- My Forums
- Tiger Rant
- LSU Recruiting
- SEC Rant
- Saints Talk
- Pelicans Talk
- More Sports Board
- Fantasy Sports
- Golf Board
- Soccer Board
- O-T Lounge
- Tech Board
- Home/Garden Board
- Outdoor Board
- Health/Fitness Board
- Movie/TV Board
- Book Board
- Music Board
- Political Talk
- Money Talk
- Fark Board
- Gaming Board
- Travel Board
- Food/Drink Board
- Ticket Exchange
- TD Help Board
Customize My Forums- View All Forums
- Topic Sort Options
- Trending Topics
- Recent Topics
- Active Topics
lostinbr
| Favorite team: | LSU  |
| Location: | Baton Rouge, LA |
| Biography: | |
| Interests: | |
| Occupation: | |
| Number of Posts: | 12743 |
| Registered on: | 10/15/2017 |
| Online Status: | Not Online |
Recent Posts
Message
quote:
Agreed. Eliminating some drafting, using it as a tool to check specifications, make the workflow better, sure. But as long as licensing and stamps are required it won't "replace" engineering in that sense.
I think people are misconstruing the issue.
AI doesn’t have to replace everything you do in order to have a huge disruptive effect on your profession. It doesn’t necessarily even have to replace anything you do in your specific role, for that matter.
It simply has to replace a significant amount of what people with similar qualifications do. Take engineering: I agree that licensing and stamps aren’t going anywhere. But what percentage of time among the entire population of PE’s is actually spent reviewing designs and stamping drawings?
Let’s say you’re a mechanical engineer with your PE who actually does spend the majority of your time on design work that can’t be automated. At first glance, you can’t be replaced. But outside of your role, productivity increases dramatically and it causes demand for engineers to drop. All of a sudden there’s going to be a lot more competition for your specific role. You might also have an influx of qualified people taking the PE exam who didn’t want or need a PE license previously. All of this is going to drive down wages and make it harder to find jobs.
The good outcome would be that demand for engineering services increases along with productivity, and we actually see an economic boom. But some industries/fields will get hit harder than others, and those fields could suffer big time.
I’m not really an AI “doomer.” However, I do think a lot of people are far too quick to write off the potential of the technology entirely based on their perception of today’s commercial models. I think we’re probably just scratching the surface of capabilities, but I have some doubt about the ability to roll game-changing capabilities out at scale, given the infrastructure/compute requirements. In any case, I think it’s a bit unwise for folks to ignore the potential for disruption.
0
re: Anthropic just studied which jobs AI can be theoretically replaced.
Posted by lostinbr on 3/6/26 at 12:45 pm to AllbyMyRelf
quote:
Most of my job is coordination rather than drafting. I haven’t seen an agentic AI that can communicate across so many different teams and workflows. We’ll see
I think this is a pretty common viewpoint. But consider that part of the reason we spend so much time on communication/coordination is that we (humans) do not share information efficiently. AI agents can theoretically share information extremely efficiently with other AI agents.
In other words, the more those other workflows adopt AI, the less important the human coordination aspect becomes. Past a certain adoption threshold, it’s possible that human coordination actually becomes a net negative. That’s probably all theoretical at this point, though.
quote:
Under Architecture and Engineering it must be forecasting a high replacement rate because "computer engineering" falls under "engineering".
You don’t think “computer engineering” would fall under “computer & math”?
I get the sentiment that there will always be a need for field work and client-interfacing that requires a person. I also believe there will always be a need for licensed PE’s, for liability/safety reasons. But there is a ton of work in the larger engineering field that AI can conceivably do.
Off the top of my head: drafting, document/spec reviews, optimization, estimating, etc.
Even the field survey part can be supplemented. We are already seeing AI tools being used in conjunction with 3D scans.
Automation doesn’t have to completely replace humans to have a major impact on the job market. It just has to allow a human to be more productive, which increases the supply of labor. Then the question becomes whether the demand for that labor also increases.
re: Narrow sidewalk etiquette. What’s the correct move here?
Posted by lostinbr on 3/5/26 at 6:12 pm to DustyDinkleman
A.
And when people coming the opposite direction try to pull a C, I get ready to plow into them (unless it’s a little kid of a woman with a stroller or something like that). So far I haven’t lost a game of sidewalk chicken.
And when people coming the opposite direction try to pull a C, I get ready to plow into them (unless it’s a little kid of a woman with a stroller or something like that). So far I haven’t lost a game of sidewalk chicken.
re: I am an engineer
Posted by lostinbr on 3/4/26 at 6:23 pm to Homey the Clown
quote:
I love when people who have an engineering degree call themselves engineers. Unless you are a P.E., you aren't an engineer.
