Hackers and hobbiests will persist despite any economics. Much of what they do I don’t see AI replacing, as AI creates based off of what it “knows”, which is mostly things it has previously ingested.

We are not (yet?) at the point where LLM does anything other than put together code snippets it’s seen or derived. If you ask it to find a new attack vector or code dissimilar to something it’s seen before the results are poor.

But the counterpoint every developer needs to keep in mind: AI will only get better. It’s not going to lose any of the current capabilities to generate code, and very likely will continue to expand on what it can accomplish. It’d be naive to assume it can never achieve these new capabilities… The question is just when & how much it costs (in terms of processing and storage).

The reality of Texas green energy is so detached from the political rhetoric from politicians… The state making the most wind energy has leaders in the capital demonizing it while the state finances (and citizens) clearly benefit. I wish the voters of Texas paid more attention and called out such obvious gaslighting :(

VIX under 20 isn’t a warning… The stock market valuation indicator I agree with: stocks are a bit over valued right now. But over valued just means we need a correction… not whether it will be a mild or severe one.

What’s more troubling is the market reacting already to nonsense trump comments. From the caption in the linked article:

The latest market sell-off was partly triggered by former President Donald Trump’s comments on Taiwan and tariffs.

Does no one else remember the dumpster fire that was the markets jumping at every comment and policy flip-flop during his four year term? The same volatility indicator (VIX) regularly jumped over 20 after some dumb trade policy comment…

I guess we get used to all the announcements being “Biden-Harris” now?

Your vote is sending a signal to future elections. If Ohio has a 20-point red margin, it’s unlikely to get any attention from blue candidates. If it has a 5% margin, that changes, and suddenly the next campaign considers spending time & money to try and move the needle.

Remember the old Roman adage: “you’re not defeated until you admit defeat”. If you don’t vote: you’ve lost. If you vote, you might still lose that election but there’s a better chance to win in the future.

A bit of an elaboration on why water towers are used in combination with pumps. Pumps are great for moving a constant amount of water around at whatever rate the pump is designed for (e.g. a small pump will move something like 1 gallon per minute). a big enough pump (or series of smaller pumps) can cause that pumped water to consistently flow at that rate.

The problem is that people don’t use water at a constant rate. In the morning, several residents probably all run the shower at the same time. if too many people open the water tap at the same time, a pump will give each just a fraction of what they expect.

But a water tank high up supplies water by gravity, you could open a large number of water taps, and as long as the pipes from the tank are big enough they’d all have the same pressure as if just one opened.

The water is gradually pumped up to the tank no matter if people are using it or not, then when many people want water, they all get it at expected pressures and the tank start to empty. Eventually people close the taps, the tank will slowly start to fill again from the pump.

This same basic design is also how water towers supply water to many single story buildings, it’s not a unique engineering feat for skyscrapers, but an adjustment to fit somewhere within the building’s footprint.

If you want a fun karaoke night, first song(s) need to be something that will get most everyone singing. Younger crowds: something like Tayor Swift “Shake It Off”. Middle age crowds, something like Nirvana or Aerosmith. Older crowds any Beatles #1.

I personally like Cyprus Hill “Jump Around” if you’re willing to learn it well enough beforehand as to not butcher the lyrics. I’ve seen Vanilla “Ice Ice Baby” also get a similar reaction of everyone knowing the song and enjoying it enough to give you kudos for choosing it.

After everyone’s over the initial hesitation, go belt all your love songs and power ballads; but get the party started first.

The answer to regulatory capture isn’t prohibition though, because prohibition essentially means unregulated.

Prohibition is effectively the same as a tax on gambling from the point of view of gamblers, but the tax is just the additional effort people have to spend to not get caught or fines when they do. The difference is there’s no tax revenue for the governing authority to redistribute, fines go almost exclusively to pay for enforcement.

Same question, but for Big Red soda…

I’d suggest Podman over docker if someone is starting fresh. I like Podman running as rootless, but moving an existing docker to Podman was a pain. Since the initial docker setup was also a pain, I’d rather have only done it once :/

For me the use case of K8s only makes sense with large use cases (in terms of volume of traffic and users). Docker / Podman is sufficient to self-host something small.

There’s a decent body of research indicating cash transfers actually are as effective as in-kind charity (often found to be even more efficient). With more recently neuance being added hinting at when one or the other is better at achieving long-term benefits. This is the basis behind charities like Give Directly. If you’re interested in some background:

Randomized trial of cash compared to food welfare in Mexico: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.6.2.195

OECD counties comparing cash transfers to expanded childcare and education: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/money-or-kindergarten-distributive-effects-of-cash-versus-in-kind-family-transfers-for-young-children_5k92vxbgpmnt-en#page5

India based comparison, noting the effectiveness and perception of the in-kind charity impacts long term results (e.g. social stigma of receiving food charity): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306919214000499

Any assumption that direct cash payments will be misspent as a reason to prefer in-kind welfare isn’t justified IMO. Benefits are fungible. Any money saved on food / childcare / whatever will be respent either efficiently (or not) in similar proportions to the direct money welfare… But administrative costs and externalities with in-kind transfers tend to make them less efficient on average.