> The building we exited was another one of the terrafoam projects. Terrafoam was a super-low-cost building material, and all of the welfare dorms were made out of it. They took a clay-like mud, aerated it into a thick foam, formed it into large panels and fired it like a brick with a mobile furnace. It was cheap and it allowed them to erect large buildings quickly. The robots had put up the building next to ours in a week.
> The government had finally figured out that giving choices to people on welfare was not such a great idea, and it was also expensive. Instead of giving people a welfare check, they started putting welfare recipients directly into government housing and serving them meals in a cafeteria. If the government could drive the cost of that housing and food down, it minimized the amount of money they had to spend per welfare recipient.
> As the robots took over in the workplace, the number of welfare recipients grew rapidly. Manna replaced tens of millions of minimum wage workers with robots, and terrafoam housing became the warehouse of choice for them. Terrafoam buildings were not pretty, but they were incredibly inexpensive to build and were designed for maximum occupancy
I switched to Ubuntu last week for my desktop. First time in my 25+ year career I’ve felt like Microsoft was wasting my time more than administering a Linux desktop would take. The slop effect is real.
I've used Kubuntu for several years, wife too now which is an official, supported flavor of Ubuntu using KDE desktop instead of Gnome. It gives a more Windows like or CDE (Common Desktop Environment - from UNIX systems) feel than Gnome which gives a more Mac feel.
I am not getting what that linked url is supposed to mean. It is a very decent business page where ubuntu is selling consulting for "your" projects and telling why ubuntu is great for developing AI systems.
I wasn't making an argument. It was a prediction that all major software, (including the major linux distros) will eventually be majority (>50%) AI generated. Software that is 100% human generated will be like getting a hand knitted sweater at a farmers market. Available, but expensive and only produced at very small scale.
On what reasoning do you make this prediction? Just because corporations are mandating their employees to use AI right now does not mean it will continue.
Any new software developers entering the field from this point on will have to know how to use and be expected to use AI code-gen tools to get employment. Moving forward, eventually all developers use these tools routinely. There will be a point in the future where there is no one left working that has ever coded anything complex thing from scratch without AI tools. Therefore, all* code will have AI code-gen as all* developers will be using them.
* all mean 'nearly all' as of course there will be exceptions.
> Any new software developers entering the field from this point on will have to know how to use and be expected to use AI code-gen tools to get employment
So eventually, doesn't the KPI move from "more code" to "better code"? The pendulum will have to swing the other way eventually; seems like microsoft is just accelerating that process
> doesn't the KPI move from "more code" to "better code"?
I would love for this to be true. But another scenario that could play out is that this process accelerates software bloat that was already happening with human coded software. Notepad will be a 300GB executable in 2035.
And this will cause what I'm talking about -- When nobody can afford memory because it's all going into the ocean-boiling datacenters, all of a sudden someone selling a program that fits into RAM will have a very attractive product
Half of the country has been left behind to the extent that they are worse off financially than their parents at the same age and have no path to improvement. It just keeps getting worse for them. The other half of the country thinks they are uneducated buffoons who are morally bankrupt for and need to do more to help themselves.
They blame the other half of the country for calling them “deplorables”, immigrants, globalization, religion, gender, education, science, and anything else that is an easy scapegoat. Blame whoever you want but the symptom of this illness that the institutions failed to resolve is the current political reality.
Americans can’t afford healthcare or rent. They aren’t happy supporting the UN anymore. If the world needs the organization it’ll find others for funding.
I bought a corded electric snow blower this year for my driveway. My neighbor has a gas powered one. I sold mine after two uses because it was so ineffective it mostly just clogged. It is a highly rated unit on Amazon. My neighbor has used his for years.
I hope this kind of environmentalism never comes for winter gear. At least not until we have fuel cell technology that far exceeds what batteries can offer.
I don’t think it’s environmentalism, I think that’s unfortunate just the pretense because it gets traction.
At least what I’ve found, now with more people working from home, there is more attention paid to intolerably noisy stuff that goes on when we used to be at work. I lived near a private school with a big grounds that had these idiots come and rev their leaf blowers for days every fall and spring, and it was basically impossible for me to work. I don’t especially care about the environmental impact and am sort of angry that people use the environment as a pretence when there are certainly more effective ways to be environmentally friendly. But the noise is intolerable, generally very supportive of the bans, though I think it should be about blanket norms on what noise levels are allowed and not about specific technologies.
