If you have induction, how do you feel about the sound of the range? I still have an ancient gas burner (though I did install a good ventilation fan), but when I've cooked on an induction stove elsewhere, it both made an annoying high-pitched squeal (think old CRTs but louder) and had fan noises kicking on and off. It annoyed the crap out of me.

I don't want to get another gas burner, and technologically induction does seem like the clear winner, but the noise thing is really throwing me off. What's your experience?

This is retarded.

1. It isn't for profit healthcare that is the problem, it's THIRD PARTY PAY.
2. I don't use third party pay, ever, for healthcare. I've been insured nonstop for over 30 years, and NEVER ONCE has my insurer paid my doctor.
3. Even when I've had emergencies, I still called around, negotiated a fair cash up front rate, paid cash up front, and billed it to my insurer. My cash up front rate was sometimes below any co-pay negotiated with my insurer, lol.

I just recently had some elective surgery that would have cost me about $2000 on my annual deductible, but I was able to cash pay a negotiated rate of $400 including a follow-up "free". I submitted the $400 to my insurer and they reimbursed me.

Third party insurance exists because YOU VOTERS demanded the HMO Act of the 1970s, which tied health care to employment, and then employers outsourced it to third parties.

Health care is remarkably cheap in the US (cash pay, negotiated) and I don't have to wait months to see a doctor when I call and say I am cash pay. They bump me up fast.

Ok, I'm making a note to check in with you in 15 years to see how the extremophiles are doing.

I think that's a total misread of the situation.

Tesco has a contract with VMware. According to Tesco, VMware/Broadcom is now breaking this contract. The point of litigation is to determine which said prevails in this dispute. Of course, during litigation, Tesco will make many claims to show how important they are, and how insidious VMware/Broadom's actions are, all in support of their position. It doesn't mean that they Tesco could go offline at any second (though that is of course possible).

You later said "Tesco sell groceries, like potatoes. Do you think they only have a single potato supplier?"

That's a good point, but the more direct analogy would be it Tesco signed a purchasing agreement with a particular potato vendor where they paid £1m for a certain amount of potatoes over three years. Now let's say that after the first year this particular vendor fails to supply the agreed upon potatoes and won't refund any money. Tesco would undoubtedly sue that one vendor (even though they have multiple potato vendors). I have no doubt that Tesco would likewise claim that "This vendor's refusal to supply us with potatoes is endangering the food supply for Britain and Ireland!"

You wouldn't say that Tesco was "negligent" for trying to enforce a paid contract with that potato vendor, would you?

Nah.

Iâ(TM)m 51. Iâ(TM)ve had health insurance continuously for 35 years and have used it exactly ZERO TIMES.

I am self pay. For everything but true life threatening emergencies, which Iâ(TM)ve had zero.

Even the ER is cheaper when negotiated self pay.

My urologist is stunned that I pay $85 for his visits. Self pay. Including labs. My colleague goes to the same urologist and his insurance pays $550 for the same visit and naturally it comes out of his deductible lol.

Insurance is a scam. All insurance is legal gambling and gamblers never win.

Supply and demand dictate this is exactly the case.

If something is valuable to everyone, it should only be accessible to those who have enough saved value to acquire it.

The poor fucked themselves. My parents are poor but worked hard so I wouldn't be.

Being compensated for it means it wonâ(TM)t get wasted and will always have a fair valuation.

Compensation is as cooperative as it comes because nobody can hoard it.

It would be amazing if there was a document that stated in very clear terms just how limited our federal government is and what it can't do at all no matter what.

Fascinating, thank you for posting.

Why did you choose to start supplementing with lithium?

Thanks for sharing, that's fascinating. I've only started using ollama within the last month, and I'm really, really regretting I didn't load up my MBP with more ram. When I bought it, 36gb seemed like more than I would probably need..

What models are you using for coding?

What CPU? How well does the CPU + 128gb ram run the models we're talking about?

Everyone I know who makes my equivalent AGI, except for my household, has 1+ dogs, work crazy hours, and have been told that their dogs are lonely and depressed.

Not one or two people.

EVERYONE. Dozens upon dozens of my clients, colleagues, peers, friends from grade school, etc, have a dog or two, and then they have to have someone come spend time with said dog when they're putting 10+ hours away from them.

Wag/Rover/etc is part of their crazy consumer spending. I always am shocked to hear they're spending $1000 a month on their pets.

Americans are insane about their pets. Instead of buying a dog, I invest in corporate veterinary hospitals, because it's crazy profitable.

There's a lot of variability here. The Seattle and California models are baffling to me. Totally agree that the US system is largely focused on irrelevant (or immutable) things. I have a kid in highschool now. His peer group is very, very impressive. Multiple perfect scores on the ACT every year. ~55% of the highschool is English-language learners and 60%+ is free lunch eligible (meaning poverty level or close). There's an engineering magnet program that does really, really cool stuff. The school was on lockdown 3 times last year for gang fights.

It's a tough environment, comparatively.

I have a different take! What's the point of a test that nobody ever gets a perfect score? I guarantee you that I can design a test that nobody ever aces, but it also wouldn't be worth anything. I think there needs to be a middle ground between overtesting, teaching to the test, and tests being the be all and end all of education, and the loosey goosey approach one often encounters in the US (most commonly among leftists) that thinks all testing is bad and racist and invalid and hurts kids.

You are probably assuming the wrong things given the demographics of Slashdot and those few of us who have hung on for decades at this point! I was not on the math team, but I had friends who were. I participated in both Latin and Computer Science competitions (and marching band). Our football team sucked (I know this from marching band). But yeah, I'm sure a huge amount of money was spent on the gym and fields and athletics, far beyond what was spent on supporting the best academic achievers.

You will get NO argument from me that America's obsession with sports, from the cradle to the grave, is hugely detrimental to our society and culture.

I hope that the current mess with NIL, paying college athletes (I will NOT call them "student athletes" -- what a joke) forces some or many schools to back off on their sports expenditures and focuses, but I'm not holding my breath.

Hey, I asked you your metric, I wasn't planning on nitpicking it!

Sure, just like micro-regions, individual demographic groups in the US, etc., score higher.

IMHO, US public education is amongst the very best in the world at the high end and pretty bad at the low end. The real confounding factor is that demographics are hard to escape.

I agree PISA is a reasonable standard.

So, in the context of STEM that you raised, the US scored 14 points above average, #16 in Science placement. That seems strong to me.

Math is slightly below average (-4 points), number 34. Weak.

Reading, US placed #9, seems strong again.

You mentioned immigrants being the majority of STEM students. I don't know if that is true, but, using the metric you picked of PISA scores, some of the countries that send the most immigrants to the US in STEM .... have no data available. Nothing for China, India, Pakistan, etc. India seems to have scored exceedingly poorly the last time they participated.

The chart at the bottom of the Wikipedia page that includes 2015 US State results and racial breakdowns for the Mathematics portion for the US over multiple years is fascinating, and I think, should make an impact on your thinking.

(For instance, in the 2018 math results, Asian students in the US scored 539, whites scored 503, and the US average was 478. That puts US Asian students between Hong Kong and Taiwan in position #5 and white students in between Seden and Finland at #20. Black students in the US scored 419, the level of Thailand and Uruguay, around the upper 50s in rank. Kind of changes things a bit?)