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Comment Re: I'm so glad the government makes me safe. (Score 1) 59

The reality is that if the tickets are selling out that fast and they're being resold for significantly more than the original price, then they were underpriced to begin with.

Tickets sell out fast because scalpers use bots to buy them all.

Which in a free market indicates that the price is below what the market would bear. Otherwise, they would be unable to make a profit by reselling them. So the GP is not wrong, at least from a pure price optimization perspective.

This is not to say that there aren't societal benefits from charging less than the market will bear, of course, nor saying that scalping in any way adds value. It is basically rent seeking behavior, which makes it a drain on society. But the point still remains that obviously the ticket vendors could raise the prices to what the scalpers were charging and still sell tickets. Whether the scalpers would then be able to raise their prices further is unknown.

Comment Vibe coding is an intermediate step that will die (Score 1) 11

I don't think vibe coding is going to last long as a thing, because it's just a sort of intermediate step to telling the AI to do what you want and having it do that. Right now, people are telling the LLM to write code to accomplish a thing and then running the code to see how it works, then telling the LLM to refine it, but that's a lot of unnecessary extra steps. I'm sure that in the not-too-distant future people will just tell the LLM what they want to do, which may require creating a custom user interface to make user interaction convenient, and may require creating databases or performing network queries or whatever, and the LLM will understand what they want, and do it.

In that future, it's possible that the LLM may generate code to implement the requested functionality, but if it does so that will be a compute-saving shortcut, essentially a way to cache the LLM's work and be able to repeat it with less effort. There won't be any need to show any of the code to the user, or even tell the user that the LLM chose to generate some code.

As an aside, the whole notion of leaning "prompt engineering" is another intermediate step that will die. The whole point of natural language-capable AI is that it will be able to understand what humans want when we express ourselves as we would to other humans. As the LLMs get more capable, it will become less necessary to treat them as something different from an entity that is fully capable of understanding and acting on human communication.

Comment Re:Very quick code reviews (Score 1) 35

At my company we don't have any dedicated Rust programmers. We all have to learn it (eventually). So passing a review off to a Rust developer or dedicated team isn't an option for us.

C++ reviews go quick for us because we have 20 years of it in our code base. And our changes tend to either be a tiny increment at the core. Or a massive dump of support for a new feature or chip that not every reviewer is familiar with.

At my company we don't have any dedicated Rust programmers. We all have to learn it (eventually). So passing a review off to a Rust developer or dedicated team isn't an option for us.

One of the things Android did very right with the Rust transition was to set up a small team of people who were entirely focused on Rust support. It wasn't a large team, only 2-6 people (it varied over time) out of approximately 1500 engineers. Having that core team who either were or became deep Rust language and toolchain experts was critical to smoothing the path for everyone else. It provided a group that had the knowledge and bandwidth to solve the problems that inevitably came up, as well as to offer advice and code review support to the early adopters.

That group no longer provides code reviews and design advice because Rust knowledge is now widespread enough that teams have their own, homegrown, Rust experts (not people designated as Rust experts, just engineers who became enthusiastic and dived deep), but the group still exists to resolve complex technical problems with language integration and to work on improving tooling and performance.

I think any shop adopting Rust (or any new language or complex tool) needs to have some people who become deeply expert in it and are allowed the time and freedom to support others who are picking it up.

C++ reviews go quick for us because we have 20 years of it in our code base.

So does Android. Google has been a primarily-C++ shop since its inception and although I'm not sure if Android had a lot of C++ in it when Google bought Android in 2005, it definitely became a C++-based system as soon as that happened.

And our changes tend to either be a tiny increment at the core. Or a massive dump of support for a new feature or chip that not every reviewer is familiar with.

The highly-segmented architecture of Android really helped facilitate the transition. Most of Android is structured as a web of collaborating services that communicate through a common language-independent [*] IPC mechanism (binder). Implementing Rust binder IDL generation and support libraries was a moderately big job, but once that was done it was easy to begin writing new system components (or replacing existing system components) in pure Rust, generally without any unsafe blocks at all.

