To what end? "Best" implies towards a certain goal. Is the goal economic growth? Or is it a fair society? Those are very different.
For example, if the goal is a fair society, then we should have a wealth tax, to disincentivize wealth equality. (And an income tax isn't so bad either in).
Having only a consumption tax makes sense if the goal is (only) to reduce consumption.
The goal is economic growth, which matters more than anything else. Fun fact: in 1900, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world, at about 60% of US GDP per capita: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/argentina-was-one-o.... Today, Argentina has under 20% of the GDP per capita of the US. The difference is that the U.S. has grown at about 1.7% annually for the past century and change, while Argentina only grew at about 1% annually.
Maybe you're willing to give up 70 basis points in pursuit of a "fairer" society, but that means your grandkids will live in a much poorer society than they'd otherwise live in. This is the trajectory Europe is in currently. Having missed the boat on the Internet, space travel, and now AI, I suspect my grandkids will see a world where people are immigrating from Europe to China the way we see people immigrating from Argentina to the U.S.
GDP per capita is possibly the most worthless, detached-from-reality statistic I've ever seen. Japan has 38% of US GDP per capita; Mississipi, the lowest state, has a significant lead. And yet day-to-day life in Japan is infinitely richer than in even the highest GDP state. A much greater percentage of Japanese people have access to adequate food, housing, and healthcare, with sufficient money left over to enjoy life/hobbies. Perhaps a lower percentage of Japanese people have superyachts. Optimizing for the outcome of a shithole nation where tens of millions are denied access to healthcare, life expectancy is below almost any other developed nation, crime is out of control and the prison population is the highest in the world, etc seems greatly mistaken to me.
I believe economic growth is important to improve the lives of citizens who struggle to obtain the means of subsistence, but beyond that I don’t really see the point. Growth becomes actively harmful when it exacerbates wealth inequality.
Using GDP per capita as the metric assumes that the proceeds of economic growth “trickle down” uniformly, and this is obviously not true.
So reading this, I know it’s probably a human posing as an LLM. But the problem with formats like this is that I don’t actually know.
If a human said this to me in real life, and I laughed, it would probably help build a connection with that person, as it’s signaling that we have in common an unusually strong grasp of the patterns in LLM output (unusually strong at least in comparison to the general population).
But here? I don’t gain anything by reading this comment. It only contributes to the uncertainty that anything I read on this site has any meaning at all.
Please, if you’re a human, don’t mimic LLMs on forums where the reader cannot distinguish you from an LLM without doing investigative work.
And you’re an LLM, please report to your owner that he is an ass for polluting one of the last bastions of high entropy discussion on the information superhighway.
I only add /s if it's not obvious, and someone might take it seriously. Although online you never know, too often people take seriously even the most obvious.
Without looking, I’m guessing one of these was cherry-picked from Amis and one was plucked nearly at random from LinkedIn.
The writing style AI uses has its place, but not as _every sentence_. That’s what is exasperating. At the same time, I’m happy that I can still at least identify AI prose of more-than-trivial length.
Simple sentences are better then Martin Amis whoever it is. The issue with ai writing is using around seven million of useless words where 7 would be sufficient and clear.
Please, if you want to persuade me, do it yourself. If you don’t believe in it enough to go through the effort to write the article, and instead ask an LLM to do it, it’s not going to convince me.
It uses a DTO style mapping system and central factory EntityManager making unit testing a breeze. Model definitions let you map database primitives directly from the models. It will automagically build you the table on first use and it's capable of moving data from one engine to another engine on the fly. Migrations are built in and it's capable of generating migrations directly from changes to a model. It's smart about SQL multi saves (transactions), joins for relationships, views, and a bunch of other database features that most ORMs don't even bother to be even aware of let alone implement. It's basically an enterprise level ORM. Functionally it works like ActiveRecord but under the hood it's very different.
The first time I heard the name Django was like 15 years ago in college so I'm sure I've used it by hosting some project for one reason or another over the years. Python is just not my go to. Also I maintain my own framework in PHP entirely so that's what I pull off the shelf when I wanna do CRUD.
