"Why don't the actual numbers match our hype? Something must be wrong with reality!"

The answer is in the summary: "Revenue at US companies providing AI infrastructure has risen by $400 billion [...]"

Yeah, it's going gangbusters at the places that provide the AI. They've managed to convince everyone that AI is a "must have" technology. But why would anyone expect that to translate into more productivity or revenue at the places that actually use the AI? They're paying the AI providers, but whatever productivity or revenue is seen is being eaten by that new cost. What this shows is that AI isn't as useful as it's hyped up to be, at least at its current price point.

Yeah, the entire NOVA scale is like that. It classifies pasta (made with only flour and water) as group 1, "Unprocessed and minimally processed foods". But "grinding or milling" (such as, say, turning wheat into flour...) is group 2, "Processed culinary ingredients". Homemade plain yogurt is group 1, but add fruit and it becomes group 4 "Ultra-processed foods". It's all very subjective and seems to be based on the premise that if an idealized old-country grandma made it, it's minimally processed.

NOVA says that one way to tell if a food is ultra-processed is "Sophisticated and attractive packaging is used, usually made of synthetic materials." Obviously the packaging has fuck-all to do with nutritional value. As it is, NOVA seems to be a prime example of the "appeal to nature" fallacy. Natural is good, and the farther away from nature you get the worse the food is for you.

I can't comment on whether or not there's validity in classifying food by its processing. But if it is valid, it seems to me that the type of processing, not just the amount of it, should have some bearing. So yeah, I agree that it's certainly time for an improved definition.

You can read the classification system for yourself, it's not very long. Ultra-processed foods, diet quality, and health using the NOVA classification system

Bingo. They welcome it. In 2016 we could believe that people were tricked into voting for Trump, that they didn't realize what a shitshow he really was. But 2024? After he'd screwed up for four years and had one trial after another for four more? No one can say they didn't see it coming. They wanted him to do exactly what he's doing. Anything that hurts "those horrible people" (immigrants, minorities, queers, liberals, whoever) gets a rousing cheer from the rank and file MAGAts. It doesn't matter if it hurts them, too. As long as it hurts their perceived enemies more. They see life as a zero sum game. Anyone else getting ahead in any way necessarily means you're losing. And if you can make them lose, that's the same as you winning.

Sure, go ahead and test effectiveness of improving health in humans. That's good to know. But, I don't think I've ever bought an air filter because I thought it would improve my health. I always had a more immediate goal: Remove an odor, make it easier to breath by removing smoke (blame Canada!), alleviate pollen allergies. These things are all primary effects that the user will be able to judge within hours or days of installing the filter.

Measuring health benefits is tricky. Studies take a long time, require a large sample population, and have many confounding factors. A general claim like "improves overall health" is nearly impossible to measure. More specific claims like, "reduces your chance of contracting XYZ virus" is easier, but are your test subjects trapped in a room 24 hours a day? If not, even with a filter that's 100% effective there are outside opportunities to contract the virus.

On the other hand, it's easy to test whether or not the filter removes particulates. Dirty air in, clean air out, measure the presence of the particles of interest in both samples. Done and done. Practically no confounding factors, doesn't need to compute statistics over a large sample population, doesn't take a long time to wait and see if there's a correlation between use of the device and lung cancer decades down the line.

I'm not saying that health studies shouldn't be done. They absolutely should be if the manufacturer is making any sort of health claims. But saying, "filters 99% of particles of this size" doesn't need human trials. Even saying "filters 99% of the virus which causes this disease" is objectively measurable in a controlled environment, without human trials.

And like I said at the start, that's really why I'm buying the air filter. To filter the air.

I always assumed that the "Must Have" designation was a paid promotional spot, just like recommendations are on every other storefront. So, maybe cough up the dough to claim it?

And Xitter is listed as a "news app"? If so it must be severely mis-categorized. No wonder it can't take the #1 spot.

