And you'll likely end up with a horribly architected and poorly structured solution - but it will be in Java, Rust, or Go or the hot language of the hour instead of COBOL - but by the time it's done, that language will no longer be the hot language of the hour and they will have to hire people out of retirement to fix it.

Giving AI the existing system even as a primary source of direction would probably be a mistake. Better to give it the statutes, regulations, policy manuals and, to a lesser extent, training materials for the current system. Perhaps during the validation phase AI might probe the existing system to create test cases to run on the replacement system. If AI can't do that, the "I" is missing in AI (and it is).

No matter what, given the apparent schedule (even with infinite resources - see The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering published around the time I was in college), the whole idea is nuts unless the scope of the project magically gets redefined to be trivial (perhaps a field office app will get rewritten and DOGE will declare victory). Sort of like "Tesla 'Full Self Driving'" or "ventilators" or Hyperloop, or "much more efficient tunneling" done by The Boring Company (which has every large tunneling project beating down their door to get The Boring Company to do the job - NOT).

Of course 240 months is, technically, "months" but I don't think it qualifies as a "few" months.

Musk has already demonstrated that he has no idea how legacy systems work or the risk of assuming they are "obvious" - such as when he seems to have assumed that because the "Dead" flag for a SSN holder in one of the SS databases wasn't set and the person was over 70 they must be receiving benefits even if they were now over the impossible age of 150 years. Then he kept doubling down on that apparently unwilling to learn or just figuring that if he repeated a lie enough times, the facts would get lost in the chaos and he could claim that he was "never wrong".

If the product you're working on includes the word "Classic" in its name or is referred to internally as "Classic", you'd be wise to be looking for a job.

If there is a similar product in the company which doesn't have the word "Classic" associated with it, you'd be wise to immediately take all the PTO you can get and spend ten hours a day searching for a new job.

WRT two+ heads on one arm (or even one "big" head with multiple read/write units), if one head is tracking its track is it guaranteed the other is right on its track - even in varying temps and therefore expansion of disks/heads/arms - all of which are made of different materials and are of different structures? The tracks are very close together so positioning needs to be pretty precise.

The two synced arms would add to the drive cost and probably somewhat reduce its reliability. About all spinning rust has now over SSDs is cost/TB so cost increases due to adding more mechanical parts probably requires firm justification. Perhaps the reliability issue isn't a big deal given reliability of drives now in real life.

No, I'm not making "excuses". I simply prefer not to expend my time and other resources on things that don't benefit me enough to justify the resource expenditure.

I'm an atheist - and that includes not being religious about Windows vs. Linux. In my experience Windows is more stable (less likely to be broken by an upgrade) than Linux (Ubuntu) and substantially easier to manage. The days of Windows being reasonably likely to blue screen after an upgrade are long gone. I run Linux on other machines and I run Linux in VirtualBox on my Windows PC when appropriate.

I have an OEM Windows Pro license on a machine I built and it's my understanding that I can't (legally) use that license in a VM.

I built my primary machine in the mid/upper-mid range over 12 years ago (and added some memory and some SSD storage since) and it's still plenty powerful for my needs for small development projects and for use as a "daily driver" for productivity apps (LibreOffice, Quicken, HR Block Tax, Postgres, etc). I have no desire to impose on the environment or myself the cost of a new system just because my Windows machine is not "new and shiny" anymore. It is Microsoft's hardware restrictions on Windows 11 (and ending support on Windows 10) that would cause me to abandon Windows if I could, not a religious dislike of Windows.

Unfortunately, Linux hasn't become popular enough with end users to motivate most software developers of consumer software to provide a Linux version.

I'd be "Windows Free" if two consumer products provided Linux versions: Quicken and HR Block Tax software.

Could I run them under WINE? Probably (they at least sort of work in that environment). However that's not a supported configuration and the last thing I need on April 14th is to find that the last update to HR Block caused it not to work under WINE and then it's "my" problem to figure out.

It's a chicken and egg problem. Until Linux becomes much more common among end consumers, software vendors won't provide a version of their software for Linux. Until more software vendors provide a version of their software for Linux, most end consumers won't switch to Linux. As more consumers are switching to doing everything on their phones, there's likely to be little progress made on this.

State and local jurisdictions' building codes often start with standards such as those published by the NFPA but adopt amended versions of them that eliminate some requirements and/or add additional requirements.

In the Bay Area we call such a "home" a "storage unit" or "shed".

You are missing the fact that there are many competitors in the auto insurance market in most places.

Everyone has to eat so eating is "required". Yet grocery stores don't raise their prices to "80% of what people can afford" because a competitor would take their business by charging less. Walmart, for example, completes in many, many markets and they compete almost entirely on price rather than selection or quality with chains like Albertsons and Kroger. Auto insurance is little different - in fact it such a generic product (in part due to state regulation) that they compete almost entirely on price and how engaging their ads are (Geckos, cavemen, ducks, known actors, etc).

The distinction, as I understood it, was between public UBI and Social Security (and other earned benefits) - not between differing sorts of retirement plans of which Social Security is one (and one which every worker is required to participate in).

If one never worked and were not eligible on someone else's earning record (such as by being the spouse of someone who worked), one will receive zero Social Security old age benefits. This is very, very different than UBI which completely ignores both an individual's contributions to the system (as well as the individual's need for the system's benefits).