So in your view like 95% of ChE grads (and damn near 100% of working process engineers) shouldn’t call themselves engineers?
That’s silly. And the entire petrochemical industry disagrees with you.
quote:
yeah y'all gotta name every document a series of numbers and letters that make no sense then have a document register listing them with more reference numbers then a damn index so you're having to jump through hoops to figure out what 3 of the 3,757 specs included with the 2 ISOs are relevant
:lol:
This guy’s seen some bid packages.
My favorite is when they have a group of 5+ people spending 2+ months compiling every specification ever written that could possibly be related to those 2 ISOs, but then they don’t fill in any of the blanks on the one datasheet that would actually tell you what they want.
So reading this thread:
Multiple witnesses saw them having sex. She admitted to multiple people that they had sex. There are text messages showing she was buying alcohol for the kids. She says in a text message that she’s going to take Plan B. She apparently gets Plan B delivered via DoorDash (WTF). She admits to telling her friends/family to lie about the sex.
Why the hell did this even go to trial?
Multiple witnesses saw them having sex. She admitted to multiple people that they had sex. There are text messages showing she was buying alcohol for the kids. She says in a text message that she’s going to take Plan B. She apparently gets Plan B delivered via DoorDash (WTF). She admits to telling her friends/family to lie about the sex.
Why the hell did this even go to trial?
re: Question about gas prices
Posted by lostinbr on 3/3/26 at 6:15 pm to LSURussian
quote:
Right back at you...
OK, I’ll try to dumb it down.
- Other guy makes mention of the lag between “international” oil prices falling and gas prices falling.
- You say that gas prices are “based on” WTI, rather than the “international” standard Brent. Presumably to imply US gas prices are not directly affected by international oil pricing? It’s not clear, as I said.
- This doesn’t make sense on multiple levels: A) US refiners import ~40+% of their crude inputs. B) WTI also trades internationally. C) WTI and Brent follow the same pricing peaks and valleys anyway, and are much more closely correlated than gasoline is to either.
- So, as I said, it seems like a pointless distinction when international oil prices are, in fact, the main variable affecting gas prices in the US.
The rest was me addressing the larger point about prices falling slower than they rise.
:cheers:
re: Question about gas prices
Posted by lostinbr on 3/3/26 at 5:01 pm to LSURussian
quote:
Gas prices in the U.S. are based on WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude prices not "international" prices, aka, Brent crude.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to prove here. US gas prices aren’t “based on” WTI any more than WTI is “based on” Brent.
US-produced crude still trades internationally, and US refiners still import something like 40% of their crude slate. It’s all related, and there’s very little difference between Brent/WTI trends in the first place. Seems like a meaningless distinction considering he was clearly talking about oil prices in the general sense.
In any case, the phenomenon of gas prices rising faster than they fall is not some figment of folks’ imaginations. It’s a real thing that’s been debated for decades.
I think the most likely answer is retailers’ desire to avoid selling at a loss (on the way up) is simply greater than consumers’ desire to avoid “overpaying” (in the way down). Or to put it another way - none of the retailers are willing to sell for lower than replacement cost, so the price goes up immediately in response to the wholesale market. However, not all consumers are going to go out of their way to find the absolute cheapest gas in their area when the price falls. So the downward pressure during the fall is less than the upward pressure during the spike.
quote:
Gas prices are highly elastic.
What? Gasoline is commonly cited as an example of inelastic demand. :lol:
quote:
What happens in the future when a 16 year old gets in a wreck for reckless driving and kills their own passengers and others in a different car with children in it? What if the parents knew the kid sometimes got distracted and forgot to give him his medication that one morning when the kid got the keys without permission and went reckless driving with his friends…do you charge the parents along with the teenage driver?
The counter-argument is “what happens when a kid tells his dad he wants a gun so he can kill his classmates, dad buys the kid a gun for Christmas, and the kid goes on to shoot up a school after dad saw the gun in his gym bad?”
If your immediate response is to say “but that’s not what happened here,” yeah - that’s the point. Neither is your example of a kid getting into a car wreck. The facts of every case are going to be different.
quote:
Do we want juries deciding when someone “might be responsible?” That is not how the judicial system is meant to work and this case opened a book of legal worms
Juries have to decide what a “reasonable person” would have known/believed all the time. The idea of criminal negligence isn’t exactly new either.
quote:
On the other hand, I feel like it is a slippery slope to convict someone of 2nd degree murder when they didn’t break any laws.
How can you say he “didn’t break any laws” when he was literally convicted of breaking the law?
Also worth noting that the 2nd degree murder statute he was convicted under was written specifically for cases of criminal negligence involving children. It’s not 2nd degree murder in the sense that most people would assume.
re: West Point cadet booted over AI deepfakes
Posted by lostinbr on 3/3/26 at 7:56 am to magildachunks
quote:
how can an e-signature be upheld by law if I deny typing my name?
