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Comment Re:Three years is too short nowadays (Score 2) 28

Just because an asset is fully depreciated on the books does not mean a business has to throw it away.

They may want to because a new asset might be more efficent, more reliable, have lower maintenance costs, and of course it might be safer which could translate in to lower insurance rates, and obviously a depreciation goes against profitability and therefore gains you some favorable tax treatment which shifts the margin at which you might replace a appreciable asset forward.

That said I worked a company about a decade ago that was running a punch press built in 1898 regularly. Pretty sure that was fully depreciated. It was still shaping metal cases just fine and nobody saw a reason to buy a new one.

I think we are just now experiencing an age of computing where decade+ old hardware really is really might do a given job as well as anything new. Depending on the scale other concerns like energy consumption might not be much a of a concern.

if you look at just PCs (server/data center applications are more complicated) from the mid 1970s up until maybe the mid 2000s, each generation was obviously a significant leap forward for the typical home user. Electron, more complex cryptography etc, mean that c2005 PC is pretty much hopeless, however by the time you get to 2015 or so you can still be using that system today if it was high-end at the time. For most business applications a 2017 or newer system if probably indistinguishable for the latest and greatest for all but most demanding users (recognize Slashdot bias probably means you're a demanding user) as far as Jim in AP is concerned when he selects re-calculate from the menu in Excel it was then, its fast now, and the pie chart he sends his VP to include in the executive briefing looks about the same in terms of resolution and color.

  It really is though quite a new thing for the response to 'new pcs' being 'why?'

Which is I think why this AI hype cycle seems outsides even as tech hype cycles go; If the industry can sell you AI accelerators, they don't really know what else to do...

Comment Re:Actual disability advocate here (Score 1) 225

The point of schooling is that people understand the subject matter and prepare themselves for employment where deadlines exist. I agree that an extra half an hour for a test is not unreasonable, but I will posit that this fails to prepare students for employment in the real world. Employers do not have to reasonably accommodate disabilities that make someone unable to do the job. I literally can't hire someone who takes 50% longer to complete tasks and therefore cannot complete them on time, because the deadlines are the deadlines.

This is not armchair psychology. This is harsh reality. Students need to learn to complete tasks and achieve goals under inflexible time constraints.

Submission + - US Man Dies From Rabies After Receiving Infected Kidney (sciencealert.com) 1

alternative_right writes: A recipient of a kidney transplant presented a medical mystery when he died from rabies

in January 2025 only weeks after his surgery in an Ohio hospital, despite having had no documented contact with the disease.

A close investigation by the CDC revealed the cause: The Michigan man's donor kidney was infected by the deadly virus – only the fourth time rabies has been transmitted via transplanted organs in the US since 1978.

The case, the CDC says, highlights the need for stronger guidance for transplant teams where the donor has a history of exposure to animals.

Comment Replace CEOs with AI! (Score 0) 21

We need to push for CEOs to be replaced with AI. They'd do a better job and would cost a LOT less.

Start repeating this everywhere and get the meme-makers on it. It will be wonderful to watch them squirm as they suddenly find reasons why AI shouldn't replace a company's most valuable assets: its most highly-paid executives.

Comment Re:money and acturial medicines (Score 1) 225

Simply stated, the psychological industry has a monetary profit motive in getting more people on daily maintenance medicine. Each person on a daily maintenance medicine means 2 to 4 office visits per year allowing a psychologists to have a steady stream of paying customers.

This is much cheaper than actually going through the labor intensive process of psychoanalysis, so insurance companies like it.

Comment Re:Couldn't happen to nicer people (Score 4, Insightful) 76

Also busses, tractors and combines and all sorts of farm equipment, everything that could be looted from businesses and homes was looted. Hundreds of thousands of children were kidnapped.

ruzzia is a scourge, always was always will be, unfit to exist on this planet.

Every time I say it here, I am moded down as a troll, doesn't change the reality.

Comment Re:Scala? (Score 1) 77

Modern C++ is a seriously powerful and fast - albeit perhaps too complicated - language without all the gotchas of older C++ and plain C.

Modern C++ didn't get rid of the gotchas, it just added more of them. It's fine if you're working by yourself, but you can't prescribe what features other people will use (including the writers of libraries you want to use). But old C++ was fine when working by yourself too.

Comment Re:Writer's Tricks (Score 2) 77

You can add types to your variables in Python. You can use typescript with Javascript.

You can also introspect your types in Ruby, so his point is moot.

There is also the question of why you would add type checking to a dynamic language: if you don't want a dynamic language, why did you choose one? But the reality is most of us don't choose languages anymore, we choose libraries and have to accept whatever language they are attached to.

Comment Re: Holup (Score 1) 136

A lot of lawyers prefer checks because a signed check is proof of intention. Not only is it signed, it often has a "reason" memo written.

This can also work in behalf of the person writing the check (in court). For example, if you pay your rent by check, the landlord shows the intent to accept it when they deposit the check. Whereas if you pay with direct deposit, the landlord can claim they had no intention to accept the money.

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