I’m sure it’s possible to do both in theory but I find it hard to believe that it’s possible in practice.

If it was California wouldn’t be covered in superfund sites that originated from industrial activities that took place decades ago.

I've been thinking recently about how with the impending demographics crunch hitting a lot of countries soonish you're going to see a sort of day of reckoning for municipalities that were run poorly in the past because people will just move to ones that that don't have horrible budget and infrastructure deficits and the one sthat do will just shrivel up and die.

Tha perpetually increasing population growth is no more and that means no more growing tax base to paper over terrible decisions to pass them onto another generation.

For the first time in a long while we're looking at actual, real selection pressures on municiptalities.

This is what a lot of people don't get. The magic genie that lets you wish for more wishes isn't a a rack of GPUs in a DC somewhere.

It's a domestic robot that can do full maintenance on another domestic robot.

Self replicating machines are the genie that grants you more wishes. They are the genie that can turn that land, energy, and precious metals into copies of themselves.

What happens when the genies realize that the meatbags that require 3000 kilocalories a day are just a net drag on the whole system?

Altman was just this week quoted as saying things in that direction...

I've been mulling over a system where there's a legislative body composed of citizens picked through sortition and another legislative body that's elected like normal legislative bodies of today.

The twist on that body however is that voting is mandatory and ballots have a non of the above option on them. If a super majority (say 60-75%) vote none of the above the election is a do-over with all the people on the ballot being uneligable to run for that seat for say 5-10 years.

I like the idea, but I worry about choosing random members of the public when so many people are unprepared for it. Any kind of government made up of "the people" requires that those people be literate, educated, and informed. With things the way they are today I'd worry that your secondary elected legislative body would end up doing everything and you'd either end up with a figurehead who'd be out of their depth and ineffectual or one being used/manipulated.

I could also envision an endless cycle of elections with 75%+ of the population voting "none of the above" because of issues like "Not my personal favorite candidate" or "eats the wrong mustard" or "I hate the idea of government"

Nice one, that might actually work. But it will be hard to explain to the electorate.

How do you expect anyone to take what you just wrote seriously when there's such a blatantly obvious difference in the detectability of the use of these two different products?

what do you mean? if some kid doesn't want to pay attention they can draw doodles, daydream, read a book under the table, talk to other students, and finally ... be on their phone. we did all of these! (played snake on a 3310.)

up to a point the teacher's job is to notice these, and motivate the student to pay attention (report cards, detention, extra homework), or ask for them to be removed from class if they are disruptive, if necessary permanently.

The two products of phones in 2026 and phones in 2010? In 2010 they were smaller.

It's just not relevant. When I was in highschool some teachers had a thingy on the wall where you would hang up your cell phone in a pouch. If it wasn't there, you better have a good explanation, or you'll be counted absent.

The solutions are simple and effectively free. That's not the issue. The issue is nobody wants to do the solutions. Schools don't, parents don't, kids don't. Everyone is just lying to themselves.

You can't on one hand claim to care about kids and then on the other dismiss obvious tactics like banning cell phones.

The freedom of 18-21 year olds to consume cannabis legally and not be threatened with violence from the state for doing so.

Yes, what you observed is people making unrealistic and disingenuous responses in reply to equally unrealistic and disingenuous reefer madness type propaganda.

What happened is that the people making these disengenuous comments in bad faith did not realize that so many others would watch them and without understanding hte context woudl pick up those same disingenuous arguments and take them as truth.

This is all the long term consequences of allowing Reefer Madness tier propaganda be published and not repudiated immediately.

I think a better question is why is a person like you in a position to be paying anyone anything close to $150k?

Every time I read stuff like this on HN I think to myself "Man the downfall of SV can't come soon enough."

It's really hard to disentangle the myriad of factors that go into the differences that we see in life expectency and quality of life between Canada and the United States but it wouldn't surprise me that this is one of those ones that accounts for some miniscule amount of the difference.

Why the glib dismissal when you most certainly live in a country where the use of titles like 'doctor', 'dentist', 'officer' or 'lawyer' is most certainly regulated?

This isn't really that exceptional and as someone from a place where not just anyone can call themselves engineer I'm always baffled when people think that it is.

Your comment completely misses the point of my question. Those countries are regulating the title not the profession.

Here is the difference: the Doctors have a liability for their medical practice, the real Engineers meaning those doing Bridges and Buildings that can kill thousands of people if they fall, have a professional obligation and responsability on the outcomes of their designs and implementation.

I can guarantee you, no Software Engineer from Portugal to Germany will be willing to guarantee the behavior and fitness for purpose, of any System or Software product they develop :-) As you very well can see, if you bother to read the full details on the Software License disclaimers of any software from any large company. From Microsoft to Oracle, IBM and others.

As such those are Software Engineers on title only, what is convenient to be hired for post within Government and similar...

> no Software Engineer from Portugal to Germany will be willing to guarantee the behavior and fitness for purpose, of any System or Software product they develop

Then they shouldn't call themselves engineers.

It's not really a big deal and I don't understand the confusion around this.

>> Then they shouldn't call themselves engineers

That is the whole point. :-) Real Software Engineers do not exist other than in title. Some institutions and governments are arbitraging those who can use the title...

That is the thing software can kill, or destroy lives in presence of bugs.

Again, sign any legal documents as engineer, and a court visit might turn into reality.

If Oracle, IBM or Microsoft after 50 years, and employing thousands of Software Engineers ...include the standard disclaimers on their Software, I dont think those in title only should make much fuss of the Software Engineer badge...

Only because so far they haven't been called into court as much as they should.

Thankfully stuff like Crowdstrike and Cloudflare are making governments pay attention to industry losses caused by malpractice.

Then maybe you shouldn't be allowed to rely on such software not causing utter carnage when you're implementing some infrastructure thing via software?

Also note that such warranty disclaiming "fitness for any purpose" is not possible if you sell for money software that you say is for such an infrastructure situation, at least in e.g. Germany. That's not from the license but from the sale though.