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Comment Re:Common knowledge (Score 2) 49

And yet, for some reason, zoonoses didn't happen before livestock farming. Or at least, it was not significant enough to leave genetic traces. It means that there is more to it than "life can adapt, duh".

To support this theory, when Europeans arrived in America, they brought a whole lot of devastating diseases with them, but the natives didn't return the favor. The difference: Europeans have been living with livestock for centuries suffered the plagues that went with it, and developed immunities, the natives, not so much. It means that the mere presence of animals is not enough for diseases to transmit to humans, but herding is.

And I don't know why you are getting political. Yeah, covid, lab leak, etc... there will always be a bunch of conspiracy nuts who disregard scientific data that may contradict their story. But if we put aside covid for a moment, there is whole list of them where the origin is relatively uncontested and not political.

Comment Re:Fill this niche (Score 1) 191

Public domain is going to be a problem considering the quality of recordings before 1930. There is plenty of music composed before 1930, but if you are using a recent recording, the performer still has copyright.

But there are already companies that sell cheap subscriptions (in the order of $10/month) for music that is not covered by performance rights organizations and that you can play in bars and restaurants. Maybe acceptable for background music, but definitely not the same quality and recognition as mainstream artists, think elevator music.

Comment Re:This has been going on for 100 years (Score 2) 42

The problem is that we don't have a better theory than dark matter to explain the motion of galaxies, although MOND and its derivatives are a close second.

A good theory must explain all observations with the least amount of free parameters. And dark matter is actually quite good in that regard: we have stuff that is massive and that we currently can't detect except for its gravitational effect on galaxies, and a particle is currently the favorite candidate. I mean, why not, neutrinos were like that not so long ago, and in fact, neutrinos have been considered dark matter candidates. So we are looking for particles that are both good dark matter candidates, and that we can build detectors for. Not finding these particles does not disprove dark matter, it just means that among the things dark matter could be, one of them is not.

For all we know, dark matter may be a particle that only interacts gravitationally, which physicists call a "nightmare scenario", because it is a very real possibility, and because gravity is so weak, we may never have the technology needed to detect it, at least for the foreseeable future.

Comment Re:well... (Score 1) 45

They seem to regard users' tastes as inferior

And most of the times, they are right. It is a big reason Apple is worth trillions, so that users can rely on Apple to give them what's best for them without having to mess with settings. I remember my family doctor, who was quite a geek and had a PC at home. But in his office, he had a Mac, because that computer was for doing his job and he didn't want to be bothered by anything else.

I don't know if Apple is as good as it once was, but I think they are still among the best. The *did* change the problematic "liquid glass" design after all. Microsoft on the other hand is a complete mess. Not only they don't have the taste of Apple, but they don't compensate by giving you much choice either.

I completely agree with the "change for change's sake" problem though. I think it is marketing. Someone told me once that if you didn't change the UI, you didn't change anything. So maybe your new product is much better but if it looks the same, people won't buy it.

Comment Re:what google has to say about it (Score 1) 99

No it is not scientific.

Science is about facts, not policies. Ideally, policies are decided based on these facts, but at that point, it stops becoming science and it becomes politics.

A scientist's job is not to support a politician over another, decide on budgets, or anything like that. What a scientist can do however is point out the possible consequences of a policy, backed with data and using proper methodology. He can make recommendations on what to do to achieve a certain goal, referencing relevant scientific results, but not decide what to do with these. Scientists don't oppose, they falsify, it means they can point out lies and other statements that don't align with facts, but by itself, a political decision is not something that can be falsified even if the context can be.

Now, scientists are also people, they can engage in politics, have opinions, and of course, they need to pay their bills. But here, we are talking about scientists as people, not science as an activity. Politics about science is not science.

Comment No shit... (Score 1) 46

Smoke is bad for the lungs, it can come from smoking or it can come from other sources. There is nothing particular about smoking, it is just a particularly bad case of self-inflicted air pollution.

It doesn't mean the study is worthless of course, we still need to quantify this, and the results may have been surprising, but as it turns out, they are not.

Comment Re:Did they read the "red book"? (Score 0) 93

The reason people don't release music on CD is because it is inconvenient. It has value as a collector's item, but if you just want to listen to music, a digital file that you can put on a USB stick, your phone, computer, etc... is so much more convenient. Streaming is even more so if you have internet access.

