each additional year companies delay upgrading equipment results in a productivity decline of about one-third of a percent

How is that even measured? Someone needs to tell us how not having the latest and greatest phone reduces productivity. The four basic uses are making/receiving calls, texting, checking email, internet. How can a 2024 model phone possibly be that less "productive" than a 2025 model?

As for PCs, the vast majority of people use Word, Outlook, and a browser (usually the memory hog Chrome followed by Edge). Again, explain how a PC which is three years old reduces productivity in this day and age.

This article almost sounds like an ad to get people to buy things to keep the economy rolling rather than a serious discussion.

Want the simplicity of what Notepad used to be? Mousepad is for you. Too bad it's not available for Windows.

Windows users will just have to suffer with whatever complex, bloated piece of yak manure Microsoft comes up with next.

Well, the would be the case except that Elmo is a weenie. He'll happily send others to an uncertain fate but not himself.

Meh, this kind of crap is what peer review is for. As long as he learns his lesson I'd be fine with letting him keep going. I mean he's still going to MIT so he's not an idiot.

I mean we all act like he got away with this but he was caught during the initial process of peer review. The system really does work.

We all like to complain about how there's thousands and thousands of papers that are just garbage but here's the thing so what? If the papers aren't doing any harm and they're just sitting out there then it's not a big deal. It's not like we are spending all that much money on any of this crap. I'm sure you can come up with a number that sounds big because we have a 33 trillion dollar economy so yeah you could find somebody who maybe got a grant and did some bad research for a few hundred thousand. But in the grand scheme of things it's not a big deal

I mean think about how much money we waste on other crap. Human beings are just wasteful creatures. And we kind of need to be to keep our civilization and economy going anyway.

It would be kind of neat to see the algorithms for AI hand it off to a GPU or one of the fancy cores on a modern CPU.

But I can't see that really happening because machine learning algorithms requires so much processing power and modern graphics do the same so you just don't have a lot of head room.

they'll do the same with this shit.

Yeah, us old farts won't cave, but the kids will just grow up with AI Slop as normal. They won't know what they're missing.

Replacing the mouse has no effect. And this has happened over years.

HHS has a job opening for you. Please see JFK Jr.'s appt secretary. You need (2) faulty references, proof of your ability to lie with a straight face, and a bone and a rattle. The latter are for explaining new "cures".

The dead giveaway your comment is some AI-slop is the use of "synergy". No one uses that word. Hell, even MBAs know better than to use it lest they sound like their dork bosses.

Unlikely. With skills in economics, AI, and deception he'll either become a think tank wonk or a Silicon Valley startup charlatan.

It needs to be profitable because it needs to generate enough economic activity directly (in ticket sales) or indirectly (by increasing taxable income) to produce/expand/maintain the system.

The capacity of the government of a large jurisdiction like California, or more particularly the US, could bankrupt someone like Musk, so I say, bring it on. Within a decade Musk would have abandoned all efforts, or, even better, be stone cold broke (frankly billionaires shouldn't exist at all, and we should tax the living fuck out of them down to their last $200 million).

We're too afraid of these modern day Bond villains when we should be aiming every financial, and probably every real, cannon straight at them and putting them in a sense of mortal danger every minute of their waking lives, so that they literally piss themselves in terror at the though that "we the people" might decide to wipe them out for good.

Wind and solar are only less expensive if you can actually build them. The current president has made it clear that he will not allow any new large wind or solar projects in the USA. Given the long running tendency of the GOP to swing even further to the extreme right, and the Democratic party's long history of capitulating to the GOP, it makes little sense for businesses to make long-term plans around renewable resources. Even if Trump leaves office and is voted out by a Democrat he might be replaced by someone who's even crazier and decides to actively destroy old renewable power setups. So if you need power for your data centers it just makes more sense to bite the bullet and go with nuclear.

Also, nuclear can probably done for a lot less money if they get the government out of it. Take out public financing and pork barrel contracts and nuclear can be less expensive. Especially if the same companies build the same reactors repeatedly instead of implementing one new design on a rare occasion. We'll find out if Starlink actually gets built and it's four reactors are powered on before the AI industry goes tits up.

That's just what human beings do. It's not really even that's going over budget it's that whenever these things are pitched they are under budgeted.

If we got upset every time anything went over budget we wouldn't have a country. We never would have made it out of the Northeast.

You need to build in extra lines and stops because there's a lot of in California people want to go. We aren't at the point yet where we are going to be building expressways. That kind of infrastructure comes later after you have a larger amount of rail installed. It isn't anything we can't or wouldn't do though in the absence of large car companies and airlines screwing everything up for the sake of their own profit.

There is absolutely nothing stupider than having an entire transportation system built around 3,000 lb+ personal vehicles that we all have to be personally responsible for both on and off the road. How many extra hours do we work to pay for these damn things? And if you're okay with that fine but fuck you for dragging me into it so that I have to pay for it too. I'm fucking sick and tired of paying for gearhead's fucking hobby.

Investor momentum is shifting, and smart money is chasing startups like Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion (among others; however, they seem to be the front runners).

Renewables are and continue to be one of the most expensive power generation options on the market (I keep looking for signs that that has changed, and I see nothing on the market today that tells me otherwise). Even novel fission technologies such as SMRs MSRs threaten it from a cost angle (ignoring regulatory costs, which is why MSRs in particular seem to thrive in environments where regulations are non-existant or are "flexible"). Working fusion reactors would beat everything else on the market on a cost basis and could plug right into the grid, no problem. Fabricating the reactors may be expensive initially until economy of scale kicks in for individual parts, though honestly if you think companies for CFS and Helion haven't already addressed that in some fashion, I'd say you're nuts.