They are if you tell them to search for the information.

Sure, but Claude, at least, knows that its knowledge cutoff date is January 2025. It's sometimes lazy and will tell you that current events precede its knowledge, but if you tell it to do a search, it will, and then it will accurately describe what it found. Other times it just automatically searches when it realizes you're asking about something that is too recent to be included in its training data.

It seems strange that other LLMs that have the ability to search the web don't do the same.

Which AI?

I asked Claude, and it gave me a much more reasonable figure (200g of bacteria in a 70kg person), and provided a link to the relevant research.

And you could have achieved exactly the same thing at lower compute cost with a stateful firewall. NAT didn't save you from worms, the stateful firewall that NAT requires in order to work did. But you can have the firewall without the NAT, and the result is simpler, more efficient, easier to manage and more flexible.

So have your router run a firewall that denies inbound connections be default, the same way NAT does. This is a side effect of NAT, but can be done better and more easily by a simple firewall.

Then don't run a web server in your bedroom. And maybe have a firewall that blocks inbound connections by default (which is a side effect of NAT, but absolutely does not require NAT).

But many of us would like to run servers from home.

Silver and gold aren't like fiat, they're inherently inferior to fiat currency, for exactly the reason you cite.

PPH is deeply incorrect when he says that fiat currencies are not backed by assets. Fiat currencies are backed by legally-enforceable promises to repay debts. Every dollar created is balanced by the simultaneous creation of an obligation by someone to do some sort of productive work to generate value that is used to retire that obligation (at which point the dollar is destroyed).

Precious metals have a small utility value coupled with a large speculative value. Fiat currency is also a mixture of utility and speculation, but the mixture depends on the probability that the borrower on the loan contract that created the dollar will repay the debt. Since nearly all debt is repaid, dollars are mostly real utility. Further, the probability of default is offset by the fact that borrowers that don't default repay more than 100% of the debt, because of interest (though interest must also offset the discount rate, i.e. currency devaluation, i.e. inflation). So the precise mixture of utility and speculation behind a dollar is hard to nail down with precision, but the speculative part is very small, usually indistinguishable from zero.

Fiat currency evolved rather than being designed, but it's hard to see how a more perfect system could have been designed. Not only does fiat currency have greater intrinsic value than precious metals or similar physical exchange media, it naturally expands and contracts the money supply as needed, which facilitates rapid economic growth in good times and prevents devastating deflation in bad times.

Cryptocurrencies are among the worst possible forms of currency. They have negative intrinsic value (they cost money to produce but have no intrinsic utility), have very limited ability to expand money supply when needed (they could adjust the mining success probability, but there are strong disincentives to do so) and cannot contract the money supply when needed. Further, they have very high transaction costs, which leads to them being treated as assets rather than currencies. The fact that they're very hard to regulate does, however, make them great for crime of all sorts.

No, fiat currency is asset-backed. The assets in question are legally-enforceable contracts to repay loans. Fiat currency is precisely a legally-enforced commitment to produce something of value in the future, bundled up into an exchangeable medium.

Same! Well, not liquid form, maybe. I thought maybe they were talking about getting sun exposure.

I re-read the headline several times, before giving up and reading the summary. At least the first sentence mentioned alcohol, which is when the metaphorical light bulb began emitting metaphorical photons.

Mormons do.

Of course there are other factors there. Married people live longer, and Mormons also have higher marriage and lower divorce rates, for one. They also don't smoke, which is clearly a big factor, and don't drink coffee (may or may not have any effect). On the other hand, they tend to have slightly higher obesity rates.

Nope. I read all the news across the spectrum and specifically seek out viewpoints that differ from my own. I subscribe to Fox, regularly read the NY Post, etc. I'll grant that I rarely read OANN or Newsmax, and stay off of Twitter entirely (Nor do I use Bluesky).

I'll bet you were unaware of the vaccine splitting or the rescinding of the vaccination recommendations, weren't you? You should try reading outside of your own bubble.

