That brings up something interesting. According to US Census data, the median age of first marriage in 1950 was 24 for men and about 20.5 for women. But that was an outlier, with a dramatic drop from 1940, when the median ages were about 25.3 and 22.8. Between 1890 and 2010, the median ages were usually much higher -- 25 or more for men and 22 or more for women. In 1890, the median ages were 26 and 23. That really drives home your mom's claim that pregnancies were drivers of a lot of marriages, as the 1950s were an unusually difficult time to get birth control. In 2010, the average ages were about 28.4 and 26.9. That's a lot of time taken out of primary childbearing years, and birth control is more available and reliable than it was.

A company provides a contract that says that the functionality ends when the customer stops paying for the license. If Davis Lu provided software under contract and had terms allowing the software to stop working, yes, it would be legal.

But he was an employee. An employee is expected to leave things running after leaving the company. Leaving behind a kill switch and not telling anyone about it is a criminal act. He's not the first person to do this (look up Tim Lloyd in 1996 and Nimesh Patel in 2016), and he won't be the last. And they all have or will have committed a criminal act. Lloyd got 41 months in prison and $2 million in restitution. Patel was lucky enough to not get charged, but he was sued by his former employer, Allegro Microsystems, for damage he caused. They appeared to ultimately settle out of court.

"Hello, Ecuadorian embassy? Yes, I heard about the weird shit with the cat, but listen..."

The birth rate in the US has not significantly recovered from the last peak in 2007. The number of births in the US was mostly gently climbing from 1997 to 2007, rising from 3.9 million to about 4.3 million (10% in ten years). But since then, it generally declined through 2020 to 3.6 million (16% decline in 13 years, and 8% lower than in 1997). The numbers for 2020-2024 are fairly flat at just above 3.6 million. The maternity rate in 2007 was 2.12, while in 2024, it was down to 1.60.

I am more convinced with each passing year that the global population is much closer to peak than we think. In the 1990s, the peak was expected to be around 2080-2100. By 2010, the forecast moved to 2070-2080. More recent forecasts have suggested 2050-2060. I'm thinking that some of the more aggressive forecasts that see the global population peak before 2050 are right. After that -- and maybe before it, in some cases -- we're going to have to figure out how the new economy works, because expanding markets will become a thing of the past.

Also possible. OpenAI's models do love their bullet points, and especially having exactly three examples in a list. The catchphrase "math magic" at the end also reeks of GPT-4's didactic blandishment.

Yeah, there aren't a lot of popular map projections that fail that test, unless you perhaps count the polar projection used for the UN logo. I'm guessing that sentence is there as a result of editing; perhaps it originally said equally-spaced parallels (which is true of the Robinson projection) but someone math-savvy was consulted to correct the claim to its current form (without seeing the context) and the maintainer of the page wasn't knowledgeable enough to realise it should just be removed.

The thing is... there have been plenty of outspoken and highly visible survivors of school shootings for decades. How the hell do we exorcise this gray paste of untruth?

In English, "IA" is usually understood to mean "Internet Archive." Only "AI" means "Artificial Intelligence."

Well, if each book has its own docker container...

Hmm. Yeah. You're right. Editorializing by Slashdot commenter fuzzyfuzzyfungus, then!

You're not wrong, but first we must all take two minutes out of our days to laugh at the misfortune of political canvassers, whose methods should be illegal.

No primary source suggests that the effect would be partisan—that's editorializing by Daring Fireball writer John Gruber. The GOP letter, which is somewhat internal to the RNC fundraising effort, simply provides an estimate of their own lost revenue.

If you're an unknown sender, you go into the bin. Simple as.

For what it's worth, simply painting a normal gun to look like a toy has been attempted before, too. But I agree that conversions like this must be pretty spooky if you're in law enforcement. Still, toy gun form factors needn't be the only gimmick; consider the chaos a briefcase gun could unleash without scrutiny. The sky is the limit for designing concealed weapons if one is sufficiently imaginative and determined.

I think you're already plenty concerning just on your own!