Let's start with some info:
    There are 2 sets of rules at the USPS. Those posted on their website and those that exist behind the scenes. There are very specific requirements to complay with their Postal Form 3541 for in county, in area, in state, and out fo state subsections.
    Each zip code has to be seperate, except those going out of state, that can be one big bundle (or multiple if there are enough to cross the bundle limit). Each Carrier Route has to be a seperate bundle or bundles. So zipcode 12345 can have several Carrier Routes. One of our local zip codes has 10 different routes. Thats a minimum of 10 bundles. In our case there are 15 bundles for that group. Route C002 is large and in our case has a lot of subscribers, it takkes 3 bundles on weekdays and 5 on Saturday. On Weekdays we can fit 60 papers in a single bundle. We have a max bundle size of 70, in case we have a few extra so we don't need to create a bundles of 2 or 3. Weekends they have recently requested we drop that to 25 per bundle, with limit of 30.
    Next there is this called a Firm Bundle. What that is is a bundles of papers for one specific address, like an Apartment complex, or Assisted living facility.
    We have a database with over 100000 subscribers/addresses. Many are inactive, many are digital only. Only about 3000 are getting physical papers. That is 3000 addresses we have to account for via the USPS. That is nearly $1500 per day in postage. We can save about $5 per day by using firm bundles. That is what the project was, to take our existing system and start using firm bundles. Per day that isn't much, but after a year that is at least 1 full day of postage eliminiated. So that is what my task was.

My company's owner asked me to use AI to write a project, as a test. I spent a month having the differnet AI's figure out what needs written, then had them build it. Once the base code was written, I had to have the AI fine tune it, over and over and over and over as requested for this test. It was a fairly simple project. Write a label generation system to meet the USPS code for periodicals, including handling bundles, and firm bundles. It had to know what was local, in county, in state, and other (out of state) and properly account for all of it to save us money. One of the last items was generating the proper postal report to report to the USPS. That along took my 2 weeks of 8-hour days dealing with the AI to get ti to work. It kept looking at the exact same set of code over and over. Fixated on it. The problem wasn't there, it was in the data from a previous step but I finally had to tell the AI that it was stupid and to stop making assumptions and check each and every step, one at a time. That didn't work, so I walked the AI through each step, one at a time and it finally found the issue. I told it to look at what it had been doing previously and told it if it can't learn from that then it shoudl format it's own drives and start over.

Total project cost in time, 320 Labor hours by me, nearly 2 BILLIION in AI tokens (used some free, so cost was much less than what it appears), and the code now works but took a lot of human intervention to make it work.

Conslusion:
    LLMs are NOT ready to write code without a senior level developer looking over it's shoulder. They get stuck and don't step back to reevaluate unless forced to.

Just a FYI, I had similar issues when trying to find some informartion at Microsoft. I used Copilot (figuring they used their own LLM) to find some information. The information was years out of date. It didn't even check to see if Microsoft's own interface had changed. Filed a complaint with Microsoft over that one, including how it was so behind the times that information it gave me is WRONG and contradicts what is on their website right now.

Az

With how long it takes to make a movie, including per-production, the 3 years is most likely what is already in the queue and approved at some point. So making the promise now doesn't cost them much in comparison to a similar agreement starting 5 years after the merger. If they stopped the 90+ movi9nes now they would be out those costs, which would most likely be a really large amount.

They should promise that they will "start new movies", including new scripts, etc for at least 10 years if they are sincere about really making a go of keeping these theater companies on their side.

No fees? In the US 90+% of all banks and credit unions charge a fee, per transaction and a percentage, of all transfers. Many businesses roll it into their pricing, but now with these fees changing every 6 months or more, business are breaking the fee out to show people their cost. Besides "fees" are less regulated than overall pricing. You can add fees for just bout anything and get away with it, so the processors do. "Electronic cost recovery fee", "Processing Fee" (the original cost per transaction), "Regulatory oversight fee", "Statement fee", etc. It all adds us and most of it is totally bogus, just a way to bring in profit.

Lucky for you. My employer now charges a 2.9% fee on all Credit and Debit card transactions. We are seeing more and more checks because people don't want to pay that fee. Businesses especially.

