In fact, the best thing to do is to use the gaps between cars to absorb speed differences so as to allow ALL traffic to flow more smoothly

I agree with you, and I find that this is easier to do in a manual because the acceleration is instantaneous. I have found that I don't have to accelerate as hard if the response is immediate, versus delayed. I don't have to brake as hard because I start slowing as soon as I back off the gas.

With most automatics, the off-pedal cruising speed is 20 to 25 mph, which means that driving any slower than that requires riding the brake. From behind, a slow, steadily moving automatic appears the same as one which is stopping, or stopped. So they create a situation in which drivers behind a steady 15mph automatic vehicle have a harder time estimating traffic speed - which leads to the inevitable traffic accordion.

Many years ago, when Motorola was in buyout talks with Google, they used Google docs extensively. One can only wonder if Google got a better deal because they were able to read Motorola's internal discussions. I don't know if they used Google docs for the discussions, but I do know there were quite a few people at the company who expressed no concern for the possibility that Google docs could leak proprietary information.

One of my vehicles has an automatic transmission, and the other, a manual. The car with the automatic transmission has about twice the horsepower of the manual, but drives as if it's twice as heavy.

What I've noticed is that when driving the manual in heavy traffic, I use the brakes much less than with the automatic; one pedal both brakes and accelerates. Because I can keep the engine in its power band when crawling along in traffic, I get instant acceleration when traffic speeds up again. But with the automatic, the "delay, downshift, overaccelerate" conniption fit of the automatic transmission often allows other drivers the space to cut in front of me.

So instead of teaching people to write concise, to-the-point emails, we instead let them ramble on and use AI to communicate what they really intended to say.

This doesn't solve the TLDR problem, it only makes it worse by encouraging people to waste time writing emails that others simply won't read.

In other words, information known to most graduates of the physical sciences, but somehow illegal to disseminate outside of the collegiate environment...

I find it rather curious that Britain has not only made certain knowledge illegal, but has managed to convince the press that merely knowing certain things can threaten their very safety.

If a model produces better answers when it is given more time to think, one can presume that it doesn't understand when it has actually found the answer to a problem, but is instead weighing incomplete options against the time remaining.

A truly thinking agent would recognize when it has the solution to a problem, and would be able to signal that it needed more time to complete the answer if it hasn't found the answer and has options yet unexplored. And it would also be able to understand if it had not reached a correct answer after trying all of its possible options. It seems that what passes for deep thinking here is nothing more than tuning time constraints so that the agent gets most of the answers correct, rather than actually building an agent which can recognize when it is right, when it is wrong, and when it needs more time.

We in America just experienced an election in which an adulterous convicted felon managed to out argue the best the Democratic party had to offer.

Pandering used to be illegal in politics, but it seems some laws just aren't enforced anymore. Even Plato recognized that rhetoric could be used to manipulate and deceive, rather than pursue truth.

AI just makes it easier to do what the wealthy have done for ages.

Yeah ok.

I do not know what world you live in but I have never seen a Linux desktop at work in my 30 years in the workforce. I have seen some ipads coming in for stuff like warehouse workers.

MDM like Intune or JamF is great for locking stuff down and rolling out apps on devices like tablets and even Windows desktops.

Until Excel, Quickbooks, Autocad, and every business software in existence gets ported Linux is not an option.

Crazy people still think WIndows is like Dos based WIndowsME/98 and thinks have not progressed in a quarter century.

If Windows was so bad and insecure then why does corporate America use and trust to secure their data and run their apps?

Linux is not an option for 97% of people as their first time OS. I used to use Linux 25 years ago. Today I want to get work done and run games and have something just work. No nvidia wayland issues. Hardware accelerated smooth scroll and anti alaisgned fonts. Chrome goes blip blip blip on Linux when I scroll up and down. Multi monitor support is even worse. Do not let me go on about the insecurity and horrors of Xorg.

Before I get accused of being a MS fanboy and modded -1 to infinity I want to say I chose this username name back in 2000 as I was a MS hater like the rest of you when I was young. I grew up.

I hate all operating systems now including WIndows BTW ... but for different reasons :-D ... since I am old and middle aged.

Linux is great and useful for dev and cloud stuff. Windows is great for multi monitor setup and boring win32 business apps. Android/IOS for content which does support smooth scrolling and fluid animations and fonts like we are in 2007 and later. I do not want linux as a host OS or a desktop or troubleshooting my own system every weekend trying to get a proton port of a steam game.

WSL is amazing and gets the job done. Without it I would have no tools at work. We must use Windows on our desktops.

The days are coming when no one will make movies anymore, but will instead type a prompt into a movie service, and an AI will generate an entire film in realtime.

Think, "NetAI, play me a movie in which the lead character is a big city powerful attorney who returns to her home town at Christmas and reluctantly falls in love with the boy she rejected in high school, who has since become independently wealthy running a winery."

The great thing about bloated frameworks and interpreted languages like nodejs and Python is more flexibility and quicker development time.

Electron yes we love to flame, enabled the cool integration of debugging and add on support of visual studio code as an example. The editor and ide could not do what it does without an interpreted language to change at runtime with something like C++

No, I don't respect it, I explain it. There's a difference.

Being able to understand why you lost the last election is the first step in winning the next one.

The short answer is because, for all of his faults, DJ talked to poor people, and his opposition talked about them. As progressives waged a campaign of hatred against whites, Christians, and males, the same just decided to stop voting for them.

I know a lot of Christians who (formerly) believed in progressive politics. But after seeing how 4 years of a progressive President left black households worse off than they were before, now they're not so sure.

I know quite a few males who (formerly) believed in equality of the sexes. But our former President nominated a SCOTUS justice because of the fact she was female, and our current one bragged about grabbing women between the legs.

I know a number of whites who (formerly) thought that racism was immoral. Now there are voices on the Right who consider racism a personal indiscretion, and on the Left who are convinced it's morally required, if it's directed against Whites, Asians, or other "privileged" groups".

While it is quite predictable that people will circle the wagons when threatened, it is difficult to overstate the effect that Left-leaning politicians have had in shifting public sentiment to the right, by pursuing a campaign of identity politics which alienated and threatened the very people who used to believe in their cause. And Biden's attempt to gaslight the American public ("Trump put you on the sidelines") left a lot of Americans with the distinct impression that the Democrats were fighting against them instead of for them.

Which is precisely why it matters. If you're in a war zone, it's not a good idea to anger your most significant arms dealer. If Israel does not enforce the judgement, the US could simply hold shipments of munitions, spare parts, etc...

In the middle of a proxy war with Iran, that's kind of a big deal.

You know, I'd agree with you, except that in 2008, banker stupidity caused my house to lose half its value. It wasn't my mistake that caused the loss, but because bankers are politically well connected, not only did I lose my investment, but my tax dollars were used to make the bankers - not me - whole.

When grandma gets scammed, her children lose their inheritance. The fact that a fool and his money are soon parted doesn't mean there's nothing immoral about taking advantage of another person's trust. Without trust, our society would look much different - and I think we'd rather have a society built on trust which prosecutes thieves than a society in which no one trusted each other, but fraud was legal.

Yes, there are stupid people in the world, but from a societal perspective, they're not as bad as the competent, but malicious, folks.