Soon we will have AI call screening that answers for us, interacts with the caller, and decides whether to handle it directly, disconnect, or forward it to the user. At what point do we just have AI talking to AI, peddling AI services to AI agents? Will we end up with both sides of the AI getting into a generation loop and find calls of them repeating a word or phrase at each other indefinitely? Or will the human suddenly have a 117 quadrillion dollar charge declined on their credit card because their AI agent agreed to buy one petaseat of licensing?

Suffice to say: "What could possibly go wrong?"

Precisely. And since a law requiring that record being kept is very obvious 'spilled beans', the law creates the chilling effect immediately.

Maybe age, maybe embarrassment, maybe less frequent use, maybe interpersonal dynamics, maybe they only looked while at public libraries, maybe they only went to (or ran) 'oddcore' sites* that were technically...(?) but not really? ... I can only speculate on that. I won't shame anybody for looking, and I won't shame them for not looking. ^.^

(* Kinks that are definitely "Happy-Making" content to some viewers, but don't qualify for 'porn' classification despite the use people put them to. The 'crusty-haired armpit' site and the 'bare feet squishing objects' site are the two immediate examples of those I can remember.)

So, yeah. They are, despite some claims, human too, and will like everything from PornHub to running a site dedicated to titillation from close ups of 'shapely feet sending pudding-covered grape guts flying with a good stomp'. Now I almost** want to go see if that site still exists.

(** After further consideration, no I definitely don't.))

Yes. The "chilling effect" as described, and its impact on their business viability. Legally, potentially privacy regulations and laws, depending on jurisdiction.

Despite 'Data Is King' and data being very profitable, strip clubs that aren't legally prevented from tracking it don't anyway because the end cost would be more than the value. The law in question here is to force them to track it and take on that end cost, and everybody else to take on the societal cost.

Note: Cost is a general term in this use, not specifically just money.

First off, major disclaimer: My source is anecdotal direct job experience. Take it or leave it, it's just to be generally informative. As always, take anecdotes with a minute serving of NaCl and apply your own sense and jade to it. Specifics are faded into the wetware memory rot of time

In the work I did, we were well aware that around 70% of politicians viewed this 'adult content' regularly - like a minimum of weekly. When 'government workers' of all types were included, the number went up substantially. More importantly, a larger than expected - I don't have exact numbers right now but it was in the 1-5% range IIRC - were directly involved in the background of running one or more Adult Entertainment sites as a side gig. Especially specialty and niche ones and they got very specific.

The thing that was definitely constant was that there was not really any pattern to who looked at or created the stuff. Young, old, prude, proud, across the spectrum of government. And the dichotomy was often extreme too. A government official who was on record repeatedly ranting about alternate lifestyles ruining family values also ran a 'twink snuff buffet' site that made more money than their day job. Yes... 'Do, Kill, Eat'. Thankfully staged and fake. Work was never anything if not interesting.

Anyway, I'm gonna go snag some brain bleach now and continue to watch this with a proper FIA attitude.

Sounds like they may be fretting about falling behind on the idea of XR and so are making excuses for it. VRChat users often observe that Desktop Mode VRChat is a gateway drug to VR.

"VR Optional" will catch them up to VRChat, and tech-wise and usage-wise they are somewhat akin to Neos in complexity and freedom. But then also has transactions with a currency that translates to and from legal currency. It'll be interesting to see what ends up working and what doesn't. What worries me is all the energy and time investment into places that may or may not survive. But that becomes a chicken and egg issue as well.

I take it you're talking about actual lens focus? Takes a few short sessions for most people to learn the new physical skill.

On the line of 'annoying for most people to bother with', Second Life was also too annoying for most people to bother with, and even video game consoles are not of interest to a lot of people. A market is rarely 'most people'. It just needs to be big enough to sustain the businesses in it.

Is it sad because the dog is ignored, and ends up dreaming about being part of what its family is intent on, but can only have fun in its dreams?

Or sad because the vast majority of the family members are also completely alone for the holiday season, intent on their individual pursuits rather than family togetherness?

