o If you're walking out in the cold, have many different ways to keep your feet and your hands warm, because usually, you'll have a good-enough coat and winter-pants that'll keep your core relatively warm, but it's the very ends of your extremities that get cold (just got a small amount of frost bite on my toes the other day).

o On top of really thick gloves and socks, can buy some battery-heated versions of both. These aren't just gimmicks, they work wonders! As do the standard handwarmers and toewarmers

o Get real winter boots, these are water proof and insulated, so your feet won't get wet, and will resist the cold for longer (didn't learn this one until recently. Yeah, once your shoes get wet enough to bleed into your socks, you feet start to freeze).

o For your head and neck, carry one of those head and neck covers with you in your coat pocket (called a balaclava). Because sometimes you misread the weather and suddenly you've got a 5 degree wind chill streaming over your neck and face.

o etc:)

And, actually, walking in the snow is really nice (so clean and pure), which is why a lot of us here do actually go outside.

Boots that are rated to -40 during light activity can leave you with cold toes if you're standing still in -10 for an hour.

Activity levels also dictate how you layer and how easily you need to dump heat. If you're hiking, snowshoeing, XC skiing, you want some layers with zips so you can quickly let heat out.

Gloves are not for severe cold. They are for dexterity during limited exposure time - as no gloves can keep your fingers warm for very long no matter how well-made they are.

Look for mittens or "choppers" as we called them back in the day if you are going to be outside for a long period of time. These are outer shells (leather or gore-tex/etc.) with various types of removable liners. You basically layer your hands inside them. For folks outside all day you usually would have a few liners on hand to replace when they get wet.

Add a heat pack (iron oxide) to these on those super cold days and you'll be pretty much set.

But also, kind of don’t like how they make me look like a teenager, and I already look young for my age, don’t need any help in this department:) have been trying to find a glove-solution that is still warm. Have just tried some heated gloves, they seem pretty good, but early still

Good luck! Let me know if you find anything, I certainly tried for a few years and now have an absurdly large glove collection to last me a lifetime.

I've found when I need to use gloves I just burn a dollar on an iron oxide heating packet - and it mostly works until it gets to about 10 degrees or lower. After that you really need to wear serious winter gear if you're going to be out for more than an hour or so, at least for me.

I have been wanting to try some of the battery heated gloves but I'm still a little suspect of them. When I find a pair I like on sale I plan on trying them out. I tend to lose things, so we will see if it actually is a net savings vs. burning up a few dozen of the disposable heating packs a year. I certainly don't like the waste generated either way and it seems a bit silly.

The tech definitely works, and these were, at the time, just another relatively-cheap, but decently-well reviewed pair. Yeah in fact, on their own, they aren't that thick or durable, but when the heat is turned on, they are plenty warm. Seems like almost any decent pair of heated mittens/gloves would work well.

For me at least, the iron-oxide heat-packs work pretty well too, but they typically don't heat the fingers too well, so when its really cold, the main parts of my hands are warm, but my fingers aren't. It's not that bad, and it's easy to heat up the fingers by curling them around the heat pack, but with a heated glove, the heat typically reaches the fingers, so you don't really have to do anything and can just completely forget about your hands - but yeah, if I was loosing gloves often, maybe heated gloves would be a net waste compared to heat packs:)

Recently, bought a pair of heated liners to go under an oversized pair of gloves - I have Leki ski-gloves that directly attach to the ski poles, and they don't currently have a heater option, so am trying this instead. This are the heated liners: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082XXKXCP

They're nothing special, but by my initial tests, they seem pretty warm under my gloves. Will know more tomorrow:)

I wear these walking the dog down to -20F or so. They're warm enough with the tops flipped up, and you can quickly flip them down for a little dexterity to tie a poop bag. Not gonna say your fingers won't get cold while you're doing it, but it's the best approach I've found short of multiple pairs of gloves, which is just a pain for a quick dog walk.

all the ones I've seen when researching were lithium-ion from sketchy-looking brands, any brands you recommend?

Snow Deer have better electronics: The main button requires you to hold it down in order to turn it off and on. This is big deal because it’s easy to accidentally press the button when you’re out and about. But, unlike what all the review say, I find them uncomfortable. They have a piece of wiring that runs along the top of the foot that digs in (and have tried two different pairs, same thing. Have returned them both).

Dr. Warm is more comfortable (not perfect, but for hiking, good enough). But the problem is the main button doesn’t require a long press to turn them off, so sometimes, you’ll find they’ve turned off by accident (or more importantly, turned on and you’ve drained the battery). Still, comfort is more important, and there are ways to get around the button issue, so these are the ones I use daily - will keep the batteries unplugged until needed.

