Just as a casual test... I opened up Microsoft Word (online version). There's a button on the Review ribbon labelled "Spelling & Grammar", click that and the realtime, inline suggestions and squiggles are off no matter how many errors are present... click that button again and they're there.
So there are two modes... and have been for as long as I can remember (maybe since automatic spell check was there) and it is just a button press.
Now knowing that it's there... well... how many people review feature documentation these days, especially for something that is "feature rich", like Word?
I can't help you with any of those questions... but back in the 90s I use to be one of those employees that looked at the image on the screen and typed the address information in Salt Lake City.
Quantitatively, I don't know the stats, but qualitatively I can confirm it felt like a lot.
There were several editions. My copy (sitting on my bookshelf as I speak) was the '73 edition (though I think a later printing), but they did revise it including releasing it for the then prevalent home microcomputers.
I first learned programming converting these things to run on my VIC-20 (and later C64). That earliest effort was prior to those later editions... and I'm kinda glad... I had to learn what different things actually meant and judge what was important and not.
> What do electric cars and rockets have in common?
Electric motors? I imagine there are differences but the super heavy grid fins are electrically actuated (I have heard these motors were sourced from Tesla, though I don't have a great reference for that on hand). The thrust vectoring is also electrically actuated... again, I imagine there are differences of what's on the rocket and what's in the cars... but there are cross over areas of research and engineering.
Also, in a hand-wavy way, rovers share some traits with electric cars; again electric motors, wheels, steering, etc.
So while I don't believe a traditional car company is exactly trying to build space hardened/ready equipment in the normal course of business... it's not as far fetched as some combinations could be.
Unless you are seeing the population decline issues in China... then blame socialism and it's long time one child policy. A system predicated on the socialists in power having a sort of "paternalistic wisdom" that it can enforce on society regardless of the individual interests of any set potential parents in having a larger family than their socialist masters wish.
This is a pretty poor take. Sure the software that we call "PostgreSQL" started to be developed in the 80's... but they didn't stop there. PostgreSQL has been in continuous development, including improvements, changes, and additions, and by some very smart people at that. It's not static and as long as I've been a professional user of the database, decades, it has continually evolved and in some cases even led the way. If we were to survey the software, wouldn't you at least be interested to know how much of code base actually dates back to those long ago decades and how much is more modern before making such statement?
It would be a mistake to take what PostgreSQL actually offers: an excellent database that has be continuously developed and updated over many years (i.e. "maturity"), for some arbitrary idea and evidently baseless idea that somehow "new" must be better.
If new is better, say why; and do so with more actually true statements than it's not extensible. Want it in rust? Well, OK, sure you can give hand-wavy reasons about security and such for why that might be beneficial; but if you want to be convincing you need to be much more specific about the problem in PostgreSQL and the specific way in which your recommendation actually and convincingly moves the needle. If you can't do that, you're simply giving us an emotional outpouring rather than a rational one.
If you're going to try and use this analogy, you need to compare Elixir to Kotlin or Scala or Clojure rather than Java. Elixir is a language written for the BEAM which was created for Erlang. The BEAM happened to be useful VM for these other languages such as Elixir, Gleam, LFE, & Luerl.
I think that's part of it, but not necessarily the whole story. I haven't criticized them in the thread yet... so here goes.
Previously, I posted critically not because they were running businesses without humans, but because their post just described going through the motions without actually discussing if it really was effective or not. Sure the AI got through the day, checked off tasks on the list, but did it actually do that effectively or efficiently in any important way? Who knows... wasn't discussed.
I think where I come down now is that repeats of this same gimmick feel like just that: they're just playing a gimmick for attention. I can't tell that they're really demonstrating any special or significant capability... but man, just the story of trying to run a business without humans will get you that sweet, sweet attention.
Unfortunately, looking at least the first post, I stopped reading their "we let AI run X" posts. I think the only thing I really came away with is how thoughtless and mundane are most aspects of running a small business actually is; something I knew, but it really drove the point home. I didn't learn anything unexpected about AI tools or their products that seemed compelling or unexpected.
Easily one of the best values in commercial software if you have a need for what it does. I think I paid something ~$70 a couple of years ago. While there's a limitation on the number of updates you get based on release version, I'm still getting updates under the license a couple years on. All that and you get a genuinely professional level tool for much less than what similar software from competitors offer.
There are a number of assumptions in what you say that don't necessarily hold.
1) That school is simply about landing a job.
