>>"We don't combat it, we die. That's why epidemiologists have been warning about the overuse of anti-biotics for decades."

>"Antibiotics do nothing against fungus"

Correct (and it is baffling why the article mentions "antibiotics") they are not used to treat fungi.

But what "sdinfoserv" was probably talking about is that bacteria often keep fungi in check. When antibiotics are used (and over used), it can wipe out all the "good" bacteria and the fungi start spreading out of control because they have free reign. This is a common problem for women with internal yeast infections after taking antibiotics, for example.

>"But what about the bedsheets and the chair cushions in the waiting room? Hmm...."

Yeah, that list, 100% of them are on "hard nonporus" surfaces. So apparently useless for carpet, clothing, bedding, curtains, etc... And then there are the spores which are probably in the air all the time, just waiting to re-establish colonies when conditions are right.

>"Sure... switch to *Nix. Except my video project files are all Vegas"

There are always cases where someone uses proprietary software applications that aren't going to run on a different platform. However, video editing is possible under Linux with several systems, and they can import existing footage (but not a project). No OS/app switch is without some amount of pain, adjustment, relearning.

>"all my office document files are Office 2016 (I know about Libre... tried it, it mangled the formatting)"

It is unlikely LibreOffice "mangled the formatting" and more likely the documents were poorly formatted or has different fonts that were not installed. MS-Office files can look/wrap different even from one system using MS-Office to another using MS-Office, or from version of MS-Office to another.

>"I can run my games in a VM and live with the performance hit."

I am not a gamer, but it seems most are now using Steam, which supposedly not only runs very well under Linux, it is often considerably faster. There will be some games that have issues, most specifically those with incompatible anti-cheat. But the situation has apparently changed significantly more positive since even a few years ago.

>"And, if I have a problem, I can search 500 forums for a solution."

As if nobody ever has problems in MS-Windows and has to search online for answers? All my systems have run Linux for decades. I guarantee you if I tried to switch to MS-Windows, I would be online searching lots of things trying to fix/understand.

>"Sure, the user is in "more control" of everything, but a lot of users aren't people I'd want to give 'admin' permissions to... they'd be more likely to delete their harddrive than download a malware scanner."

No doubt there. With more freedom, choice, and power, comes new possibilities for things to go wrong. Never wrote it was for everyone or every purpose. I just wrote that with MS's recent hostilities, it is no wonder more people are leaving MS-Windows. MS apparently continues to loath its customers with more and more force.

>"The idea is to create a boundary between the agent and what the rest of the system can access."

The idea is apparently to create a boundary between the OS and the user's control and authority. Sorry, I just don't see how this is a good idea, at all.

This is "out of bounds" and it is no wonder more and more people are moving to Linux and MacOS. Especially with Linux, the user really is in total control over everything- what the OS UI looks like, what is loaded/installed, what and when updates are installed, what hardware is used, what runs and when, whether or not to use "cloud" logins, whether TPM or encryption is used and where/when, who has control over resources, what browser they want to use, etc. They don't even have to suppress ads in menus, uninstall bloatware, or "register" their machines so they have permission to fully use them. What a concept.

>"Go fuck yourself, Ivan. Fuck yourself today, tomorrow, and every other day, and when you have fucked off, fuck off some more."

How is this productive? Although the poster made a personal attack, which is not good (and I do not condone), this type of response is even worse. You go nuclear and don't even address the issues.

Sinij actually made a valid point- in a free market, consumers *do* decide what products they want and are willing to pay for and companies *do* respond to consumer demand. It isn't perfect, for sure. Especially when consumers and companies do not have full information. What is the alternative? To have the government decide what is sold and at what prices? We know how that usually turns out...

No system is perfect, but the free market is the least bad.

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.

Neither does the EU

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.

Indeed. I am always shocked when I see many of the same employees year after year. That is just unheard of anywhere else in retail. And they are all pleasant and helpful. And, generally, seem happy.

And the checkouts are AMAZINGLY fast. Walmart is orders of magnitude slower. Unfortunately, Costco has little that I need/want, and Walmart has most of what I need. There is just enough at Costco to keep me coming back and barely justify the annual fee.

My main problem with my Costco is parking is a zoo, as is the lot, in general, taking way too long to get in and out because there of poor design (often forcing much of the traffic to flow through the pedestrian zones). And on many days, getting gas is a double zoo- same parking lot problems and then long lines that are slow and pumps that are "2 deep", making them less effective. And no matter which lane I pick, it usually ends up being the slowest (but not always).

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.