How does a physical signature get upheld if you deny signing the document?
This seems silly to argue about. If someone forges your signature you’re going to rely on some sort of handwriting analysis to prove it. If someone forges an e-signature you’re going to rely on an electronic paper trail to prove it.
If someone files your tax return using your tax documents, your SSN, your IRS PIN, from your PC, on an IP address assigned to your home, and e-signs.. good luck proving an identity thief broke into your house just to file your tax return. I don’t see how that’s any less secure than a physical signature.
In cases of actual identity theft, that same electronic trail should help you prove it wasn’t you.
quote:
They’re gonna need to come up with changes to laws (or create new ones in general) with all the AI shite looming. Seems like it won’t be long until you can almost literally create anything with any “person” you want. shite is weird.
They already are, but it’s state by state. I’m not sure about New York, but in Louisiana:
quote:
§73.13. Unlawful deepfakes
. . .
B.(1) Except as provided in Paragraph (2) of this Subsection, any person who, with knowledge that the material is a deepfake that depicts another person, without consent of the person depicted, engaging in sexual conduct, knowingly advertises, distributes, exhibits, exchanges with, promotes, or sells any sexual material shall be punished by imprisonment at hard labor for not less than ten nor more than thirty years, a fine of not more than fifty thousand dollars, or both.
. . .
(4) "Sexual conduct" means any of the following, whether actual or simulated: sexual intercourse, oral copulation, anal intercourse, anal oral copulation, masturbation, bestiality, sexual sadism, sexual masochism, penetration of the vagina or rectum by any object in a lewd or lascivious manner, exhibition of the genitals or pubic or rectal area for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer, or excretory functions performed in a lewd or lascivious manner, whether or not any of the conduct is performed alone or between members of the same or opposite sex or between humans and animals. An act is simulated when it gives the appearance of being actual sexual conduct.
I’d be a little surprised if NY didn’t already have some sort of similar deepfake law on the books. Kind of weird that it said he’s already been charged and sentenced to only 10 days by a military judge though, not sure if that means he’s off the hook now.
quote:
This doesn't explain February. I just looked at the charts and the spot price was sub-4 from Jan 31st thru the end of Feb. And yet, my gas bill was more than in January AND I used less natural gas for the month.
What was the actual billing period?
re: WTI Crude crossed above $70; and Brent Crude crossed above the $80 mark
Posted by lostinbr on 3/2/26 at 3:38 pm to SECCaptain
quote:
About to be a global supply problem and the Iran conflict is the cover-up. Gas prices and the Saudi refinery fire check out as well. Given everything else, e.g. the EV revolution, wouldn’t shock me if we’re approaching peak oil territory and it’s not being revealed to stop morons from hoarding fuel/exacerbating the problem
That’s.. dumb. :lol:
re: Highland Road- Baton Rouge
Posted by lostinbr on 3/2/26 at 7:40 am to Xcalibur2017
quote:
But I’m the bad person bc I can drive 45 on a road with turns and you can’t? But you choose to go that road u stead of Burbank or Perkins on whatever road parallel to highland?
By that logic, why wouldn’t you drive down Burbank where the speed limit is 55 for much of the way?
That said, I think many folks just don’t realize they’re driving in a 45 mph zone. I agree it’s a little annoying at times but it’s a weird thing to melt about.
quote:
Don’t get me wrong, they’re fast. Especially Zavion, that’s crazy fast. But you’ve got a guy saying it might be the fastest WR in college football history. And another saying they are faster than the 2019 teams and NFL teams. On the 2019 team, Ja’Marr, Marshall, Palmer, and McMath were all 4.3 guys.
In order of number of receptions:
2019:
Justin Jefferson - 4.43 (combine)
Ja’Marr Chase - 4.38 (pro day)
Terrace Marshall - 4.40 (pro day)
Racey McMath - 4.39 (pro day)
Trey Palmer - 4.33 (combine)*
*1 reception in 2019
2025:
Barion Brown - 4.40 (combine)
Zavion Thomas - 4.28 (combine)
Aaron Anderson - TBD
Chris Hilton - 4.41 (combine)
3 of the 4 guys you describe as “4.3 guys” had pro day times ranging from 4.38 to 4.40. The other was a true freshman with 1 reception in 2019.
Meanwhile Chris Hilton’s combine time was the slowest of the 2025 group at 4.41. I don’t think it’s crazy at all to suggest the 2025 group was faster than 2019. Certainly not better than 2019, but faster? Sure.
quote:
Because the alternative is that China wins the AI race and we all speak Chinese. That’s if we’re incredibly lucky that is.
It’s more likely that if China wins the AI race, they just decide to dispose of all of the none Chinese people.
