In the case of both quantum computing and commercial fusion reactors we're making progress pretty rapidly. A major reason that fusion has been so slow compared to some predictions is that simply put, the amount of funding for it has been well below projections. See https://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/5budos/fusion_is_always_50_years_away_for_a_reason/?onetap_auto=true&one_tap=true#lightbox this graph. But the fusion situation is getting better, and rapidly. The triple product, a useful way of measuring how close a fusion reactor is to being self-sustaining has shown major improvement the last few years and it continues to get better https://www.fusionenergybase.com/article/measuring-progress-in-fusion-energy-the-triple-products Better computer modeling of what is happening in reactors, as well as better superconductors have helped a lot. And there's another large-scale change with fusion reactors which that we're starting to see a lot more private investment. Now, some of that is clearly due to hype, but a lot of it looks promising, and also helps show that the tech is getting to the point where it has some decent chance. If fusion fails to be commercially viable the most likely way that will happen is that by the time it would be otherwise viable, it will be competing with just really efficient solar and wind which are showing drastic improvements in cost the last few years.

For quantum computers the situation is not as good. But there's still clear improvements the last few years in at least three major respects. First, there's been major improvements on quantum error corrections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_error_correction Due to the inherent noisiness of quantum computers due to stray particles and the like, quantum error correction is really important. But the early error correction algorithms were just not that good. One of the first discovered was Shor's code which required 9 extra qubits for each logical qubit. But that was replaced with the CSS code which was much more efficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_code, and subsequent codes are even more efficient or allow one to play with tradeoffs. Second, we're much better at keeping qubits entangled with many others or for long periods of time. See for example, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2382022-record-breaking-number-of-qubits-entangled-in-a-quantum-computer/ Third, and closely connected to 1 and 2, there are now real demonstrations of CSS and similar approaches on physical qubits. See e.g. discussion here https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7651.

It does not seem like either of these techs is going to be practical for a few years yet. But there's clear progress in both and at a rapid rate.

Funny thing, Montana is a big grain-producing state, and we have possibly the most unpredictable, and definitely the most absurdly-variable climate in North America.

https://montanakids.com/facts_...

Oh, and we also grow potatoes, but only in very limited areas (potatoes need more predictable conditions), whereas grain is grown here pretty much anywhere the ground is near enough to level.

Central Park is "publicly available," but that doesn't mean you have the right to cut down the trees in it and sell them for lumber. The AI companies are selling lumber and when you ask them where they got it, they shrug and say "publicly available sources."

It's confusing because of non-unique names, but I haven't been able to find a CV, bio, or publication list... nothing to confirm that he is at NASA, was at NASA, or that he's the top electrostatics expert at NASA.

Thank you for missing the point and not actually addressing it. What that shows is that yes, there is a point where Israel will use its nuclear arsenal. Congratulations; that's true for every country with nukes. The point you are not addressing is that they've had many opportunities to use their nukes where they have not. Care to actually address that?

That's pretty obviously false given that Israel has not used those nukes. They've had repeated opportunities to nuke targets in Gaza, or nuke targets in Syria and Iran and have not done so. That shows that your second half of your sentence is pretty obviously false.

I don't know about real Macs, but I have a Hackintosh that's ... um, OSX 10.8, on a midrange i7 with 8GB RAM and a fast SSD, and even doing nothing much (file manager, system settings and the like, no browser) it was sluggish to occasionally painful. Gave the system 32GB and suddenly it was much better.

If a version of OSX however-many-years-old is that bad with 8GB, I can't imagine current-OSX being pleasant.

What I've noticed more than that... over the past year or so, a vast uptick in the number of auto-generated videos. These drag together a lot of readily-available text and images on the nominal topic, so pass for "real" -- but the giveaway is that the narrator is text-to-speech, not a human. (It'll make mistakes like saying "one, six hundred" for "1,600".)

All such channels I've encountered have MILLIONS of subscribers, MILLIONS of rapidly-acquired views, but very few comments. (Like, 12M views in a week, but only 30 comments.)

I've concluded that these videos exist so that the channel owner can use another bot to generate millions of views and a whole lot of the shared ad revenue.

Which is probably starting to bleed Youtube beyond what they're used to.

And yes, probably because of the high view counts, those channels occasionally dominate my recommends (which are otherwise pretty good).

Because law and culture are connected.

Remembering that in the business world, "unsupported" can translate to "legally liable" in the event something goes seriously wrong.

I have a houseful of PCs, but only one will officially run Win11 -- a low-powered netbook that ironically is the least competent hardware I own (its horsepower is on par with my laptop from 2003). I'll give it this -- Win11 does a good job of downshifting to match the environment it finds itself in; Win10 would struggle on that netbook.

Which desktops did you try, and what issues blew it for you?

I had a hard time finding a linux I could live with, and I first started looking over 25 years ago. It's only been about six years now since it's become sufficiently stable and complete. And implementations vary wildly. I prefer the KDE desktop as being the most functional (and least annoying), but KDE on Kubuntu is not nearly as slick as KDE on PCLinuxOS.

But at the far end, IMO current Gnome makes Win10 look stellar.... good gods, who thought a cellphone makes a good desktop??

Oh, the story has one good function. It points up how in isolation, such metrics are garbage.

Otherwise.... what you said.

XP64 here. Same philosophy. Block the garbage, don't be stupid, glory in my lack of visitors, and remember that attack vectors are mostly discovered by reverse-engineering the patches. No patches, way fewer clues.

Whatever small risks are well offset by an OS that doesn't continually make me long to reach through my monitor and throttle a UI developer.

It may be source-available, but this is a shitty closed license resembling Facebook's Llama license.