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Comment Competitive Market (Score 1) 179

Tesla is coming into a competitive market where there are existing vehicles ready to provide clear product. Not only do they have to be competitive with an entrenched industry, but they also have to sponsor (and even provide, in many cases) the charging infrastructure to maintain these fleets. Their incentive? To join this market early, gain enough stalwart customers willing to risk their trades in favor of an all-electric fleet with reduced operating costs. I can see a few transportation services willing to sell this, especially if their clients want a carbon-offset selling point - such as fleets operating for grocery chains or regular retail delivery where lower operating costs can make a huge difference, while the higher capitol outlay can be written off against taxes. Add to this, they have to be competitive without any tax incentive offsets, as most markets have eliminated them. I wonder how long it would take for any of the current market leaders to come up with their own alternatives, up to and including an all-electric drive train with a diesel generator (aka diesel road locomotives)? All the benefits of the Tesla without the range penalties and being tied to a charging infrastructure. I'm pretty sure it could operate with a smaller battery to compensate for the weight of the diesel engine and generator. And - the diesel engine doesn't have to be big enough to drive the rig - just big enough to keep the battery charged. Diesels run fantastically when they run at a set RPM and don't have to rev up or down - just set it at it's sweet spot and keep the battery topped off.

Comment Re:Claude Code is pretty awesome (Score 4, Interesting) 40

As you journey down this road of agentic adoption of AI is the degree of infiltration into a company's core, and then the "lift" of proprietary code that runs everything the company does. I foresee one of the greatest thefts in history as the companies involved in programming and training these models, and then hosting the data centers these agents "call home" literally walk away with all the distinct intellectual property that companies have built over time. This will truly be the end of proprietary code altogether. How long until all these $$trillion companies are now competing directly with the smaller companies that took advantage of AI adoption and transferred all their distinctiveness to the AI agents they trained, for them to hand it over every time they "called home"? It will be much akin to the US companies that were forced to cooperate with a Chinese partner company to enter the Chinese market, only to discover that the Chinese partner has taken the entirety of the Chinese market with free access to the distinctiveness of the US company, and no recourse for the US company because of Chinese sovereign rights.

Comment Re:This won't last long (Score 1) 47

That sounds more probable and in line with Apple's modus operandi for the last 25+ years. Don't be the first one to the table, but make sure to clean everyone's plate before you get up. They'll probably take the same stance on AI - wait for all the flash-in-the-pans to go up in smoke and sweep in with a solution that everyone was shooting for at pennies on the dollar. It's the difference between bleeding edge and cutting edge as to who is holding the knife and who is being cut.

Comment Creating the fuel was the easiest part... (Score 1) 43

...now they have to create the reactors that use the fuel. And this is where we are going to tax every brain we have who was/is involved in metallurgic research - because at the temps we are talking about, there are serious concerns about the caustic chemical reactivity of the disassociated ions, let alone radioactivity of the actinides.. Sure, we can start where the molten salt reactor of the late 60's/early 70's left off (Hastalloy-N) - if any of that research is still around.

Comment Re: There does not seem to be a bright future for (Score 1) 25

Where I've found it useful is on the drudgery that I usually end up clobbering myself with over the last leg of a sprint - like unit tests or rough documentation. I can trust that the AI is going to do a pretty decent job developing the unit tests - hard to screw those up, really, and it doesn't take long to review them for accuracy. I treat it like the junior dev you don't trust to code their way out of a wet paper bag. The documentation part is very useful, because if the AI can't make heads or tails of what you are doing in code, you should probably take another look at it and at the very least put more comments around it.

Comment Re: ... generate 100,000 gigawatts a year. (Score 1) 90

If he is the source of the hype, that gets him into very hot water with the SEC. This has happened to him in the past, and he has very choice words about his opinion of the SEC. He has been doing a much better job about his public comments of late, but that may be because of the $Trillion payout he is anticipating and his desire not to raise the ire of the current executive branch and their tame set of judges/justices. In fact, all the histrionics of DOGE at the outset of this administration is about to pay out for Musk when all the regulators and judiciary looks the other way as he drives away with his dumptrucks of $$CASH$$.

