NYT is spouting every headline they can imagine to shift votes toward Trump, and not just lately. Their entire editorial focus is to cast confusion on Democrats’ prospects. They should be recognized as firmly partisan and no longer serving a journalistic purpose. Unfortunate, but that’s the times in which we live.

There is a new process for treating wastewater sludge that destroys the microfibers, so that is good news at least. I think it may be expensive, of course. It is called “hydrothermal carbonization”. Basically put the sludge in a giant pressure-cooker and the heat breaks the plastics into carbon and some water-soluble residual molecules which can go back to the start of the wastewater treatment plant to be biodegraded. But like others say, the main source in general is tires - not sure if they know whether tire microplastics are the main source in agricultural land though.

The statistic of low Firefox use is based on accessing US government websites. Could it be that there is significantly LESS government site access by the population of users that prefer Firefox? As a corollary I recently read that game companies observed significantly HIGHER bug reporting from Linux users on Steam, not because there were more Linux-related bugs, but simply because that set of users were more likely to initiate bug reports. Of course Firefox is not Linux and Steam is not the world, but a statistic from a relatively narrow segment of the internet should not be assumed representative of the whole.

wrong, western philosophy is often based on dichotomies - something is either this or that, but it is more of an analytical tool (I am not nature despite that I am a part of nature). Eastern philosophies are often mystic, though there is western mysticism - that some aspects of existence are incomprehensible on a rational basis and therefore dichotomies are illusory. But such a perspective does not inherently make people better stewards of the environment - in fact they might conclude that their every action is “natural” by definition.

lmao

I’d hate to think modern society is based on a giant elaboration of poker, but I can’t rule it out - it MIGHT not be the worst outcome, but a pseudo-equilibrium far from the best. Every young person knows something accessible in the past is now lost to them - not sure what it is, but there is a hole. And yet, the social track laid out is almost unavoidable.

I traveled a good bit the past 20 years and I’ve experienced first-hand the really hard work and the immense gratification of simple farming. Nobody wants to live like that (at least so they think). Having done it, I can’t even say I recommend it over what modern society seems to offer. But since the best option on offer is not a true equilibrium, as the climate is making abundantly clear, what is on offer may be illusory. An alternative equilibrium - tried and true - is worth considering when opportunity arises: subsistence farming. It is NOT simple or easy - don’t wait until there is no other option.

the ultimate run-away train! No matter how impossibly big it is, it just grew infinitely bigger in the past second.

maybe space is the graviton field itself(!), but maybe there is a graviton field (or is it the Higgs field?) and gravitons (and Higgs particles?) are excitations of that field; like other particles are excitations of their various postulated quantum fields

I have plain ol’ Ubuntu LTS and I do not recall a Steam crash in a decade. Playing with Nvidia GPU on AMD Ryzen in recent years.

These are some good points. The more traditional engineering disciplines have a depth of methods and practices that developed over time, and software engineering is - what? only maybe 50 years old or so? I have not worked with software engineers, but with all other sorts, so I know if there is engineering going on in software development there will be certain methods in place: preliminary designs that senior teams evaluate and compare, interdisciplinary review so the features of design that “work” for one objective also do not detract from others, and quality control - nobody works alone - every calculation and every sentence and every communication is documented, reviewed by someone else, and recorded permanently.

I can imagine that some software engineering efforts must bring some of these tools to bear, sometimes - but the refrain in software development has long been “we don’t have time or funds to do it that way - things are moving too fast, or it is too competitive.” Which maybe all that is true, and maybe it can all be fun and games since nobody can get hurt. So if game developers want to call themselves engineers regardless of whether they follow, or even know about standards of their industry (let alone any others’), no harm, no foul, right?

An old friend of mine wrote the autopilot software for commercial passenger jets - though he retired about 25 years ago. He was undoubtedly engaged in a project that nowadays would be dubbed software engineering. The aerospace company included him in the team with a whole slew of different engineers of all sorts and they did all the sort of engineerish things. But I don’t have the impression that much software goes through that kind of scrutiny - even software that demonstrably deeply affects lives and society. In a way this is like criticizing the engineering of an AR-15; what were the engineers thinking to develop something that would kill people?! But it seems like with software, the development has effects that are a complete shock even to the developers: facebook algorithms weren’t devised to promote teen suicide, it was just an unforeseen side effect for a while.

I think it is time for software engineering to be taken seriously. And there is professional licensing. The problem is that corporations are dubbing their staff as software engineers a lot of times, when there is no licensed engineer in the building and there are no engineering systems in place. It is fine for me to say that I engineered the rickety shelves in my garage, because I’m an engineer and therefore it must be so, but that is some sensationally bad logic. They could collapse at any moment - I’m a chemical engineer.

Thank you for this correction. I will make a note that professional engineering has nothing to do with engineering - I don’t know how I have been so confused for so long!

I think engineers have been held liable for the soundness and fitness-for-purpose of what they “engineered” since ancient Rome - though they have certainly been called upon to engineer a greater variety of things in the past couple of centuries. And I think if someone proposes to engineer software, I am all for that! We could do with a great deal more of it in fact. And let’s dispense with this perpetual disclaimer of warranty for merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and such terms. If an engineer designs it and it does not work, the engineer is generally held to be negligent and liable . . . except if they are a software engineer, of course.

this seems to reflect the simultaneous co-opting of the titles “architect” (one who designs physical edifices such as buildings) and “engineer” (one who applies math and science principles to problems of infrastructure and industrial production). We all understand what is meant by design, but that does not mean a software design must be devised by an “engineer” or an “architect” anymore than an interior design (though there are also some self-styled “design architects” roaming about). So is it possible to say what is different about software development and software engineering without saying the engineer is an architect? Is it that software developers do not design anything (which in its simplest terms is ‘artful arrangement’)? That seems arbitrary - though I agree that there can also be a fine line sometimes between, say, architecture and structural engineering.

How often in the software industry is the title “engineer” a sop to give applicants a flashy title; and how often is there actual engineering involved? When I worked as an engineer some years ago, it seemed inconceivable that software development would become actual engineering because how could the engineering standards of care and professional liability ever be imposed? Today, virtually all software is either privately licensed or open source - there is no such thing as public software infrastructure under the development supervision of a professional software engineer (as far as I know). So I guess Mozilla can call their software developers anything they like, but it seems to be an ongoing cheapening of the engineering title - like why not call this position Chief of Software Surgery? Lead Software Counselor?

“the necessity always to have been” could mean that for something to BE permanent, it is always necessary that it has existed previously. Whether any thing in this universe can be said to be permanent under such a criterion (within the perspective of spacetime) is doubtful. But if time is a feature of this universe, then there could be perspectives beyond it where all of this universe is permanent, I suppose.

yes captain

You don’t have to use Google at all. They are pretty ubiquitous, so you have to make a little effort - search with another tool (I find duckduckgo to be quite satisfactory). Although Youtube has the lion’s share of the video, there are other places to go. It is the same with all Google products.

maybe you are a little short on RAM? OS and apps keep growing, but installed RAM does not grow with them. :(

You are right about one thing, the US does not yet have a decarbonization strategy - it is like a motor that is not quite starting; banging on a cylinder here or there but not yet running (may this analogy be completely indecipherable in another generation). But maybe things are starting to change a little?

You know, just wearing a seatbelt is not enough to keep you from being killed in a car wreck, so might as well not wear it, eh?