I live in the New England and last year got a quote for replacing my existing boiler and furnace with two heat pumps. MassSave offers a good rebate program with $10k rebate. The problem is that the installers have bumped up the prices to the point where even after the rebate it would have costed me $35K. With that kind of price, and high electricity rates, I have no hope of saving money compared to my current setup.
For a layperson, the passwords are easy to understand and provide enough ways to shoot themselves in the foot. Unless you are an expert, password hygiene can rarely be accomplished.
For a layperson, passkeys are difficult to understand, but provide out-of-the-box hygiene and security.
Passwords are not fine. What we need is better explanation/education of passkeys.
AI may be meta's only and real "grow out of newsfeed business" card. They should probably pivot, release their own version of ChatGPT/VoiceGPT, start charging for it and maybe rebrand (metai?). They are currently not being taken seriously, despite the chops they have, due to their stupid obsession with social and connecting people.
Perhaps by consumers but among the AI industry/NLP I would view them as the top 3 most sophisticated companies. They have also gained a ton of respect from me for not joining in with the "closed" approach other companies have all now adopted.
They have, but when OpenAI started spouting "too dangerous to release" was about the same time they effectively dropped the "Open" part. I hope that is not the same for Meta. But wasn't Meta not releasing model weights except for a leak? In that respect are Meta and OpenAI already equivalent?
OpenAI isnt even oublishing papers any more, and Meta has been publishing model weights for many models for quite some tome and have also commited to releasing their next language model open
It’s about time. We probably need to go even faster, like face melting faster to remain competitive/relevant. Frankly though, this is just one of the dimensions. There is also the “people will need to work harder” dimension. That will be a harder adjustment for people. Nevertheless this is a good news
It’s hard to be an absolutist on such a big question. Everyone has distilled it in their own ways. I will throw mine:
There is no purpose of life. Life is THE purpose. To experience its full brilliance is the ONLY purpose. And only way to experience that is through a healthy mind and healthy body. So do what you can to take care of those.
I've seen this play out badly for some though. As you correctly state, hard to be absolute about such things. For some people, it can escalate to a very egocentric behavior, in turn making live worse for others. One could argue most of us wanting the best living standard all the time is perhaps the main cause for a lot of problems around the world, including global warming.
If you one day wake up inside a box isn't your purpose in life from that moment on to find out how to escape from the box, and if that turns out to be impossible to figure out what the box is made of, etc.?
It seems that many people could enjoy a rich life, but instead they are thinking about that box all the time.
There’s a big difference between Microsoft and Google though - diversification. Microsoft have been truly diversified in their portfolio. When they release new products they mean it, they iterate, they put wood behind the arrow.
Google’s sole interest is their ad business. If a product doesn’t increase ad revenue, it’s just a PR stunt to keep the brand relevant, it will be quietly sunset when nobody is looking. This will be their Achilles heel.
I have never had any brush with the giant. But I have my own little story to share. Way back in 1998, I was a newly minted engineer in India and was visiting Bangalore. While roaming around on MG Road, I picked up a book named “Inside Intel”. It is through that book that I learned about Gordon Moore. On the 48 hour train journey back to Delhi, I devoured the book. It left an impression and I was in awe. It also ignited something in me. I wanted to become a better engineer, so I bought my first computer soon after. I wanted to be in the “Silicon Valley”. As the fate would have it, 3 years later, I landed there. Little did I know that this serendipity and random inspiration would weave my life story. I remain awestruck with the person and the impact that he left. RIP
In 1999 on MG Road, it was more likely a roadside vendor with pirated books, Higginbotham, or unlikely, Gangarams. Blossom’s (Church St) wasn’t yet open IIRC.
Late 90s and early 2000s, I recall that Intel Inside, Lee Iacocca’s book, Who Moved my Cheese, Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, Jack Welch’s book, etc were commonly sold, in addition to the latest novels. I even remember buying Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind (was popular because of the movie then) from a roadside vendor.
On the contrary, the bookshop situation in Bengaluru is exceptional!
The old book shops have been disrupted. Sapna is one that has adapted well, with a publishing house, decent web-presence, and has grown too.
For the best technical books, you now go to Tata Book House (may be others, I am unaware of). Novels, and such, Blossom's on Church Street is one of the best. Then there are cafe-bookshop types like Crossword, etc.
Kannada and other language book stores are also thriving.
> Resident Alien - I think that’s how USCIS calls people who do intend to stay but not immigrate
Resident alien is a general term (not specific to the US) for someone who permanently resides in a country without citizenship; it is also an IRS tax term for someone who is either a permanent resident alien or who meets the “substantial presence test” so that they are treated as residents for tax purposes.
A permanent resident alien is another term for someone with a green card, which is for people who intend to (often, already have) immigrated before they qualify for naturalization.