It is even worse. The USPS doesn't even guarantee delivery, contrary to their own regulations.
Even if they do deliver it, the "standard" is now 5 to 14 business days to deliver 1st class (standard) mail.

They are supposed to scan every email so they can track it from the source. They don't. She scan it at Outgoing side from the processing center. Even then it may take days before it gets postmarked. The system is failing. Fast.

Interesting. How about the Roman Empire? Ancient Egypt? Incas? Mayans? Those civilizations are destroyed and only ruins are left, yet we are all still here. Civilization evolves, old civilizations die out and new ones take their place. Maybe that is what needs to happen.

It doesn't happen over night, it takes time. Centuries even. So think about how you want to shape the next civilization. Now narrow that focus to just fossil fuel sub-set. That is what they are doing. Will it work? Maybe, maybe not. But if they don't try it it won't work. They are even looking at a smaller subset and looking at only emissions. One part of a much bigger whole. Why? Because the problem is huge so why try to change it all at once and fail. Try just a part and see if success can happen. It worked with CFCs, specifically Freon and other refrigerant gasses. Did it change civilization? Yes, in small ways. Does it cost more? Depends on how you define the cost. Using the old model, yes it costs more. Adding in the cleanup for "after the sale" it costs much less. Adding in the damage it could potentially do and the cost of mitigating it, the cost is negligible. It only takes looking at the overall picture and the long-term ramifications if what happens, instead of the short term profits, to see that something is needed.

What is that something? I do not know. The result needs to be lower emissions, and lower dependence of fossil based materials. How would this be accomplished? How about new materials that use less than 10% of what current materials are. That would be one step. Will that work? No idea. That is what these people need to get together, along with engineers and scientists to figure it out. That should be the goal, to find a better way. It does not mean eliminating it completely, not at first. Just a step, hopefully a big one, in the right direction.

Civilization dies when it becomes stagnant. Guess what, according to history, the world's civilizations are stagnating some faster than others. Innovation will change that. Changing how we do things will change that. That is how civilization will survive.

Interesting to see you haven't seen problems with working at the shelter. How many are short term visitors moving on? How many are there because of real medical bills? Remember you only see a snapshot at that shelter.

All that being said, I am one of those one hospital visit away from poverty. I spend fairly wisely, but not perfect. I have a medial prescription that is over $7,000 per month. I was lucky. I was able to get the last slot for assistance from the pharmaceutical company for that drug. I actually spend $5 out of pocket. My spouse has a $35,000 per month prescription that is currently 100% covered by assistance from the pharmaceutical company. Again we are lucky. If either of those assistance programs go away we have to stop taking the prescription. Why? I don't make $35,000+ a month to cover them. I have a house payment. I have Medical insurance. I have utilities. I have car expenses so I can work, etc.

Based on the ariticle, I am slowly falling out of mid-middle class into lower-middle class. Why? Because where I live is depressed. I do not live in a "big" city. I live in a smaller city far outside any really big city, I work 2 jobs, both in slowly conglomerating industries which is forcing wage freezes (I haven't seen a raise since 2016) and even cut hours at both jobs. I'd love to move, but again the area is depressed and I cannot sell my home or scrape together enough money to cover any loss on it so I can move.

Remember not everything is obvious.

That $200/hour? That is the price they charge.

Out of that comes about 10% needed to cover further education for themselves and any staff, as required by the bar and in some places law. Another 20% is taxes in one form or another. Another 10-15% is to cover office upkeep, excluding wages for staff. And finally between 40 and 50% is Staff Wages and benefits. That leaves a very small amount for the Lawyer themselves. The smaller the office the higher the percentages taken from the overall income. This is why most law firms are partnerships of 3 or more lawyers. They can't afford to go it alone for any length of time. They need the 3x or more per hour income to cover the costs and to re-use the staff across the many lawyers to spread out the percentage out over those multiple hourly income streams. Now add in AI, and the lawyer may see in increase in his percentage, but you still need the people to check the LLM since the LLM is till a toddler.

Had to log in to come say this, but looks like you beat me to it.

If climate change, especially man-made of man-aggravated, climate change doesn't exist how can we have a law limiting liability in court?

