I think this is right. For example, GPS is tremendously useful, but you can use it for free. Similarly, while there are commercial weather services, a lot of people access the ad-supported versions[0] or get it from their government’s weather agency.
[0]: which obviously provide some revenue, but much less than the value provided.
Honestly, even if Python had replaced C++, it was originally created in the 90s, so it's already a "decades-old" technology. Python 3.0 came out 17 years ago.
I found this whole piece strikingly disingenuous and manipulative, and your post captures why.
I think what makes fascism appealing to some people is that it seemingly offers an explanation and solution for why their immense talent, real or perceived, has been overlooked. Justine Tunney probably has more actual talent than the vast majority of the fascists of this type but she shares the same core of grievance.
I think it’s telling too that she doesn’t really mention that many open source maintainers, if they’re paid at all, don’t get paid enough. I’m not saying every pitch for open source funding has to include this but to omit that and also to brag about being in the 99.9997th percentile certainly makes it seem like she’s indifferent to the many talented open source maintainers who are in the same boat, most of whom do not have her destructive, nihilistic, and bigoted politics.
I don’t usually push LÖVE to its limits because I tend to make simple games as a hobby but I do keep an eye on its framerate and often it‘s in the 100s of frames per second. So it may not be impressive (in sense of winning benchmarks) but it’s rarely perceivably slow.
The same thing happened when the same researcher did studies on Covid using similar datasets. There’s likely some generalizability but part of the reason the absolute risk is so high is because VA patients are a group already at high risk. It’s partly a failure of science journalism this caveat gets missed but seems like it is also one Al-Aly is happy to allow.
I did notice that the writer says he was commissioned to cowrite a report that will be the basis for a lawsuit against the tax:
> Four Norwegian entrepreneurs have commissioned yours truly, Dr. Laura Melusine Baudenbacher and Professor Dr. Dr. Mads Andenas to write a comparative law study on the Norwegian wealth tax. This report will be the basis for a class action against the Norwegian state.
I assume the fact it’s submitted to a court will dissuade the authors from making totally unsubstantiated claims, but it still seems like there’s a strong financial incentive for them to reach negative conclusions about the tax.
I mean, it's frequently the case that guidelines for new situations are really just a reapplication of existing principles. But often specificity is needed so people realize which guidelines are applicable.
This feels like a good tradeoff as far as gadgets go. It doesn’t take finding that many objects for it to make up the energy cost to manufacture the AirTag.
They do require periodic battery replacements but I imagine it’s still a net savings or pretty negligible cost. I’d love to see a more formal analysis, though.
I feel like this idea would work better at a somewhat larger scale, like a small to medium datacenter heating an apartment or office building. The downside is for any of these systems is that when it's too hot outside that heat becomes a liability so you'd have to have the infrastructure to divert heat as well. The other downside is that you'd be replacing a very well understood technology with minimal maintenance requirements with a relatively complex technology with more extensive and complex maintenance requirements.
I think you're right that it's very unlikely to be a common thing. However, so many people use Gmail (including with setups like Thunderbird like you note) that it's totally possible someone really did get banned due to a total fluke.
While the article is correct about the basic fact about an AI bubble driving up memory costs, which in turn makes it harder to purchase laptops and other consumer technology, there's a lot of dubious economics shoehorned in. I'm not sure why this article is here when so many other articles have been written about the memory shortage. (That being said, I don't think it's flag-worthy, just mediocre.)
People here do seem to miss that they added this relatively big feature. The problem for Microsoft is that Google Docs also has collaborative editing, and in my experience, it actually works better.
The pace has probably slowed down, but problem isn't so much that they're not adding anything, it's that the additions are either somewhat niche (e.g., new Excel formulas), don't work as well as they should (e.g., syncing), or are confusing (e.g., the new Outlook that lives alongside "classic" Outlook).
As much as I like Python and personally prefer it to R, I don’t really disagree. But I’m not sure R is a great language for data science either—it has its own weaknesses, e.g., writing custom loops (or functional equivalents with map or reduce) was pretty clunky last I tried it.
The other thing is that a lot of R’s strengths are really the tidyverse’s. Some of that is to R’s credit as an extensible language that enables a skilled API designer to really shine of course, but I think there’s no reason Python the language couldn’t have similar libraries. In fact it has, in plotnine. (I haven’t tried Polars yet but it does at least seem to have a more consistent API.)
While it sounds like this blogger doesn't want to bother (and perhaps experimenting with AI is itself the appeal), I personally appreciate when authors read their posts instead of delegating the task to AI.
I suppose there could be a use for programming for computers that would otherwise be ewaste, although I'm not sure how much ewaste is out there that can run DOS but not, say, Linux or a BSD. Lots has already been trashed or recycled, and my impression is that retrocomputing enthusiasts are thinning out the market as well.
Now‘s not the best time to try Pop OS!, unfortunately, as they’ve been focused on Cosmic. They’re making progress, though, so I hope the benefits of Cosmic will pan out, and we’ll soon be in the best time to try Pop OS!.
[0]: which obviously provide some revenue, but much less than the value provided.