I find it amazing that a couple of Chinese LLM’s and diffusion models can instill this level of doomerism in real people.
quote:
So why again are you so hell bent on stopping the U.S. development of AI?
Holy hyperbole. :lol:
I’m.. not? I don’t think regulated utilities with sanctioned monopolies should be able to enter into contracts that are hidden behind NDA’s. Considering the utility makes the same profit on the capital investment regardless of who pays for it, and considering that the tech companies’ incentive is to obtain the cheapest deals possible, I think it creates a major conflict of interest that could be easily negated by simply making the details of the deals public.
I’m not sure how that stance makes me “hell bent on stopping US development of AI.” :dunno:
quote:
Everyone needs to understand that the people and the minds behind all of this are vastly superior to the general public...sorry thats just the truth. This isnt about making a quick buck its again about changing the world.
What artificial intelligence is capable of producing and is going to produce is hard to explain and comprehend for the common folk. This is unfortunately a case of "We know better and we know what's good for you"
:lol:
frick all that.
I’m not generally anti-AI, but this mentality among the tech elites is a problem. Let’s assume, for a moment, that the following opinions spouted by the tech CEO’s and AI leaders are true:
1. That AGI is inevitable.
2. That AGI will completely change the concept of “work” in human society.
3. That this will cause a major economic disruption, necessitating UBI.
4. That it’s a race, and the first lab to create AGI will hold all of the power.
..then what you’re telling me is that it’s a race to create an even more significant tech oligarchy than we already have? A race to concentrate the wealth (and therefore the political power) in the hands of a few? Why the frick should the general public subsidize that race?
Why would we willingly accept higher costs so that Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, and/or Elon Musk can become even richer and give us table scraps in the form of UBI? If anything, they should be subsidizing our electrical costs.
quote:
Delta is a PE firm and bills have sky rocketed.
I posted this in the other thread about gas bills, but there’s a pretty obvious reason why everyone’s gas bill skyrocketed in January-February. This is a three-year chart of natural gas spot prices at the Henry Hub:
quote:
70% of Louisiana’s electrical capacity currently supplies industrial customers. All that has done was give us some of the lowest utility rates in the country. Why do yall think data centers change anything?
Normally the negotiation of electrical rates for industrial customers occurs out in the open. This is necessary because the utility’s return on capital is guaranteed. If they don’t earn that return on the industrial tariff or on the individual PPA’s, then the remainder of the rate-paying public have to make up the difference.
So under normal circumstances, all of the various special interest groups (including consumer advocacy groups who argue on behalf of residential customers) get to go in front of the PUC and argue for why the industrial rates should be higher. This is true for the baseline industrial tariff as well as normal PPA’s, which should be public record and still have to ultimately be approved by the PUC.
The issue with data centers is that they negotiate their PPA’s under NDA. Everyone involved (including Entergy and the PUC members who have to approve it) is under NDA. The details of the contract are kept hidden from the public. So despite the fact that the consumer is on the hook for any costs that don’t get fully covered by the special contract, nobody on the consumer’s side can scrutinize the rates.
That’s the difference with data centers. And it seems pretty obvious that the contracts are favorable to the tech companies; if they weren’t, there would be no reason to hide them under NDA. It shouldn’t be legal for a regulated utility to enter into secret contracts.
There’s also something inherently slimy about selling out the general public for AI. Regardless of whether you believe AI will actually take a ton of jobs away, the tech companies believe it. Why should consumers subsidize data centers to run AI models, when the tech companies building the data centers say we’ll need UBI because of the economic impact of those same AI models?
quote:
So if you were in my shoes and just wanted a budget friendly option with the minimum required specs, what laptop would you get?
Keep in mind I’m just looking for something that will work for now. If I end up really liking it I can always upgrade
Honestly? Not a Mac.
MacBooks are great for music production, don’t get me wrong. But the days of needing a Mac for music production have been over for a decade+ and they aren’t exactly budget machines.
I’m not an expert on laptops at all. It’s been a looong time since I’ve bought one, and my last 2 recording PC’s have been desktops that I built. That being said, I’m seeing HP and Lenovo laptops on Best Buy right now with 512 GB SSDs, 16+ GB RAM, and i7’s in the $400-600 range.
I’ll tell you what I’d prioritize in a Windows laptop for recording:
- 16+ GB RAM
- 256+ GB SSD (512+ is ideal)
- The best CPU you can swing. When you’re talking about a music production PC, it can be worthwhile to prioritize cores over clock speed. It’s kind of the opposite of gaming.
Everything else is kind of lagniappe.
I’m hesitant to make any hard recommendations on specific laptops just because I’m out of the loop on them. But that’s what I’d be looking for, and you should be able to get something well within your price range if you’re willing to go with Windows.
Popular
24
