I support pushing back against H1-B abuse as a way to get cheap labor (as opposed to it's supposed purpose to fill jobs where there is no-one qualified available), but I'm not sure this is the way to do it. Better than nothing I suppose.

$100K is only 1 year of a $100K annual salary, which is pretty low especially considering these are meant to be impossible to fill highly specialized skill sets. So, you pay a $100K fine to get your cheap H1-B, pay them $50K or even $100K/yr, and are still ahead after 2-3 years vs paying market rate of $150K or whatever.

This upfront fee could be part of a solution to discourage H1-B abuse, but would need to be paired with a need to pay market rate as well, determined in some way that was difficult to cheat.

Plus my utility in CO just cut the price of their 100% renewable offset by about 60% (because they are transitioning to 100% carbon free power, and they need to offset less now) and so my rate is actually lower than it was 2 years ago.

My credit score is well over 800 and I don't see how I'm exploitable. I haven't paid any CC fees or interest in decades, and have no debt anywhere else. But maybe I'm missing something obvious. Can you explain a bit? (serious question).

The thing is that places that historically didn't have to worry about this, now have to worry about this.

If they want it preconditioned? Yes, welcome to 2025, they can install the app on their phone. Or they use the 'remote climate start' option on the keyfob. Or they shoot you a quick text asking you to hit the button in your app.

You keep trying to paint these advancements in convenience and comfort as terrible burdens, and it's weird.

> However, it was "enhanced" to churn through thinking tokens for the five-hour duration of the competition in search of solutions.

If you read the comments on the linked story, one is from a competitor from a prior years competition who notes that his competition always has a "time sink" problem that smart humans will steer clear of unless that have solved everything else.

Apparently it took Gemini 30 minutes of solve this one time sink problem "C". The article doesn't say what hardware Gemini was running on, but apparently the dollar cost of this30 min run was high enough that they'd rather not say. Impressive perhaps, but I'm not sure that the correct takeaway is what a great programmer Gemini is (if so, when did it take 30 min ?!), but rather that with brute force search lots of time consuming things can be achieved.

https://neildegrassetyson.com/...

Great. Tapping the 'climate start' button in your car's app on your phone not only will absolutely not 'make you late for work,' it will potentially get you to work quicker, *and* in a better mood, *and* more safely than driving an unheated car in -30 weather.

Because it's more pleasant to drive in a warm vehicle than a -30c vehicle? Especially when all it takes to accomplish this is three taps on your phone's screen?

Ban on tobacco products.

Yeah, let's make cigarettes cool again!

The Dreamcast/PowerVR architecture was pretty awesome. But if there's one thing computing keeps teaching us, it's that in the end, brute force beats specalization. That said, we're about at the point for somebody to wire up eight SATA lanes in parallel, and make Super Parallel ATA or something. Then, in another twenty years, move back to serial when they realize that it's faster to blast eight bits down whatever new system there is, than to synchronize eight lanes. And so on.

Gasp, same as an EV! Hell, my EV 'heats up' faster than any ICE car I've ever driven, what with the heater being independent of having to warm up an entire engine block through inefficient combustion.

Perhaps, but it's not a battle that is solved by choosing an ICE car over an EV, so I'm not sure how it's relevant.

How are you 'delayed' by getting into a cold EV? Are you 'more' or 'less' delayed than climbing into a cold ICE car?

How is 'some people forget to tie their shoelaces' an argument against shoes?

I do. I also assume that everyone will remember to not swerve into oncoming traffic.

But, and here's the important part, *even if they don't remember to preheat their car, all that happens is that, at worst, their EV car then operates like an ICE car being started at -30, which is to say, takes a bit to warm up.*

Only faster than the ICE car will, and with less wear and tear.