That's the beauty of data, you can put the data center somewhere far from where the data is used. Put it somewhere appropriate, not Texas or other places that are high on ambient heat and low on water.

I've been wondering if geothermal might be a solution, only use the ground as a heat sink instead of a heat source. Here in Michigan's Upper Peninsula the abandoned mines stay at 40F all year round, regardless of the air temperature. Place the servers in the mine, drill some cooling loops into the rock. I don't know enough about thermodynamics to know if this is viable. A thousand feet of earth and rock ought to be pretty good as noise insulation, too.

Assuming that AI is actually capable of coding useful, non-trivial, defect-free products... You're still going to need programmers. But instead of writing code, they'll be writing formalized specifications.

The English language suuuuuuuuccckkks at precision. Just look at any RFC that spends the first page defining the terms "MUST", "MAY", and "SHALL". AI prompts will need to become formalized and written to look like legal documents. The average person just doesn't think like that. Programmers do.

"AI Specification Language" (probably several different ones with subtle differences depending on the exact AI model being used) is going to be the next big programming language. Netcraft confirms it.

We'll still need programmers, at least until honest-to-goodness AGI comes along and makes all of us meatbags obsolete.

Agreed. I wish people would stop treating data centers as bogeymen. Most people aren't opposed to data centers per se, they're opposed to the side-effects. They're concerned about the energy usage and its effect on consumer energy rates. They're concerned about water usage. They're concerned about noise. They're concerned about heat pollution in the surrounding environment.

The thing is, all those things (with the possible exception of heat pollution) are fixable! They just take money and regulators with teeth. Don't let the data center owners externalize the costs onto the community. Make them pay for new power plants to satisfy their needs. Pass noise regulations. Require closed-loop cooling instead of evaporative. Address the actual concerns. And when writing the regulations, don't even mention the words "data center". Establish thresholds applicable to any industry, so when the next big thing comes along you don't have to start all over again passing the same rules but in the context of "hoverboard manufacturers" or whatever.

I expect it means there are two Outlook icons on the desktop.

And here I am, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, sitting on 347" of snowfall this season. And today, the Second of April in the Year of Our Lord 2026, we have a winter storm warning with another 2-4" predicted this afternoon.

All I'm saying is, if the western states want snow they can feel free to come get it! No one here will argue.

I look forward to the clash between the sites that require you to prove you're not a bot and everyone currently engaged in the agentic AI circle-jerk. I mean, how can I tell my agent to read and summarize a thread and reply to it in the style of Boris Badenov if the site checks that the user is a human? I mean, maybe I could login and prove my humanity before handing the keyboard over to the agent, but who has time for crap like that? That's the kind of boring busy-work we have computers for.

tackle (verb)
1. To attempt (but not necessarily succeed at) a task.
2. To knock down so as to impede forward progress.

Either way, I'm sure Claude can tackle modernization of COBOL code.

If there is one thing I don't care for, it is the placement of the power switch. Underneath the machine, in the left rear. As I told an Apple representative, they produce these pretty machines, but must employ an evil genius to place the power switches in bizarre or obscure places.

I honestly can't think of a reason to ever turn off a computer that stays plugged into the wall. I'm sure you have your reasons, but I expect that 99% of buyers press the power button exactly once.

We're weak against it because we're stupid.

"Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb." - D. Helmet

The training takes 10-30 minutes? This isn't training in any sense of the word. It not for the benefit of the worker, nor is it so Citigroup can benefit from their workers using the new tools. The sole purpose of this (and most other corporate "training" programs) is so companies can tick off a checkbox somewhere. Citigroup doesn't care if their employees know or use AI, they only care that they can tell someone (maybe the government, maybe a big customer, maybe their own board) that they're hip to the latest buzzword.

No, they mean "surface". Each of the slots is planed, sanded, and hand-rubbed with the finest tung oil. It puts a beautiful surface on them! Only the best for the C-suite executive meetings!

Primaries help but they aren't a complete solution. First, primary results can be overridden by the party leadership. It's best to think of primaries as a non-binding poll of the electorate. This alone makes primaries a pretty unreliable way to filter candidates.

Second, some states allow voting in either party's primary; there's no declaration of party affiliation and no check to make sure you're a member of the party whose ballot you're marking. So if your own party's nomination is pretty much settled, why not just vote in the other party's primary and pick the least electable candidate? See if you can trick the other party into running an absolute idiot that your guy can easily defeat.

Third, the losers of the primary can still decide to run in the general election under a different party or as an independent. In my example, Lion wins the primary so Tiger runs as neither herbivore or carnivore, but switches to the omnivore party or runs as an independent. This is still going to leech votes away from Lion and put us back in the situation of the minority candidate being elected.

Finally, the biggest advantage that ranked choice voting has that primaries can never have is that it encourages third-party candidates. First past the post almost inevitably devolves into what we have now, two equal parties full of voters who aren't voting *for* their own candidate as much as they are voting *against* the other one. In a close race between two big parties, voting for a third-party is very much not in your best interest. It makes it more likely for your *least* favorite candidate to win. Primaries can't fix that, it's inherent in first past the post voting. Ranked choice voting can bring in third parties as it lets you vote for them without fear of helping the candidate you least like. And who knows? Maybe there are enough others who are voting strategically to keep one party out of office who, if they could actually vote for the party they *like* for a change, could get one of the third-parties elected.

So much there in that short paragraph. Saying Canada shouldn't antagonize Trump is fine, but the problem is there's *nothing* we can do that *won't* antagonize him and nothing we can do to placate him, short of inviting him to come be a king. What can Greenland do to not antagonize him (what can Ukraine do to not antagonize Putin)? See the problem?

Nonsense, it's easy to placate him. It just involves depositing very large sums of money into one of his many offshore accounts. Combine with flattery and gifts (solid gold jets, second-hand peace prizes) and he'll do pretty much anything you want him to. Canada is willfully antagonizing him by not bribing him and kissing his ass well enough, and that's on them.

Wow, you've completely missed the point of ranked choice voting. It's not to make the voter feel good about having been able to vote for the ultimate winner. That's absolutely backwards. It's so we can elect a politician more in line with the desires of the voters.

Super simplistic example: Say you have two major candidates, Lion and Gazelle. A majority of the voters, 60%, would happily vote for Lion. But a third candidate, Tiger, is also running. Tiger is a lot like Lion, but has a few interesting new ideas. Half the Lion voters switch to Tiger. Now Gazelle ends up with 40% of the vote, Lion and Tiger each get 30%. Gazelle wins, even though only a minority of voters actually want a herbivore prey animal in office. 60% would still prefer a big cat, they just have a minor squabble over *which* big cat.

This is the problem ranked choice voting aims to solve. It lets you vote for the candidate you really want in office, without the risk of splitting the vote and losing to the candidate you *least* want to win.

This is why my printer is an aged monk with a calligraphy pen. Even his yellow security dots are lavishly illuminated works of art. The only problem is that his pages-per-day output is in the low single digits. That's more than offset by his vow of silence, though. He never talks back or blasphemes by telling me PC LOAD LETTER.