There's good battery powered stuff out there, and there's a lot of bad battery powered stuff out there. Hopefully the good gets more common and the bad gets less common.
I think batteries are good enough for your needs, just that there's too much junk on the market.
I know the scale isn't comparable but I much prefer an electric chainsaw to a gas chainsaw. I own both kinds because every couple of years something big falls across my driveway that I can't lift without cutting it up. Mixing two-stroke fuel correctly so I don't foul the spark plug is a hassle, and something I do rarely enough that I always need to look up how to do it. Breathing two-stroke exhaust fumes is no fun at all. My cheap electric chainsaw has better torque, which makes it even easier to use. The only consumable is bar and chain oil, and after a while the chain itself.
I wonder if you've accidentally purchased an inferior product by buying a corded one - and I guess that's just a problem of American outlets being limited to 110V and generally ~10 amps or so, because yeah, I can't imagine a 1000W blower being very powerful. Battery powered ones like this:
What kind of batteries are you running that can support the equivalent of 15A AC for hours?
I have both a battery leafblower and a corded one. The corded is far more powerful and of course does not run out. The battery one is quick and convenient for small cleanups but only gets about 10 minutes from a full charge, then it's back to the charger for hours.
Recently I cleaned up a large roof full of leaves, took about an hour with the powerful corded leafblower. That would've taken weeks with the battery one given the small power and the ~10 minute runtime.
I mostly use the battery one since it's easier and most jobs I do are tiny. But it is no substitute for the corded one.
Your battery blower sounds like it's just not very good.
I can move piles of wet leaves easily with my makita blower that uses two 18v batteries. It's a pretty old model too.
Batteries can surge power and not risk fire hazard like AC over a long extension cord. Manufacturers know this and have to intentionally limit draw way below the 15A ceiling so a 100ft 14AWG cord doesn't trip breakers or burn houses down.
Yeah outside of areas with very light precipitation a pretty hefty snowblower is definitely required. In my experience the weaker models are enough of a waste of energy to where I questioned if I'd save effort just hand shoveling. Everyone I know with a nice gas powered one has had the same one for years and can clear out the entire block with relative ease.
This is about leaf blowers which do not need nearly as much power to function. I don't think anyone is using a leaf blower in such a way that gas is better (there are tractor mounted ones that might be better for some applications - but tractors are diesel powered)
I had a corded electric snow blower 20 years ago and it was great for light snows, but I needed the gas one for larger snows. Cordless tools often have more power than corded because there is only so much power you can get from a plug - of course the battery discharges fast when doing this.
If you're in North America, you can only get 1800 watts from a cord. It's not enough to blow anything but light snow.
OTOH, an 80V battery can easily draw 1000 watts+. A good snow blower has 4 of those. That's more than enough, comparable to a gas engine but with way more torque.
I’m honestly surprised it hasn’t been more prevalent yet. I still get call centre type spam calls where you can hear all the background noise of the rest of the call centre.
I assume it's to make it seem like an actual call center rather than a scam. I recently got two phone scam attempts (credit card related) that sounded exactly like this.
I built a voice AI stack and background noise can be really helpful to a restaurant AI for example. Italian background music or cafe background is part of the brand. It’s not meant to make the caller believe this is not a bot but only to make the AI call on brand.
You can call it what ever you like, but to me this is deceptive.
Where is the difference between this and Indian support staff pretending to be in your vicinity by telling you about the local weather? Your version is arguably even worse because it can plausibly fool people more competently.
It doesn't have to be. You can configure your bot to great the user.
E.g. "Aleksandra is not available at the moment, but I'm her AI assistant to help you book a table. How may I help you?"
So you're telling the caller that it is an AI, and yet you can have a pleasant background audio experience.
Also, it only takes one legitimate collect call from a jail from a loved one and now I'm all in favor of reform in our jail system.
No, it does not cost over thirty dollars to allow someone accused to call their loved ones. We pay taxes. I want my government to use the taxes and provide these calls for free.
reply