For reasons I won't go into beyond saying it's an educational projects for kids, I needed to write a (very simple) app for an iPhone 3G recently, Problem is: I've never written any kind of app at all. I have remnants of a single college level C++ class from thirty years ago, that's it.

I was lucky to have a friend 'in the business' - he pointed me in the right way and got me set up in Xcode (4.4, in case you're skeptical), but I was astonished how much AI (specially Chat-GPT) was able to pull me through. Explaining to me what the code was doing, and - crucially - writing chunks of it. It was wrong often enough to cause problems, but feeding its own mistakes back to it and asking for corrections worked well.

Point is - I became a vibe coder and the app now works: I still can't write code or understand half of what is in my app. Even the basic principles of UIView construction made no sense to me. But it works, and the kid's project works.

We're at that level today. Someone with zero experience and knowledge can produce basic working apps. I gotta think we'll be much further along in 3-5 short years. My heart goes out to the code-crafters, but manipulating (synthetic) language turns out to be something AI is excellent at.

Thanks for a good answer, lots of reasonable points.
I looked into three of the planes that you linked to: Vespina, the UK equivalent of Airforce One, Konrad Adenauer, the German equivalent and Cotam 001, the French. As far as I can tell, they are all just regular commercial planes with pragmatic changes to reflect their usage (eg seating layouts, private spaces, etc) and upgraded radar. They're pretty cheap in commercial jet terms.

eg. Vespina: It's a standard (new) Airbus 330 (list cost approximately $250m) with about $15m spent on refitting it for purpose. Total: $275m. It isn't fitted with ECM, EMP hardening, armor etc. It's just a convenience thing. Both the German and French retrofitted previously used commercial planes.

The next (pair of) Airforce Ones will cost the US taxpayer at least $3.9bn. Much more than 10x Vespina. Running costs are astronomical (about $100m per year)

You're probably right that there's a good case for a dedicated aircraft for senior government officials. I'm not convinced having a supposedly nuclear-hardened Boeing boondoggle one makes any sense at all. (Don't fall for the 'Boeing is losing money on this' argument, the US Government will always bail out Boeing whatever happens)

Does any other nation on earth feel the need to have a tricked-out James-bond passenger jet for the benefit of one individual? What a colossal waste of money.
In the event of nuclear war, the chances of survival or otherwise of the President is a) not very greatly influenced by 'thicker windows' b) not very important compared to the survival of civil society in general, which is more dependent on personnel redundancy, planning and bunkers than whatever trivial armor is on a VC-25.

Imagine a US without Air Force One. It'd be the same, but a little richer.

... and that is why I feel this matters.
The SFX accomplishments in this movie deserve to be honored by being seen. The first ever computer-controlled camera allowed unprecedented freedom in model FX, and I would love to be able to appreciate those, instead of the quite bog-standard CGI in the Special Editions. Kudos to Dennis Muren, John Dykstra et al!

It's two clicks deep on the article that Moryath linked to, so I can see how you'd miss it:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticle...
A peer reviewed paper from Nature Medicine giving the scientific basis for believing that the spike protein was a natural occurrence, not engineered.

except:
"While the analyses above suggest that SARS-CoV-2 may bind human ACE2 with high affinity, computational analyses predict that the interaction is not ideal7 and that the RBD sequence is different from those shown in SARS-CoV to be optimal for receptor binding7,11. Thus, the high-affinity binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise. This is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation."

Just in case anyone isn't aware: you can still buy a single one-off permanent license of Microsoft Office 2024 for $150, supported until October 2029
I make that a saving of over $500 over that period, assuming that the sub price never goes up again! Microsoft haven't added a feature I cared about for over 10 years.

Microsoft kind of bury it, but with this price increase I can't see why anyone would pay for the subscription.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fen-u...

It's both of those effects. And, in addition...
It's an unwritten rule of critics (well, published ones) that you don't write even an honest negative review for a relatively unknown band/author/director etc. What's the point? No would be interested to read the review anyways. But it's absolutely fair game to slam a successful band's new album because they can take it.

