Any of flipk's 3 similar responses does a pretty good job of explaining what is going on: Losing energy to heat and/or EM radiation. Its not really a paradox; just some difficulty fully accounting for everything that affects the total energy of the system, as opposed to conservation of charge approach where energy can basically be ignored.

It reminds me of the first day of the first physics course I took as a senior in high school. The teacher gave us a pre-test (of multiple-choice questions) as part of a gimick to show how much we learned over the course. But I had already studied physics quite a bit on my own, and I think I was only confused on one question and made a dumb mistake on a second. My confusion involved a problem about the final speed of a mass after two moving balls "merged together". I tried to analyze it using conservation of energy, not realizing that energy is lost when smooshing the balls together into a clump, and my answer wasn't one of the multiple choices. I hadn't realized this is much easier with conservation of momentum, where you can just ignore the lost energy. (I studied this more when I got home, so basically most of what I learned in the course I learned on the first day, and not even in the class itself.) Your capacitor problem is essentially identical from a mathematical perspective.

Regarding AI, it doesn't surprise me it has trouble. If it had been trained on enough text like flipk's, you might have gotten lucky such that it could have regurgitated "correct BS" based on the blind text token statistics it might have derived from such training. But the underlying design of LLM's has no ability to derive anything like it from first principals...

Given enough power, it will generate new X-files episodes until the heat death of the Universe.

That sounds like a core idea that could be expanded into a (new) episode of the X-files...

I've heard of various techniques of loosening up old drives that have too much friction to start spinning, including something about sticking it in a freezer. (I have doubts; the water condensation from humidity and rapidly-changing temperature...)

My favorite is to rapidly spin the drive housing back and forth along the same axis as the internal platters with my wrist, so that inertia of the platters holds them (closer) to stationary than the housing, and loosens things up. Then try to power it up again. This is much gentler than most other techniques, so it is unlikely to damage the drive further. In fact, I used this technique for a few YEARS with a 40 MB drive from ca. 1986 after it started having this problem in the 90's. Initially I could usually spin the whole computer this way to get it to loosen up, but over time things got more stuck and it became more common to need to remove the drive from the computer to get enough torque where it was needed... (Of course, I've always kept good backups...)

I last booted that machine this way in 2012 (after a hiatus) when I discovered disk2fdi (currently at http://www.oldskool.org/disk2f... ), a DOS program that successfully read my old Apple II disks onto this PC compatible, with the (satisfied) prerequisite that the PC happens to have two floppy drives... (Then transfer the floppy images to newer machines over my LAN, and use emulators and/or other tools to extract files from the images...)

I suspect I could still boot it today if I bothered to pull it out of storage and try, although it might be even more difficult...

This article reminds me of the many https:://joelonsoftware.com blog articles from 20 years ago. (See the organized lists at the bottom of the front page.)

Especially relevant to Zaides' article:

"Hitting the High Notes" https://www.joelonsoftware.com... is about the benefits of hiring the very top-notch developers, is especially relevant.

"The Law of Leaky Abstractions" https://www.joelonsoftware.com... is about how developers still need to understand details about how lower-level abstractions actually work in order to use higher-level abstractions effectively.

"Big Macs vs the Naked Chef" https://www.joelonsoftware.com... is about how trying to use training, process and methodologies to substitute for real talent, and how it doesn't work particularly well.

There are also semi-counter-aguments, like "The Development Abstraction Layer" https://www.joelonsoftware.com... (and others), about how there are a ton of additional non-development jobs needed to turn software development into a profitable business, and those jobs are mostly hidden and unknown to developers. (Side order: effective managers don't dictate precisely what to develop, but instead focus on creating the illusion that the writing great code is the only thing that is needed...)

My first thought was to wonder if this is a subtle indication that someone somehow invented the fictional "Dollhouse" imprinting technology, and wanted this data as a raw source of skills/etc to edit into personalities to actually imprint in the dolls...

My second thought was to wonder what this data could actually be useful for (nefarious or otherwise), since it is doubtful it really "reads your mind". But the article does mention it "... can reveal mental health conditions, emotional states, and cognitive patterns, even when anonymized". I guess that is a legitimate concern.

Minor correction: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/815 is just the summary. The actual text is a little more verbose, starting with:

Where?
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text

If I understand that website correctly, your linked page is just a draft that only passed the house. The actual passed law (a different version) was embedded in another "related" bill ( https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/815 ), which includes the following sentence:

I don't know how well Trump's action actually meets those privisos...

From the Nov 1 story on slashdot: "US Experts Say Headlights Aren't Bright Enough" https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

For what its worth, I agree with this newer story and completely DISAGREE with that earlier one.

In fact, in that one I actively complained about tail lights, let alone headlights: https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... . Everyone is trying to out-bright everyone else, with no sign of reaching a reasonable balance...

Emails or phone calls claiming your computer is infected is one of the most common scams...

The specs seem like only a rather tiny incremental step towards the upcoming PlayStation 9 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ).

They seem to be releasing new console versions too quickly: We've used more than half the version numbers already, but it has been less than 1/3 of the time elapsed until the year 2078. They'll need to substantially slow down the release of new versions if they expect the PS9 to have anything like the advertised features...

Personally, I think some cars' taillights and brake lights are too bright, let alone headlights.

Everyone is trying to out-bright everthing else, increasing brightness more and more on a continuous treadmill. Everyone has studies that if they just make their own lights brighter, drivers will notice them better and avoid hitting them, possibly stop and shop at their store, etc. That's true when considered in isolation, but it ignores how that now makes it harder for drivers to notice anything else besides your now-brighter taillights, storefront signs, etc.

I suspect it would be beneficial to try to achieve a better balance, making everything dimmer (but balanced by priority), with the ultimate goal of trying to preserve enough of a remnant of people's night vision that they might have a chance of noticing hazards that aren't directly illuminated at all...

Agreed. I think the title is miss-phrased. It should most likely read "... BECAUSE of His Many Encrypted Apps", although I suspect the authorities aren't talking about their techniques in enough detail to determine which of his apps tipped them off...

#1 is wrong, DEI prioritizes hiring on the DEI principles WHEN the competence is equal.

In theory.

In theory, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" seems like an excellent and fair way to distribute resources.

In theory, with respect to voting there seems like a lot of sense in the idea that someone should demonstrate some minimal level of competence in planning and running their own lives before they are allowed to have a say in running a country.

(There are probably many more.)

But in practice...

... (the US, which does the lion's share of global space spending, hasn't sent a dedicated mission to Venus since 1978).

Pedantically, there was the Magellan mission launched in 1989. But your overall point still stands... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellan_(spacecraft)

The concept of consistently poor quality big macs reminds me of a 23 year old joelonsoftware post that used the concept to explain why consulting companies start out great, and then quickly degrade into mediocracy: https://www.joelonsoftware.com...