Yeah, it' still around.
SL has probably the largest unified collection of 3D geometry ever created.
Microsoft should point it at SL, use SL geometry as low-res hints, and use MS AI as the renderer.
Why decode video when the geometry has better metadata, especially on interiors?
It's so much more information richlooking at the data itself, instead of pure interpretation.
Second Life really doesn't have a point, other than being there, so it's a good fit for this.
And it doesn't have to reanimate avatars, just use who/what's there.

The thing SL doesn't have is a modern render engine,
but SL could supply all of the modeling, and the MS AI could be the renderer.
Not quite Ready Player One, but Second Life already has customers in-world
that are already familiar with a metaverse environment and are willing to pay for it.

We can't model and texture our way to the metaverse. This is how to do it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It also seems like you would want guards who are famiiar with the places you go and any routine you have. I suppose the market is small enough that you would keep getting the same guards though.

He's not imposing tariffs on Russia so he's looking after his ally.

Prior to 2018 I drove a petrol car, used a heating oil (kerosene) powered boiler to heat my house and butane to power my stove top.

Including electricity and converting all the energy sources to kWh, I used between 50-60 kWh annually. Of that, 5-6 MWh was electricity.

Starting in 2018 and finishing in 2021 I changed to an EV, a heat pump, an induction stove top, added solar PV and boosted insulation. Now I only use electricity to power my home and transport.

I now use 16-18 MWh annually and generate between 5-6 MWh locally.

This is far more energy efficient than I was, which shows just how much more efficient electrical solutions are compared to thermal ones. However it also means that my need for electricity from the grid doubled. And it's actually worse than that because local generation largely offsets my electricity usage in summer but hardly makes a dent in my usage in winter - which is when my electricity demand is highest. So it's more like the grid had to generate 3 to 4 times more electricity in winter.

Now, I like in Ireland where wind generation peaks during winter. And if we'd do offshore wind around the island we'd have a constant source of electricity. So this is all *technically* doable. What we're missing is the political will/vision.

Yep, exactly. Having an EV made me learn that brake pad adhesives have a shelf life. I've never replaced brakes on my EV due to wear. I have replaced them due to the expiration of the adhesive.

A100 GPUs use 48vdc in datacenters, apparently:

https://l4rz.net/running-nvidi...

And the GaN based buck converters are apparently much smaller in dimension than what we've been used to:

https://www.eenewseurope.com/e...

https://www.eetimes.com/how-ga...

So... yeah, I would like to see them update the standard to allow for 48v PSUs in consumer PCs.

That's the point Stroustrup is making. With the current C++ language and standard library (STL), he claims, you don't need to write code with pointers, and you don't need to mess with new and delete. The container classes like vector handle it safely for you.

As far as I know the 1 yen coin is still being minted as legal tender (and very annoying too when you get it as change, since no vending machines will take them.) Two cool facts though - #1, it will float on water if you carefully place it flat on the surface, owing to surface tension. #2, allowing for wear, it is supposed to weigh exactly 1 gram.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Supposedly you can get rid of them, up to 20 one yen coins at a time, when paying for bus fare in the automated fare box...

This CompTIA article from today updates their tech sector unemployment number from 2% to 2.9%. Lower than national average unemployment, but higher than in January. Still a big gap between 2.9% and the 5.7% in the WSJ article.

https://www.comptia.org/newsro...

" Tech employment off to a strong start as hiring momentum continues, CompTIA reports

Feb 7, 2025

Three of four key employment metrics were positive for the month

DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. â" Technology companies and employers throughout the economy added tech workers in January, while also increasing job listings for future hiring, CompTIA, the leading global provider of vendor-neutral information technology (IT) training and certification products, reported today.

Analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) #JobsReport data reveals employment by tech sector companies increased by a net 6,787 positions in January.[1] Robust hiring of personnel in IT services and software development occupations (+13,700) offset reductions in telecommunication jobs (-7,900).

