shimon

Yes. Altman was just pointing out something about economies of scale.

You don't have to agree with his values (e.g. you could believe that individual ownership of computation is more important than overall efficiency) but the statement here is logical and more or less obvious.

Can confirm. Our household is involved in raising two natural intelligences. They are quite expensive to maintain. Chances they will offer positive economic return are unclear. The value proposition on comptuer-based intelligence, by-token or through hardware ownership, seems much clearer.

I have to admit I am a sort of enthusiast for the natural intelligences, though.

Did you get any interpretation of the imaging? It sounds cool (I'd take an ultrasound selfie) but it has to be medically useful for something before enough doctors grade enough images to kickstart the data collection for diagnosing more.

LLM/AI growth is the major driver of usage growth on all the clouds.

Actually no, LLMs (preferably tool-using LLMs that can themselves do web searches and price lookups) are a great way to shop, especially if you're looking in a category and don't know exactly what item you want.

You just say "I want to find some headphones" and it makes you some recommendations. Or it helps you nail down what you're looking for first and then gives you options at various price points. I've found this useful when shopping for cars, computers, tourist activities, and much more.

At what point does the use of clues to uncover the identity of a criminal cross the line from solid detective work to doxing? /s

Can you explain the joke in that username?

I totally agree, but it is reflective of a shift in how cultural products are designed and selected that is in my view the more interesting story here.

When selection is personal, you have a smaller set of choices and will respond to how things feel. If you're walking down a street looking at 3 restaurants, a surprising element in one might speak to you in a way you can't even explain. On the other hand, if you're just browsing in maps, you'll be going by ratings that reward a more generic notion of quality. That type of selection is algorithmic rather than personal.

More parts of our lives have been algorithmized than even before, and we generally like this because selecting things is hard. But algorithmization can drive us toward local maxima, where the pleasantness of familiarity draws us away from selecting or creating something truly personal. Of course, it can also draw people into arcane and corrupt niches like conspiracy theories.

The algorithmizations of physical spaces and social connections are probably the newest and most distressing. These realms used to be almost entirely localized; the idea you'd pick your friends or spouse by algorithm used to be rare and is now dominant. But personal relationships are incredibly nuanced and the algorithms are inadequate to the diversity of human desires. Yet they're shaping our desires in a way that is preventing many people from finding their happiness.

It would make sense to expect some ramp up because immigration is a stronger electoral issue than it was previously, and because a second Trump administration will probably be more coordinated and effective in implementing its goals than the first one was. Given how laden with unintended consequences any change in immigration policy is, though, there are probably some limits on the rate of change that would be possible and politically prudent.

For example, without undocumented immigrants, milk would be a lot more expensive (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/magazine/milk-industry-un...). The current election is showing us quite starkly how significant grocery staple prices are in shaping public perception of a nation's economic health.

I'm particularly impressed by your choice of "up there with Euchre" as a metaphor to explain Crokinole. It's like you wanted to make it relatable for people in a larger geographic region, but only a little larger.

In many cases, a simple off-the-shelf smart plug would suffice.

On what factual basis can you claim that adverse events are primarily driven by genetics?

On the face of it this seems ludicrous. A baby born to a mother living in a high-risk environment but then adopted by a low-risk family would likely do far better in their life than the inverse.

Yes they also typically buy reinsurance (insurance that covers individuals whose claims exceed some amount in a given year, like say $150,000). The company will have some people in HR who administer this program but they aren't duplicating a lot of what the insurance companies do -- that's why they pay for administrative services.

They rarely have actuaries on payroll but there are several boutique actuarial consultant who serve these companies (e.g. "given the geographical distribution of your employees and the higher use of services X, Y, Z, you would save $xxx if you choose insurer A over insurer B").

Almost every sufficiently large employer does this. Instead of paying premiums to an insurance company which owns the risk (and also makes a profit from that) the large employer pays the actual costs of care, and a percentage to the insurance company for the administrative work (using their provider network, claims processing systems, etc.).

Insurers don't want to pay for unnecessary treatments, including equipment. Maybe your provider could have done a better job selecting the right mask or settings for the CPAP? Maybe they could have trained you in their office?

I'm not saying the surveillance and payment-held-hostage model is the best, but it does at least attempt to provide some useful incentives.

I think the Android approach is: the back button usually does what you want, unless what you want is consistency.

Thoughtfully designed apps tend to set up clear expectations and deliver on them. Thoughtless or malicious apps can be confusing or intentionally mislead.

Yes, it's often hard to identify this as an outsider. But people inside the company know, and if you've worked in places that handle conflict in healthy ways and in some that handle it not-so-well, you'll know quite clearly within a few days where your workplace stands.

The used/refurbished market for Chromebooks is great for buyers, too. There's not much demand for used Chromebooks so you can get something quite nice for personal/kid use around $100-200.

If you're going to make a symbolic gesture you don't cloak it in so much secrecy that nobody can even reasonably guess what you're trying to symbolize.

You say this as if it does something other than reinforce that Microsoft has figured out how to do this effectively and demonstrated that capability multiple times.

Thanks for elaborating - that sounds really cool.

Interesting technique. Are there some similarities to the Venetian Plaster technique? (Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfGbryICt0A)

I'd love to do something like this with my family someday. Any advice based on your experience?

What was your AC repair? Did it involve dealing with the refrigerant system or just other electronic components? If so, I'd be shocked too -- AFAIK most commonly-used refrigerant compounds are not generally available to civilians because of the environmental damage caused by their irresponsible discharge.

I agree, the scale problems seem to outweigh the scale economies at N=2. At some point you get positive network effects where the older ones contribute to the care of the younger ones, but so far we mainly observe a lot of resource contention with frequent livelock exceptions requiring intervention by the parent processes.

Yes, the point is that for most classes of merchants this behavior is not allowed by their contracts with their payment processors.

You're still generating a lot less trash than replacing the whole laptop, but I have a hard time imagining how you can get the level of consumer-upgradeability you seem to want in a laptop form factor. You have to compromise somewhere.

No company today has the level of consolidated power over the computing industry that Microsoft had in the 1990s. It's actually hard to imagine now, when the situation even at the very top of the industry is so much more competitive.

It's almost like saying "Donald Trump's presidency was just like Josef Stalin". Sure, there are bad things but if you seriously look at what was going on, there was just a whole different level of badness.

Or your IT team can implement an offboarding process that does something reasonable here, like transfer ownership of any remaining files to the departing employee's manager. Or sequester them somewhere with specified access rules. Some version of this problem is present in any corporation but the right solution varies a lot.

It comes down to whether the experience is desired or not.

When multiple people recognize and respond to you, it is a sign of fame and respect. People generally like to be well-known and respected, so this coordination is appreciated.

When a machine recognizes and responds to you, it is often not a sign of respect but a sign of exploitation. I think it's kinda useful when I see relevant ads on a website based on my recent browsing. But I might feel differently if I spent 8 hours a day driving wherever a computer told me to go or cooking whatever a computer told me to cook.