Two AI assistants? Not sure about other stuff, but this sort of reminds me of the insanely hyped game back in the late 1990s, Daikatana, where one had to ensure AI controlled NPCs made it. It didn't exactly help gameplay back then.

There are other items which will compound the problem. Student loan debt. When those debt defaults start happening, those are going to have a major impact, on par with the derivatives back in 2008. Then, there is the fact that people are trying to stuff cryptocurrency in everything, so if BTC really tanks, everyone pays for it, be it peoples' pensions, 401ks, etc.

Finally, there is one thing that people don't realize, which will cause major business failure: The cloud cliff. In the past, if a company had bad times, they would play fast and loose with licensing, not bother renewing support, or ride the high seas to keep the software they need present. These days, with most stuff subscription based and in the cloud, once the company hits the late cut-off date, their data is rendered inaccessible, and they are pretty much out of business for good. This will kill a lot of companies who might have survived.

Perhaps this is because consoles are luxuries, and with the economy not looking so good, people are not really willing to spend the big bucks, and rather use what they have until things get better.

It will be interesting to see how MS's next gen console, which doubles as a PC will do. Done right, it may be a money maker.

This is trivially easy to get around.

Company ABC has a "security is no ROI" stance. They get ransomwared. The CEO of ABC puts out a PR memo that "oh no, hackers can punch through any defenses, we are pretty much helpless, and nobody could have seen that RID 500 could have been the target of credential stuffing. That stuff is too technical for anyone." They hire XYZ company from offshore. They pay XYZ company the ransom + a consulting fee. XYZ pays the ransom, forwards the keys. Company ABC then says that they were able to use a third party that decrypted all their stuff and allowed them to function.

If later it is found that XYZ paid the ransom, perhaps via the fact that they did so via obvious blockchain transactions, as opposed to tumbling or moving to Monero and back to another BTC wallet, company ABC can just shrug, and claim plausible deniability, and how can they know? It isn't like a corporation would ever have execs go to jail or anything like that.

For the love of $DEITY, why not just use a heat pump? It takes a fraction of the energy cost to move the heat, compared to generating it. If it is too cold, then by all means, use another heat source, but save the electrical heat for the actual cold weather.

Ideally, once it is too cold for a heat pump, one should go with natural gas, propane, or a fuel, just because it puts out more energy than electric and puts less stress on the grid. What would be ideal is having gas furnaces use the heat differential to generate a small amount of power, so that could be used to help keep the main house batteries charged with what would be otherwise be wasted heat. However, in more population-dense areas, electric is probably the only choice, but in a house with given choices, not having as much load on the grid is a good thing.

To me, it is asking an answer why deflation is bad over inflation. The response from the people the parent mentions, is usually along the lines of "we are used to giving raises and assuming our currency is worth less", to "the people that matter have their assets in other things that count... it is only the poors that have their money eaten by inflation."

Having deflation doesn't sound like a bad thing, especially with one's currency holdings gain in value over a time interval. Inflation seems to do is harm the people working paycheck to paycheck... who don't get raises, so their buying power constantly diminishes. Yes, one can always do a game of paying for today's goods with tomorrow's diminished currency, but that isn't really something everyone can do.

This is something I see a lot. When people say, "caveat emptor", or "you have to be smarter next time" when a scammer is successful, it doesn't do any good. We do need some scammer protection to maintain a high-trust society. Otherwise, one can't really do much business, when most of life is spent trying to check if every part of a business transaction is legit, or something contrived.

Part of it is that some devices are deliberately wide open for advertising dollars. However, if someone can advertise, they can scam. The same vector used to trade info to advertisers can be used for malicious software.

Ultimately, this is going to be a major battle when it is lucrative for phone makers to have their devices exfiltrate as much data as possible.

The ironic thing is that I used generic algorithms to "solve" the TSP when getting my CS degree. I would agree other ways can do better because there are metastable points one can get to, and only a lucky mutation would knock it out of that state to something closer to the ideal.

This makes me curious what the big-O factor is with TSP and AI models. O(x)?

I wish Apple could bring back the XServe. For a while, Apple was actually the #1 storage vendor with their repurposed Promise arrays and XSan over fiber channel.

