This. I've started with solar. Now that in good weather I produce more than I consume, I'm thinking about adding storage next. Once you have solar power with storage, an EV or at least a plug-in hybrid becomes a logical next step.

That's not necessarily a given.

Developing countries have the advantage of not having an established base. For example, mobile phones took Africa by storm and were available in many places where landlines were not. And with smartphones, for a while Africa was leading in mobile payment systems - exactly because it didn't have the established base the developed world has.

With solar power and batteries dropping in price, solar is an obvious choice for people in developing countries where the power grid is unreliable. Once you have solar power and storage anyways, an EV means independence from oil prices and not having to drive to a petrol station to refill.

EVs are coming down in price rapidly. They might soon be an actual alternative outside the developed world.

This is the first step toward a full cure for everyone with Type 1 diabetes. With our increasing ability to manipulate genes, it may come to the point where they grow a batch of modified cells that are based on patient's DNA so that no immunosuppressive drugs are needed. If you're a billionaire then this is within reach but for the rest of us, it will take some time.

The future is already here... it’s just not very evenly distributed.

Swap 'EV' with 'car'.
The powerplqnt doesn't matter at this point.

Historically, that's true. However, that's a coincidence, like Moore's Law. Also, most breakthroughs occur so slowly that the economy has time to adjust. Technology has replaced lots of people working in photography, travel agents, typists, stenographers, but it took awhile for each. Once you have AI that works as promised, you're going to have a massive amount of job loss. The only shining light is that modern AI is a pyramid scheme and the results are never as promised...but what if that changes?

I think it's safe to say that once you have AI that can reliably replace a software engineer, you'll have AI that can reliably replace a truck driver...a lawyer...an accountant, etc. That will really decimate the economy. I think today's LLMs are a far cry from their promise and mostly garbage...for many reasons I've ranted about in the past on this site.

If they find a way, a LOT of people will lose their job very quickly.

My prediction? LLMs...at best, can replace stack overflow or Google...but not people. An LLM only predicts tokens. It has no idea what it's doing. I use Claude 4.0 every day for work and it still can't reliably match braces. Seems easy to fix...but at that point, you're building an AI with a rules engine....they've poured trillions into this. If it could be done, it would be and they'd be making near infinite money with a magic box that can take an English sentence and produce useful code...an app, a video game, a video, etc.

IF...LLMs actually worked, you'd not only see them selling your LLMs, but actual solutions based on them...like a generate your own FPS game service...infinite levels for your favorite game...JVMs/CLRs/Node.js/Python runtimes that could transform your functional code into expert-grade assembly, giving you blistering performance and reducing your cloud spend. Once we see those?...I'll get nervous.

However, to your point. There's no logical reason why technology creates jobs. It just has in the past. The new demand has outstripped the reduction in positions. Those are two competing variables. Once the rate of job loss exceeds the rate of new demand created, you have a massive economic issue. Wait until white collar work is gutted the way retail was...ask anyone who worked at Sam Goody, Blockbuster, ToysRUs, etc.

I was uninterested in this until I noticed mention of Megan McArdle.

Megan McArdle has been a reliable weather vane for being exactly wrong about everything. Like, it's not hit or miss, I literally don't know of an opinion she has expressed that hasn't proven to be mostly wrong or entirely wrong. If you know of anything she has written that was actually correct then please link it because her record for being wrong seems statistically impossible.

If Megan McArdle thinks BlueSky is dying then I would say this is an extremely good omen for BlueSky.

What this tells me is that CEOs aren't knowledgeable enough to understand the severe limitations of AI. As a result, they are compelled to push AI use into their company simply because preliminary results show AI being effective at certain tasks. They clearly want to deploy AI and think it will decrease costs thereby improving profitability and thus raising their stock price. However, it has not panned out as doing what they think but they have not come to terms with that just yet.

TL;DR: CEOs drank the "AI revolution" kool-aid and are now trying to convince everyone they are right.

I would rather let Nazis speak and elect to block them myself than have an entire moderation team block everyone they disagree with.

Reddit is equally a shithole.

Heck. /. used to have a good libertarian minority and today it's nerds defending their trans kids here.

