I run Windows for days or weeks between reboot, and then only for automatic updates, which I do while I'm not using the computer.

Nope, not a Windows thing. I never reboot my Windows desktops unless I'm updating the software.

Yes, VB did actually make the price of software cheaper, just not...cheap. A lot of software got written that wouldn't have been written, before VB.

The same is happening now, with AI. I don't think it's going to make writing significant software cheap, but it will certainly enable a lot of one-off code to be written by those spreadsheet-using departments now.

And I too have gotten some projects done that wouldn't have happened without AI. Like updating the look and feel of my 1990's era website to Bootstrap. It took an hour, while it would have taken weeks to do by hand.

Yeah all the doomsayers are saying this incessantly, as if AI invented automation. We've been automating things for centuries, and we still have a wage-labor loop functioning just fine.

In a gold rush, it's always the tool makers that make all the money.

I was wondering if they would actually be able to find results.

Well, it will be just as hard to find companies that aren't doing AI. I'm picturing a warehouse office with a few desks and stacks of paper everywhere, with one shared computer running Windows 95 to access vendor websites.

Toxicity is a matter of concentration. Studies have shown that the *primary* source of BPA in the body is through ingestion. It's not clear yet if receipt paper or contact with plastics, result in enough chemical exposure to rise to the level of toxicity in the body.

It's possible that oil could cause chemicals to leech from the plastic into your skin. But is this actually demonstrated by research, or just supposed?

Your car's arm rest might be soft and pliable just due to the repeated pressure from your elbow, it might have nothing to do with oils, and that softness may or may not lead to chemicals leeching.

Most of these harmful compounds are harmful if you *eat* them, not if you *touch* them. They are undesirable for use in microwave ovens because the heat can cause some of the chemicals to leech into the food they contain. But at room temperature, the chemicals almost entirely remain in the plastic.

If these researchers want to raise the alarm, they need to do some measurements of how much of these chemicals can be absorbed through the skin. Just the presence of the chemicals is not enough to raise concern.

Clearly, my information is out of date. It has been a long time since I was using vim every day.

Yes, it can now reason at Level 4, instead of just Level 2.

Don't worry, Trump will make sure the UFO files are redacted to ensure that none of the documents contain his name.

I agree with your headline. But success in software is not primarily due to the code, but to the business behind the code. A badly-run business with good code, will fail, while a well-run business that has (or inherits) bad code, is far more likely to succeed.

I think you underestimate the power of lobbying. Something like this was tried in the Tax Reform Act of 1986. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... It's goal was to simplify the tax code and eliminate entire categories of loopholes. But as you can see now, all those loopholes, and more, have come back. Legislators can't keep their fingers off the law, they DO NOT CARE about the purity of the law, but they do care about campaign contributions and about the votes of their own constituents. These concerns always lead to complications.

Consider, for example, what would happen if the charitable giving deduction were eliminated. Charities everywhere, and lots of voters who support them, and lots of taxpayers who benefit from the deductions, would throw out anybody who voted for eliminating the deduction, until they got it back. Every deduction, every carve-out, has a group of people behind it who really, REALLY want it to stay. Throwing out the old system and coming up with a new, "clean" system won't change that.

Amazon's retail business is small compared to Walmart. The only way in which Amazon is bigger, is if you throw in AWS, which dwarfs its retail sales. So Amazon's retail operations have not overtaken Walmart, not even close.