Or is it sad because she's selecting a torch in a village during the day and isn't playing full-screen?

I've found that they implement stuff, and then incrementally improve it. As long as you know the manual controls well, you're set. Then when a new feature comes out, you can poke it if you like, or leave it be until it's got better results.

Realistic expectations are also good. Stuff like smart summon, people complain "OMG, it drove the wrong way on a one way lane! A human driver would NEVER do that!" ... So I sit in a parking lot for half an hour and watch a bunch of human drivers drive the wrong way in a one way lane (and much worse on occasion) and end up wondering what world those people live in that no human drivers do that.

Not that I'm aware of without a service call to fully reset the camera stuff. It has sanity checks though. It knows what its normal camera views are, and bases wipes on those normal views being obstructed or showing certain patterns, and the pattern and view changing from a wipe. There is a place I can park that has a bush in front that has tiny, waxy leaves. If I turn the car on while facing the little reflective leaves, it wipes, thinking that the reflection pattern from the leaves is rain on the windshield. If I close one eye, I can easily see in monoscopic vision that it looks like that. Then it doesn't see a change, so it only does it once.

If the last time you used Auto was before the update, it's a big difference now.

I trained it after the software version where it could be trained. It defaults to less wiping because people complained that it was wiping too much. Push the press to wipe when you want it to wipe, and it adds the snapshot of that view of the windshield to "The driver wants me to wipe if it looks like this" in training. It took to training well and was good within three drives for me.

Yep, beta, and I've yet to encounter any bugs with it. In the (so-far-zero) event that it doesn't work as I'd like (In the PNW, so there have been MANY opportunities for it to be off), I have the option to press the stalk button more than once, or press the stalk button and then tap a specific speed on the console, which I can do without looking, because I am familiar with that part of vehicle operation.

This makes it full circle to "driver being familiar with the vehicle controls" again. I would surmise that if you temporarily drove a vehicle with wiper controls on the right stem and in a different configuration (Prius is an excellent example), you would have a bit of trouble until you knew the controls well. For comparison, on your X, the activation and speed controls are both by twisting the end of the stem on the upper left behind the wheel. On a Prius, twisting the end of the stem operates the back wipers. The speed control is on a twist ring halfway along the stem. Turning them on requires pushing the stem down the proper amount. And the stem is on the lower right.

I'm glad that you are happy you can split your attention away from the road in your car to find the wiper controls and turn them to full speed.

I am happy that in my Tesla Model 3, the car instantly recognizes this situation and goes to full speed faster than a human could react, without requiring me to focus on anything more than driving safely.

Even in less-extreme situations, like my impression that the car is not wiping fast enough for my preference, but I just want slightly faster auto, not full speed, I just push the button when I think it needs a wipe, and after the second press, it's learned the conditions that I would like a wipe at, so does it itself moving forward.

If you don't know what you're doing - which is going to be the situation in ANY new car until you get used to it - it will be more difficult. Once people have experience, it's just fine and they find it extremely convenient and good. The main takeaway is "Don't knock it 'til you try it" I suppose.

There's no standard, so different manufacturers do it differently and in different places. If you put a random person who's used to a different arrangement in your car at night with just "Turn on the headlights" as instructions, they'd probably take more than three seconds to figure it out. ;)

Try searching Google for "car headlight controls" and then click the image search. Some common themes, but a lot of variations. A search for images of "car windshield wiper controls" gets even weirder.

Touch interface, meaning that you touch it to interface with it. As opposed to a twist interface, a push interface, a knob interface, a slider interface, or any other physical manipulation of a control device.

I would posit that the different physical controls on different cars can be just as confusing and distracting unless the driver knows them by heart from repetition and frequent use.

Anecdotal case in point: After taking my eight-year-old vehicle in for service, the headlights were changed from Auto to Off. The last time I touched the controls for the headlights was about five years before that, and I ended up having to pull to the side and pull out a light to look at all the various controls on steering wheel stems to find out what to twist and which way to turn the headlights back on.

That was my bad for not being familiar with the controls of the car due to disuse. But you don't see people griping about oversaturation of unclear stem controls.