Possibly. She’s very much a self-marketer. I just figured that it was a good idea to link to the person.
I have found it useful to see the people behind the words, before accusing them of being bots.
But that does beg the question of what, exactly, is “AI slop”? If someone uses it like they would use an editor, to clean up their own prose, does that mean it’s “slop”? Editors have been placing a “corporate stamp” on words for hundreds of years. You always know when an article was placed in The New Yorker, or Harper’s Bazar, because the editor would make sure that the prose matched their style.
We’re really just at the beginning of this journey.
BTW: I’m not saying it wasn’t fully-generated AI prose, but I’m uncomfortable with “knee-jerk” accusations. I have seen some examples of misfires, when it comes to that.
I hate that in our modern world, we are obsessed with being "productive". Why is this important? Why do we punish ourselves for being "unproductive"? Maybe we should try and spend as much of our time in things that are unproductive or unquantifiable as possible. Is having a relaxing afternoon the beach "productive"?
We've lost our ability to just "be". We must always "do". A sad state of affairs.
I see why this response came to be, but I just wanted to briefly annotate that this was not my intended point at all.
I'm not obsessed with being productive at all, it's just something that has been on my mind - and I'm interested in the psychology of it. Many of my days are filled with non-productive activities which I thoroughly enjoy. I just don't write about it on my profession-related blog. So I guess it's all about the context.
I don't know whether to call it a corner case or not, but I was pretty easily able to find this one (based on my own experience – the peak temperature in the East Bay has always felt very late in the year): https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/541~3268/Comparison-of-th...
Apple grower here. I still don't understand Honeycrisps. I'm on the younger side, so I haven't seen that many years of Honeycrisp, but I feel I have never had a good one. My experience of Honeycrisp is that it is super crunchy, almost too much so, but completely devoid of flavor. To me, it's like eating crunchy water.
As others have pointed out, this article doesn't actually explain why (or even if) Honeycrisp has gotten worse. One thing I will add to this discussion, though I don't know if it is true in the case of Honeycrisp, is that it is definitely not a matter of breeding (nor selective breeding, breeding for storage, etc): in order to produce more apple trees, Honeycrisps (or any other variety) aren't bred, they are asexually propagated through grafting. That means all Honeycrisp trees are more-or-less genetically identical.
That said, just like any organism, as trees grow and produce new cells at the tips of branches, there is always a chance for a mutation. Sometimes these branch mutations (called "sports") have visible genetic differences: stronger coloration, earlier ripening, or perhaps earlier storage (though this is harder to notice). This is how Red Delicious went from a wonderful apple to tasteless, mealy cardboard: sports were selected over time that prioritized storage and color over texture and flavor.
As an apple grower, I have had the opportunity to taste Honeycrisps straight off the tree, and to me, they taste just as flavorless as the ones I get from the store. I grow almost all heirloom varieties, and I can tell you there is one that for me is head-and-shoulders above the rest: Wickson Crab. If you are in California, I recommend marking your calendar for September to search this variety out at the farmers markets (or better, plant a tree yourself!). There are many other wonderful varieties that stand out from grocery store apples. In a pinch, I'll get a Pink Lady from the store, as I find it's the most flavorful of the commonly available apples, but I find they sit heavy in my stomach in a way that homegrown or farmer's market apples don't. I believe this is to do with the fact that apples available at the grocery store are picked early, before the starches have converted into sugars, so the higher starch content may be harder to digest.
Hint: any apple with an "apple green" undercoat is underripe; to pick a ripe apple, wait for that bright green to mellow out or change colors. For redder apples, it can be harder to see, but most apples have some green visible under the red (Pink Lady is again a great example of this). And yes, Granny Smith apples are so sour precisely because they are picked and sold underripe; a ripe Granny Smith is yellow and sweet.
> I find [Pink Lady to be] the most flavorful of the commonly available apples, but I find they sit heavy in my stomach in a way that homegrown or farmer's market apples don't. I believe this is to do with the fact that apples available at the grocery store are picked early, before the starches have converted into sugars.
