The COVID mRNA vaccines were the culmination of decades of research into genetic vaccines that could be in essence engineered to target a selected antigen without the years of trial and error that are required by the methods we have been using since the 1950s. Within days of the virus genome being published, they had a vaccine design, the months it took to get to the public were taken up with studies of the safety and effectiveness of the heretofore untested technology, ramping up production, and preparing for the distribution of a medicine that required cryogenic storage.

It would be unreasonable not to give the Trump administration credit for not mucking up this process. But the unprecedented speed of development wasnâ(TM)t due to Trump employing some kind of magical Fuhrermojo. It was a stroke good fortune that when the global pandemic epidemiologists have been worried about arrived, mRNA technology was just at the point where you could use it. Had it arrived a decade earlier the consequences would have been far worse, no matter who was president.

The lesson isnâ(TM)t that Trump is some kind of divine figure who willed a vaccine into existence, itâ(TM)s that basic research that is decades from practical application is important.

I almost never agree with that guy but there is entirely no point in making a post where you just paste an AI response. That post is worth about as much as the swastika spam that used to be so common here. It just takes up space and adds nothing to the discussion. Trolls are more interesting.

The only time I have seen that was with Google sites.

The problem with javascript is that it allows developers to offload processes that would be better off executed server-side onto the users. Ideally, we would have a markup language that combines html + css, with the added benefit of dynamically interacting with the server to replace AJAX. Cookies could be replaced with a protocol that has a very limited number of states the user can choose from when connecting to a site (anonymous, logged in anonymous, logged in identified). It could create a unique token for each website and each website would only have access to view the cookie related to their website (we could use DNS to authenticate this). Sites would not have the ability to store data in the cookie—the cookie would just be a key they relate to server-side data.

Javascript is a complete programming language, and that's a bad thing! That means malicious developers (like Google and Microsoft) can use it to build a corporate surveillance state. It also means our web browsers need to do way more work than necessary, store unnecessary data, and have a persistent security vulnerability.

I suspect that the reason "none of the largest companies and stakeholders with a voice are willing to propose a significant replacement" is because the major disadvantages of the current state of affairs for users are all advantages for them. Developing a better system would be costly and if the system was truly better it would neuter their corporate surveillance state. If they did propose a significant alternative, it would probably be one that destroys internet anonymity and offloads even more processes onto the browser. There's a reason Google invested so much in a "free" browser.

That's a pretty disingenuous argument. A universal ban on all plastic is politically (and economically) impossible at this point. Pushing for individual initiatives to eliminate certain kinds of plastic waste are achievable goals that can help us move away from plastics.

If someone has a minor political position or runs a nonprofit with limited funds and they manage to get plastic drinking straws banned in their municipality, they've done a small good. Changing the world for the better, even if it's in such a tiny way that it doesn't change the grand scheme of things, is both laudable and more than most people do. Regardless, the goal isn't to just ban plastic straws in one small town. The goal is to ban plastic straws and then move on to the next thing. The goal is to motivate other towns to also ban plastic straws.

One of the most important things about legislating plastic alternatives to common items is that it creates a market for those sustainable alternatives. And the more those sustainable alternatives are produced, the cheaper they get and the more viable they become even in places where there isn't a plastic ban. It also works the other way—the more consumers become used to using plastic alternatives (and form a negative view of plastics), the more demand there will be for those alternatives. Strategically, drinking straws are a great place to start because they are commonplace, easy to legislate/enforce, and alternatives already exist.

The idea that "Green people" only care about their goals if they try to achieve them with a hopeless moonshot is not a serious argument.

In my experience, Fedora plays the nicest with Mac hardware without requiring you to start hacking away at the command line. If you want something in the Debian family I would go with Mint. Pop! is also nice (especially because its GUI is similar to macOS), but I had to manually install my wifi driver last time I put it on a Mac.

If you choose Fedora, the easiest way to get a Mac-like experience is to go with Gnome (the default) and the first thing you need to do is install "Dash to Dock." That extension transforms it from pretty unusable to Mac-like by giving you a functional dock.

I saw a show that detailed one once (in California, I believe). Very cool stuff, and certainly more efficient than WALL-E.

That was insensitive on my part considering the man is a convicted rapist. I should have thought about that. Mia culpa.

