C++ was a superb language for its time. There was nothing faster with as-powerful abstractions. It showed how far you can change a language too, with C++11 being a massively better language with shared_ptr and company.

It took in almost every idea, and the battlefield showed us which do work and which don't. We get to keep RAII, move vs copy, smart pointers, placement-new, and generics. We get to drop auto_ptr, copy-by-default, its specific exceptions implementation (fight me), multiple virtual inheritance, and templates as full code substitution.

In my opinion the battles have played out, and Rust is the best sum-up of what worked (it even inherited the compile times! Lucky us!)

AI code is often fine. The point of the code is for the computer to do a job. And code is supposed to be consistent and boring and straightforward in its structure. AI is pretty ok at this.

AI is terrible at writing. Its prose is awful and horrendous to read. Plus, the whole point of reading a written piece is to hear about the author's new ideas or experiences. If AI wrote your piece it's both bad and pointless. I can also prompt the AI to hear what it knows about.

I haven't tried opus 4.8 yet, but I hope the writing quality has returned to the Opus 4.5 level. Anthropic really lost something, where 4.5 had this really crisp writing style that flowed really nicely and 4.6 and 4.7 sound much more "chatgpt-like." It feels like they tuned it to be too much of a problem solver, and when you do that you get this terse, clipped textual output that's more difficult to read.

I've noticed this too. Part of why i don't like GPT is because of how verbose it is but opus 4.7 is nearly as bad. I don't need an essay in response to every question

It is because they have power, and want to be addressed this way. And you are likely to lose your case if you don't follow their rules.

On some superficial level, sure: you have to follow the rules because if you don't, it won't end well for you. But the reason for these rules isn't just self-aggrandizement.

Ultimately, the court is there to implement a procedure. The procedure wasn't invented by the judges; in criminal cases, it's there to give you some protection from the rest of the government, which could otherwise use its police powers to put you in prison based on a whim. The protection isn't perfect, but it beats the alternative.

The court would not be able to carry out that procedure if, for example, anyone could just constantly talk over the judges and not let them get a word in. So there is a pecking order in the courtroom, but mostly because you couldn't have courts without it.

The major axis is urban+gritty to more suburby and spread out. It's a very personal preference where you want to be, but most people dislike the most gritty areas (tenderloin, most of soma). It's worth aiming for a neighborhood at the median as your first.

Yes, bbc had gone back to paywalling this month.

Is real, physical engineering that much better?

Take the new sf bay bridge span. It leaked, and had to be fixed to prevent critical parts from corroding. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Caltrans-was-warned-o...

Projects are consistently over budget, late, and shoddily done in the physical world too.

Yes, if you just list 3 more problems about the US then it means that China has no problems at all.

No it means that perhaps the US should finally start looking at itself instead of just asserting that it doesn't need to because China.

That doesn't mean China should not be criticized. But to me it's clear that the China blame game is not about a genuine concern for Chinese people or its neighbors, it's about trying to keep it down because China should never dared to rise in the first place.

Anglo Saxons and maybe the French should be in charge and the rest should be resource colonies. It very much feels like that Western mentality is still there.

> No it means that perhaps the US should finally start looking at itself instead of just asserting that it doesn't need to because China.

Agreed, the US definitely needs to do some introspection to sort out its own shit (and stop spraying it on everyone else).

However, that does not mean that China gets a pass. Fundamentally, the Chinese model of governance does not protect the individual. For all its faults, the US model is based upon the idea of individual liberty, which acts as a touchstone and allows it to self-correct whenever it goes to far in the wrong direction. That's something the Chinese model does not do, and means that, short of a revolution, it will continue to be an authoritarian state with all of the malignant features that entails.

> Fundamentally, the Chinese model of governance does not protect the individual. For all its faults, the US model is based upon the idea of individual liberty

Look, am not here to defend the Chinese model but I find it interesting how convinced you seem that individualism is the right model for everyone.

While I would generally agree with you, I have spoken to many from poorer countries who say that they prefer to trade some individualism for a steady hand of economic development and lifting the population from poverty. That is the Chinese model.

These people would argue that they can reclaim more and more individual freedom as the country gets richer and more self confident.

I am not saying they are right, but looking at a nominal democracy like India and a nominal autocracy like China, I know which government works better as far as raising the living standards of its population and it's not the Indian one.

My hope is that China will continue to liberalize on its own. Forcing it will likely only reverse the gains.

Individualism also leads to the sort of healthcare system the US had or Skid Row. So it's not all roses.

Grok is despised because it has more aggressive alignment.

The best managers I've seen would turn this situation into a headcount request.

The problem is leadership has priorities 1-5. Your team works on 1-3, but the PM keeps getting hassled about 4 and 5, so they look for levers to get them to happen.

In this situation, the PM scrounged up headcount from elsewhere, but if you present the option of adding headcount to the existing team, then you create a more harmonious option of getting these lower priorities accomplished.

Of course, this guy was taken fully by surprise by the suggestion. It's much harder to present a better option after the fact, and I agree that letting leadership feel the consequences of its decisions is a reasonable thing to do in this case.

> letting leadership feel the consequences of its decisions is a reasonable thing to do in this case

In this case the consequence of leadership's decision was a permanent solution to the CX problem with no permanent increase in headcount.

"Sometimes when you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."