IIRC Sony did something like that: they used an LCD panel to produce colors in front of a black&white CRT to provide the backlight. The result was a screen with a very high contrast ratio.

You could beat me to the joke.

I actually think it's an interesting story in terms of aging, but wouldn't it be nicer to stay with the memories of peak happiness? Too much of the recent stuff strikes me as unpleasant or insane or both...

Did it die from jumping the shark?

(The joke I was expecting. Not following any of the series so I don't know about any shark jumping that may have occurred. Long ago I was turned into a newt/trekkie, but I got better.)

It was too obvious, but the problem is that the headline could always be reworded the opposite way. In this case "Is Sam Altman untrustworthy?" Then Betteridge's automatic "No" response would become an affirmation of his trustworthiness.

On the record of his behavior I would say that Altman wants to act in a trustworthy way, but on the record of tech companies operating in the real world, I would agree with the "Heck no" responses.

Citation required but hated? Latest is Facebook by the great Steven Levy. Quite a heavy book but his smooth writing makes it a pleasure to read.

Now you have me wondering about this distinction in my second language... I can easily recall the most frequently used word for oxygen (but can't show it to you on Slashdot), but I am unsure how to make the distinction you described. It does seem like the gas and the element are conflated again. (However the same word is used in other ways, especially going into "oxide" territory, so...)

However my actual interest in the topic is tangential. Of course you can get oxygen out of compounds that include oxygen. It's mostly a matter of the cost, especially in terms of energy. But it's also a matter of where you do it. We have plenty of free oxygen here on earth (for now) whereas free oxygen on the moon could be much more useful if there are some human visitors who need such.

Hence my basic disappointment in the Artemis approach. We've already been there and done that. But imagine we had sent some robots to the moon. It's close enough for us to operate them remotely from earth. And what if those robots could produce that oxygen on the moon? Along with a big shelter? Then the next human mission could last a long time rather than a few days. I'm not saying Apollo was a bad show, but the sequel doesn't need to be so similar that it feels disappointing...

*sigh*

Spotted yet another typo (when trying to understand moderation (favorable this time)), but this one worries me because it looks like a frequent mistake from voice dictation and yet I am sure that I typed the reply above...

s/so I am sure/though I am sure/

Some of the problems you mention are oft-recurring ones in YA, especially the newer TV adaptations of existing SF and Fantasy franchises. Cheesy dialogue, focusing on teen angst and hookup culture, and in general poor writing with little regard for the source material. What I mean by the latter is that they build the world to suit the story, which rarely works. In contrast, in good SF and Fantasy, the world, the story, the people in it and the events around them all work together.

But the mistake that they seem to make repeatedly is thinking that the YA style has wide appeal with younger people. It doesn't - not when it is applied to existing franchises like this. The reception by (young) fans, and viewership figures, confirm that. Young people don't want everything to be YA, they want to be taken seriously and be served serious entertainment fare as well.

I guess it is a feel good story, but I was hoping (as usual) for a joke or something more substantive. Along the substantive dimension I think "robot" was the key and there doesn't seem to be anything here about that. So...

What's bothering me about the Artemis approach is that it's too much of an advertising thing without substance behind it. Whether the goal is to do more science on the moon or to work towards a permanent human base on the moon, this is not the best way to go about it. We already have the PoC for humans traveling to the moon, and the PoC does not expire. Nice that we can still do it, but most technologies get better over time, so no surprise that we can still do it.

I think a robotic approach is the way to go and for much less than Artemis costs we could put a large number of robots on the moon. They could be used for science or construction work towards an eventual manned base. The delay time to the moon is short enough that they could (at least in theory) be relatively low-intelligence robots operated by remote control. But that approach apparently couldn't be sold to Congress?

Oh yeah. Of course I'm glad it went well and it is impressive and all that stuff. But still a sub-optimal investment in the future.

Is this based on a movie quote or something? Especially the bit about the "airhorns"? And yes, I know that there is no runway 67.

But wait. Perhaps that's a limitation of 2D runways. How would we number the runways in higher dimensions?

Oh wait again. In higher dimensions I'm sure they would use radians rather than the silly 360 thing.

Anyway, thanks for the funny.

Quoted against the censor trolls with mod points. However I still can't figure out what it means and whether or not I agree with it.

Care to clarify? (Couldn't find any helpful clarity within the thread.)

I'm not sure how much I agree, though I'm more sure that I can't say I disagree. My old position was that I favored evolution over revolution, but I'm less sure what that means now. When it comes right down to it, both evolution and revolution are driven by death, and how much does it matter about the timing?

But I'm also beginning to understand the violent Russian anarchists I studied so many decades ago. They caused a lot of problems in Russia before Lenin took over, but I was basically stumped by their motivations. But now I look at the situation we're in and I'm beginning to understand it along the lines of "This cannot be fixed so it might as well collapse and we'll just have to hope the next major version is better." I've been using the related "You can't there from here" joke for a few months now, where "here" is the status quo and "there" is 'Solution City'.

Another example of the day? Currently reading the ponderous Facebook by Steven Levy, an excellent writer. Got me to thinking about the need for a Internet-wide white pages website that would be detached from the money aspects. Objective would be to allow each person to control his own identity and screen out imposters. At first I thought it could be a killer app for my imaginary CSB (Charity Share Brokerage), but with just a bit more thinking I could see a crisis of dimensionality that seems fundamentally unresolvable. "You can't get there from here" even with a CSB. But the point of the book is that Zuck didn't look that far ahead. Just solving the "trivial" crisis of each day and imagining vague castles in the sky between crises... (Also related to The Enigma of Reason and how our rationality is mostly not rational even in real life decisions. Life fails to imitate fiction again?)

NAK

*sigh* !

s/on my time/on my dime/

My fingers and eyes are borken [sic].

*sigh*

s/on my time/on my time/

And probably other mistakes.

Is NOT this encryption. Why don't I want this encryption? Can't possibly be because I don't trust the google anymore, so I am sure that it includes back doors of their convenience.

Can't imagine how today's google could convince me that they have changed their business model in a way that they aren't selling me as the product. Funny related reading is Disrupted by Dan Lyons. Actually a couple of years old, but still funny.

What do I actually want from the google? Right now the #1 priority would be a way to delete the garbage in my google account. Without completely tossing the stuff that I speculate could come back to haunt some criminals. I think that business model is actually to get me to pay for personal information they have acquired without my comprehension and now want to store on my time. But in lack of a "friendly" solution I'm on the verge of wholesale slaughter of the data, hopefully including whatever the google values because it is the data they hope (or want) to use against me. Freedom is a funny thing, too.

By the way, I don't even know if Gmail still has that confidential email stuff. What I wanted there was an option to auto-bounce any incoming email that tried to use it. Seems moot, since I can't recall ever seeing such an animal.