That is stupid. If Trump tried to beat a woman she would kick his ass.

In some municipalities they actually do have people mix all the trash and recycling and they have a really cool automated system of sorting it out on their end. It is much more efficient than having people do their own sorting.

I am not sure why this is not more commonplace. It probably requires a large investment in all those machines, and here in the Midwest we tend to contract stuff out to the lowest bidder rather than see the value of more efficient recycling. When the system is designed for people to do their own sorting, spending a small amount to encourage better sorting probably saves them money (if it works).

Also, I doubt it works very well. The company that came up with this is probably courting municipalities around the country claiming their system will reduce costs. The AI bubble will have no shortage of strange AI applications that eventually fizzle out.

We haven't invented WALL-E yet, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

There are certainly problems with recycling (including the plastic industry using it as a greenwashing strategy), but it's still much better than just throwing everything in the trash.

While most the plastic people recycle doesn't actually get recycled (and products made from recycled plastic are almost never made from 100% recycled plastic), metals are actually very recyclable. Furthermore, extracting metals from the earth is extremely environmentally hazardous, poorly regulated, and sometimes wrecks an ecosystem for generations by poisoning drinking water.

Just because the benefits of recycling have been greatly exaggerated doesn't mean that it's not a much better alternative than sending everything straight to the landfill. The biggest problem with recycling is that we don't subsidize it enough and we don't tax manufacturers heavily for producing stuff that's not renewable. The basic idea of recycling is a good one. The problem is that we have let industry take the lead rather than environmental regulators (not that we even have those right now).

Despite that, if you don't recycle just because it's not nearly as effective as it should be, that's really a dick move. Recycling is better than the alternative (not recycling). You gotta do what little you can.

I watch a lot of maritime disaster videos, so YouTubeâ(TM)s genius algorithm thinks Iâ(TM)d be interested in traveling on a cruise ship.

Open source is particularly resistant to enshittification. Red Hat and Canonical try to enshittify Linux, and then swoops in AlmaLinux and Mint.

I would just not use AI in schools. Likewise, I would only have computers in a single computer lab.

We keep looking to technology to create educational shortcuts but have any of these shortcuts actually worked out? Over the last 40 years we have put more and more computers in schools and kids have become less literate, lost the ability to spell, and we've reached this bizarre time in history where it's become common to distrust basic science. The main things computers have brought to K-12 education are amazingly efficient ways to cheat and avoid actual learning.

This is just not true. With AI comes the ability to AVOID learning any of those things.

We need more teachers. That's how we improve the success rate. That's what prestigious private schools do to prepare kids for prestigious colleges. You provide small classrooms and make tutors available.

You are conflating education with vocational training. Treating education as vocational training is one of the major problems that got us into this mess.

Up until the last couple hundred years, having people hyper-specialize worked wonders to construct the modern civilization we enjoy. It didn't matter if a fletcher had a basic understanding of economics because he had no say. Likewise, in China they can get away with treating education as vocational training because having a broad education doesn't do a person any good (it's probably depressing, because it makes them aware of how shitty their situation is).

In societies that elect their leaders, the only thing preventing incompetent grifters from seizing control is a broadly educated populace.

Just look at how many people here on ./ are experts in highly complex fields—programmers, engineers, sysadmins, etc. And then look at how many of these dudes are complete idiots when discussing any topic outside their field of expertise.

So I guess that's a long way of saying, "You don't worry about teaching essential tools, you teach foundational concepts." Teach kids symbolic logic in elementary school. Teach them foreign languages in elementary school (most people don't really understand grammar until they learn a foreign language). Teach them how to write with a pencil and paper. Give them more teachers so they can learn these things while getting individualized attention.

As a final example, think of music theory. I have known tons of musicians who learned how to play a specific instrument, repeating songs written by others. Sometimes they're damned good at it. But they can't play other instruments, can't write their own songs, and haven't the faintest clue how to improvise. I have also known tons of musicians well versed in music theory. They can play any instrument (although technique will vary depending on instrument), write songs on any instrument, and improvise on any instrument within minutes of picking it up. Why? Because they didn't learn to use an essential tool, they learned a fundamental concept. If you're starting a band, which musician would you prefer?