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Comment Re:robot parking lot: no need for lights, sounds? (Score 0) 46

Because we don't want them to instantly kill the first kid who jumps the fence, or the next careless service technician. Automated industrial robots (which is what these cars are, really) have these things for a reason.

I really hope that Waymo's cars aren't relying on their Nader-beepers to avoid killing people. They should be (and AFAIK are) relying instead on their video cameras, LIDARs, and other sensors to stop the car before it hits the wayward kid/technician.

Comment Re: "Microsoft said it's working to resolve the is (Score 1) 60

Remember that these are the people who invented the use of CTRL-ALT-DEL hardware interrupts to "secure" the Windows login screen. That tells you all you need to know really.

Yes, they should have done it the right way instead!

Err, what was the right way? It's not obvious to me, given that Microsoft doesn't have design control over the hardware its software runs on.

Comment Re:They are using AI to code core Windows function (Score 1) 60

Do you really think Karen in Finance is going to request an RDS instance and vibe code a nice react frontend for her CRUD??

At this point, my biggest fear is that she will -- and then call me over to debug the AI-generated codebase, when it inevitably doesn't work quite right.

Comment It gets worse (Score 3, Interesting) 121

Let's assume for the sake of argument that OpenAI and its competitors are trying to do the right thing here and make their AIs as harm-free as possible.

Not everyone will be that responsible, however. Now that it has been demonstrated that a suitably sycophantic AI can compromise the psyches of significant numbers of people, it's only a matter of time before various bad actors start weaponizing their own AI models specifically to take advantage of that ability. "Pig butchering" will be one of the first job categories to be successfully replaced by AI. :/

Comment Re:So... (Score 2) 42

Whatever happened to IPv6 ?

I didn't do anything crazy like actually read the article, but I did go as far as to read the third sentence of the summary, which began like this:

[A]round half of internet traffic continues to use IPv4, because changing to IPv6 can be expensive and complex [...]

.... and that would seem to indicate that IPv6 is currently handling around half of Internet traffic.

Comment Re:Meanwhile... (Score 2) 77

Stop chasing these false "scarcities" that continue to crop up from time to time. Build your systems with used or NOS parts that are 3 or more generations back.

That's good advice for individuals building a home system for personal use. It's not really applicable for businesses and companies, though, since they likely don't have the expertise or the man-hours required to cobble together their business-critical systems from used parts. They're going to want to buy new, from a company that give them good support if/when anything goes wrong.

Comment Re:So we are about 3 to 5 years (Score 1) 77

The [AI] infrastructure isn't going to get shut down and sold off it's going to get used.

It'll get used, if using it is more profitable than letting it go dark. Given the infrastructure costs of keeping all that hardware running, it's not a given that it will be. Once the investor $$$ stop flowing and the debt limits are hit, we'll see how much of the AI hardware build-out can really pay for its own room and board, and how much was just 'peacock feathers' whose only real purpose was to impress gullible investors into handing over their money.

Comment Re:Put 100s of millions out of work... (Score 1) 47

people on benefits always find constructive things to do with their time, they never get depressed due to lack of purpose and end up on drinks, drugs or in prison.

You're not thinking it through -- the goal isn't just to put everyone on benefits and make them spend the rest of their lives clicking the TV remote and waiting for their next welfare check. If you want to do it right (and the robots provide sufficient surplus resources to support it), you go a step further and hire people to do the job they always wanted to do, whether it makes a profit for anyone or not. If that means we have 100,000 ski instructors and 300,000 mediocre artists, then so be it; the robots do the grunt work, and the people are paid to do their preferred avocation.

Not that I expect that to actually happen, of course; in the event the robots actually can replace all labor, the upper classes will make sure that economic surplus goes to themselves, with only the absolute minimum getting distributed to anyone else.

Comment Re:NO! NO! NO! (Score 2) 47

We all know China is only competing successfully with us by using slave labor. Why would they need robots?

Honestly, they don't "need" robots or anything else; they could just keep doing what they've always done and hope for the best.

However, unlike some countries I could mention, the Chinese government has a vision of what it wants its future to be like, and is willing to work and invest to realize that vision. Hence robots, and other economic development.

Comment Re:Also, why can't ChatGPT control a robot? (Score 1) 119

There has been plenty of progress in using AI to control robotics; they use robotics-specific AIs for that, of course.

The fact that ChatGPT (or even LLMs in general) isn't particularly useful for robots shouldn't be a surprise, since robots (other than maybe C3PO) are about physical manipulation of objects, not about language generation.

Comment Re:Obvious answer (Score 1) 211

Compared to what was available before, it is quite impressive.

The negative feedback is prompted by the fact that AI is constantly being shoved into every one of our orifices 24/7 by every vaguely tech-related company as if it was the second coming of Jesus. To justify that amount of social pressure, it would indeed have to be quite a bit better than it actually is, and that's why people aren't impressed.

Comment Re:News at 11: Blowhard bloviates obvious bias (Score 1) 31

Why does he keep doing this?

You mean, why does Linus keep agreeing to be interviewed, and then reply to straightforward questions with the obvious answers?

What would you rather he do? Refuse to be interviewed, or maybe make up unexpected answers just to be edgy?

Comment Re:C/C++ code covers more complex legacy code (Score 1) 37

Rust [...] makes it harder for you to work around the compiler when it comes to memory.

... which, to be clear, is a good thing. Working around the compiler is dangerous and a code smell, so it shouldn't be something that is easy to do. It usually indicates that either the compiler's capabilities aren't sufficient to meet your needs (in which case, a better solution would be either a better compiler, or to re-evaluate the wisdom of your approach), or that you are doing something the wrong way and should find a way to do it that works with the compiler, rather than around it, so that you get the benefits of the compiler's co-operation.

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