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Comment Re:China surpassing the USA again? (Score 1) 20

Musk would start up a company around this to produce more of his children since he can't find women willing to help him with that anymore.

You would be shocked how easy it would be for him to find women willing to have his babies, even now. Women have high standards, but "lots of money" beats most of them.

Comment Re: The end is nigh (Score 1) 89

I think that a slow decline in population over many generations would be a reasonable goal. I worry more about a sudden decline, especially after such a large group is heading into retirement across the west. We're going to go through a period where there's a lot of elderly people who need care, and that's going to suck up resources, which leaves less resources for everyone else, and that naturally leads to a drop in standard of living. There's a huge difference between slow or even flat growth, vs. a declining economy. Human psychology reacts very violently to any perceived decline. That's why leaders are always obsessed with constant growth... it keeps people content. Decline causes violence and fighting over increasingly scarce resources.

Comment Re:Is Katy Perry an astronaut? (Score 3, Insightful) 14

There's a big difference between the Blue Origin flights that just pop you up above the Karman line to technically be in space and experience a ballistic trajectory for a few minutes of weightlessness, vs. going on a trip to the ISS, which is in orbit. The delta-v required to reach orbit is an order of magnitude more. This is definitely real astronaut stuff, especially if he has a job to do once he reaches the ISS.

Comment Re:Not artificial intelligence (Score 2) 204

There are professions where your job is mostly bullshitting: politician, journalist (specifically writing editorials), sales, fiction author, HR, middle manager, etc. Those jobs are going to be impacted, or in some cases, replaced by LLMs. But those people (in particular the journalists who write these articles) seem to think that everyone else's job involves just as much bullshitting as theirs. But there are lots of jobs where being correct matters: engineering, technicians, warfighting, surgeons, construction, etc. The danger is that people are going to try to use LLMs to do these jobs and it's going to be dangerous.

Comment Re:Scam (Score 1) 79

If LLM coding is just a better stackoverflow, then that's hardly going to replace programmers. Typically if you increase the ability of programmers to do their jobs efficiently, then you increase the demand for programmers. That's how the Jevons Paradox works. But this is just an incremental gain at best. Not a huge improvement.

Comment Scam (Score 3, Interesting) 79

AI-assisted coding has been around for a little while now, and the gains people are claiming are absolutely massive. Yet where's the evidence? How come I haven't seen any meaningful change in any applications that I use on a daily basis? Where's the guy cranking out big new popular apps at an astonishing rate and just raking in the cash? The answer is simple: it's a scam. These claims are being made by people who are trying to get investment dollars, or who've received investment dollars and need to continually reassure their investors that the money didn't go to waste. Don't buy into it. At the very least demand some evidence.

Comment Re: Whatever, nobody cares (Score 2) 61

The realism of that mission didn't have much to do with it being successful. It's not a documentary. It was essentially a Star Wars trench run, and they came up with it because it looked super-cool and worked for the plot. They did an excellent job of pacing that movie and building tension. We're told over and over again that the chances of success are slim. The second time I watched it, even though I knew what was going to happen, as they were approaching the coast I was still on the edge of my seat. That's hard to do.

No, that movie was about a bunch of relatable aspects of life. Pete's growing older. It realistically portrays the feelings a person has about passing the torch to the next generation. You have a lot of experience and you want to protect them from their own mistakes, but you know that you're not doing them any favors by holding the umbrella over their head. There's the regret over what could have been with Penny. There's the regret over what he did pulling Rooster's papers, even though it was Rooster's mom who made Pete promise to do it. And the competing responsibilities. These are all feelings that older people really have.

The first movie was aimed at teenagers, and it hit the bullseye. Those people are getting older now, and have a different perspective on life. I give the writers credit for creating a legacy sequel that follows up on a story with the same audience as the original, and keeping it relevant to them. They hit the bullseye again. If Disney had made this movie they'd want to rejuvenate the brand and make it cool for a new generation, and it wouldn't have worked as well as it did.

Comment A good start (Score 1) 52

I like the idea, but from what I've read most of the plastic pollution in the ocean is actually fishing gear. I don't think making fishing gear out of plastic that dissolves in sea water is going to be commercially viable. The plastic they use for fishing gear is actually very expensive high grade plastic, and the ocean cleanup group actually collects it and sells it because it's worth money.

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