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Comment Re:Almost evil (Score 5, Informative) 106

Big Health has no interest in curing you but also doesn't benefit from killing you.

Are you sure about that?

If your carcass is taking up time and space that could be spent on a more profitable body, they're better off with you gone. Cured or killed doesn't make any difference.

If you count the "heath insurance" industry as being part of "big heath", there are countless people they'd love to see dead. They want healthy people on premium plans, not chronically sick people making endless claims.

Comment Re:Not AI (Score 0) 106

This is not AI, it's just data science,

What do you think AI is, exactly? AI is applied data science ... and good bit of applied data science is AI.

AI is a broad field that encompasses a lot of things that you probably don't think of as AI such as linear regression, clustering, and decision trees. I understand this annoys some people, but I can assure you that this isn't anything new. This is what AI was always about. The science fiction version of the term came much later.

Yes, there is a lot of hype around AI at the moment and the marketdroids are falling all over themselves to slap "AI" on everything they can. I can also see why someone would think that was misleading. Still, it is technically correct. Maybe we should see this as an opportunity to educate the public about the breath and scope of AI so that they can ask better questions about new products rather than attempt to redefine a long-established term.

Comment Re:Just "ChatGPT"? (Score 2) 10

if I was a 4th grader in History class and this got slipped in there, I'd just believe it!

This is exactly why these things should not be used as private tutors. Given the way the function, they are guaranteed to give incorrect information, as more and more people are discovering in embarrassing and expensive ways.

contaminating and corrupting the official records

I see it like the wikipedia "citogenesis" problem. AI generated nonsense gets introduced into what should be a trustworthy source gets copied other places, including other ostensibly trustworthy sources, lending it further credibility.

AI generated content is pollution.

Comment Re:Thank you Bruce! (Score 1) 73

He seems to think that just having portions of the band reserved for CW means that there is still some sort of requirement to learn code. I think I understand his complaint, even if I don't agree that it's a problem.

you don't need it for access to the lower bands

If all you have is your Tech license, all you have access to on HF is a little sliver on 10m. Everything below that is CW-only for Techs. You'll need your General or Extra to operate in other modes on the lower bands. If you're a tech who doesn't know code, you can't operate on the lower bands.

Novice is long gone

Believe it or not, there are still people with Novice and Advanced licenses. Advanced, I understand. Novice, not so much.

Comment Re:Speaking of bad UNIX ideas (Score 4, Informative) 320

it's also greatly and unnecessarily increased the difficulty and complexity of the system.

Nonsense. It dramatically simplifies systems, as anyone can see from systems like Plan9, which take the 'everything is a file' concept to an extreme. The benefits of being able to treat different kinds of resources identically are innumerable, but the single most obvious benefit is the simplicity it brings.

That shared abstraction also brings with it a lot of power and flexibility you wouldn't have otherwise. Existing tools can work with resources that the authors never imaged and even interoperate with other tools without the slightest consideration given between them. It singularly defines the UNIX philosophy.

There's a talk on YouTube where one guy discussed the nightmare of implementing a USB driver on Linux versus Windows ~10 years ago

Yeah, we've all seen it. It wasn't even close 10 years ago. He's an idiot. Here's one very simple fact that you and the other people who thoughtlessly repeated his stupidity haven't discovered: There is nothing stopping you from implementing a higher-level API. You're welcome. You might also want to take a look at why Plan9 doesn't need ioctl. (After reading the rest of your post, it occurs to me that you might be more that a little out of your depth here.)

Anyway, everything-is-a-file's main use and convenience has always been in scripting.

No. The "main use and convenience" has always been, and always will be, that it provides a uniform interface. What do you think "everything is a file" means?

But in the last 15 years that use case was entirely superseded by scripting languages that implement a newer concept, everything-as-an-object

So much wrong here... That's not even remotely the same concept. I know they sound similar, but they are completely unrelated. We're talking about operating systems, after all, not programming languages.

and prove that OS support is unnecessary for such abstractions.

I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a statement. Do you know what operating systems do?

but likely never will.

Fortunately, operating systems are, for the most part, developed by intelligent people who are loath to throw away good ideas just because some moron on Youtube doesn't understand their purpose or value.

Comment Re:Thank you Bruce! (Score 1) 73

Hows that been working so far?

Remarkably well. With a little effort, you could learn code and find that out for yourself.

What I'm seeing is this is an incentive to get a GMRS license.

It seems to me that you'd be just as happy with with FRS or CB, no license required. Maybe even something like Discord, if you're just looking for a chatroom with voice and photos.

For the future health of Amateur radio.

As your post makes abundantly clear, amateur radio just isn't for you.

Amateur radio is living in the past.

Code is just a small part of amateur radio, you know ...

There's no "roger" or "what's your 20?"

... or maybe you don't. You seem to have it confused with CB.

I wonder how many people take it seriously any more.

Millions.

this really winds me up today for some reason.

I have no idea why. You really don't seem all that interested in amateur radio.

Comment Re:against using content to train AI models (Score 1) 73

The point is specifically to exclude AI models. Why would they make an exception?

your stuck in PRE post-scarcity neverland

You better hope so. AI generated content is the training data equivalent to poison. That trash is all over github now.

we will hit a bottleneck where there is not enough training material to push these models to the next level

It's not the lack of training data that's the problem. We've taken things just about as far as they can go with the current approach. Further improvement is going to require something radically different from what we're doing now. Keep your expectations low.

Comment Re:How much is really delayed maintenance? (Score 5, Insightful) 116

I'm no longer a fan of electric cars after I learned that they don't really solve the smog problem

That's stupid. EVs might not be a 100% perfect fix, but they will dramatically improve air quality. (Including a reduction in o3, a major component of smog). That's a good thing.

EVs are an essential and important step towards a cleaner future. Walkable cities and high-speed rail are ultimately better, but we're not going to see that in the US in our lifetime.

Comment Re:But ... (Score 1) 74

is seeing and describing is akin to raising a young child.

Try to resist the impulse to anthropomorphism these things. They are not independent entities that learn and grow on their own. Neither are they capable of things like consideration, reason, or analysis. This isn't speculation. These are simple facts, things we know with absolute certainty.

One of the differences that Hinton points out:

Is also nonsense, which he should know. He's lost his mind. Neural networks do not have "experiences" in any meaningful way. That's insane. Try this link. That should dispel any absurd notions you might have picked up.

it doesn't mean we automatically understand everything there is to know about it.

This is just 'god of the gaps'. I don't know what it is you think we don't understand, but I can assure you that it's a lot less than you think. We design and build these things, after all. We don't just do random things and hope it works.

Comment Re:But ... (Score 1) 74

You keep making claims without any evidence.

These are basic facts, not nonsense speculation like you've been posting.

Not once have you done any such thing.

You must be illiterate as well. Why are you here? Just to waste everyone's time with pointless bullshit?

Not an easy decision!

If you weren't a complete moron, you could actually evaluate the claims on their merit.

Sorry, kid, your hero has gone senile. Get over it.

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