At first, the music industry fought hard to keep CDs relevant, it was a time when downloading meant piracy. They then tried to offer their own (paid/legal) download platforms, with DRM, no one wanted that and many switched to DRM-free MP3s (the very thing they wanted to kill) for that reason. Now, it is all about streaming.

The music industry lost the battle on copy protection, they may even have lost the war. They are now doing the smart thing and offer a product (streaming) that is convenient enough and affordable enough that people don't even want to copy. There is still some DRM, but it is more of a suggestion, people who want to copy will.

Comment Re:Huh? (Score 1) 93

Cars last about 10 years on average, 10 years ago, CD players were a standard feature in most cars, and many of these cars are still on the road.

My current car don't, but my previous car (2004 model) had a cassette player! It was already outdated in 2004, but it was the cheaper option, so that's what I got. By the end of its life (2018), it was completely obsolete but I could still use it if I wanted to.

Comment Re:Erm... (Score 2) 163

SpaceX *is* doing pretty well, despite the spectacular failures.

The problem is all about Elon Musk communication. To put it bluntly, he is a manipulative bastard. But the rockets, yes, they are fine, very good actually. I don't know how much SpaceX got in state funding, but probably a lot more than meets the eye. Again, I don't consider it a bad thing, US rocketry had been an international joke between the Space Shuttle and the Falcon 9. The people who put a man on the moon have their astronauts travel on a Russian rocket, come on... of course the state should put their money in a company that can actually build rockets! But it didn't stop Elon Musk from bad mouthing the government, and going back to the article, "pretending that space is easy".

Just don't listen to Elon Musk hype and you will save yourself a lot of trouble. He has some technical skills though, so on that ground, he has interesting things to say, unfortunately, most of what we hear about from him is not that, with exceptions, like Tim Dodd visit to SpaceX on YouTube.

Comment Re: Global Phenomenon (Score 1, Troll) 180

It's bullshit to be forced to accept cash if you don't want to.

As much as it is "bullshit" to be forced to accept black people if you don't want to. Anti-discrimination laws are a thing.

What's next, being forced to accept checks?

In my country (France), some businesses are forced to accept checks, banks in particular. Regular shops don't. In fact, for a long time, it was the only non-cash payment method that (by law) didn't come with bank fees, making it popular with small structures or between people when cash wouldn't do. Now, most banks offer free wire (SEPA) transfers so checks are becoming a rarity, but I think that having a way around arbitrary bank fees and doesn't require an app is a good thing.

There's a lot of expense and liability involved

Credit card transactions are not free either. But anyways, following the law doesn't have to be free.

If being "unbanked" is the problem, then it sounds like having electronic transactions that don't require banks is what we're in want of

Yes, but how? Who is going to make the infrastructure to support that? How is your new thing better than cash?

not fascist politicians forcing their will on people

Fascist politicians love electronic transactions, much easier to track and control people with these.

Comment Re:Who is going to give me a 4 day work week? (Score 1) 181

Easy: delegate. You can delegate to AI (according to those who think it can be done), an employee, or an associate.

Now, if you can't delegate, or if you are a workaholic who can't imagine having any time off, you are free to do as you want, but the idea with the 4 day week is that you shouldn't expect more of others.

Comment Fluency in AI? (Score 1) 73

There is nothing simpler than *using* AI, just write a prompt and get your result. That's the whole point of AI, any dumbass can use it. "Prompt engineering" is overrated unless it is a system prompt of if you are doing stuff like jailbreaking or prompt injection, neither are particularly relevant to "normal" use, and not that hard anyways. The only thing you really need to know is that sometimes, LLMs hallucinate, so you need to verify. And sure enough fact checking is something all universities should teach, but it is not exclusive to AI by far.

Now *understanding* AI (i.e. machine learning) is another story. Algorithms, linear algebra, statistics, etc... These are hard to pass in many scientific fields nowadays, with so many papers involving machine learning. But it doesn't seem to be what it is about.

And BTW, I think one *should* ban chatbot use for classwork. Students will have more than enough occasions to use it outside of school. Instead, school should teach students how to think by themselves, so when they are inevitably going to use chatbots in other personal or professional situations, they can do it with a working brain. The "creative" ideas in the article are not, there is no creativity in having ideas being suggested by a LLM. "karma and the practice of returning shopping carts", come on, that's a meme.

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