The merchants need to consider that if their competitor down the street still accepts rewards cards, the customers might just switch, and then they've just lost the whole sale. All this over a 1% extra cost to the merchant.

In the meantime, they think nothing of offering things like buy-one-get-one-free deals to lure in a few more customers.

That summary at the top of this story is just way too long. I'll have a chatbot break it down and give me the gist.

If you're locked inside an ATM, have you tried banging on the case to alert passers by?

Almost nobody uses "untyped languages". Few of those even exist, with Forth and various assembly languages being the main examples. (C, with its type system that is as airtight as a sieve, gets an honorary mention.)

You're probably harping about dynamically typed languages. In such languages, the runtime still knows *exactly* what type every item of data has. These are not weakly typed. But what you obviously prefer are "statically typed" languages.

Static typing might statistically reduce some errors, but it certainly can't "eliminate whole classes". Consider "set_warhead_target(float latitude, float longitude)". Did the type system give you any protection from accidentally swapping the two parameters? That's really the problem that you're so worried about: accidentally using the wrong data value in the wrong place.

However, very few statically typed languages (with Rust being a notable exception) have eliminated the biggest source of type errors in computing: Null, which is a bogus placeholder that matches any pointer type (or reference type, depending on the language's nomenclature). So in many cases you have no less risk with static typing than you do with accidentally feeding a string into a Python sqrt() function. And in the case of C or C++, you can be much worse off, as in segfaults and remote exploits.

I can't think of any business or other government function that still makes me fill out any paper forms. At one recent employer I did not fill out a single paper or PDF-style form, HR or otherwise, in the entire experience from the day I applied until the day I resigned.

Nobody uses paper forms any more. Everything is online. Taxes should be no different, and there should be no 3rd party middlemen collecting tolls for the "privilege" of doing something online the way everything else is done.

I learned SAS In the early 80s and used it extensively. At the time, it was easily the best data analysis software available. About 15 years ago I wanted to get a few copies for my consulting team and we were looking at more than $50K / seat. Do you think Chinese users want to pay that sort of money to a US firm?

SAS sued a source compatible competitor (World Programming) out of existence some years back, to destroy competition and maintain their high prices. I had trialled the World Programming solution and it worked very nicely.

These days I use Python and a few other open-source tools. I suspect that Chinese data analysts are mostly doing the same.

There are numerous facts and points about how stupid this all is, and I am not going to cite all of them other than the fact this thing is now a huge GDP impactor on the USA economy.

Which I would like to point is nothing but a search engine. The Emporer has no clothes and there is nothing intelligent about it artifically or otherwise.

If it fails or tanks we could be looking at a sudden death of entire sectors of technology and industrial capacity which won't recover for decades, if ever. I wish I could say we had great minds, and wonder men like VonNeumann working on it with great chances of success.

I am sad to report however, that most of these people are not particularly bright nor are they all that great business leaders other than the fact some moron gave them all this money for one purpose only: Fire everyone nwo that we have a wunderbar machine and travel the Universe with our trillions and live forever.

I am not shitting you, that is what these people that head these A.I. companies are thinking.

I wish I could say this is going to be worse than the 1930's by some measure when it blows up, but alas, it will be unprecedented when it does and the only we to restablish order world wide after it does blow up is war, and authoritarianism.

Such a bright future too look forward to you 20's and 30's somethings.

I bought a whole bunch of op-amps and rheostats, but I'm having a hard time trying to get them to implement all of my lighting "scenes". The voltages often won't converge to a stable solution, and it's really hard to analyze all the differential equations with just my slide rule.

Perhaps, but the universe doesn't owe you any easy explanations.

According to TFA, the dark matter isn't glowing. Instead, it is annihilating when it collides with another dark matter particle, which turns it into normal electrons and positrons, which then ionize normal gas and create the glow.

It's a long sequence of events, but in case it pans out, at least it might be able to address the unwillingness of most people to accept that something could possibly exist unless it somehow interacts with the electromagnetic field.

In 2025, that statement is 100% false.

Or my pet peeve: If they do show the text, it's some ceremonial name for a highway that nobody uses or knows, like the "Honorable Colonel Harland David Sanders Commemorative Memorial Highway" instead of "US Hwy 123".

I think that the theory is that mercury in the environment is converted to methylmercury by microbial activity, then it bioaccumulates in fish. Presumably, anything that is leaching from fillings is metallic mercury, which is far less toxic than methylmercury.

I've seen claims that the mercury is so firmly bound in the amalgam with silver that your exposure is negligible, but I'm not sure how much I believe that. I've had quite a few worn out mercury fillings replaced over the years, and I always wondered how much of the ground up fillings ends up getting ingested in that process.

Of course, the newer fillings are largely some kind of UV-activated epoxy resin, probably a different exact brew of chemicals for each one. I wouldn't be surprised if someone eventually figures out that some of those chemicals pose risks as well.

What can you do? Not getting your mouth fixed is known to be risky as well. Bacteria cause inflammation that causes your own body to release highly toxic chemicals.

I think they should go back to their original pre-CD business plan:

1. Mail out a lifetime supply of free floppy disks to every household in the USA.
2. ???
3. Profit!

It was demonstrated long ago that most all trading markets are chaotic. By definition, you won't see a sign of collapse in sight.

Unlike useful markets, (but similar to 17th century tulips), crypto has no intrinsic value. Therefore, there is no bottom to a potential crash.