I'm not saying that never happens, but it's actually pretty rare. It usually goes the opposite direction, in fact. There are a lot of studies on this question, and a lot of evidence. What nearly always happens is that when you bring in a lot of high-skilled foreign labor, you create rapid growth in the relevant industry and increase job opportunities in the area, for both natives and immigrants.

The H-1B vetting that was being done was exactly the same as it has been for a long time, and exactly the same as it is now.

Also, there never was an "open borders regime", but there's no point in getting into those details. It would be a waste of my time, because you would ignore anything that doesn't agree with your preconceptions. If you were the sort who sought out information that contradicts your existing beliefs in order to make them a more accurate representation of reality, you wouldn't use that nonsensical right-wing talking point.

You seem not to have paid attention to the news. Or perhaps the news you watch is incomplete.

The first thing RFK Jr. is doing to make vaccination harder is splitting the MMR vaccine into multiple shots. He wants to do the same with other combination vaccines. Triple the number of shots that kids have to get and you'll reduce the number of kids that get them all.

The second thing is that he's formally rescinding HHS' broad recommendation that all kids get vaccinated, saying that parents and pediatricians should decide on a case by case basis. It's not clear what actual impact this may have. It's possible that it may lead insurance companies to stop covering some vaccines, to play an actuarial game where they refuse to cover vaccines for diseases that are currently rare, until those diseases come back and begin causing enough hospitalizations that vaccines become cheaper. Or that may not happen. We'll have to see.

The splitting of combination vaccines will affect doctor, parent and insurance company decisions, too, since it will increase the pain and cost of fully vaccinating a child.

RFK Jr. has given the weakest possible recommendation for vaccination for measles. Yes, he has on a couple of occasions grudgingly said it's good, but then quickly reverted to talking about vitamins and whatnot. But I really doubt that public statements have that much effect one way or the other. What matters is policy.

Canada has a higher number of cases because they presently have a lower vaccination rate but vaccine resistance is isolated to certain pockets of society, not widespread like in the US, so its actually easier for them to work with the holdouts -- and the holdouts are also where all of the cases are focused, so that population has been hit a lot harder, which should help them come around.

The Canadian healthcare system is having issues in some areas, but delivering vaccines is not one of them.

Finally, this issue has nothing to do with immigration, it's all about whether Canadian kids get their shots.

The problem in Canada is the same thing it is in the US, and it's not Trump's fault that it started, though Trump choice of RFK Jr for Secretary of HHS is definitely contributing to not stopping it (in the US). The problem, of course, is resistance to vaccination.

In the US, anti-vaxx sentiment was largely left-coded until COVID when it shifted to being right-coded -- and expanded significantly. In Canada, anti-vaxx sentiment isn't so political. Instead, it's more religious-based, with large groups of Mennonites, especially in Ontario and Alberta, refusing vaccination. It's those communities that account for 84% of the cases. Those pre-existing vaccine refuseniks, combined with lots of kids across the spectrum who didn't get vaccinated during COVID when access to routine pediatric care was disrupted, have pushed Canada's vaccination rates to well below America's (82% vs 92% -- though both are below the 95% level required for herd immunity for a highly contagious illness like measles).

Although Canada has it a lot worse right now, it seems probable that Canada will get it back under control faster than the US does. Canada has stepped up enforcement of vaccination requirements for school kids, and has been reaching out to the Mennonite communities -- who are also in the process of being educated pretty harshly by the disease. Those facts plus the fact that anti-vaxx sentiment in Canada isn't really political (and political sentiment may trend the other way due to the way Trump has alienated Canadians with his "51st state" talk and anti-vaxx ideas becoming associated with him) probably mean it'll reverse relatively quickly. Probably not next year, but within the next few years.

Meanwhile, RFK Jr is actively working to make it harder for Americans to vaccinate their kids, and the cases aren't concentrated in insular communities, dispersing the impact, so I expect the US trajectory to be longer and rougher.