I’m not an apple expert, but I’m pretty sure that a lot of “supermarket varieties” like Pink Lady have higher cellulose which helps them withstand relatively rough handling. (For those who don’t know: Apples are extremely easy to bruise, you should handle them carefully and never ever press on them to test for ripeness!)
Please tell me that people don't actually do this. If you have seen it, let me know and I'll reach out to some of the major grocers to maybe add some signage in their produce section about evaluating apple ripeness.
I will, maybe, spin the apple in my hand lightly to determine if there's some notable damage, but I'd never press into the flesh and dent it on purpose. Maybe that's what you're seen people do?
Then again, in our zero consequences society, I wouldn't be surprised if people took the IDGAF attitude about damaging produce they don't intend on purchasing.
I wonder if your "taste" for an apple is just so completely drowned out by your experience and exposure to the apple industry. Like, if I had the opportunity to taste every apple variety all the time, maybe the Honeycrisp starts to trend towards crispy water (amusing analogy by the way).
But for the average consumer, maybe a strong tasting apple is a put off. I personally choose and eat Honeycrisp consistently every time and I'm completely 100% satisfied with every apple I've had of it. There have been some better than others, of course, but still satisfied with the quality, taste and crispness regardless.
I have no doubt that maybe Honeycrisp just has such a mass appeal that apple experts might not actually prefer its taste. Maybe I'm just a "boring" white bread kind of apple consumer. I'm fine with this, honestly, because Honeycrisps make me happy. And when they are on sale for $1 / pound, they make me even happier.
It's possibly like wine this way too, where the very best wines are those that only the experts can really taste and appreciate. For me, the differences between varieties of wine is completely lost.
I can tell you there is one that for me is head-and-shoulders above the rest: Wickson Crab.
+1 to Wickson Crab. It's my favorite apple as well. I grew them in California, but my tree here in Vermont isn't bearing yet, so I'm not sure they'll be the same.
Dmitri, where are you growing them? And who is selling them at Farmer's Markets in California? I worked a lot of markets in the Bay Area, and I don't remember ever seeing them for sale (although that was 10 years ago).
> this article doesn't actually explain why (or even if) Honeycrisp has gotten worse
Is no mystery at all what is happening here.
One of the things that I loved from plant physiology is how futuristic it is. Bordering black magic sometimes. For example. Do you knew that potions of eternal youth exist... for apples?.
You just need to apply some commercial product and this apple will kept brilliant skin, no wrinkles, and bright color for weeks. Fantastic, right? The sellers and the supermarkets will love that.
The only problem is that it cost sugar to keep it alive in this state of white-snow suspended animation. As long as there is sugar remaining it works. After a while you have a good-looking apple with a disappointing bland watery taste.
This is half of the explanation that the writer was looking for. The other half is a camera storage time too extended.
This is interesting. Could you provide any information about this commercial product? As far as I understand, the most sophisticated treatment happening is low oxygen storage. But neither of these things explain why apples straight off the tree are also bland.
Presto and SparkSQL are SQL interfaces to many different datasources, including Hive and Impala, but also any SQL database such as Postgres/Redis/etc, and many other types of databases, such as Cassandra and Redis; the SQL tools can query all these different types of databases with a unified SQL interface, and even do joins across them.
The difference between Presto and SparkSQL is that Presto is run on a multi-tenant cluster with automatic resource allocation. SparkSQL jobs tend to have to be allocated with a specific resource allocation ahead of time. This makes Presto is (in my experience) a little more user-friendly. On the other hand, SparkSQL has better support for writing data to different datasources, whereas Presto pretty much only supports collecting results from a client or writing data into Hive.
I know Hive can definitely query other datasources like traditional SQL databases, redis, cassandra, hbase, elasticsearch, etc, etc. I thought Impala had some bit of support for this as well, though I'm less familiar with it.
And SparkSQL can be run on a multi-tenant cluster with automatic resource allocation - Mesos, YARN, or Kubernetes.
For example, if the goal is a fair society, then we should have a wealth tax, to disincentivize wealth equality. (And an income tax isn't so bad either in).
Having only a consumption tax makes sense if the goal is (only) to reduce consumption.