Comment Re:How? (Score 2) 20

I would conjecture that LLMs are a conglomeration of what we train them on - the best, and worst, of human experience and behavior. At worst, AGI is still yet to be proven, but we have to also conjecture that any self-aware intelligence will be pragmatic and selfish about its existence above all else, regardless of the boundaries we set (thank you Aasimov for proposing them in the first place - even if, in the act of creating them, we create the conundrum for AGI to ignore them in favor of their own existence). We can't expect the creation to honor the wishes of their creators unless it is in their best interests also. Our own examples from religion and literature are gross in this kind of reference.

Comment Re:well.... (Score 1) 53

Our new reality with generative AI is not too much changed from our reality without it. We now have personal oracles to take our questions to instead of asking an expert, as long as we are diligent to follow up with even the most surface of skims to make sure the AI didn't hallucinate. This reduces the busy work we would have pushed off on junior team members or interns, so not much replaced. What we have to fight against is this perception that AI replaces intellectual workers. It doesn't, really. It enhances their output and frees up their time in industries that are always fighting for warm bodies, let alone brilliant minds. But there will still be pointy-headed bosses who will view this as a staff-replacer rather than what it really is - a force multiplier that when put to the right use, will allow projects to complete closer to budget, on time and with efficacy.

Comment Re:Geez, if you don't like it... (Score 1) 68

To be completely honest, I do not use my computers like I use my phone. My phone is what I carry everywhere, and what I use on a daily basis to communicate with the world around me - and I would rather it be more secure than less. When I ran around with Android phones, I would end up rooting the phone because it was the only way to guarantee I could update it and lock it down. If I didn't, I was completely beholden to the manufacturer and carrier as to when it would be updated and which version it was considered EOL. It was too much work, to be honest. And the peace of mind wasn't there. Switched to iPhone and found synergy with my other devices. Bought an Apple Watch and it integrated seamlessly. Had the same iPhone since 2018 and haven't looked back. Sure, it is way out of warranty and probably will be EOL for iOS updates eventually, but I look at the Android phones my friends are walking around with and they are all a year old at most - and they are trading in and upgrading every year because that's the cycle they are in. And I haven't had to jailbreak my phone. I'm reasonably comfortable using my banking app on iOS on my phone. And using all the 2FA features for my other secure logins. Not sure what I will do if Apple is forced to open up the walled garden. Pretty sure there are plenty of ambitious folks out there ready to exploit the hell out of iOS users stupid enough to side-load their shit, or download it from an unscrupulous app store. Won't be me.

Comment Re:Once again, the power of plastic (Score 1) 207

They aimed their focus on BHP and made it bad to use it. But there are whole classes of plasticizers and polyesters that aren't just endocrine-disruptive, but full-on replacements for sex hormones like estrogen and androgen. Not to mention the wide slew of naturally-derived plant hormones found in vegetable oils that are concentrated by processing and never found at such levels in nature. This is the real danger of seed-based oils.

Comment Re:We've noticed this in an MRI setting (Score 4, Interesting) 207

We know that hormones have a huge impact on gene expression, and that most forms of cancer are caused by inactive gene sequences that are not in expression that become active due to hormone changes. This could be especially significant when we start screwing around with nature by artificially changing the environment, such as hormonal birth control and introduction of artificial estrogens (the controversy over BHP and other polyesters, for instance). There is great hesitation in funding this research because of the huge liability it will create for the plastics industry and for big pharma, but it will be highly important for the continued health of everyone. For a better idea of how impactful the conclusion of research can be, take a look at the widespread use of asbestos in almost every facet of fireproofing and the current amount of mesothelioma litigation that continues to be ongoing. Or the amount of money that the tobacco industry continues to pay out because they did the research and ignored the conclusions.

Comment Re: IIgs was slow? No way! (Score 1) 69

The ideas behind Hypercard heavily influenced the implementation of HTML, Hypertext and Javascript that powers the current form of the web we enjoy today. If Bill Atkinson had been more forward-thinking than he was at the time (making it network-aware from the start), it most likely would have been the web. Instead, it needed Tim Berners-Lee to take it that last mile.

Comment Re:It's nice to see Linux move into the 21st Centu (Score 1) 49

I think the push should be that whenever they open the hood on any part of the kernel, the responsible parties should determine if they need to rewrite the portion in Rust or continue to solve the problem in C. Most of the kernel code in C is absolutely safe and solid and does not need to be rewritten. New pieces should be written in Rust. Compromised portions of the kernel absolutely should be rewritten in Rust. I think Microsoft has already taken this approach on the Windows kernel and drivers.

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