It's a paper copy of underground utility records and a backhoe.

Probably the next code that it outputs will be:

My Walmart is worse than that. They didn't have any price tags at all. Just video screens with AI avatars of a guy in baggy pants sitting cross-legged on a rug.

When I walk by, he says "Look at my cotton swabs! I offer you the best cotton swabs in the land!"

I say: "Well, how much to they cost?"

He squints at me, looks me up and down for a long while, then says: "For you........ I give to you seven hundred and fifty swabs for two pieces of silver only. Believe me when I say you will search this entire kingdom and not find a better deal!"

The conversation only seems unnatural because they didn't use the right avatar.

If you choose the "Max Headroom" avatar, then everything will look and feel exactly as you would expect. Moreover, the dystopian vibe he gives off will be a perfect fit with the current state of the world.

"I'll america you in your americaing america!" – Smurf Intelligence

Wrong again.

Moreover, many of the big complex systems I've worked on were big and complex mainly because OOP nitwits had designed them. They often didn't understand how computers actually work, lost sight of the fact that they were writing a computer program, and spewed out frameworks that filled countless gigabytes of resident memory with endlessly deep layers of nothingburger abstractions. Maybe that didn't matter so much when memory was cheap, but that's no longer the case.

If you think that there's only one way to deal with large data sets, you're a just noob that needs more experience before spouting your theories.

C++ is just as much of a sieve as C, only more obtuse.

"Object models" are an anti-feature.

The ideal for memory safety is to have an air-tight pressure vessel.

With C, you're starting that task with a colander. You've managed to fill two of the colander's holes with silicone caulk. Congratulations.

A space weapons arms race plus one million data center satellites.

What could possibly go wrong?

And fission plants definitely aren't cheap.

Especially if you include the unsolved issues such as waste barrels stranded on the beach.

"But but no true Scotsman would put barrels..."

Just shut up.

I guess that proves that even this site is using AI to write their summaries these days.

How about avoiding those impacts in the first place? Or would that be un-American?

In other news, scientists are looking into geoengineering to cool our planet, so we can continue to drill-baby-drill until kingdom come.

The directional explanation reminds me of the backreaction conjecture. The basic idea is due to the inhomogeneity of the real universe: as the gravity within each concentration of matter (such as a group of galaxies) pulls it into a tighter clump, the distance between such clumps appears to increase.

I've only come across this idea because of Syksy Räsänen, who is famous in Finland for his goth looks and pro-Palestine activities. So the theory doesn't seem to be widely known.

I haven't seen any serious attempts at reducing emissions, quite the contrary. Sure, renewable electricity generation is a growing industry, but it's only a small part of the total energy budget that's growing fast. With a nation whose official motto is "drill baby drill" and an AI slop industry powered by gas turbines, it's hard to believe the story of renewables saving the world.

Instead of asking how we can power our cars with more climate-friendly sources, we should be questioning the need to drive around so much at all. If it weren't for the petrol industry, we'd probably spend our time more creatively than sitting around in traffic jams. In the early days, the automobile was a more efficient alternative to horse power, but then we ran into Jevons paradox. We're now seeing the same paradox in action with AI data centers; the computers that were supposed to save time and energy are now wasting it.

I'm OK with some form of climate engineering to cool the planet, but only if we're also serious about reducing emissions. Climate engineering shouldn't be an excuse that lets us continue drilling and burning our planet into ashes.