If your code runs as a monolithic process, or has a lot of different IPC mechanisms, or uses a lot of existing libraries, it will be a lot harder, and the benefits will come slower. You'll have to wrap a lot of C interfaces in Rust -- and they will have to be C, not C++, since there isn't a good way for Rust to interoperate directly with C++. People are working on that, but it's a very hard problem and at present the best option is to layer a C interface on top of your C++ code, then wrap a Rust interface around the C interface. Yuck. Or, in the alternative, insert some other language-agnostic boundary between them.

So in a lot of ways Android got lucky because of its modular architecture and single, language-agnostic IPC mechanism. OTOH, that wasn't really "luck", it was a lot of work, done for good reasons, one of which was cross-language compatibility, notably between Java and C++.

[*] Language independent-ish, maybe I should say. The binder IDL is definitively Java-based, but this maps fairly nicely onto OO languages that support common primitive types (int, char, enum), basic composite types (array, vector, class/struct, string (which is just a vector, but used enough to be worth treating as a first-class thing)) and Java-like methods (fixed argument list, single return value). Further, it's based on "old" Java, before Java acquired functional extensions, when doing things like passing method references as argument was uncommon, and therefore not supported. So it's moderately-expressive but avoids things that get weird and complicated. My one big complaint about it is that I wish it supported unsigned integer types. That's my biggest gripe with Java, too.

Comment Re: Oh, Such Greatness (Score 1) 135

Indeed.

All these mayors and governors telling their local law enforcement (you know actual men with guns) to thwart the efforts of federal law enforcement, is a hell of lot closer to 'insurrection' than J6, CHAZ and a lot of those BLM protest looked a lot more like the Whiskey rebellion(s) or Shay's than J6, and we know how those were handled.

The GP should look in mirror and be careful what s/he wishes for..

Comment Agreed but (Score 1) 27

In the blue States it's generally individual cops getting caught doing it. Albeit a lot but still individual cops.

In the red States it's coming down from the top that's the difference. It's because corruption at the top is more common in a red state than a blue state.

This is to be expected if you understand how left and right wing politics work.

In a red State you have a right Wing state. So you have people that are prone to hierarchical structures and obedience.

That's going to encourage corruption because the people at the top will view themselves as being absolutely in charge and the people beneath them will encourage that view. It's why Trump can get away with committing so many crimes and the public still loves him.

A hierarchical command structure versus a democratic command structure is going to lend itself to top down corruption more often and the corruption is going to be worse. There is just no getting away from that or the consequences of right-wing politics.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to leverage one AI beast against the other? (google.com)

shanen writes: File this under "rage against the machines"? Or as some kind of joke?

So here's the background: The google is trying to sell me cloud storage. The sales pitch is simple enough. Frequent nagging about running low on storage space. I do not even know which of my google accounts this is based on because two of my universities have foisted secondary accounts on me.

However I suspect that a lot of the data is basically garbage photos. Now I could just delete masses of stuff at random (and this is probably where I will wind up), but there are actually two potentially large categories of images that could be reduced from megabytes to a few hundred bytes each without major loss. It's an obvious AI application of pulling some text and the metadata from the images and tossing the originals.

However when I asked the (increasingly evil) google's Gemini about this, the response was NOT helpful. Gemini admits that it's an obviously useful thing to do, but also spewed a lot of BS about why google isn't going to do it. Gemini also spewed a lot of even less useful verbiage about how to implement it using the google's tools--but I do NOT want to go back to my programming days. I'm content with a few minor noddies these years... My take is that the non-evil google could offer the tool and get "payback" in the form of learning more about what the images mean, but the google obviously disagrees. Or at least that's how I'm interpreting the massive blather from Gemini.

But does some other AI offer such a tool that could be applied to my google account? The other AI company could positively justify it by learning about images or perhaps negatively justify it by depriving the google of the business.

Or maybe you want to share some hints about how you manage your file bloat in these AI days? Me? I think we are collapsing through the singularity even as I type... And the other side doesn't look so good. I did a lot of kinds of work over the years, but most of my jobs already look like they are obsolete or extinct. And I made my living at a wide spectrum of trades from low to high skills... Or perhaps you want a link to a short video of the best job in the world: "Mayor of Prairie Dog Town greeting the citizens with veggies!" That's job no AI can handle yet!

