That's kind of been the bread and butter for cloud providers - "data velocity". They say: keep all your stuff on our cloud, it'll be safe forever, you don't need to worry about it.

A single copy is zero copies and 2 is 1. This is overlooked on all clouds, on the basis that 3 copies on a cloud provider is still 1 copy.

This kind of oversight failure has ended many companies when they've had DR scenarios. I know of 2 that had to close shop because the egress cost of all their data from AWS was larger than insurance would pay out, and the cash difference was significant.

In most cases, it makes more sense to keep 2 local copies (different storage) than 2 cloud copies, for this reason alone.

Even if frontier models only continue to get 'marginally better' in terms of evaluations, as they have been for the past year, it's quite apparent that the newer models tend to be significantly better in aggregate and practice.

We're also starting to see a stratification across frontier models:

- Anthropic seems focused on "one shot" capabilities (latest generations have suffered significantly in other departments)
- GLM seems to be increasing their focus on security and coding robustness
- Google seems to be leaning in on 'fast and cheap' and 'good enough'
- Agnes (while not quite frontier) seems to be going for "broad scope of capabilities"
- LiquidAI is focusing on specialized, small local models for agentic pipeline work
- OpenAI seems stratified on do-everything frontier models with functional stratification based on task complexity
- Qwen - local capability focus.
- Grok - code centric + fast.
- Deepseek - also local-capability focus while trying to optimize the full stack

Then you've got the mess of models like Laguna (last generation capabilities but local-focus) and Agnes (more like google's approach, with a wide and cheap portfolio).

As for Anthropic (and , it is quite apparent that they're architecturally behind in many ways to other models. The release of dflash papers and the subsequent speed increase on the competitor models made that plainly obvious.

Whether we like it or not, whether we use Windows or not, Microsoft is going to insist on adding the tax whether the PC comes shipped with Windows or not. This is illegal bundling, Microsoft has essentially ignored prior rulings, and it's pretty much a certainty the courts will be fine with this.

It sounds fair, and maybe even a little generous.

My university did the opposite, and to this day I think it was good.

At the end of the first semester, you were given a test in the three most important subjects for your field. If you failed, you could re-take it after the summer break, before next semester starts. If you failed it again, you could repeat the first semester and try a third and final time. Fail that, you're out.

It was hard, too. In my class, we were just over a hundred when we started. We were 28 in the 2nd semester. But of those 28, almost everyone made it to the end. Everyone who would've failed somewhere along the way had already been weeded out.

It was brutal, it was stressful - but IMHO it was the best way to do it and be respectful of both student time and university resources.

We had that in 1st grade. Not university, school. So students starting university have now regressed to the level of 6-year-olds ?

I get that it's stressful. I don't get how "managing stress" has vanished from the requirements of getting a degree.

If they work, then why not use them as the first line of treatment?

Based on Trump's age, health, and actuarial tables, he better use that army really quickly because he doesn't have many years left.

The problem is that AI has made it very obvious that teachers have not been doing their jobs.

For instance: one history test, one report. Two different responses: "Contrast the political sentiments at the time of the American Revolution with modern day American sentiments and political events." 1 page report.

You could just paste that into chat and get a useable if not undetectable result. The result is obvious. Instead, a curious student could use the tool to pose a more complete question to chat: take into mind more emotional similarities between different political factions, as well as the contrast amongst social classes. It'll help them stand out a bit and it'll be different, and they might learn something.

But, I do note: this would require a curious student. Teachers have all but punished curiosity and a love for education for decades, catering to the dumb ones to keep them engaged instead of punishing them for wanting to be dumb.

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

AI has only accelerated my desire for learning. I can learn so much more (though perhaps not as thoroughly or as deeply, because you don't have to go below the architectural surface as much anymore) now than I could before: much less switching between tabs, copy/pasta'ing, digging for documentation (and reading a lot of things that I don't remember 3 seconds later because I'm looking for something specific).

The same goes for reading about history, or anything else. Curiosity is rewarded rapidly with AI.

No, the biggest problem with education in the schools is the schools and how they teach. They've made it un-interesting and curiosity is generally punished. They have completely destroyed education long before AI was even a question - I'd argue shortly after the Internet became available and approachable for your typical 100-IQ public school teacher, in the late 90s.

"3 dimensional thinking and problem solving is something you can learn to be good at"

It really isn't, not to a meaningful degree. You can sharpen cast iron, too, but that doesn't mean you'll have a sharp knife.

Spatial thinking (which is heavily linked to problem solving) is fairly tightly coupled to inborn intellect and early education capability attainment.

"How did you get hired?"
"I was top at Fortnite. You?"
"Combat flight sims."

"Damn, two Boeings just crashed over an oil refinery on city limits and took out half the city."
"Did you remember to save your position beforehand?"
"Yeah."
"The reload and continue from there. No-one will notice."

I love computer games. I have XPlane 12 and many scenery packs. I rank well on Elite:Dangerous. From the sounds of it, the FAA would see me as over-qualified. In reality? There's no way in hell I'd be taking those kinds of risks with real lives. There's a huge difference between having good reflexes and a good eye, versus having the complex 4D spacetime relationship mental models needed for robust air traffic control.

You must be an engineer to have figured that out!

You don't have to complain about everything. Removing plastic from the water is a good thing.

Crap to call this greenwashing.
The problem of microplastics already exists around the world, including in the snow on Antarctica and mother's milk.
When this would lead to an affordable way to catch and remove the existing microplastics this would be great news.