HankB99

I'm not a mathematician but an engineer, math adjacent.

I recall once saying something to a colleague even more cringe-worthy than this. Fear of one's own position and stature can make us (speaking for myself) say things we later regret.

> 5% solution (to the hardest problems),

Isn't that more likely the easiest problems in the set? I suppose the hardest problems compared to those that have been solved.

Otherwise your points stand.

Ooo. I have a Midea dehumidifier. When it powers up it displays the WiFi symbol. I wonder if it is hammering away at my access point. Might it be better to bring it on line and then just block all traffic?

And I wonder how I would even tell if it was trying to associate with my WiFi.

I think about this WRT data centers in general. It seems to me that they are not likely to be more intrusive than power plants and we've been siting them for decades. Of course no one wants a coal plant or nuclear plant next door. Why does that have to be?

And IMO the data centers could be built that are much less intrusive in the neighborhood. Perhaps they could blunt some of the complaints by covering the buildings and parking areas with solar panels. I suspect the answer here is that the companies building data centers are putting every possible dollar into data and compute capacity and as little as possible into mitigating the factors that lead to complaints.

Industrial sites: On the shores of Lake Michigan in Illinois there used to be a steel mill - US Steel's South Works. It's abandoned and is designated a "quantum park" (Illinois Quantum and Microelectronic Park.) Neighbors have extracted an agreement from the governor to not build a data center there. It seems to me that a data center would be much less objectionable than a steel mill. (I worked at a steel mill in the 70s and they are nasty places.)

Just north of Rockford IL there is a plan to build a data center which is drawing objections due to the impact on "quality of life." I can't speak to that but it looks like it would be situated in what is now farm land. Several farms would probably be bought up to make this, if it happens.

I think there are two motivations to build data centers in space, despite the technical challenges:

* Outside of any regulatory boundary, though I'm not sure how much that matters if they're selling their services within a regulated area. * No neighbors to complain.

I just checked my closest Microcenters (in Illinois.) 12 in Westmont and 25+ in Chicago (for $18) Zero W were 13 and 25+ respectively at $15.

Long gone are the days when they would sell a Pi Zero for $3.14 on Pi day.

> Not sure what that has to do with the owl--"teasing"

I wonder if they're just amusing themselves (by being little jerks.)

One day in early spring, I thought I heard a Red Tail Hawk screeching in a tree directly above me. I stood back, searching for it. I never spotted it despite the leaves barely out on the tree. But I did spot a Blue Jay hopping around some lower branches.

When I got home I looked up Blue Jay behavior and found that they do imitate the calls of Red Tail Hawks, among others.

I suspect they're looking at the cost of implementing a one time refund/credit vs. reducing prices without the need to implement anything special.

Yes, I'm being charitable but not having to spend part of the refund on an extra program could benefit their customers more in the long run.

(We're Costco members.)

Would it make sense to consider anything that prevents a process from completing it's intended function an error? It seems like this message would fall into that category and, as you pointed out, could result from a local fault as well.

> A good old ICE car will be cheaper to make than an EV

How much of that is the result of the relatively maturity of the technology? We've been continuously improving ICE based transportation for well over a hundred years. It's been a lot shorter for electric vehicles.

I suspect that there are bigger strides to make with electrics that may eventually turn that around.

Our kids have a Rottweiler that loves to chase a ball, Bring it back and then dare us to try to take it away from her. She can drop if convinced. Or I have a second ball that is more interesting, causing her to drop the other ball. She can hold two balls in her mouth so I have to wait for her to drop the first ball before I throw.

She also has a large (about 1 food diameter) ball that can't possibly fit in her mouth and I can kick that at which point she'll drop the little ball and try to get the big one in her mouth.

I was thinking of that in terms of siloed web sites but your description of walling off information is broader and more appropriate.

It shipped in the release version but was disabled according to a note on Wikipedia.

> Microsoft disabled the AARD code for the final release of Windows 3.1, but did not remove it so it could be later reactivated by the change of a single byte.

IIRC it did manage to make it into the PCs of some users - testers and early adopters?

/pedant