and set-top boxes are a dime a dozen.

It's not that xbox was bad. And some aspects of it were pretty powerful and advanced. Remember kinect? Cutting edge stuff at the time.

But, Sony was just better. Microsoft tried. Not their strength. No dishonor in admitting defeat and redirecting the resources elsewhere.

this person is obsessing about the lack of warm fuzzy human connection when they interact with their rental office rep?

It’s been a while since I rented, but when I did, whenever I called the landlord, my goal was work out an issue with the utilities or get traction on a maintenance issue. As quickly and efficiently as possible. At no point did I ever call hoping for a deep meaningful human interaction. If AI can get me faster response for dealing with that flickering light fixture, I’m all for it.

Human interaction matters. A lot. But anyone expecting spiritual fulfillment from their landlord has bigger issues.

This idea that the USD is dead as the global currency - you need to look at the numbers before reaching that conclusion.

https://www.philadelphiafed.or....

USD is 60%, Euro is 20%,Yen and British pound are 5% each, and everything else is basically noise. Yuan, Rouble, Rupee and all the other currencies are basically rounding errors at the global level.

People who predict the downfall of the US and the USD will eventually be proved right, but that's like somebody telling me that I'm gonna die someday. Wow, sherlock, you're such an insightful genius! Is it gonna be tomorrow or next century?

The executive branch is already quietly prepping for this. A big chunk of tariffs will be refunded to businesses and the paperwork for that has probably been in the works for months. The refund will be something like 0.5 percent of gdp. Big. The admin knew they were almost certainly gonna lose this. They just followed through with the process because it makes great social media

Still, the tribe benefitted from having a few of you around. You were good at keeping watch at night for dire wolves, fires, or raiders from the neighboring tribes, allowing the majority to get a better sleep.

But, yeah, being nearly unable to do things during the day must be rough.

For almost everyone, working the night shift is brutal on your health. It messes with your sleep, circadian rhythms, mood, hormones, blood sugar, healing, blood pressure, and pretty much everything else. And not in a good way. I had a primary care physician doctor friend who told me that, if a night shift worker started getting pre-diabetic, there was almost no way they could avoid progression to type 2 unless they stopped working nights. If he had a prediabetic patient that couldn't get excused from the night shift work, he would offer to recommend them for disability as an alternative.

Some things absolutely must run on a 24/7/365 schedule, and small numbers of people do just fine with a flipped schedule. For most of us, it burns our lifespan at a much faster rate than day work. We should let AI and the robots take care of the night shifts.

I’d be surprised if Texas is ready to dump Paxton. He’s basically a party-line Republican, corruption doesn’t matter to the voters nearly as much as it used to, and adultry is practically a badge of honor nowadays. There was a time when infidelity would quickly destroy a political career. It’s a different era now.

Paxton will get voted out when his shenanigans start costing the local taxpayer too much. Remember Joe “I torture immigrants live on telivision” Arpaio? His constituents loved him until his reality-show bul*s^%t started wasting 100s of millions of Arizona taxpayer dollars. That’s why they booted him, not because he was a monster.

Call this a landmark trial. More like a show trial.

His evidence for a AI white collar armageddon is a single unnamed tech company that plans 50% staff cuts over the next few years? Sorry, but during a recession a 50% staff cut for a tech company is basically a normal tuesday. And recessions happen almost every decade like clockwork, regardless of AI.

I'm not losing any sleep about my job. At least, not in the 18 month period. The AI revolution will unfold over decades.

Your points about IP are spot on. US citizen here. Yes, we stole knowledge ruthlessly mostly but not entirely from Europe before deciding that maybe ideas should be protected somehow. Yes, China is probably following the same path. To me, it'll be interesting to see how China navigates this. The US frequently struggles to get it's way because it's constantly accused of various forms of hypocrisy (and we usually deserve it). But I think China is going to have that problem 10 times worse. Their law basically amounts to "whatever the Emperor wants it to be" and everybody knows it. In this sense, they're treading the same path that Russia did.

Your thoughts on the US empire are off target, in my opinion. Most of this crap with the Trump administration is not new. I watched a very similar thing play out during the Bush years. Liberals went too far left, and the everyday Joes decided to elect an utterly unremarkable born-into--wealth basic bro, because he "vibes" with a big chunk of the electorate. Queue up 8 years of mostly sh&*y right wing policy mixed in with a small amount of reasonable policy correction, and then the country swings the other way. There's been a few unique things about the Trump train, but overall this feels like a mostly normal political cycle in the US.

The US will eventually fall out of the top spot. It happens to all hegemons given enough time. But, at this point, I think that it's the wrong conclusion.

Your data on teachers is a bit off, at least in the US. Look up median engineering vs K-12 teacher salaries. Not mean. Median. You have to account for the fact that the teachers get around 4 solid months of vacation, good benefits, high job security and ironclad retirement. Accounting for that stuff, their salaries lag behind engineers but only by a little bit.

Everyone on slashdot knows the stories of fresh cs grads being offered insta-millionaire amounts of money. Those are extreme outliers.

Teachers in the US are, overall, paid a solid middle-middle-upper class salary, way above the median. It’s a bit of a secret. I know quite a few of them and they absolutely play the “we’re underpaid and overworked because we wuv the cheeeldren” role. I say that with nothing but respect. Every profession has a bit of an image to project. US society kind of expects teachers to be poor and struggling, so the teachers lean into that identity. But the numbers tell the reality. As a group, they’re never gonna be rich but they ain’t sufferin’

Hm. I'll take you at face value and assume that my primary point completely whooshed. I'm actually quite pro-nuclear. However, because the consequences of a nuclear accident can last for essentially infinity, we need the right mindset and the right people doing that sort of work, and SV-bro types are the absolute wrong people. Wrong mindset, wrong culture. Wrong attitudes.

My point about Chernobyl isnt a west-vs-east thing. It's a responsible-vs-reckless thing. Reckless+nuclear=Chernobyl. SV-types are reckless, because their entire ecosystem rewards the people who sprint forward with almost no consideration of safety, responsibility or the damage they might cause. Add nuclear into that mix, and things will end very, very badly.

mmmooOOOOOstly dead

Yes, Fukushima and 3 Mile Island barely released any radiation, this is true, so the obvious conclusion is that nuclear accidents are nothing to worry abo*cough*CHERNOBYL*cough

Did you just try and gloss over Chernobyl?

Silicon valley and cs-bro types to mess with anything nuclear. When something screws up badly in the nuclear world, the entire planet gets a measurable dose of radiation and worldwide cancer rates tick up, and a patch of the planet is rendered uninhabitable for a time frame that's basically "forever" from a practical perspective.

The entire SV ecosystem thrives because it can solve most problems by slamming out software patch over the weekend, or installing a few more server nodes. If things go totally bad, you just shrug your shoulders, walk away and invest in the next shiny startup.

Absolutely the wrong way of thinking when it comes to dealing with nuclear stuff.