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.

Ironically enough, this would be good for most of Slashdot. It could have saved creimer.

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.

That's because videos are terribly efficient. You used to be able to skim an article in 30 seconds and get all of the important information. Now it's a 45 minute video explaining that the bash command you need is du -sh /path/to/folder

to get the folder size.

Do I need to listen to two podcasters ramble for an hour? No I do not. Not only do I want to play it back at 2x speed. I also want an AI to cut out the 90% of fluff.

JSON is an improvement over XML and easier to transmit than YAML.

Patrick was not happy with the veto.

Abbott has called a special session for the purpose of writing a new bill. I suspect that Patrick will get a very slightly looser version of SB3 passed, which may itself get vetoed.

The number of times that my wife has had to submit a copy of her marriage certificate to confirm her original name even though we've been married for 11 years baffles me. It made some sense in the first year or two, but she still has to do it a couple of times a year for seemingly random things. I encouraged her to keep her original name when we were planning the wedding, but she insisted on the name change.

I teach at a highly rated high school. I use AI to help me come up with ideas for lesson plans. I don't just accept it whole: even if I wanted to, AI lesson plans simply aren't coherent enough to actually use for an extended time.

As for the criticism that teachers use AI to make it, students use AI to do it, the process is a joke: it's two separate issues. Nobody cares how the teachers do it. We could use tarot cards, and if it made good lesson plans, hell yeah. The whole focus is on the students. Students need to know how to do the independent thinking on their own, or at least how to do the independent thinking with the assistance of an LLM (no teacher I know actually believes this, but I could see the argument being made).

And certainly every single teacher is aware that students can use AI to cheat. It's like at the forefront of teacher thought right now. I'm an English teacher using motherfucking blue books like it was 1987. Schools are all implementing paper tests, switch to in-class assignments only, weighting homework at 0% or nearby it because cheating on Homework has become trivial, etc.

Oh, finally, about AI grading. I'm sure it happens, but I've never heard of it happening. I guess I could see that for like a practice assignment? I don't think AI is trusted enough for students or parents to accept AI grading results, even if I wanted to do that.

It's not about scale. Fiber is inexpensive to make. But it's just more temperamental than copper. You need to keep the ports completely dust free. It's not ideal for a normal home and doesn't carry electricity so you can't power a device at the other end of the plug with POE.

There are $700 gaming monitors with those specs already. There will probably be $300 gaming monitors with those specs in a year or two.

Like a bike messenger? Why does a delivery rider need home internet?!

He vetoed the bill.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.texastribune.org%2F2...

He doesn't care. It wouldn't be going to his supporters for the most part, and some of the more vocal ones will criticize him for it.