It is true that one can't rely on the government to fulfill their implied obligation to pay full Social Security benefits in retirement because the government has no such obligation. In theory Congress could cancel all future Social Security benefits from next month on, retain the payroll taxes, and spend the rest of the ever dwindling OASDI trust fund and the revenue from the ongoing payroll taxes on something else - such as an expanded defense budget. However, the odds of something this extreme happening is very remote (as it would likely result in no member of Congress who voted for this being reelected and them being replaced by candidates who pledged to restore benefit payments). It is, however, entirely possible that SS retirement benefits will be cut across the board when the OASDI trust fund runs dry (that date varies from year to year based on the economy and resulting projections, but the 2024 trustee's report projects that will happen in 2033 - sooner than the 2034 date projected in their 2022 report).

The Social Security OASDI Trust Fund was supposed to be weakly similar to the "capitalization model" you describe - that's why it was allowed to grow, at its maximum point, to $2.91T in 2020 rather than the program being strictly "Pay As You Go". However the failure of Congress to act decisively and consistently in the past to keep this model solvent (Social Security being described as "The Third Rail" in politics) will likely result in benefit cuts in the future (the form of those cuts remains the "trillion dollar question").

However a private annuity company, public pension fund, or private pension fund can also become insolvent and, if enough did, the government and quasi-government agencies, such as the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and the various state guaranty associations, may be unable to backstop the programs.

The difference between a benefit that you pay for (and are forced to pay for) and one that someone else pays for with no contribution from you is like the difference between a kelp forest in the ocean and a old growth redwood forest. It's not a minor distinction.

It's more, but not completely, like the difference between free government housing and a house you buy on the free market for cash from a willing seller for a mutually agreeable price.

An UBI works exactly like retirement benefits, except that at an earlier age than is more typical for retirees.

That is not true.

Retirement benefits from pensions or Social Security scale, at least to some extent, to how much work you did to earn those benefits. There is no "work requirement" for a true UBI program.

Sure there are tweaks that distort this to some extent. One example is "bend points" in Social Security benefit calculations which result (at a high level) in the first dollar contributed yielding six times the retirement benefit that the last dollar paid in before cap is hit. Another SS example is that only the "top earning" 35 years count in the benefit calculation. Another SS example is that there are "minimum benefits" that can give an additional boost to benefits of those who earned very low wages but worked many years. Another is sometimes found in public union pensions where the "last three years" (or similar) of wages are used to determine benefits (sometimes called "Final Average Salary") - although still multiplied by the number of years of creditable service.

The entire study, and its conclusions, could be used verbatim to argue for eliminating Social Security in its entirety.

That is incorrect.

This study is very different than Social Security as this study didn't require the participants to contribute to the UBI program for decades before most received any benefit (and potentially none at all if they died before collecting benefits) at all and then received a benefit that scaled to at least some extent with the amount of money they contributed to the program over those decades.

One of the most widely known UBI schemes, that of Andrew Yang who ran for President in 2020, had no means test. His UBI replaced other needs based programs (such as SNAP and TANF) but didn't replaced "earned benefits" such as those from Social Security that scale to at least a limited extent with the recipients' payments into the program.

Wikipedia states that:

Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a minimum income in the form of an unconditional transfer payment, i.e., without a means test or need to work. In contrast, a guaranteed minimum income is paid only to those who do not already receive an income that is enough to live on. A UBI would be received independently of any other income.

The Wikipedia definition is the one that I've always heard associated with UBI.

Perhaps you are confusing a Universal Basic Income with a Guaranteed Minimum Income or some other income program (of which there are many).

As I've never had a bonus plan that didn't consistently pay out at or above 80% of potential (and sometimes even above 100%), I value the bonus component of the offer more than you do. However, I generally negotiate first for more stock options if the company is a startup, then more salary, then more bonus. Often a hiring manager has more flexibility in one of these than the others.

During the negotiation process I do of course inquire as to the history of bonuses - esp. the percentage of payout on the "corporate" portion over the past few years. If that history showed low payouts as a percentage of potential, I'd probably walk just for that reason alone even if the salary seemed to financially compensate for that lacking as either the bonus program is a sham (and I wouldn't want to work for a company that would engage in such a sham) or the company is very poor at setting and/or achieving goals -- which would be a giant red flag.

And if the State of California weren't so cheap that they'll only pay for single-employee garbage trucks (which means that when plastic bags fail to end up in the truck, they blow around the area for decades), or, I don't know, actually ran street sweepers once a week like every other major city in the country, we wouldn't have most of the plastic bag problems that we have.

The State of California does not run local garbage pickup or street sweeping.

I've lived in various cities in California all my life.

Street sweeping was sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, and sometimes never. It depended on the city and the type of street. I lived in a well off city in California for some time that didn't have a single street swept street in the city and I've lived in a less well off city that swept the street in front of my home weekly.

I've lived where there were one person garbage trucks and I've lived where there were two or three person trucks. In the latter, you could put almost any quantity of stuff out and if there was a lot, they would actually leave it on their first "normal" pass and on their next trip back from the transfer station with an empty truck they would swing by and open the big back doors of the empty truck and heave everything in rather than spending a long time coaxing everything through the "trash compactor" part of the truck.

Call your city/county council member if you want street sweeping and garbage pickup changes. There's plenty of blame to place on the state for stuff, but local garbage pickup and street sweeping isn't one of them.

If you want really good trash service, assuming they have not changed in the past few years, move to Shaker Heights Ohio. There, IIRC, your taxes (property and city income tax) cover trash pickup - you leave your cans in the back (it would be unseemly to put them out where they could be visible for hours on trash day!) and the trash crews will take up to ten cans from your back/side yard to the truck, dump them, and then return the empty cans to the back/side yard. I'm betting they don't leave stray plastic bags on the street. Do, however, be prepared for high property and city income taxes - you sometimes get what you pay for and pay for what you get.