"allegedly reflect the higher-than-average delinquency rate found with Apple Card holders"

This is the most surprising part because there is usually an aura surrounding Apple users as higher income and more desirable as customers. Is this mostly a reflection of the changing demographics for Apple users or rather some unique aspects tied to using the Apple Card?

So, we the masses are justifiably miffed when we learn that the rich snobs in first class are responsible for higher fuel consumption per square foot. However, we are also miffed when we are crammed into ever smaller economy cabin seats, even though those smaller and more tightly packed seats are fantastic for cutting fuel consumption and emissions.

Even more important is not the ratio of fuel consumption or emissions per seat. The only thing that matters is the total absolute fuel consumption and emissions, and that is almost entirely dependent on the masses flying in economy. The first class seats don't matter because there are fewer of those. So, we continue with our miffness at the rich people destroying our planet combined with our miffness at the airlines for not giving us more space in economy.

While Nvidia has been working on autonomous driving for quite a while, the original Mercedes-Nvidia partnership was announced in 2020. At that time, the expectation was for a product in 2024 that would be Level 2/3 with a 50/50 revenue sharing for the autonomous system. So, the announcement this year is actually an acknowledgement that the original plan was delayed by two years.

Mercedes has been a pioneer for many automotive innovations. The issue with autonomous driving is that the AI processing needed requires a hefty processor, far beyond what is currently used for ADAS. Mercedes could try to make their own processor, but they decided that even a 50/50 revenue split was more cost-effective.

Why does an invasion have to be successful? Do we have to wait until Putin flies the Russian flag in Kiev before the "special military operation" is officially an invasion? A invasion is an act of intrusion, regardless of what the actual outcome is. If an invasion is inept or incomplete, it's still an invasion. If someone tried to break into my home but couldn't get past the front door, it's still a home invasion.

The problem with replacing all workers with AI is that no one will have jobs, which will crater the economy, which will in turn remove the capital and operating funds for supporting the AI/robots. The only way AI/robots will replace any significant portion of the workforce without creating new human jobs is when the government creates a system for universal basic income, or maybe a Star Trek-like post-scarcity economy. That or a Matrix-like system.

Absolutely. In fact, this sort of looks like a laptop attached to a docking station with a monitor, except that the laptop doesn't have a monitor.

My kids in high school and college still get assigned entire books to read. Of course, they don't read the books, but they are definitely assigned. I know because I have to pay for those books.

If I were a student, the only reason I would read an assigned book is for enjoyment. It's simply not practical to teach about or test on an entire book. The teacher doesn't have enough time to lecture, and the student doesn't have the time to read a book in a way that allows retention of most of the book contents. The teacher can only test on either broad themes or specific details. Testing on specific details form a sizeable book devolves to the luck of the draw and is nonsensical. Testing on themes doesn't require reading the entire book. In fact understanding the themes is more practical when reading study guides or using AI.

The article is misleading as it suggests that only the top-N schools are recruited from. That's not true. What the article says is that companies are recruiting from a smaller set of schools However, each company has a different set of schools. So, if we look at the union of all these different sets of schools, I'd imagine that most of the top-100 or top-150 schools are still covered. For example, the article mentions Auburn, which is a good school but nowhere near a top-25 school.

My guess is that this change is simply a reflection of a decrease in the corporate recruiting budget due to a lower target for the desired number of new college graduate hires. In a few years when hiring picks up, the recruiting budgets will increase, and the traditional sets of school to recruit from will return.

The big challenge in this idea of non-US universities absorbing the students that previously might have attended US universities is that outside the US, universities don't operate on a capitalist system with supply-demand mechanisms. The US is unique in allowing many universities on many different levels to exist. Degrees from the top 150 universities can all find jobs, and often degrees from other universities can also find jobs. Universities can expand rapidly and compete with each other. Private universities can and have been created in every state. Students can "fail" high school or college entrance exams and still find a decent school to attend, either straight out of high school or even later on in life. In states like California, there are reserved slots for community college students to transfer to the top UC schools.

This is not true in most of the world. In most Asian and European countries, there are a limited number of universities, and there is a single exam that gates entrance to those universities. In a very real sense, these universities pride themselves on the scarcity of their enrollment slots. They will fight to maintain that exclusivity. There is no chance that those countries will expand enrollment in their decent universities. Even in China where the number of students is huge, the urge to expand enrollment at the decent universities is strongly resisted, and China is not unique in that regard.

Republicans have defined socialism, communism, and wokeism as bogeymen representing the enemy. Nothing more. Most Republicans are not able to define these terms, and it doesn't matter because their are intended to be strawmen to be attacked.

No, just because it's not affordable doesn't mean that it isn't good technology. However, being unaffordable does mean that it's a bad value. $3500 is cheap for a car because of what the car offers, but $3500 is expensive for what the Vision Pro offers. Hence, it's a bad value. If buyers considered it to be a good value, it would have garnered more demand.

Their business plan involves keeping prices low but still profitable for the most part. Costco has a net profit of around $8 billion with more than $5 billion coming from membership fees. So, most of the profits come from membership fees. However, in contrast to other companies (like Sam's Club), Costco is able to squeeze out about $2.5 billion in non-membership fee profits out of around $270 billion in sales. That's tight but at least positive, even considering the loss leaders, like the hot dogs and rotisserie chicken.

Relatively few people are calling for the erasure or extermination of Israel. It seems like the two extremes calling for the extermination of either Israel or the Gaza are attempting to paint the other extreme as representing the viewpoint of all, when that is far from the truth. I think part of the reason why the PR defense of Israel is receiving so much animus is due to the idea that any criticism of Israel is equivalent to calling for the extermination of Israel. In reality, the vast majority defend the right of Israel to exist along with responsibility of acting in less drastic ways toward Gaza. This is exactly the same viewpoint towards China, etc.

This is the practical question. Are these bad effects cumulative or based on some recent time window? That is, can someone who had negative sleep but then follows good sleep behaviors for some time reach the same state of health as someone who had good sleep behaviors all along?