus your nonsense on corruption, exploitation, capitalistic excess, income disparities and most of all elected people with empathy …… that are the cause and could help

I don’t see it as a zero sum game. On the contrary, I see advancing science and technology as an investment in our future that makes it easier to take care of our people, and stagnation as making it harder to care for our people

Not at all. The people who are motivated by advancing technology, aren’t motivated to overcome corruption, incline equality, to replace economic systems, etc.

All you’d be doing is stifling innovation, improvement, a reason for hope in the future, for …… the same unmet needs, but now with less hope

That’s not a trade off.

Taking care of people basic needs is not a technology problem or even a resources problem. It’s political, economic, corruption, logistics, whatever variation decides who gets what and how it gets there. We already have the resources and technology to do this

Advanced research projects have no effect on whether the politico-economic system takes care of people’s basic needs. It does, however, help advance society, enhance our capabilities, create new opportunities to improve our lives

For those of us plugging in at home, ads can never happen.

Ai says

Virginia is home to the largest data center market in the world, with over 576 data centers, primarily located in Northern Virginia,

I mostly hope that his companies make it back into the “disruptive technology” club, regardless of him.

Tesla was started by a handful of really smart people with a great idea. Musk was ceo as it grew from an idea into the first new major automaker in almost a century. As it grew from a dismissed toy that no one would buy, into an industry-wide paradigm shift. Most of that time musk preached the gospel. You can’t disregard that influence, you can’t claim the guy in charge had nothing to do with it. You might decide his skill was more manipulative than visionary, but you can’t deny that him being the front man was part of the success. You might decide any engineering or problem solving ability was not real, but he was the guy in charge, he did make decisions, and Tesla has generally been a huge success (until recently).

We just need some drug rehab and find a way to reset the god complex ….

For whatever reasons Musk has found himself as ceo of some wildly successful visionary companies. It has not changed that they are finally bringing the future to the present, disrupting old technologies in favor of newer and better, for a better world. And the musk from before his breakdown deserves a lot of credit.

At this point I no longer care about musk either, but SpaceX and Tesla are critical. Or at least SpaceX is. Tesla has not yet finished disrupting vehicle manufacturing , but if we’re content to let Chinese companies go ahead, they’re ready and willing. Legacy manufacturers have been slapped up the side of the face, but if they’re still not awake at this point it’s on them

It would save electricity

The problem is that we don’t yet have a practical alternative to jet fuel, except high speed rail and Zoom. The technologies are all too young.

And it’s not just cost, it’s trying to make them useful enough. Batteries will not take you across a continent, for any cost.

We’re more at the stage of “fuck the cost. Give me another option to try”

I wonder if that takes an appreciable amount of carbon out of the air, and if it is somehow persisted in solid form.

It is a society thing. There were many ways I never got along with my ex mother in law …… but one of them was that if I forgot my soap or shampoo and used my wife’s she made a big deal of it. I mean I would thank her for (passive aggressively) complimenting my scent but that’s annoying.

It’s just soap and shampoo. I generally prefer unscented and strongly prefer something that doesn’t trigger my psoriasis but the bottom line is getting clean

I’m actually planning to do an evaluation of a n ai code review tool to see what it can do. I’m actually somewhat optimistic that it could do this better than it can code

I really want to sic it on this one junior programmer who doesn’t understand that you can’t just commit ai generated slop and expect it to work. This last code review after over 60 pieces of feedback I gave up on the rest and left it as he needs to understand when ai generated slop needs help

Ai is usually pretty good at unit tests but it was so bad. Randomly started using a different mocking framework, it actually mocked entire classes and somehow thought that was valid to test them. Wasting tests on non-existent constructors no negative tests, tests without verifying anything. Most of all there were so many compile errors, yet he thought that was fine

My company only allows downloads from official sources, verified publishers, signed where we can. This is enforced by only allowing the repo server to download stuff and only from places we’ve configured. In general those go through a process to reduce the chances of problems and mitigate them quickly.

We also feed everything through a scanner to flag known vulnerabilities, unacceptable licenses

If it’s fully packaged installable software, we have security guys that take a look at I have no idea what they do and whether it’s an audit

I’m actually going round in circles with this one developer. He needs an open source package and we already cache it on the repo server in several form factors, from reputable sources …… but he wants to run a random GitHub component which downloads an unsigned tar file from an untrusted source

Just ask them to spin the windmills in reverse 3% of the time

Effective rates

1. The ladder of progressive rates ends too early, so actual income tax rates do not go up after something like half a million income. That’s a lot for most of us but does not begin to cover the wealthy
2. Many tax cuts over the last few decades were specific to other types of income, generally available to the wealthy

For example if you were like Elon Musk, the richest person in the world (sometimes) who gets little to no salary and is paid mainly with stock options, you’d pay at most 37% on your salary, same as any basic millionaire but the bulk of your income would count as long term capital gains and taxed at 20%, lowering your effective rate. Even better, you could take loans against your stock and never “realize” the gains so never pay taxes on it.

There are many other tricks you can pull to count your income as other that income and taxed at a lower rate. Last time we had that debate, Warren Buffet, another of the richest men in the world wrote an opinion piece in support of changes that he could take advantage such that he paid a lower effective tax rate than his secretary. Nice try but quickly disappeared under a flood of propaganda from other rich people

Technically anyone could be paid in stock like Elon musk, and live off loans on stock like Elon musk, and pay a much lower effective tax rate like Elon musk, but it’s a practical Impossibility for most of us

Technically we could all form a trust like the Kennedys and many other wealthy families, hold all of our assets. The trust has several ways to avoid taxes and i believe is taxed at the corporate rate, which is also now lower than personal tax rates. And the trust can cover all of our expenses and write them off from its income, while we owe little to no income tax. Realistically most of us couldn’t afford the lawyers to make that happen much less the prerequisites to dodge the taxes

I can definitely see the fear of letting ai do something like that. Someone will always try to trick it. That’s why we can’t have good things.

However, like you said, they didn’t think to make that an option in the voice menu. If it were an AI, you could drop the process into the knowledge base and have it available much more easily than reprogramming the voice menu

In the US we do that to some extent but not for the wealthy. Somehow we ended up with upper middle class paying the highest rate, then tax rates dropping as you get wealthy. It’s fair that I pay a higher rate than someone with less income, but very much not fair that I pay a higher tax rate than wealthy people

True, but there’s no reason that can’t coexist with a sense of fairness, and witha long term greater good

Of course I don’t want to pay more taxes. However I realize I’ve been more successful than some, and a more progressive tax scheme is fair. I realize I have vices and don’t mind if there is a discouragement, as long as it applies to everyone fairly. I realize my success is based on a successful society and understand it is only fair to leave society in at least as good condition as I found it. Most importantly I have kids so I’m all for building a better future for them …. And understand that includes the society they will live in, the environment they will live in