We found an average time savings of 5.4% of work hours in the November 2024 survey. For an individual working 40 hours per week, saving 5.4% of work hours implies a time savings of 2.2 hours per week. When we factor in all workers, including nonusers, workers saved 1.4% of total hours because of generative AI.

Note this is across all disciplines. Some tasks are more easily assisted by AI than others. But this outlines a broad trend of at least ~5% improvement across users.

Some economists say these trends may be short term in nature and little cause for concern on their own. Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard, noted that the uptick in unemployment for college-educated workers was only modestly larger than the increase in unemployment overall, and that unemployment for both groups remained low by historical measures.

I think this is like the quote I know that goes ‘when your neighbor gets laid off, its a recession. When you get laid off its a depression’. Regardless of how ’low’ unemployment is historically, it is also trending up for the first time in a long time, especially for college educated workers who might not have experienced this trend before. Best of luck to everyone out there looking right now.

In late March, BYD surpassed Tesla TSLA in quarterly automotive revenue for the first time. This was no symbolic flourish, but an outright coup. This isn’t a case of catching up. It’s charging ahead. Buffett, meanwhile, recently reiterated his enthusiasm for BYD at Berkshire’s 2024 annual meeting: “Charlie [Munger] twice pounded the table … and said, ‘Buy BYD.’ He was right — big time.”

Ironically I learned about BYD while TikTok was banned and I explored Xioahongshu for a little while. I was aware that Ford CEO Jim Farely had indicated international competitors spooked him but the sleek designs and modern interiors and LOW cost of BYD vehicles is amazing. Coupled with apparently high quality and it will be interesting to see what happens to Ford/GM.

Health insurers got double-paid by the Medicaid system for the coverage of hundreds of thousands of patients across the country, costing taxpayers billions of dollars in extra payments. The insurers, which are paid by state and federal governments to cover low-income Medicaid recipients, collected at least $4.3 billion over three years for patients who were enrolled—and paid for—in other states, a Wall Street Journal analysis of Medicaid data found.

Let’s take a closer look at these numbers. A pet peeve of mine, this article is written with varying scales (trillions, billions, millions) and time frames. So to summarize, a program that costs $1.8 trillion dollars per years has $4.3 billion in duplicate payments over three years. Or .0043 trillion / 3*1.8 trillion. .08% of the cost of the program. And insurance is hard, why is the burden on the individual to keep all of this straight?

Thune, a fourth-term senator from South Dakota, is an awkward leader for Trump’s ruthless Republican Party, in part because even Democrats invariably describe him as amiable and honest.

Excellent tracing of the new Senate majority leader’s rise to power and what it means for the separation of powers when the current Executive Branch is pursuing rule by fiat.

_{Quote Citation: David D. Kirkpatrick, “The Senate’s Age of Irrelevance”, March 31, 2025, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/07/john-thune-profile-senate-majority-leader}

The benefits of AI-driven automation often favour capital over labour, which could widen inequality and reduce the competitive advantage of low-cost labour in developing economies.

However, the UNCTAD report also highlights inequalities between nations, with U.N. data showing that 40% of global corporate research and development spending in AI is concentrated among just 100 firms, mainly those in the U.S. and China.

First, original story is pay-walled for journalist only, so I was unable to review that. Second, no surprise that the wealthiest countries are using their capital to pursue AI. Here’s hoping humanity seizes the opportunity to improve everyone’s lives…

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too

If, one of my favorites.

_{Quote Citation: RUDYARD KIPLING, “If—”, 1943, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---}

Through a combination of static code analysis tools (such as CodeQL), fuzzing the GRUB2 emulator (grub-emu) with AFL++, manual code analysis, and using Microsoft Security Copilot, we have uncovered several vulnerabilities. … Copilot identified multiple security issues, which we refined further by requesting Copilot to identify and provide the five most pressing of these issues. In our manual review of the five identified issues, we found three were false positives, one was not exploitable, and the remaining issue, which warranted our attention and further investigation, was an integer overflow vulnerability.

The thing I’m most excited about in our weird new AI-enhanced reality is the way it allows me to be more ambitious with my projects. As an experienced developer, ChatGPT (and GitHub Copilot) save me an enormous amount of “figuring things out” time.

I think the key is in the expertise. As noted in other blogs AI generated code is the dopamine sugar rush of our time. Just because its sweet doesn’t mean its right. Trust Simon and his expertise, but he’s still publishing Python code.

The result is a product that better resembles a bowling pin than a traditional bat, redistributing the weight to the area where players most often make contact with the ball. … The goal was to use as much of that [wood] budget as possible in the ideal spot—six or 7 inches below the tip—without sacrificing swing speed.

Filed under ideas that seem obvious when done in real life. 100 years of baseball and gloves have evolved every decade, bats not so much. Or as George says ‘its simple physics’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTwE7xDZkPk