By proposing this bill the Republicans just stated that is "is" something. Way to shoot yourself in the foot.

Az

From a ESP (Email Service Provider) standpoint part of the issue is the recipients.

ESP wants to block all of auickbooks@notification.intuit.com because of all the phishing scams, but they can't. Users "need" (I disagree) it because they have multiple vendors who send out their invoices using that exact same address. So these phishing emails get through because someone "needs" their vendors (possibly intentionally) insecure server emailed invoice.

Come on people! Why aren't the vendors using their own email address. It can be configured in Quickbooks, it takes a bit work work and someone with at least a little bit of email server knowledge to get it set up. Why shouldn't we block vendors who are too lazy or too technologically challenged? If they are cutting corners, too lazy, or too tech challenged why should we even use their "regular" service in the first place?

I can say similar things about Google/gmail, Microsoft/outlook, Apple/icloud, and yahoo services. All it takes is a small bit of work and you have your own domain name to send from and not the providers, making it easier to add exceptions when needed, or better yet block when things go bad.

For a single domain, this is easy. For 20? 50? 1000+? not so easy.

It looks to be a poorly done job, until you find out that there are a users who want to see everything because they doesn't want to miss something important like their brother's cousinn-in-laws, child's pet's birthday picture from whomever may have taken it. These same users will complain if an email takes more than 20 seconds to get from Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo/etc to their mailbox. Now spread that over 1000+ domains on a mail server and you have a recipe to disaster that makes even the hardest working ISP's look bad.

I won't say all ISPs are good, or bad. Just remember that you see the output from the ESP that has to cover 1000's of different requirements vs the 1 set of requirement for your self run mail server..

My father, years ago (mid 1990's) leased Dell desktops for his law office. He did the 4 year lease they offered at the time. When it came time to upgrade after 2 (as part of the lease) I had to spend 4 days backing up and clearing drives to make sure nothing private left the office. That is 4 days down time. That is 4 days at $50+/hr. Once the drives were clean we sent the systems back. Dell wanted them back and promised next day delivery for the new ones. 8 days later they arrived.

Reminder: LAW office.

Once everything was back up and running, I looked over the details of each system. The upgrade? Newer hardware? No. Better hardware? No. SAME HARDWARE, including chip serial numbers in many cases (The law office documented EVERYTHING with pictures, inside and out). They changed out the drives, and the cases but put most of the same hardware back in the new cases.

Let us just say that the next hardware was purchased (buy, not lease) from a different vendor on Dell's dime, and was significantly better hardware, that lasted more than the next decade until he retired. Hardware was running Windows 7 easily by the time it was scrapped and the only reason it wasn't running Windows 8 was that by that time the new License agreements meant that Lawyers should (legally) never use a Microsoft product again.

Read and understand the EULAs. It will scare you what you are giving up to these companies even when purchasing.

So you want to use your apple wallet for ID. What happens when Apple decides to suspend your account?

If they wanted to the Carriers could track where these come from. Say it comes from some India call center it then goes through a India Telecom then transfers to the international Carrier AT&T, then from AT&T to Verizon to a specific number. That person at the number asks Verizon where ti came from. Verizon says AT&T, not you ask AT&T they cay India Telecom, then you contact them. If they don't wish to answer (assuming legal warrant of some sort) then AT&T can be legally compelled to de-link India Telecom, stopping the mess.

Every Telecom carrier has a record of origin point and destination. It may not be the original point, just the origin point for their carriage. That should be used. No carrier should be exempt from being an accessory to this fraud.

This makes no sense when you look at it. We are trading one foiegn power for another. Makes me wonder what the REAL reason for this change is.

I still sell Dialup, yes actively sell it. We don't have many dialup customers but in rural Michigan even Starlink can be a problem to use, if it is even available to you..

Average speed on the crappy (aka rotting) lines here tops out around 32K. Too many line-share's, bridge taps, and outdated Remote Terminals (Teleco lingo for Multiplexing, Wire tap boards, and Local area control systems).

Unfortunately because of the way the system is set up it only works in our state, and even then if you happen to dial a 'local long distance' number (i e: next town over) to connect it won't. It has to be one of the Local numbers. Again because of the primary telephone company and how they handle the number routing.

Az