Comment Not an actual case of cryocide, so what's the... (Score 1) 75

Mod FP funny, and if that moderation had happened sooner, then maybe the humorous opening FP would have been more productive. But I don't have another joke to add, so I'll fork (as is my tendency in most cases).

New Subject:

Not an actual case of cryocide, so what's the problem here?

Near as I can tell (without actually breaking down and reading everything) is that she died, was pronounced and certified as dead, and he didn't incinerate or bury her corpse, but chose to freeze her remains. Minor question about how long that process took, but not too interesting.

Now imagine that it was a case of cryocide. Imagine that she was still alive when she pushed a button to carefully freeze herself BEFORE she was actually dead. On the one hand, the cause of death is now a kind of suicide, but on the other hand, if the freezing is carefully done with the intention of minimizing the damage and the hope of being revived in the future, then we may be looking at an entirely fresh can of worms.

I actually imagine this as an opening for a series of SF stories called "Cyocide Crybabies" about waking up in worlds gone wrong. Any leads? Or even interest?

Comment The two largest economies on the planet (Score 0, Troll) 31

Are actively hiding their economic data. We are going to have a 1930s style economic collapse.

All the pieces are here. We are in the middle of a industrial revolution with massive amounts of automation and technological unemployment without any significant new employment opportunities on the horizon. Seriously sit down and write out what the jobs are going to be after automation and ai and machine learning rip through the economy. You can't just go and make cars after the buggy whip factory shuts down when the car factory is also automated.

Next we have a huge economic bubble where we are spending trillions of dollars specifically AI infrastructure spending and the massive bank loans that go with it.

And we have widespread drought resulting in crop failures and increasing food prices. Even if you don't believe climate change and the water cycle breaking is the problem the drought is still real.

This is everything that led up to world war I at world war II.

We have the technology to stop this but we don't have the education and critical thinking and social structures to stop it...

Comment So why are we allowing this again? (Score 0) 27

Seriously. I understand the bomb squad needs robots that's a good thing. But every year a crime goes down and every year we put more cops with better weapons and more weapons on the street.

I understand what's going on with all that immigration enforcement bullshit. There's a bunch of bitter old assholes who get off on seeing people slammed into the ground.

But is there really that many people for whom the pleasure of watching a couple of Mexicans get dragged into a black van by masked goons is enough to make them A-Okay with this bullshit?

I just had to get the new fancy license and they made me take my glasses off because they're using facial recognition now.

One of the funny things I keep seeing over and over again is confused white people in the middle class pulled over by cops and harassed the same way they're used to seeing "those people" harassed.

The place where it's really showing up is DUIs. In several red states with heavy duty police enforcement there is a ton of stories about people getting pulled over and arrested and losing their license when they were Stone Cold sober. There are a couple of big scandals where the local police were just told you need to get your arrest numbers up or else.

DUI is really popular for that because the cops can arrest you without cause or proof and it takes months before it comes out that you were innocent. Meanwhile your license is suspended.

The fact that they're doing this to the in group is a massive red flag. It's a huge shift in how things work.

Comment Republicans did this (Score 0, Troll) 135

They are objectively bad for the economy and they know it. People are starting to know it too no matter how much propaganda there is.

Google it. It is a fact that the Republican party is worse for the economy than the Democratic party. Trickle down economics doesn't work and never has.

We have been trained to get angry when we see anyone discussing the two political parties. So it's tough to have this discussion but it's a discussion we need to have.

Because without positive economic gains for 90% of us the Republican party has to give voters some reason to vote for them.

Yes homophobia and racism and transphobia will always be good old standbys but religion is fading in America. It's just not bringing the numbers in that it used to.

So they are pivoting to crackpottery with anti-vax being the big one.

Comment Re:No need for security (Score 1) 91

1. I got asked once if I played world of warcraft since they say a guy with the name "thegarbz" playing. I said no. By the way I know exactly who that person is because he impersonated me as a joke. I found that flattering and funny, but it has no impact on my life beyond that.

Reminds me of my first email account ;) One of my professors said we all had to register for an email account (this was in the mid-90s) so we could submit our homework to him, so I registered his name at hotmail.com to mess with him ;)

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