OK, let's ask our favorite LLM:

Are online forums in the Internet considered "social media?"

Worth what you paid for it.

What category would you put it in? What is so amazingly different about it than, say, reddit, X, 4chan, fark, or for that matter, disqus? Or any of dozens of others?

The clique is different. The moderation is a bit different. The community feedback needs to be re-written but never will be. It doesn't support pictures.

But at the end of the day it is a social media site. Now I'm curious to know what you thought it was.

If you want the "numbers" then a social media site like /. is not the way to go. Nor the typical lay media that gets reported here.

If you want real climate science without all the political bullshit and willful ignorance go to Real Climate where only real scientists discuss the real research they are doing.

Of course I doubt that many of our our participants here will ever go to that link. It is much more comfortable to hang on to their own cherished "common sense" positions which they believe will place them at the apex of any scientific debate.

We are evolving here, and it seems that the judges in there have at least some idea of what they are dealing with.

All the hype around AI and LLMs have done a lot of damage. A superficial look at it -- which is what most media does most of the time -- thinks they are looking at Lt. Cmdr Data when in fact what they are looking at is closer to a Speak-and-Spell (tm)

Maybe they started to realize the obvious: It Is A Tool. Not an Oracle and not a sci-fi calculator to the Answer To the Universe (which works out to 42.)

Use the tool smart/skilled you get smart/skilled results. Use it like a clueless idiot and get clueless idiot results. Like any tool!

Is that so hard?

So much that is illogical, mis-informed and outright absurd in the above post it is hard to know where to begin. In fact I think I will leave it to others if they are so inclined (which I doubt.).

If the statements were not wrong, Tesla would have gone out of business. MANY people predicted that MANY times, and that group is WELL REPRESENTED here on /. The fact that Tesla survived is proof that the statement is wrong.

And it was a paraphrase anyway. They would have come up with all kinds of reasons BEVs were not viable, when the truth was that they did not want to invest in it and they certainly did not want to undermine their existing product lines. Major auto companies do not do those things unless they are FORCED to. And Tesla's success forced them.

So the EV market is following "hockey stick" growth and Tesla is making its numbers. Like it almost always has. I'm not sure what the big news is here.

But it is one more data point supporting what I have been writing for several years now: Had Elon Musk and Tesla not ignored all critics and implemented with the courage of their convictions back in 201x, we would still be in 2024 be getting position statements from every major auto maker to the effect:

And, probably: "we are looking into hydrogen."

And never mind pointing out little eddies like the Nissan Leaf. That was a niche product that benefited greatly from Tesla making the market for them.

As you will note, I got moderated troll for my post you responded to. They just cannot stand anyone telling the truth about them and they lash out. I suppose I can't begrudge them that because I wouldn't want to try to defend the indefensible either.

But the hypocritical perfidy behind the cases you cited really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. These people are lame-ass predators after a fashion, and instinctively seek protective coloration. So of course they all seek to be "respected" as church-goers or anti-queer crusader out to Save The Children. They are trying to hide what they are and in their simplistic minds they think their hate speech will fool them.

The real problem are all the so-called conservative voters and community that goes along with it. It does fool them, at least until the inevitable arrest is made, but it doesn't fool anyone aware of the simple logic I just described.

Two defining principles of conservative politics in the United States today:

Every Accusation Is A Confession.

It's OK If You Are A Republican.

Before attempting to answer the question in the headline, you have to consider that one of the two major parties which may end up in control of Congress next year is 100% dedicated to eliminating any government assistance in healthcare and put everything in the hands of for-profit private entities. The very idea that someone, somewhere will get some benefit they do not "deserve" drives them crazy.

Of course, their "government out of private lives" policy does not include matters involving a woman's uterus. There, they will dictate what may and may not be done (mostly may not) and and healthcare workers must choose between reusing to provide life-saving healthcare or become a fugitive. The woman in need of the health care will also be subject to arrest, prosecution, and jail.

I will probably get moderated "Troll" for this because that is just how we roll here, but it is true. No exaggeration or hyperbole. Just true.

There is more to it than the relative benchmarks

When I was a kid in the 70s I had various jobs programing the CDC 6000/7000 computers at LBL in Berkeley. Hundreds if not thousands of researchers used those computers which ran thousands of jobs every day, submitted on punch card decks either locally or from remote locations.

Those computers had not only their own behemoth power supplies, but their own support staff to keep them running. Trained operators would fetch 1/2 inch tapes from the library and mount them on those refrigerator-sized tape drives. Dedicated staff wrote and updated the operating systems and even compilers. And there were at least two full-time engineers that had an office where they repaired things that broke.

They even had accounting staff. All this was paid for by intra-agency billing, where each job charged for each millisecond of processor time and each "kilo-core-second" used. And a purchasing department to order and stock the endless boxes of line-printer and teletype paper, punched tape, hollerith cards, magnetic tape, and so on.

It didn't stop there. All of this was housed in a special room behind locked doors with special architecture to route all those 30-70 pound cables under the floor. You had to have special privilege to go in there without escort. So its own police force, effectively. Over the hill and Livermore Labs where they did a lot of top secret work (still do) there was a police force in actuality.

To the general public, the main staff that casually wafted in and out of that room looked more like a priesthood than anything to do with engineering.

Aside from computing power, there is no way to compare all that to the typical 5W palm-top disposable rig. A lot of what I describe still exists around large operations (where I rent space in a co-hosting location is like that) but it is more that the culture around them is all different.

Memes change and update.

I thought ChatGPT got to a hundred million users in record time and the subscription was $20/month. If even 10% of their users are paying, that's income of $200M/month.

Even with outrageous ops budget there is a lot of R&D you can do with that kind of income. And you don't have to give up any equity.

Engineers and Accountants don't save you from these kinds of situations.

For both professions, there are individuals that will tolerate as close to zero risk as they can manage. Although they exist, they very rarely rise to the positions where their opinions are asked in speculative ventures.

Most, however, when confronted with a proposition will tell you what assumptions you have to make in order for some contraption to work within a given cost or what investment risk will pay off. And often they will be correct. But ... assumptions?

What the "visionary" will do is somehow disregard those assumptions or be over optimistic about them. That's when the money starts flowing and the dream balloons rise in the air. Sometimes they overcome the problems but more often not. Hyperloop is just one example of many.

As I recall, the single most popular group was ba.jobs.offered

That was in the days that the San Jose Mercury news Sunday edition was prized for its job listing section.

What a different world.