So sum up all three effects: selection bias, reversion to the mean and 'your-first-album-is-your-life's-work' and the conclusion that 'critics are to blame' is pretty obvious.

'Fan' ratings are an even more flawed metric. They are, by definition, not remotely objective. A new band has fewer devoted fans to declare their album awesome.

Can I help? I saw the premier of this at the Palace of Fine Arts a few weeks ago. To directly answer your question "why would anyone want to see this?"
- Interest in Brian Eno, who collaborated in creating this. It's in line with his creative history, and includes a lot of personal archive footage and new interviews
- Mild interest in Gary Hurstwit, he's a decent director with an interest in nerdy things that overlap with mine
- Interest in the concept: does it work as a movie? I think generative movies are an inevitable future, curious to see the leading edge of that

The result? It was pretty good. The 'spine' of the movie is a set of Eno interviews where he is engaging and good company. Funny anecdotes and reflection on his career.
The generative part is somewhat invisible, since the bits fit together quite well. Judging from what I remember of the Q&A it ISN'T random - the snippets of interview and archival material are linked together probabilistically. So it is different every time, but not disjointed. eg. It broadly follows a time sequence through his life.

There was a moment when the credits rolled when I thought: that was good, I'd recommend it to friends.Then I thought: well - I can't. They won't see that version. I can't even ever see that version again. Maybe I was just lucky with the really funny sequence of a visibly nervous Bono recording 'In the Name of Love.' A fascinating way to experience something. I'm going to see it again later this month to see how different it is.

For the number of articles I have read about how "self-driving cars are never going to happen," including such details as their total inability to make an unprotected left turn, Google seem to be opening a lot of (presumably functional) services.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftechcrunch.com%2F2022%2F10...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lifewire.com%2Fwhy-s...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F0...

What gives? Feels like some people desperately want them not to happen...

Yeah, that statistic does comes off as totally made up...

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.snopes.com%2Ffact-ch...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politifact.com%2Ffac...

> And honestly.. at the time you went there.... do you remember anyone speaking of "quality issues" with German brands?

It was one of my most memorable experiences of my professional life, largely because I was touring this plant with a colleague who used to do Quality/TPS at Toyota. While I was wildly impressed with most everything I saw (even the beer vending machines), my Quality friend was visibly and audibly horrified with some of what he saw from a QA/LEAN PoV. So I gather the German auto companies were still lagging the Japanese at that time.

Still - the beer: probably not a big deal. Americans are still rather puritan about alcohol: as a European by upbringing, it was normal to have a beer at lunch when I worked there in the 90's. After I moved to the US I quickly learned that that was considered very unprofessional here.

but the CEO is the deepest level it CAN go (unless you want to point to the board, which would be fair). They shouldn't be 'following a bad rule.' They get to decide the rule.

The CEO is supposed to be in charge of the culture, it's literally their job to provide and demonstrate leadership up and down the company.
Look at Steve Jobs, or for a less tired example Sam Palmisano at IBM. They call the shots about what the company does and doesn't do. They set the tone, and if the company is failing they (should) carry the can.

What IS going on in these suppliers? 50 fuselages with errors is a systematic issue of both manufacturing process (what is being done) and QA (catching what is being done). It's a very serious inditement of their QA, which has implications for their ability to catch other, unrelated additional errors.

It reminds me of the time I got to tour the manufacturing plant of a major luxury car brand in Germany (one of the three you just thought of).
I saw with my own eyes: beer-dispensing vending machines for workers *right alongside* the production line. Wow. That's gotta help quality.

> why would you think that the USA has done exactly what Diector Wray suggests that the Chinese have done?
For one example, stuff like this:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.risidata.com%2Findex...

Isn't a bit like MAD theory with nuclear weapons? If both sides have a weapon so powerful, neither side can use it?
I suspect the US has penetrated every bit as deeply as China has, and they both have their hands all over the critical infrastructure (energy, finance, telecoms, IT, etc). There doesn't seem to be much that either side can keep secret if they try (eg. the Shadowbrokers taking out the elite NSA TAO group).
I imagine that we'd see much more strategic disruptions, ones that causes maximum embarrassment or the right system at the right time, rather than wide-spread pandemonium.