2) That there is a value in students knowing how to have the AI do problems for them.
3) That follow-on effects of manually solving difficult problems is discountable compared to the direct output of the work.
I would say you're absolutely correct in that people pay for the result and they don't really care how you got there. But that's a pretty shallow rationale which overvalues the ability to be the conduit from the source of requirements to the final output and undervalues the individual ability to think for one's self when faced with the challenges of technological, geopolitical, or simply uncontrolled personal circumstances.
"The conduit", who you seem to be believe is the one with marketplace advantage, is exactly the person I would say is the most vulnerable. Not because getting the AI to produce demands is without value, but that its quickly becoming a task that doesn't need the intermediary at all. Those magicians that can prompt/agent/mcp/etc their way through to positive successes are actively being challenged by the very AI producers which our conduits people now depend on. Removing the need for intermediaries would be a great competitive advantage for any AI vendor able to achieve it. But insofar as intermediaries create output from LLMs, they'll not be very well differentiated: the common wisdom tends to be the output, lest the AI be accused of hallucination or being overly supportive. But when everyone is using AI for everything the opportunities will be in arbitraging that which is missed by common wisdom... filling in the cracks that any responsible AI would simply never venture to consider. Our conduit-person will be at a decided disadvantage because it takes real thought to know when it's best to color within the lines, and when it's best to not do so.
And that's really it. A good education is teaching you about the process of thought and becoming practiced at thinking. I would expect a better educated, thinking person to more easily adapt and make use of technology such as generative AI to solve problems more so than a person that just knows how to deal with today's prompting needs. The thinking person will be able to understand the bigger picture to better get a consistent and high quality series of results than the person just getting results as needed.
And that's really it. The output of a good education is you as a thoughtful & knowledgeable person: the output on the page is merely a means to that end. But if you focus solely on the answer on the page and the only important thing... you're really evaluating the AI, not the person that acted as intermediary.
In otherwords, if the person following your advice comes for a job, simply ask them which AIs they used in the interview and then just sign contracts with those vendors instead... you'll get better bang for your buck cutting out the middleman.
I skimmed through this, and maybe I missed it... but what really are they trying to prove? Are they trying to show that AI is capable of arbitraging consumer desires vs. market products/services into a successful business? Are they trying to show that once you get to financially managing a business that the ruthlessly efficient demands of the AI can mean points to your margins? Or are they simply trying to get attention in an otherwise arguably overcrowded market for AI service s (maybe the AI suggested something like this)?
The only thing that I saw demonstrated, and again, I skimmed, is what many thousands of software developers using AI tools to write their boilerplate already know: these tools, as of now, are great at going through the motions. A successful retail business, and I spent many years in the retail industry, isn't about putting together a nice store front, hiring clerks, and selecting just any-old-products: it's about being profitable. In traditional retail one of most important things is getting the right real estate for your target market... seems like that choice was made already in this case. Yes, a nice store front and good clerks are important, but I've worked in chains which were immaculately designed and built stores with great clerks that failed... and some that opened little more than fluorescent lighted hellscapes with clerks that barely cared that succeeded. In both cases the overall quality of the decisions and strategies relative to the target markets mattered to the success of the business. Just going through the motions didn't.
So if all is this is to say AI can do the things people generally do in these circumstances then sure, you didn't need this much human effort to prove that.... developer types do that at scale everyday now. If there was something different that this company is trying to learn, I'd be much more interested in that.
I think this really needs to be party of the message. It's great that Claude found a vulnerability that apparently has been overlooked for a long time. It's even proper for Anthropic to tout the find. But we should all ask about the signal to nose ratio that would have been part of the process. If it only was successful... That would be worth touting, too. But I expect there was more noise than they'd care to admit.
They've pretty clearly demonstrated the ability to get to orbit but have, quite reasonably, not actually put the thing into orbit. Given the size of the rocket they've been needing to demonstrate things like the relight for control after achieving orbit and have prioritized other issues like figuring out reentry.
So yes, you are literally correct in that they haven't put one in orbit, but it's more out of caution than capability. What they've only demonstrated in the most recent tests is that they have good reason to believe to believe that they can deorbit in a controlled fashion. But... now they've upgraded everything: raptor 3, booster v3, starship v3. Those need to prove out those capabilities again.
So I wouldn't be surprised if they continue the suborbital program for the next 3 or 4 tests. Given all the redesign, they aren't exactly at the beginning, but they have to show that they haven't broken what they previously fixed.