We're well past the point where we all have a calculator app in our pocket, but if you've ever felt the frustration of having a discussion with someone who can't do simple arithmetic because they never had to do flash cards in school, you probably understand why students should learn the basics before moving on to more power tools. There are just times you need to pickup a screwdriver, and times you reach for the impact driver.

Renaming a lake and bullying Canada are distractions from the real issues he cares about: the war with Iran, and the Epstein files. Looks like it's working.

Take a look at who the current frontrunners are for the next Democratic presidential nomination.

For that matter, look at what's going on during the current midterms. They've got a golden opportunity to make major gains ... and it's looking more and more like they're going to piss it all away.

Ah, yes. The old "there's totally evidence to back up my statements, I just can't be bothered to give you enough details to find the evidence" routine.

The only instance that some googling shows up is the same one linked to in the summary of this story -- namely, that 404 Media worked with a "rare bookseller" (who they won't name) to put an airtag inside one of the books (which they won't name) in a shipment of 1000 books.

There's rare and then there's "rare." From what I've seen, the people involved have declined to say what the books involved were. About the only reason I can think of to hide that is because they know that people won't be as outraged when they find out what the "rare" books actually are. However, it was a bulk lot of something like 1,000 books, so it's a pretty safe bet that they weren't exactly valuable.

The 1973 manual for a toaster that I found in my grandfather's attic is certainly rare, but we're not losing anything if Amazon feeds it to their AI machine.

These are all the reasons those of us who live in suburbs give when we're asked why we don't live in the downtown core of cities.

That's fine, and I use Claude for software development. I check what it creates, and my goal is just to create the lines of code that I would have created, but faster. It can watermark those lines of code if it wants. My employer knows I use the AI coding assistant, pays the monthly fee, and wants me to make use of it to produce the same code faster.

But I suppose this is mostly about kids using it to do their homework, or people using it to try to defraud others. 100% good idea.

No, who's Meta?

The stock price was inflated to start with, due to speculation. Elon was just taking advantage of the situation. "Oh, you want to buy a tiny fraction of my company at way more than it's worth? Sure. I can use an infusion of liquidity." What's bonkers is that if you sell 1% of your company for $20 billion, the talking heads then pretend the whole company is worth two trillion. Who would actually buy SpaceX for two trillion dollars if Elon wanted to sell it? But they call him a trillionaire. He's only worth the net present (discounted) value of all future earnings of his companies. Yes, that's a lot of money, but look at how much these companies make and do the math.

You are correct. What's kind of crazy is that a lot of the training data is probably GPL code. So if LLM-generated code retains GPL copyright, that's going to provide a lot of work for lawyering companies over the next few decades. And before any lawyers start cheering, there's no guarantee that the lawyering companies will need to hire any lawyers. LLMs can do most of their work already.

Civilian infrastructure is a pretty squishy target in wartime, even without "cyber" attack vectors. If the bullets ever really start flying, expect everyone's standard of living to plummet. Look at the civilian infrastructure that's been hit in the Ukraine war, and now in the Iran war, even in neighboring countries. It's fragile and takes a long time to rebuild. We need to make it clear to our leaders that we want a large alliance network and open but fair trade agreements with other countries, because that's what has traditionally provided peace, growth, and prosperity. Countries don't generally bomb the people who buy all the shit their factories produce.

It must be the preliminary moves in a surprise strike by our mortal forever enemy, Canada. "Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia." - 1984

Imagine what this would do to you mentally. You've never done what you were accused of, but you're found guilty anyway. All of your family probably suspects you too. Your neighbours and coworkers don't want anything to do with you. You're presumed guilty. One moment you're going through life smoothly and suddenly your life is turned upside down, and it's not an 'act of God'... it's just other people who erroneously decided to cast you out of society. It's a horror movie.

The point was simply that the "old days" of decades ago was based on a mutual trust, and that trust is gone. It works both ways. If employees leave immediately after training, we shouldn't expect companies to offer training.

Do you not see how that's leading to exactly the problem that the OP is complaining about? Decades ago there was an understanding that you could stay at a company for years and your loyalty would be rewarded. The OP was complaining that companies show now loyalty anymore. My point was that loyalty goes both ways. Your point is... that companies are stupid for offering something with the expectation that the employee might stick around? Ultimately this didn't bankrupt the company... we don't take risks we can't handle. It was only an illustration. I'm sorry it went over your head.