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Comment A little irony for ya (Score 1) 69

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.myarkansaspbs.org%2F...

Arkansas PBS is excited to announce that former State Rep. Carlton Wing has been selected as the agency’s new executive director and chief executive officer. Wing brings more than three decades of leadership experience in broadcasting, media and public service to the state’s only public media network. The Arkansas PBS commission and staff are looking forward to his first day in the office, on Tuesday, Sept. 30.

Maybe they should have been a little more nervous.

Comment Re:Hopefully they can survive that long (Score 2) 28

Their total # of vehicles sold are actually expected to decline in 2025.

I guess you mean their annual car sales?

Specifically:
Overall Guidance: Rivian adjusted its 2025 delivery target down to 41,500 - 43,500 vehicles due to retooling for the next-gen R2 platform, impacting production.
(vs about 51K in 2024)

I guess I'd call that a blip if the numbers play out and they get R2 up and running - which I'm looking forward to.

Comment Re:Learning with fun and enjoyment doesn't work (Score 4, Informative) 259

To learn maths properly, you have to enjoy it, love it even.

Horseshit.

To learn maths properly - enough to do middle school math - you need to be taught it. You don't have to love it. You don't have to enjoy it, even. You just have to be taught.

Sure - it helps if you love it. But we're not talking calculus, here; we're talking algebra. Geometry. Not even trig. You don't need to love math to learn that.

Comment Re:Not AI (Score 1, Interesting) 162

AI has problems for sure. Not a month goes by without news of yet another idiot lawyer getting sanctioned because of the hallucinations were presented as fact. However......have you tried coding with AI? I have. I'm 5x more productive than before, and I can solve problems now that I wouldn't have touched before. I still test my code. I still review it. But man, this thing is a game changer. I can see why people are paying big money for it. It absolutely is delivering.

To give you a recent example - I know nothing about terraform, but I had to implement a proof of concept in AWS and was mandated to use terraform. Previously, I would have spent some time understanding terraform concepts and then worked out some basic examples before attempting the task at hand. None of that was needed. I was coding from day 1. Yes, the AI can go wrong, but I find its never a syntactical error. When errors do occur, its usually a misunderstanding of the requirement I gave it, and because I know what I had in mind, I can always rephrase to get the right results. I have not so far encountered a situation in the coding realm where hallucinations caused me problems.

The other day, I asking the AI to do some task it noticed that I was using java 17 and offered me the upgrade to 21. I thought it was a trivial upgrade, but the implementation, when I said "yes", was breathtaking. It asked for me to sign into git, then created a branch, generated test cases for my code, after applying its changes, it ran the test cases, committed its changes, asked me for approval to merge to main and then did it.

Magnificient!

Yes, lesser number of programmers will be needed. What makes me most happy though is that this levels the playing field. No longer do I have to deal with those difficult prima donnas who are only tolerated because they are good developers, even though they mess with the team and make everyone elses life miserable. I can't wait for those people to get fired because there is no more excuse for them to be kept on.

Comment Re:The PHEV is the future (Score 1) 137

I bought a Prius PHEV even though I'm firmly convinced that the PHEV is the worst of both worlds. You don't get the freedom from maintenance hassle that the BEVs give you, and the battery is small enough that it cannot fill all use cases _and do what you paid the premium $$ for_. If you want compromises, the hybrid will be a cheaper car.

Why did I buy this car? Because for reasons that I couldn't fathom, the BEVs that were in my price range were simply not available on the dealer lots at the time I needed a new car.

That being said, the car is working out great so far. Its been three weeks since we drove it off the dealer lot and thanks to our normal driving patterns (to the office / grocery store and back), we have not consumed more than half a gallon. There is a real danger that the gas in the almost full tank we have will degrade to the point its unusable before we end up using it.

Comment What Orwell got wrong (Score 4, Insightful) 56

I reread 1984 a few years ago and the thing that really struck me is what Orwell got wrong: the notion that you need to erase evidence of factual data (at great effort/expense) in order to propagate lies. It turns out that you just need to shout a little louder and a lot of folks will eat it up.

Which should have been obvious by then, but which was not even obvious to me when I read it the first time (in HS - around '84). But at this point we've all very much lived through it (and continue to).

The number of people who care about what's factual or actual isn't enough.

Comment Re:Will it make ICEs irrelevant (Score 1) 180

As an EV owner I have just 1 question for 600 mile range (almost 1000KM): why?

So my partner (who irrationally worries about such things) will consent to buying one.

That's it.

The reasons don't need to be good. The arguments don't matter at all. 600 mile range is what some people expect/require from their vehicle.

Comment Re:And yet the Africans are breeding like crazy (Score 3, Informative) 65

While the westerners have fewer and fewer kids.

I wonder if ending USAID will stop Africa's population rise.

No.

USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) plays a significant role in global family planning and reproductive health, providing contraceptive supplies and support to developing countries.

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