Scenario One: We further narrow education so that the bulk of it is effectively job training for careers in tech, and we pursue the unlimited growth of server farms for AI and social media, along with the resultant expansion of pervasive advertising, propaganda (sorry for that redundancy), and surveillance. As a side effect, we drastically increase greenhouse gas emissions and embrace a dystopian future.

Scenario Two: We re-tool the education system: allowing people to pursue their passions, and encouraging people who are generalists and polymaths by nature to bridge the silos built by those who are specialists by nature. We encourage inter-disciplinary studies. We put the brakes on rampant tech overgrowth, and stop sacrificing every resource we can literally dig up on the altar of the tech oligarchy. Instead, we start to narrow class divides, re-learn how to live within our planet's means, and focus on healing the ecosphere while devoting serious effort to adapting to the changing climate as best we can.

Which of those scenarios will result in the greatest good for the greatest number, while giving our species the best chance of surviving and flourishing?

It was an illustrative and evocative comment, not a treatise on electrical infrastructure. Must you be so relentlessly pedantic?

Thanks for saying that. I'm much the same, but had never managed to put it into words so succinctly.

I dunno - it seems to me that your description of Linux pretty much applies to Windows as well.

What's your justification for that remark? Beyond the "stop voting for Republicans" parting shot - except for the very recent past, Red and Blue aren't really that much different - I see the comment you're replying to as a remarkably insightful analysis.

Cool! If he ends up at Waterloo he'll only be an hour from where I live.

The Kitchener-Waterloo-Guelph-Cambridge area is a good place to be, with two universities among them and a mix of urban, suburban, and rural areas. And for a big-city fix - at least big by our standards - Toronto is only an hour and a half or so away.

Thanks for the up-to-date info. I guess AI is just the latest example of how we have put layers of abstraction between ourselves and lower-level processes of all kinds. We've come a long way - from programming computers via toggle switches, to using natural language to tell the computer to program itself.

And if we talked New England into joining the alliance, the US would be down to 42 states! Woohoo!

I just wish Trump aspired to be a Stablepresident! Or even just the Stablegenius he imagines himself to be...

I've been Microsoft Accountless since... let me see... oh, that's right! I've never had a Microsoft account!

Google is Putting AI Mode Wrong in Search

Shhhh! We're trying to downplay that - there's already been too much '51st state' talk...

I'm sure we in Canada would be happy to have them as the 11th province!

In my experience, pads for NC-placed through-hole components have just enough clearance to prevent an interference fit at the tolerance limits. And I can envision the 'falling into the holes' scenario. I'm guessing that the pick-and-place machine stops short of pushing the component all the way down - it probably floats on the paste, and full insertion would squeeze too much of it out of the joint. So they need bigger holes to allow the part to settle properly, without the pins hanging up on the edges of the holes, when the solder flows. That's just a guess though.

Canada too! https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbc.ca%2Fnews%2Fhealth... So far we're only doing it at the provincial level, probably because our federal government was just elected so there will be a bit of a delay. But I'm fairly sure that Ottawa will be rolling out the welcome mat big-time in the coming weeks. Welcome American scientists, academics, doctors, etc!