When something goes badly wrong with a nuclear power plant, the entire human population sees an uptick in cancer rates and a chunk of the planet gets declared uninhabitable for 10,000 years.

That's true of only fission reactors, but TFA is talking about fusion reactors. Aside from the radiation being much, much less, it has a much, much shorter half-life. Additionally, the chances of something going horribly wrong are much, much less since fusion reactors can't have a run-away chain reaction.

Half the purpose of the entire practice of engineering is exactly that. Making a reliable thing that you need, from unreliable things that you have.

TCP/IP being the obvious example.

What I asked relates to my comment because I'm NOT assuming he actually meant anything. I'm asking what he meant, or at least I'm pointing out the inconsistency if I were to assume a particular meaning; but at no time did I assume he actually meant a particular thing. That aside, I'd hope that a software engineer would be more precise when using computer-related terms.

.. but I don't think it means what the author thinks it means. FTFA:

The Apple Calculator leaked 32GB of RAM. Not used. Not allocated. Leaked.

First, AFAIK, leaking memory means you allocate it, but don't deallocate it. So how can he say "Not allocated?"

Second, leaked how? If it's leaking 32GB of RAM on, say, every keystroke, that would be serious; but if it allocates 32GB RAM once on start-up and simply forgets to deallocate it upon termination, it doesn't matter since the OS will reclaim the RAM for the entire process.

Today's real chain: React > Electron > Chromium > Docker > Kubernetes > VM > managed DB > API gateways.

OK, those are lots of layers of abstraction and they each use memory, perhaps a lot, and he has a point that modern software tends to use too many layers, but that doesn't mean that any of that memory is leaked: just used.

Based on that part of his rant, is he complaining more about the 32GB size of the (alleged) leak of the Calculator app, i.e., why should a calculator need 32GB? Sure, complaining that a calculator using 32GB is valid, but it's not a leak, just inefficient or lazy on the part of the programmer.

Why on earth should content creators get to control derivative works and levy a tax on them?

Suppose I make an independent film and it becomes popular in the limited places I've shown it. Suppose at one of the showings, an audience member is a big movie studio executive who loves my film, then goes back to his studio and creates a very similar film, a derivative work, and makes many millions for the studio and I get nothing. Are you OK with that? Copyright works for both the big and little guys.

That's true whether the panels are on the car or on the home. Putting panels on the car only allows the battery to be reduced but Aptera hasn't done that since a car needs more than 20 miles of daily range. Panels on the home provides a superset of what Aptera provides.

The only subset of people that would benefit from solar panels on the car are those who live in apartments that don't own a home to put solar panels on.

I own, but do not operate, a few IT companies that manage corporations in the $600MM-$1B receivables range.

Based on our own help desk ticket software, our clients have opened 40% fewer tickets since ChatGPT was rolled out to every desk and phone. 40%. I expect another 40% drop (total 80%) by next year as end users just manage things themselves.

I won't downsize as the tickets aren't really generating revenue as much as headaches. One of my engineers had a broken PDF file that took her 6 hours to fix, and the end user spent 6 days trying to fix it themselves with Ai.

But -- the basic stuff? Reboot your computer stuff? Email rejected because you mistyped a domain name stuff?

You don't need a human, and we would probably have outsource that stuff to India anyway next year if not for ChatGPT etc.

I spend quite a bit on Discord server services, but I'm out.

GFY, Discord and governments, for mandating this bullshit nonsense.

Once I wanted a particular oil-based stain. My local hardware store didn't carry it; not even Home Depot carried it.

Less esoteric: every few months, I buy cat treats: buying a 2-pack gets me past the $25 minimum for free shipping, plus the unit cost is still less than my local store. No getting into my car, no driving, no parking, no standing in line.

In some cases, Amazon is both more convenient and less expensive.

For hunter-gatherers (which we were for most of a million years) an older female can continue to dig roots and pick berries, but an older male can't keep up with the hunting party. If the older male has some talent like flint knapping that would still make them valuable to the group, but any older female can continue to cook and herd the children.

And older men can't start helping out with the things older women do because ..?

We can barely get people to vote once every few years. Voter turnout is appalling low, even for major elections. Asking the unwashed masses to vote for every issue wouldn't work well. Ideally, every voter should really understand the proposal, arguments for and against, unintended consequences, cost, and other nuances, that's beyond most people.

Some states do have direct voting due to ballot measures. For weeks leading up to the election, both supporters and detractors spam everything with ads that distort the truth or don't include the whole truth.

Representative democracy is still better, but a parliamentary system is better than a presidential system. In the former, electing a leader doesn't devolve into a popularity contest.

Talking to people in public isnâ(TM)t harassment.

Talking to people on taxpayer funded grounds also isnâ(TM)t trespass.

Tax funded?

Not private property anymore.

Similar to Uncle Simon.

I had Netflix's DVD service for a very long time until they terminated it. It had a far bigger selection than streaming and included all seasons of TV shows, something that, annoyingly, streaming services only sometimes have some, not all, seasons.

But the same reasons for staying home to watch streaming now applied equally to DVDs.