The unfortunate aspect of that philosophy is that our society now confuses "don't censor political speech I don't like" with "don't censor falsehoods which are tied to politically-charged topics."

We should absolutely encourage discussions about things we may not agree on - but we should also not give audience to things which are demonstrably incorrect.

How much of this, I wonder, is that Qualcomm has patents on things integral to the physics? So that inherently anyone else trying to make a modem has to use alternate means to make it work, which are basically poisoned by the standard so of course they won't work as well?

It can't really be that hard to make a radio from a physics standpoint, but I bet it can be difficult to work around patents. Especially if it's a "dumb" patent like "put a filter here" which should have invalidated the patent due to "anyone skilled in the art" of radio devices... but because of it competitors can't put a filter in that exact spot, so have to figure out some other place to put it which of course doesn't work as well because it isn't where you'd want it...or "we set this frequency so it can only be done using a component with this material's band gap, and we have the patent on this material" or something like that.

I always laugh / cry when people say something about "stop indoctrination!" because what they really mean is "we don't want that kind of indoctrination, we want this kind!"

What we really need as a society is critical thinking skills, the ability to draw conclusions from evidence instead of reporting only supporting evidence for a preconceived conclusion and suppressing other evidence. We need to have people that can determine if the evidence is complete and conclusive, not just matching what people want emotionally.

I think you would see a price increase. In most food markets what happens is food is set at a price; if it sits on the shelf long enough it gets discounted. If it still doesn't sell it is thrown out. So what will happen is the the shelf-time of non-discounted prices will be longer relative to discounted price, meaning that the price level increases.

The other option is that the stock of goods at a low price sells out first, leaving only the higher-priced alternatives remaining on the shelves, also pushing up the price level.

I have never seen an example ever where increased demand leads to decreased price except where supply increases. If you have an example otherwise... I'd be interested in seeing it.

I don't disagree that this might happen in the medium to long term, as people see that prices are up (because of more money to spend on things) so they might be willing to invest to create companies to take some of that new profit margin.

But this lags the initial influx of money, meaning the final price level is more likely higher than the initial price level, even after new business come online.

Also, if there is less money in banks for the reserve ratio, or there is less money available for "investors" to create new companies, who do you think (and, with what money?) is going to be creating these new companies?

it would just be redistributing the same amount of money around. This would not cause inflation since the same amount of dollars would be chasing the same amount of goods.

Only in aggregate. It's generally the case that the ultra-rich are not buying the goods and services that the lower classes are trying to buy. This means that if you suddenly shift a bunch of money (spending power) to the lower classes, there will very likely be an increase in prices for the goods those lower classes purchase because you can increase their money supply way faster than the supply of the things they want to buy.

In fact, the argument goes that it will be a double-whammy because the thing "the rich" buy are companies that generally make stuff. So if you shift spending to the masses, you will increase demand for goods and services while simultaneously decreasing the available supply of new businesses.

An approach that actually gives the desired outcome on all fronts is to tax the rich and directly create new businesses, therefore creating new supply of all goods and services, dropping prices, and likely employing people. It also helps protect against monopoly by ensuring a steady supply of competition. Sadly, this idea is "too left" for most people.

Do you have any evidence at all of any "green" policy "destroying the economy?" If you're going to fret about policies that have a negative impact on the economy, you'll have plenty of data from the present administration in the USA to examine in the near future.

That was largely my point: why single out the tech companies, or make it depend on number of customers or whatever. If the principle is interoperability, just make the principle be interoperability.

It's not about letting the iCar only drive on other roads. It's more like say Tesla having their remote app and being forced to allow anyone to make a remote app to talk to the car. Or allow anyone to write their own OS or software for the car.

The same arguments about interoperability versus security/safety apply. I mean, there are surely many companies out there capable of writing their own vehicle control software for a Tesla, or Ford, or GM or whoever, why shouldn't they be allowed to "access" the hardware features of the vehicle?

Basically the entire concept of differentiation goes away, and simply putting an arbitrary "oh it only applies when you have this many customers" per the gatekeeper status doesn't really change that. It ends up putting a damper on the large companies to innovate yet doesn't help the small companies, because mostly what the market will end up with is cheaply made copycats of the first-party features or another giant company coming in with their own flavor of rent-seeking but getting away with it because they don't meet the gatekeeper criteria.

The thing that gets me with this discussion is that switching to Rust (or any other language) to address the problems that arise when using C fails to address the question of why those problems exist when using C.