You and I think alike...my kids don't. My wife's family doesn't. I'd be happy to roll the dice with a local restaurant, but if it's just me and a cool person, OK 2 meals ruined if things are bad, but you'll probably get a superior meal and an interesting experience...when you have 8 relatives with you...yeah, it's just not worth the risk.

I also have an autistic kid. Getting him to sit for an hour for a shitty meal is a disaster. Applebees & iHop will handle them quickly.

Again, you're saying...why drive your beat up 2012 Prius when the 2025 Lexus RZ450 is AMAZING!!!! I drive a shitty car because it's what I got. It's easier...it's less risky

Adventure is fun...but now that I have kids...I get why people choose mediocre chain restaurants. Sometimes you need "good enough"....not optimal....Also, I have 2 kids....iHop is about half the cost of most local restaurants. I can pay $80-100 before tip and get a charming meal that's at least 20% better...or about $50 with tip and get what my kids like and expect (not sure if that price is still valid, I haven't been there in 5 years...we largely skip eating out post-pandemic).

When it was just me...money mattered less....it matters a lot more when you multiply times 4...not to mention the upsells parents dread...like when the waiter asks your 8yo if they want another milk and each glass adds $4 to the bill....or when they give the hard sell for dessert or every add on....which again...do you act like an asshole and ruin the experience for them by telling them no?...or just let them add $20-50 worth of stupid expenses to the bill?...it may or may not happen locally...it never happens at iHop or Applebees...they want you out of there quickly. :)

Another video echoing the point on the risks of AI combined with "bad" capitalism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
        "(8:54) So just to summarize: We're currently releasing the most powerful inscrutible uncontrollable technology that humanity has ever invented that's already demonstrating the behaviors of self-preservation and deception that we thought only existed in sci-fi movies. We're releasing it faster than we've released any other technology in history -- and under the maximum incentive to cut corners on safety. And we're doing this because we think it will lead to utopia? Now there's a word for what we're doing right now -- which is this is insane. This situation is insane.
        Now, notice what you're feeling right now. Do do you feel comfortable with this outcome? But do you think that if you're someone who's in China or in France or the Middle East or you're part of building AI and you're exposed to the same set of facts about the recklessness of this current race, do you think you would feel differently? There's a universal human experience to the thing hat's being threatened by the way we're currently rolling out this profound technology into society. So, if this is crazy why are we doing it? Because people believe it's inevitable. [Same argument for any arms race.] But just think for a second. Is the current way that we're rolling out AI actually inevitable like if if literally no one on Earth wanted this to happen would the laws of physics force AI out into society? There's a critical difference between believing it's inevitable which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy and leads people to being fatalistic and surrendering to this bad outcome -- versus believing it's really difficult to imagine how we would do something really different. But "it's difficult" opens up a whole new space of options and choice and possibility than simply believing "it's inevitable" which is a thought-terminating cliche. And so the ability for us to choose something else starts by stepping outside the self-fulfilling prophecy of inevitability. We can't do something else if we believe it's inevitable.
        Okay, so what would it take to choose another path? Well, I think it would take two fundamental things. The first is that we have to agree that the current path is unacceptable. And the second is that we have to commit to finding another path -- but under different incentives that offer more discernment, foresight, and where power is matched with responsibility. So, imagine if the whole world had this shared understanding about the insanity, how differently we might approach this problem..."

He also makes the point that we ignored the downsides of social media and so got the current problematical situations related to it -- and so do we really want to do the same with way-more-risky AI? He calls for "global clarity" on AI issues. He provides examples from nuclear, biotech, and ozone on how collective understanding and then collective action made a difference to manage risks.

Tristan Harris is associated with "The Center For Humane Technology" (of which I joined their mailing list while back):
https://www.humanetech.com/
"Articulating challenges.
Identifying interventions.
Empowering humanity."