And like someone else said, if all else fails, get a nicer brand, one that is $200+.

darn tough socks. I have these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000XG34G8

your feet will be warm and dry, even when exercising, wet, etc.

They work super hot summer and cold winter.

Your main concern is to stay dry and minimize snow incursion. Either wear ski pants that act as gaiters, use gaiters or use boots and socks that are high enough that you won't get snow down the sides.

If you buy boots with insulation, try not to compress it. Otherwise be aware that if you don't keep moving, your boots will eventually cool to ambient and it's pretty hard to get that temperature back up.

Check grip? Hard to test but warm doesn't necessarily mean any good on slick ice. Spikes work well if you're going on a hike and there's a lot of packed snow mixed with ice.

Don't forget good socks. Doesn't need to be anything fancy, but wool is by far the best material (not necessarily merino as it tends to be too thin). You may need to size up because of the extra padding.

Also luxury, but fan assisted boot drying/warming stations are great. They make quite a big difference if you go out a lot because moisture build-up takes ages to dry otherwise.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFKC0BynjxY

Pick a size larger than you would usually do, unless they're explicitly designed as winter boots. In cold weather you'll want wool socks as well as regular socks and that requires some extra space.

When given a choice, soldiers will tend to choose something like Salomon Toundra.

  https://www.ktvu.com/news/salesforce-ai-layoffs-marc-benioff

Of course, it could still happen, as maybe AI systems just need another few years to mature before trying to fully replace jobs like this...

... although, one thing I agree with you is that there isn't much info online on these quotes from Salesforce executives, so could be made up.

But, feel like combining LLM's with other AI techniques seems like it could do so much more...

... As mentioned, am no expert, but seems like one of the next major focuses on LLM's is on verification of its answers, and adding to this, giving LLM's a sense for when its result are right or wrong. Yeah, feel like the ability for an LLM to introspect itself so it can gain an understanding of how it got its answer might be of help if knowing if its answer is right (think Anthropic has been working on this for awhile now), as well as scoring the reliability of the information sources.

And, they could also mix in a formal verification step, using some form of proof to prove that its results are right (for those answers that lend themselves to formal verification).

Am sure all this is all currently being tried. So any AI experts out there, feel free to correct me. Thanks!

Interesting that you mentioned Knowledge Graphs, haven't heard about these in a long time. Just looked up "Commonsense knowledge" page on wikipedia and seems like they're still being added to. Would you happen to know if they're useful yet and can do any real work? or are good enough to integrate with LLM's?

And actually, still browse the web and watch YouTube, but just on my non-work days.

When spacex finally got falcon 9 reusability working (and am no expert in this) but from what I read, the pundits were partially right and partially wrong. Yes, refurbishment and testing on the Falcon 9 does cost a lot, but it still brings down the cost significantly (just looked it up, their saying nowadays, the cost savings is something like 70%, which actually is huge). And as importantly, you don’t have to build a new rocket for every launch, and once you get your refurbishment process down like clockwork, you can relaunch them quite often.

So maybe data centers in space won’t be like ones on earth, but they still might be very useful… One idea is that they could become true “space” data centers, that supply powerful computing for satellites near by. This way satellites could get access to much more powerful computing, while still being small themselves (but again, am no expert in this, so maybe this idea also has many holes, for example why not just offload processing to ground based data centers).

Still, agree with others, seems like you're generalizing what is good for the average person is also good for those with personalities that are more at the extremes. Yeah, know a couple of people who just don't understand what people are thinking or feeling, ever. And so they have to learn a system of cues to look for to figure out whether a person is angry or sad or happy... These people need to create systems to make socialization work.

One question for you since your worked at SpaceX. Starship v4 is supposed to be able to bring 200 metric tons to LEO vs 35 metric tons for v2. Do you have any guesses on the finally amount that New Glenn will be able to bring up when it reaches its version/block 4?

*In fully reusable first AND second stage configuration.

An expendable starship would double the tonnage.

Still, am wondering though if SpaceX's highly iterative approach is a better way, because with Blue Origin's more standard approach of getting everything right the first time, you may need to over engineer everything, which seems like it may take longer.

On the flipside, SpaceX's approach might tax the engineers, because they have to deal with launching so often, and maybe if they had done less launches, they might have actually gotten falcon and starship out quicker...

...But, then again maybe at Spacex, the "launch" engineers are really the ones that have to deal with getting the rockets ready for launch, while the core design engineers can focus on building the latest version. And all the launches are used to test out different ideas and gather real life data). Hmm, for my part, am leaning towards the spacex way of doing things.

(maybe SpaceX and Blue Origin engineers could share their thoughts if they're reading this??)