Allow me to clarify my statement; fighter jets. Later F15 fighters, all F16s (I think now retired) and newer fighter aircraft use computer systems to stabilize the aircraft so they can maneuver better, especially when making sharp turns. They're a 4-CPU setup, so that if one CPU goes haywire, the other 3 can override the fourth and maintain stability. Fly by wire does exist in older F15s.

Wasn't there a recent study that indicated that the microplastic measurements might be wrong and that the high level of microplastics might actually be caused by the gloves researches were using? I'm not saying microplastics aren't contributing, I'm saying that if that study is right, then they not be as big of a threat as perceived.

Commercial pilots don't really do much these days. They're there primarily for emergency situations. Most functions are handled by autopilot. It's also why stats on plane crashes are very misleading; the plane was on autopilot, then the pilot had to step in to handle the emergency. Note also that military aircraft can't be flown without help from computers, even if guided by the pilot. They're otherwise unstable.

No matter how hard you try, no matter how many firewalls you put things behind, everything can be hacked if it's connected to the internet. An on-site person monitoring everything via a disconnected network is very hard to hack. But he, let's save a few bucks until there's a huge disaster.

I don't think that will remain the case. People are actually starting to explore Perl again because of the flexibility the language offers.

Why didn't they just stop being lazy and cheap and hire somebody to monitor the refrigerators at night?

You gotta keep up with the Nazi holding the gun to your head screaming, "You vil write code dis way!" No other language gives you a set of RFCs telling you exactly how to write code. It doesn't even solve the problems it was intended to address. You can still write 1000 line functions. Easy solution: limit indentations. Within a function, to can indent twice, maybe 2 times in the case of a switch statement. Problem solved, no team of Nazis needed to write RFCs. No supposedly benevolent dictator to write such RFCs.

That's what inheritance does: that money 401k gets inherited by your descendants. One of the problems is boomers are living a lot longer than anybody expected, so the money isn't being passed down as would conventionally happen.

Some people appreciate the human interaction, some people don't. You can't replace the former with a self checkout. I've walked out of stores after gathering everything and seen there was no human-operated checkout. I don't put anything back, I just leave the cart up front. The owners created the mess, now they get to pay their employees to put everything back.

Kroger, and the general AI movement, is just being at the forefront of realizing they're not going to have customers who have the money to go to their stores anymore, especially with the inflation of food prices.

FFS, mountains store water that gets rained down on them. We call that water "springs". And downstream, over and over, there are dams from the same exact water that Fontana Dam holds back. You ever seen the movie "The Fugitive?" That dam is one of them.

Yep. Critical infrastructure should never be connected to the internet. I wonder how many of these kinds of attacks need to occur before people get the message.

Allow me to spell it out for you. When founded, New Orleans used to at the mouth of the Mississippi on the gulf coast. Now it's inland. In the ensuing centuries, erosion dumped a ton of dirt into the gulf. Now Orleans is now about 100 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi.

And yet Fontana Dam, as do many others in the east, do just fine without snow packed mountains. Look at the online maps application of your choice and check out how many hydroelectric dams are downstream from the Appalachians. Fontana Dam, BTW, powered the Oak Ridge, TN facility that created the uranium for the Manhattan Project -- all without snow capped mountains.

Can't disagree more with the penalty. $250 billion seems more in the right range for Zuckerburg to to get the message. $3.45 billion is a tax rideoff. $250 billion is a "Wow, we really fucked up. We need to permanently change our practices." Make it, intentionally, payable at a rate of about $25 billion per year so that every year there's a reminder to stop doing the psychopath things they've been doing to make money and make it honestly.

ChatGPT had a hard time understanding complimentary angles when I wanted to do a calculation for a cut I was going to do on a saw that maxed out at 45 degrees. Not sure how it didn't understand a basic math calculation.