Apple sells AI servers. Maybe they should sell virtualization farms with macOS?

Then, there is OS X Server. At the time, it was one of the best business framework servers for SMBs out there. Everything from LDAP, to Wiki pages, to web pages, to network booting, to program caching. Apple could definitely make some money from something like that, be it on an XServe. For a SMB, combining this with something like a Time Capsule would make a mint.

Apple could easily win big if they get back into the enterprise, and hopefully with their AI servers, they can get that framework back. They have money to throw at things, and I'm sure if they have something that can replace AD/Entra, people will flock to them in droves, just to be MS free.

In 2021, I chucked my old desktop for a Mac Mini, and earlier this year, went to a M4 Mac Mini due to concern about embargoes/tariffs. No complaints.

My recommendation is to definitely max out RAM and CPU, and get the 10gig Ethernet option. You can boot the Mini from a TB5 SSD, which is about 10% slower than the internal and use that, and Apple Intelligence can't be used (which is something I don't bother with anyway.)

Overall, zero complaints. Nothing is perfect, and you do trade one platform's annoyances for another, but overall, it has been a good thing. If I jump to another platform, I'll just build a Ubuntu desktop, call it done, or if I have to have Windows, built a Proxmox server.

I'm just tired of the US having the worst geographical selection for vehicles in the world. Go to Mexico, Europe, China, or other regions, and you find that VW has a nice selection of usable vehicles that they never sell in the US. Toyota has the Hilux pickup, which is sold everywhere but the US.

Lets look at RVs as well. $80k gets you something in Australia which would go for upwards of a quarter mill in the US, with far worse engineering. For example, you can buy a VW Grand California, which is a top notch class "B" for a fraction of what the class "B" upfits in the US cost.

Then, there are engine choices. The rest of the world works on small diesel engines. Carmakers don't sell those in the US.

Don't forget all the Chinese vehicles that the rest of the world uses. Those are embargoed... and the only Chinese vehicles we see are ones rebranded by GM like the Buick Envision.

The market in the US is truly a monopolist's delight. It is propped up by overpriced vehicles, and fewer people can afford them. It gets old going to a dealership and a salesperson wants a $2000 deposit before they will fetch a key, and still selling stuff $5000 over sticker.

That is one nice thing about Apple products. They have a resale value. If I wanted to, I could just erase all data on a laptop, make sure it isn't in Find My... and go off and sell it, use that cash for the next purchase. Plus, there is always someone wanting to buy it. I have seen people want to buy even 10+ year old Macs... just because they are a known quantity.

It depends how hamstrung it is. I'd say that the days of 8 GB RAM is behind us, 16 is the minimum, and 32 gig is what I'd be doing for any new desktops. For SSD, 1 TB minimum, 2 TB ideal, and CPU, all depends, but I'd say at least 4 cores minimum,

Around ten years ago, Apple had the m3 (not M3... Intel m3) MacBook. It only had one USB-C slot and wasn't exactly a barnburner, but for a relatively small laptop, it did the job well enough. It could bring up the usual Word documents and such. With Apple Silicon having decent single core performance numbers even on iPhones, a laptop from an iPhone CPU may not be too bad. I'd say the test is to run some games on it.

For a lot of tasks, especially a business laptop whose only purpose in life is sending emails, handling Teams, using the usual Office stuff, and browsing the web, even a M1 CPU does well enough. I have a M1 MacBook Pro still kicking and does well enough. Only reason I bothered to upgrade my desktop was the fear of tariffs or embargoes earlier this year, so I wound up FOMOing a bunch of stuff that I didn't really need to bother upgrading this year.

I would say it sucks on all sides. A college education used to mean someone was exposed to a lot of things, and meant they were a Renaissance man, jack of all trades, and at least knew what something was. It meant someone decided to better themselves.

Back in the 60s/70s, it did not matter what the college major was even. A degree was a degree, and you could get a decent job regardless.

Fast forward to now. All education is out the window, and the key hiring/factor is knowledge in whatever is "cool". If someone doesn't know GolfCart 2.0, but knows GolfCart 1.5, they will not be considered for the job.

That is only in the US. Other countries pay for their students to go to college.