Just saw this yesterday on former President Obama talking about concerns about AI not being hyped (mostly about economic disruption) and also how cooperation between people is the biggest issue:
"ORIGINAL FULL CONVERSATION: An Evening with President Barack Obama"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
        "(31:43) The changes I just described are accelerating. If you ask me right now the thing that is not talked about enough but is coming to your neighborhood faster than you think, this AI revolution is not made up; it's not overhyped. ... I was talking to some people backstage who are uh associated with businesses uh here in the Hartford community. Uh, I guarantee you you're going to start seeing shifts in white collar work as a consequence of uh what these new AI models can do. And so that's going to be more disruption. And it's going to speed up. Which is why uh, one of the things I discovered as president is most of the problems we face are not simply technical problems. If we want to solve climate change, uh we probably do need some new battery technologies and we need to make progress in terms of getting to zero emission carbons. But, if we were organized right now we could reduce our emissions by 30% with existing technologies. It'd be a big deal. But getting people organized to do that is hard. Most of the problems we have, have to do with how do we cooperate and work together, uh not you know ... do we have a ten point plan or the absence of it."

I would respectfully build on what President Obama said by adding that a major reason why getting people to cooperate about such technology is because we need to shift our perspective as suggested with my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

I said much the same in the open letter to Michelle Obama from 2011:
https://pdfernhout.net/open-le...

One thing I would add to such a letter now is a mention of Dialogue Mapping using IBIS (perhaps even AI-assisted) to help people cooperate on solving "wicked" problems through visualizing the questions, options, and supporting pros and cons in their conversations:
https://cognitive-science.info...
https://pdfernhout.net/media/l...

Here is one example of some people working in that general area to support human collaboration on "wicked problems" (there are others, but I am conversing with related people at the moment): "The Sensemaking Scenius" (as one way to help get the "global clarity" that Tristan Harris and, indirectly, President Obama calls for):
https://www.scenius.space/
        "The internet gods blessed us with an abundance of information & connectivity -- and in the process, boiled our brains. We're lost in a swirl of irrelevancy, trading our attention, at too low a price. Technology has destroyed our collective sensemaking. It's time to rebuild our sanity. But how?
Introducing The Sensemaking Scenius, a community of practice for digital builders, researchers, artists & activists who share a vision of a regenerative intentional & meaningful internet."

Something related to that by me from 2011:
http://barcamp.org/w/page/4722...
        "This workshop was led by Paul Fernhout on the theme of tools for collective sensemaking and civic engagement."

I can hope for a convergence of these AI concerns, these sorts of collaborative tools, and civic engagement.

Bucky Fuller talked about being a "trim tab", a smaller rudder on a big rudder for a ship, where the trim tab slowly turns the bigger rudder which ultimately turns the ship. Perhaps civic groups can also be "trim tabs", as in: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. (Margaret Mead)"

To circle back to the original article on what Facebook is doing, frankly, if there are some people at Facebook who really care about the future of humanity more than the next quarter's profits, this is the kind of work they could be doing related to "Artificial Super Intelligence". They could use add tools for Dialogue Mapping to Facebook's platform (like with IBIS or similar, perhaps supported by AI) to help people understand the risks and opportunities of AI and to support related social collaboration towards workable solutions -- rather than just rushing ahead to create ASI for some perceived short-term economic advantage. And this sort of collaboration-enhancing work is the kind of thing Facebook should be paying 100 million dollar signing bonuses for if such bonuses make any sense.

I quoted President Carter in that open letter, and the sentiment is as relevant about AI as it was then about energy:
        http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americ...
        "We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy [or AI] problem."

Then unfortunately you've never worked for a decent company, because I have worked for several such small IT support providers. I have myself worked with Microsoft engineers on issues that were beyond my skill level and resistant to Googling.

Why Arizona? Why pick a state that is so overheated and water deprived? Seriously, they are already fighting over water there and you want want a ton of water to do semiconductor manufacturing?

Some, yes.

Correct.

Sure could.
But it wasn't, and I think you know that.

These guys were picking people up after court hearings without a deport order.
They were going for the low-hanging fruit.

That's not how it works.
Due process isn't something granted by law, it is a constitutional right.
There are cases where that right may not apply, however. Trump weighed that calling these people "enemies" or "invaders" would put them into that category. He was wrong.

They should have paid their TV license eh?

Hahah!