Across all sectors of the economy tech occupations grew by estimated 228,000 for the month.[2] The tech unemployment rate increased to 2.9%, compared to the national rate of 4% for January."

Uh... that's weird. According to the WSJ, tech sector unemployment has hit 5.7%.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/i...

"The unemployment rate in the information technology sector rose from 3.9% in December to 5.7% in January, well above last monthâ(TM)s overall jobless rate of 4%, in the latest sign of how automation and the increasing use of artificial intelligence are having a negative impact on the tech labor market.

The number of unemployed IT workers rose from 98,000 in December to 152,000 last month, according to a report from consulting firm Janco Associates based on data from the U.S. Department of Labor.

The department on Friday said the economy added 143,000 jobs, as the job market continued to chug along, though at a slower pace than in the prior two months.

Job losses in tech can be attributed in part to the influence of AI, according to Victor Janulaitis, chief executive of Janco Associates. The emergence of generative AI has produced massive amounts of spending by tech giants on AI infrastructure, but not necessarily new jobs in IT."

Now I'm really curious as to why there's such a huge discrepancy in the numbers reported between last month (in the article reference you gave from Jan 10) and this month (in the article I'm referencing from today.). Does anyone have more information to share?

I think pretty much everyone understands that recent RTO initiatives are designed to induce attrition. Regardless of benefit in getting people in to the office, the main objective is to get people to quit so they don't have to go to the trouble of filing a WARN notice, and paying severance and unemployment. Otherwise why have people show up to offices without enough space to hold them?

Yahoo and IBM used the same tactics previously prior to covid in order to force out senior employees who were costing too much.

The next step, if not enough people have decided to quit is to offer buyouts to those near retirement age. After that... layoffs. Notice that many companies already have hiring freezes.

"Leading Companies Announcing Layoffs And Hiring Freezes in 2024-25

        February 4, 2025 Layoff/Downsizing

The following is a list of major layoffs, job cuts, and hiring freezes announced by leading companies in 2024. Subscribe to Intellizence to get complete data on layoffs, downsizing, job cuts, and hiring freezes curated from news sources and WARN filings.

Since January 1st, 2024, 5700+ companies have announced mass layoffs.[Last update: December 31, 2024]

Since January 1st, 2025, 190+ companies have announced mass layoffs.[Last update: January 21, 2025]"

https://intellizence.com/insig...

Admitting that you need layoffs is an admission that your cash/competitive position is weak. It's also bad for morale because layoffs are seemingly random, and once they start, you don't know when they'll stop. Hence the slow-roll squid game of RTO instead.

Those of us who've worked for a while have seen these cycles happen before. Things can get worse.

Drop-in general purpose human replacing AI hasn't arrived yet. But just the mere threat of it has many businesses acting to reduce risk and conserve cash. Easiest way to swap in AI is to treat it like an outsourcer. You still need people to manage to doublecheck the work generated. If so, then the next logical step is to take the intermediate step of replacing US staff with outsourced staff. It'll make any future layoffs super easy, since nobody in the US is going to care about a bunch of Costa Ricans losing their jobs. And we've got just plain old layoffs without trying to replace people with outsourced replacements, which isn't great either.

The problem is everybody is doing this at the same time (we've had layoffs going on over the last 2 years) so the domestic market is unable to absorb the deluge of people being dislocated from a number of sectors (tech, entertainment, gaming). This ironically has the effect of making the domestic economy even riskier (potential for recession due to decreased consumption), which means that businesses have even more incentive to accelerate the pace of layoffs in order to reduce risk and conserve cash for a recession instead of just an AI nuclear winter.

Welcome to the next great labor dislocation.

I believe the main reasons cancer rates are going up is that there is better detection of cancer, and people are dying less of other things before they get cancer.

The proportion of the population that has never smoked is going up. If how much lung cancer is caused by smoking does not change, and all other cancer is spread evenly among the population, then the proportion of people with lung cancer who never smoked is going to increase. It does not matter if there is more or less or the same amount of cancer caused by air pollution.