"Why don't the actual numbers match our hype? Something must be wrong with reality!"

The answer is in the summary: "Revenue at US companies providing AI infrastructure has risen by $400 billion [...]"

Yeah, it's going gangbusters at the places that provide the AI. They've managed to convince everyone that AI is a "must have" technology. But why would anyone expect that to translate into more productivity or revenue at the places that actually use the AI? They're paying the AI providers, but whatever productivity or revenue is seen is being eaten by that new cost. What this shows is that AI isn't as useful as it's hyped up to be, at least at its current price point.

Yeah, the entire NOVA scale is like that. It classifies pasta (made with only flour and water) as group 1, "Unprocessed and minimally processed foods". But "grinding or milling" (such as, say, turning wheat into flour...) is group 2, "Processed culinary ingredients". Homemade plain yogurt is group 1, but add fruit and it becomes group 4 "Ultra-processed foods". It's all very subjective and seems to be based on the premise that if an idealized old-country grandma made it, it's minimally processed.

NOVA says that one way to tell if a food is ultra-processed is "Sophisticated and attractive packaging is used, usually made of synthetic materials." Obviously the packaging has fuck-all to do with nutritional value. As it is, NOVA seems to be a prime example of the "appeal to nature" fallacy. Natural is good, and the farther away from nature you get the worse the food is for you.

I can't comment on whether or not there's validity in classifying food by its processing. But if it is valid, it seems to me that the type of processing, not just the amount of it, should have some bearing. So yeah, I agree that it's certainly time for an improved definition.

You can read the classification system for yourself, it's not very long. Ultra-processed foods, diet quality, and health using the NOVA classification system

Bingo. They welcome it. In 2016 we could believe that people were tricked into voting for Trump, that they didn't realize what a shitshow he really was. But 2024? After he'd screwed up for four years and had one trial after another for four more? No one can say they didn't see it coming. They wanted him to do exactly what he's doing. Anything that hurts "those horrible people" (immigrants, minorities, queers, liberals, whoever) gets a rousing cheer from the rank and file MAGAts. It doesn't matter if it hurts them, too. As long as it hurts their perceived enemies more. They see life as a zero sum game. Anyone else getting ahead in any way necessarily means you're losing. And if you can make them lose, that's the same as you winning.

Sure, go ahead and test effectiveness of improving health in humans. That's good to know. But, I don't think I've ever bought an air filter because I thought it would improve my health. I always had a more immediate goal: Remove an odor, make it easier to breath by removing smoke (blame Canada!), alleviate pollen allergies. These things are all primary effects that the user will be able to judge within hours or days of installing the filter.

Measuring health benefits is tricky. Studies take a long time, require a large sample population, and have many confounding factors. A general claim like "improves overall health" is nearly impossible to measure. More specific claims like, "reduces your chance of contracting XYZ virus" is easier, but are your test subjects trapped in a room 24 hours a day? If not, even with a filter that's 100% effective there are outside opportunities to contract the virus.

On the other hand, it's easy to test whether or not the filter removes particulates. Dirty air in, clean air out, measure the presence of the particles of interest in both samples. Done and done. Practically no confounding factors, doesn't need to compute statistics over a large sample population, doesn't take a long time to wait and see if there's a correlation between use of the device and lung cancer decades down the line.

I'm not saying that health studies shouldn't be done. They absolutely should be if the manufacturer is making any sort of health claims. But saying, "filters 99% of particles of this size" doesn't need human trials. Even saying "filters 99% of the virus which causes this disease" is objectively measurable in a controlled environment, without human trials.

And like I said at the start, that's really why I'm buying the air filter. To filter the air.

I always assumed that the "Must Have" designation was a paid promotional spot, just like recommendations are on every other storefront. So, maybe cough up the dough to claim it?

And Xitter is listed as a "news app"? If so it must be severely mis-categorized. No wonder it can't take the #1 spot.

So the journey is going to last 400 years. That's a minimum of 8 generations. If you were born in such a ship, and your parents were born in the ship, and your grandparents, and your great-grandparents, and your great-great-grandparents, and so on back to your (great*5)-grandparents were born on the ship... Why bother stopping at a planet at all? You're very well acclimated to ship-board life. You're used to all the things that it necessitates, like strict recycling, birthrate control, etc. Why doom yourselves and your children to life down at the bottom of a gravity that your descendants will some day just have to climb out of again? You might want to pause and restock on consumables, maybe even build another ship for expansion. But actually *live* on a planet? With uncontrolled weather!? And an unenclosed sky that you just *know* is going to leak out all your atmosphere into the vacuum of space? Eeeww!

For that matter, why bother with the "ship" part of "generation ship"? The design gets a lot easier if you don't have to deal with that whole propulsion component. Plus, if you hang out in the solar system you retain access to resources and sunlight. You might even choose to vacation down in that awkward gravity well, if Earth is still habitable.

Sadly the LKLM is hidden behind some ridiculous "protection". Does anyone know a mirror that's usable?

Of course it's nearly unusable for the Enterprise! Didn't you see what happened when Dr. Daystrom hooked up the M-5 to the Enterprise computer? It went nuts! Destroyed friendly targets and tried to destroy the entire Enterprise. M-5, GPT-5... WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!

I use the Feedbro Firefox plugin to track podcasts - an amazing number of worthwhile podcasts still advertise new contend by RSS. So I don't need to use any privacy-invading audio services or apps.

A sampling of podcasts of interest to me with RSS: No Such Thing As A Fish, Cory Doctorow, Gastropod, Hackaday, Science With Sabine, Guardian Science Weekly

Vik :v)

"People are excited about the devices that they can buy from us that has Alexa+ enabled in it. People do a lot of shopping [with Alexa+]; it's a delightful shopping experience that will keep getting better,"

Please, name one person who's not being paid by Amazon who says anything like this. And if you manage to dig up one person who says it, go ahead and ask them if paid advertising in the stream continues to delight them.

I'll pull a number out of my ass and will claim that in at least 95% of all translation, quality and emotion does not matter at all.

Maybe you think of translating a masterpiece, a best-selling book. They are outnumbered by an order of magnitude by apps, websites, technical manuals, policy documents, reports, all mass-produced by every business out there and require translation but no one cares about the details.

Oh, Satanic Panic, how I've missed you! It's been, what, 40 years since the last good one? Sadly, Jack Chick is no longer with us, but I bet we could convince an AI to barf out a tract in his style warning us all of the satanic powers of AI.

Reminds me of a quote from the book High-Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic:

Any experiment involving semiconductors at a frequency of 10^-12 Hz will (eventually) reveal that they do not function. It takes so long to run an experiment at 10^-12 Hz that the circuits turn to dust. Viewed on a very long time scale, integrated circuits are nothing but tiny lumps of oxidized silicon.

If it's only photo ID images 2 years old, then everyone is safe! No need to worry about a thing.

My photo ID and driver's license information is of course completely different now compared to two years ago. I'm sure everyone has moved and changed their looks enough in two years to make that information virtually useless.

This is actually less than expected. Low enough that I think this is too optimistic.

Then again, the cost is not so much labor, but energy, raw material, and land use. I wouldn't be surprised if cost of property and energy is actually comparable between Taiwan and Arizona, so there's only the extra shipping and a bit higher salary for a few workers.