That is to say: the problem isn't in the language, because the language can be used properly - that is, the language doesn't "give rise" to the issues, it merely permits them to exist.

So the question is - what insufficient mental models or processes exist that cause people to use C in a way that results in hazards? That is - what structural issue about problem solving or formulating problems causes C authors to introduce hazards into the code? Is it a misunderstanding of control and/or data flow? A fundamental misunderstanding of how our CPUs perform operations? Laziness? Something else? For example, if "unconstrained" memory accesses are fundamentally hazardous, should we not root those out at a deeper level, rather than just rely on a tool to keep us safe?

There's definitely government waste as in any large organization, but what the current administration is doing is basically you trying to cut wasteful personal spending by quitting your job and then beating up your foreign neighbors because they aren't paying you to keep your yard presentable.

The other issue is that apparently these "geniuses" can only account for things in terms of dollars instead of other value - they seem to only be looking at the cost side of the ledger, not the benefit. Take Ukraine for instance - what is with this "oh we'll help you defend against an aggressor but only if you pay us" instead of "we'll do this because helping the oppressed is the right thing to do" - and that's not even getting into the "oh you refuse our deal? We'll just throw you under the bus then" stuff.

Basically people screaming about waste are just mad because they don't see anything other than direct personal benefit as worth it. They can't see the benefit of a government being the last spender of resort for things like research or public welfare.

Sure cut waste - but they are literally throwing out not just the baby, but the entire nursery, with the bathwater. Not to mention destroying any kind of international goodwill we once had. Sure you might be able to have some short-term personal benefit from it, and the stupid $5000 checks they are throwing around is an idiotic inflationary disaster waiting to happen, but yeah, keep enjoying the narrow, self-first view of the world.

That's not true for the small sample I've used of the free online LLMs. I asked a question and it simply made a statement as if it were true, and it was clearly not. Then I said in the prompt "that's not true; that person is not in that role any more" and the AI said, "oh yeah, you're right, I was limited by my information cutoff at the end of 2023."

So why didn't it say "as of 2023, the information is..." or "I don't know right now, because I don't have up-to-date information"? Instead it simply answered with unfounded certainty.

At least in this instance, I knew the information was wrong ahead of time, but I can imagine scenarios where I wouldn't have the knowledge (which is why I'd be asking the LLM for information) and wouldn't be able to detect the error.

That's the worst problem with information - taking as fact without being able (or willing) to know if it is correct.

Eh, fatal accident rates have been relatively flat for around the past 10 years, fluctuating +/- 10%. Injury rate has also been either declining or flat. So cost due to injury/fatality is volatile but within a bounded range - not increasing. See for example NHTSA data

The insurance increases are due to a) the massive increases in repair cost due to vehicle complexity, part cost, increase in totaling a car because repair is expensive (labor and parts), and because of the liability/injury portion of the insurance due to increases in medical cost and litigation.

The vehicles themselves are much better at avoiding harm, but with expensive tech. Drivers are countering some of that tech through behavior like poor driving skills, mostly due to distractions *cough - phones - cough* or just plain lack of diligence.

Short version: even if insurance companies kept their profit per policy a fixed amount (instead of a fixed percentage) the costs would have gone up significantly.

Or the reverse: without that regulation, you wouldn't have had to throw out that 5lbs of cables; you could use them with your new equipment instead of having to get all-new cables.

The e-waste argument was and is the dumbest justification for this regulation.

No I didn't cheer for Microsoft. I absolutely prefer open standards. What I don't like is forcing people to make their standards open just because the company has some arbitrary total revenue or number of customers.

If companies don't want their standards to be open, then let the customers sort it out. Apple didn't get big because they forced people to buy their stuff. The "barriers to switch" away from Apple are there, but they aren't impossible. I mean, they are no less onerous than switching from say PlayStation to XBox; you have to re-buy your game library, get new peripherals, etc.

So until the EU makes their principles apply to everyone then I'm going to complain, because they are just singling out companies that have the revenue to write really big penalty checks. Basically the laws are targeted against these specific companies, they aren't really for general principles.

I could totally get behind rules about obsolescence though - if a company declares a product obsolete and unsupported, I'd totally be up for them being required to remove all their proprietary hooks and allow people to use those products as general devices. Basically say "this iPad is obsolete; you can use as-is or you can download this new firmware which will remove all Apple functionality and it's a clean slate.