Given the ambiguity in the rules, it’s possible many Apple laptops already comply in that an end use can open the device and swap the battery, although it is not easy. The commercially available tools could be interpreted as long as the manufacturer offers for sale to anyone tools need to do the repair, they are commercially available and meet the letter of the law. I suspect, for most end users, the cost and difficulty will mean they forgo the DIY repair. A 3rd party shop might be able to afford investing in tools since the cost would be amortized over multiple uses.

Which is why water resistant is term of choice, since it does not imply 100% impervious to water intrusion and damage.

A few were from 2020 - 24 or so from MIT and DOE. While they do state considerable progress has been made, they also point out a number of questions still remain about the long term effects and solution viability. For example, ultra pure salt seems to have very little corrosive effect, but then the challenge is obtaining and maintaining the purity at scale. Type of salt used also has an impact, and some have more data than others so more studies are needed to determine impacts. Having been in the industry, when someone claims a new tech will result in a nuclear renaissance and previous problems are solved, I am skeptical based on my experience. Been there, got the t-shirt.

Perhaps you should google some studies. While the impact of purity is has been identified as a means to limit corrosion, most agree more work needs to be done to understand the impact of radiation and salt purity. One study found minimal corrosion with high purity salts after 3000 hours or about 1/3 of a year; so long term impact over a reactor life is not known. As for common sense, that has never stopped someone selling an idea. As I have said, thorium reactors do not appear to be a viable near term solution, which seems to be the goal of the administration’s policy. Whether they can achieve the scale needed to meet growing energy needs is an open question.

IMHO, intent is the design specification that is created before the first line of code is written, and lays out clearly what needs to be done and teh intended purpose and outputs. It then gets updated everyone something is changed. However, like unicorns, it is a mythical creature beloved by all but seen by no one.

It's S&S, not Subscribe and get the lowest possible price on every shipment. Amazon offers a slight break in price if you subscribe, and even don't require a second purchase. It is a convenient way to regularly get items that need replenishment, and Amazon lets you know before the next shipment so you can cancel or skip as needed. If you don't like the new price, you're free to cancel and use another option to get your item.

Amazon has a number of practises I think are shady, but this isn't one of them.

Good points and analogy. It will be interesting to see the social disruption caused by AI; ad it may disproportionately impact lower skill/wage employees. One of my clients provided medical reviews of physicals and had a number of data entry clerks who processed the incoming paperwork and several doctors who reviewed it. AI should be bl to greatly speed up the process, flagging missing information and informing the sender of it, entering data from either the electronic or secure fax copy, flag any anomalies and send the electronic record to the doctor for review. An office full of data entry clerks can be replaced by a few people to monitor teh system to ensure it is working properly and respond to customer inquiries. Data entry may be one of the skills that simply is not transferable and thus lower wage or off shored job opportunities will disappear. My client's jobs were actually pretty good if low wage, since they included benefits such as healthcare, PTO and a matching 401K in addition to a living wage.

Certainly. There’s enough crazy in the idea for everyone.

IIRC from power plant days, our simulator’s programming ran on an emulator because the program was only certified for the mainframe’s OS.

We used to find a remote terminal - with paper and an acoustic coupler to play Trek. By remote, I mean hidden away in the bowels of a university building where the computer police wouldn’t find us an explain that computer s weren’t for playing games. We also learned that as long as you had 1 cent in your uni account you could log in and stay on as long as you wanted so end of term games lasted for tag team hours. Fun times. When we saw the first remote terminal with a screen instead of paper it was like a whole new world.

Wikipedia wrong? I am shocked, shocked.

Correct. Technology was merely the face of what was happening, as is AI. History may not repeat but it does rhyme.

I agree. I think it is more like a replacement for community forums. Instead of posting a question and waiting for an answer, you get one right away and as with forum responses the quality varies.

Are modern tools crutches or merely the next step in software design? Software design has evolved from programing in 0 and 1's to having a lot of tools and languages to make it easier to code, AI may just be the next tool that programmers use to create code.

It's inevitable that people will lash out at the tools that make skills they developed over years of work suddenly at risk of being no longer relevant. What used to take an experienced coder months to build now can be done by AI in far les time at far less cost. This is like the response to industrialization when machines began to replace labor, slash wades, rand educe product quality, so some coders are becoming modern day Luddites. They key, IMHO, is to find out what skills will be needed to use AI better and thus use it to work for you.