So the journey is going to last 400 years. That's a minimum of 8 generations. If you were born in such a ship, and your parents were born in the ship, and your grandparents, and your great-grandparents, and your great-great-grandparents, and so on back to your (great*5)-grandparents were born on the ship... Why bother stopping at a planet at all? You're very well acclimated to ship-board life. You're used to all the things that it necessitates, like strict recycling, birthrate control, etc. Why doom yourselves and your children to life down at the bottom of a gravity that your descendants will some day just have to climb out of again? You might want to pause and restock on consumables, maybe even build another ship for expansion. But actually *live* on a planet? With uncontrolled weather!? And an unenclosed sky that you just *know* is going to leak out all your atmosphere into the vacuum of space? Eeeww!

For that matter, why bother with the "ship" part of "generation ship"? The design gets a lot easier if you don't have to deal with that whole propulsion component. Plus, if you hang out in the solar system you retain access to resources and sunlight. You might even choose to vacation down in that awkward gravity well, if Earth is still habitable.

Of course it's nearly unusable for the Enterprise! Didn't you see what happened when Dr. Daystrom hooked up the M-5 to the Enterprise computer? It went nuts! Destroyed friendly targets and tried to destroy the entire Enterprise. M-5, GPT-5... WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!

"People are excited about the devices that they can buy from us that has Alexa+ enabled in it. People do a lot of shopping [with Alexa+]; it's a delightful shopping experience that will keep getting better,"

Please, name one person who's not being paid by Amazon who says anything like this. And if you manage to dig up one person who says it, go ahead and ask them if paid advertising in the stream continues to delight them.

Oh, Satanic Panic, how I've missed you! It's been, what, 40 years since the last good one? Sadly, Jack Chick is no longer with us, but I bet we could convince an AI to barf out a tract in his style warning us all of the satanic powers of AI.

Having a system which encourages companies to invest engineering in making something like a bike better is not a bad thing, and can not only benefit everyday bikes but may also have applications entirely outside of the cycling world.

In that case, we should *encourage* cheating like this. It will spark innovation in motor and battery size and performance. In fact, I'd write the rules to say that the bicycle has to meet certain requirements for mass and volume, but beyond that anything is fair game. You want to have a hamster on a wheel hooked up to give you that little extra boost? Go for it.

Races would be a lot more interesting if engineers got to make the rules.

Will one of the categories eliminated be the dipshit prognosticator CEO who is constantly touting that his product will lead to massive societal revolution? I'd be all for that.

If not, I'd also accept removing the category of journalist who writes articles about the CEO's self-serving drivel. It seems like AI would be perfect for either of those positions.

The way you use a search engine, you're asking it for information. The way I use a search engine, I'm asking for a pointer to the information. This is a critical difference for non-trivial queries, every bit as important as the difference between a pointer and a memory location in C.

I very seldom want an answer to a specific question. I want to know more about a subject, including things that I don't know enough to ask about yet. And I want to know the provenance of the information so I can decide if it's trustworthy or if I need to keep looking.

It's a different way of using the search engine. Neither way is intrinsically superior to the other, we're just looking for different types of information.

No, but I remember the N64 controller having the shittiest joystick imaginable.

Spoken like someone who missed the entire Atari 2600 / IntelliVision era. *shudder* And don't even mention the Atari 5200. There was absolutely no joy in that stick.

On the other hand, if you're aiming at an international market, dropping a line easily perceived as American jingoism might be a net gain.

I'm kind of mystified by the absolute visceral hostility of a large number of Americans towards recycling.

I think a big part is that recycling is very inconsistent here. Different geographic regions have very different rules on what materials can be recycled, what condition it needs to be in, and how it can be packaged. Even moving from one town to the neighboring one means having to learn a whole new set of recycling rules.

Plus, all recycling here typically goes together in one bin, maybe two if paper is separated from plastic, glass, and metal. This has to get sorted at the recycling center, and there's going to be a lot of contamination from things that can't actually be recycled. (Coated magazine pages, for example, or the wrong kinds of plastics mixed together.) I've seen places in Europe which have half a dozen different containers for different materials. That seems like someone in charge is at least taking it seriously. Here it feels like officials are paying lip service to the idea but don't really give a damn. If they're going to do a half-assed job, so are the citizens.

In short, inconsistent rules and a lack of faith that items are going to actually be recycled rather than just end up in a landfill, mixed with typical American resistance to regulations of any sort, all combine to make recycling look like a bad joke.

I predict that this Ohio initiative won't prompt people to do better at sorting their recyclables. Rather, it will just give people more excuse to give up on recycling altogether.