And years from now companies will be doing the same things and making the same "mistakes", because the apparently the economic system that controls them demands it. Rinse and repeat.

Or even better, get submitters to post content to Lemmy (or other instance, as this one is reporting load problems from the influx of new users already), or some other free site while dark. It would be good to not have all ones eggs in one basket.

Oh oh, someone's upset that ChatGPT won't serve them their kitty porn fanfic. And even worse, somehow thought that AIs are capable of being unbiased. Unbiased, like the internet is unbiased. And even worse than that, thought that chatGPT actually output coherent "strongman" arguments ON ANY TOPIC that warranted intellectual consideration. That last point may be, I'm sorry, unforgivable. You just failed the internet.

Microsoft... antitrust.... WHaT YEaR IS THiS??!

It's bad for books in the same way that Microsoft has been "bad" for personal computers and web browsers. It's captured the market and is owned by a monopolist (of sorts) who does pretty much the absolute minimum to advance it, while stifling competition in various ways. As the article describes, it also is full of bugs that never get fixed and hasn't sufficiently respected users data (lost a lot of user data during an upgrade, and didn't seem to care to recover it). Its parent company, as a virtual monopolist, while it doesn't seem to have imposed itself too much so far, also has a huge conflict of interest -- community based platform-neutral reviews vs amazon's product reviews.

I was curious who this lynched scientist was, so did a quick wikipedia lookup. Turns out he actually is a "political science" (science?) educated person who wrote a controversial book which talked about climate change -- not denying it, but apparently advocating de-prioretising addressing it for economic reasons.

Interestingly complaints were filed to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (some sort of government-related oversight committee) and his book was found "contained deliberately misleading data and flawed conclusions". This finding was later annulled on some procedural technicalities, but not on the substance. Also a bunch of scientists protested it on the basis that the book in question was "opinion" and not real "science" -- though the author himself appears to have disagreed with this. So basically the usual big stupid mess often seen when non-scientists attempt to cherry pick science to support their preferred political views.

This all happened around 20 years ago, so I assume this is the topic of the "lynching" being referred to. From what I'm reading about htis it seems more likely that around 20 years ago certain political biases started becoming more and more detached from scientific reality. And people who were called out for their lack of rigour and/or qualifications are considered to be "lynched". But I haven't read the primary material so I can't say for sure. "Lyching" certainly seems like probably an overstatement, however.

It is heartening to see that even a famously abrasive curmudgeon can have the wisdom to evolve in leadership.

Looks like Ars Technica is now a front for jihadists, either that or their ignorant dupes. You'd think a technically focused team wouldn't fall for this obviously religious indoctrination. Shows just how insidious this stuff is. Interesting that they posted the story under the name "Machkovech" -- vaguly jewish sounding. False flag? This guy is embedded deep, too (long writing history of articles there, none of them overtly Muslim). I guess more likely just identity theft. Someone should let this schmuck know how his name is being misused to unwittingly advancing bigotry and tyranny, so he can liberate his byline from this (IS?) quagmire.

For those who think I don't know what I'm talking about, I can tell you I know of these things from personal experience. I once downloaded a "shareware" (communist?) program a long time ago that animated Celtic knot designed. Seemed innocent and interesting, but before I knew it I had Druids recruiting me. And young innocent that I was at the time, I fell for it. Sure I went on a few raids, just some minor raping and pillaging and all that. But thank God (not Odin!) I finally (thanks to some helpful posts on Slashdot, like yours) realised the error of my ways, and woke up to reality. Got a job at one of the few remaining American call centers. It's a bit boring, but at least it lets me talk to a lot of people, who I can help by telling my story.

I thought it was the law of programming that recursion be introduced with a Fibonacci sequence generator. I believe this AP thing is breaking the law of programming.

Is there any evidence that any scientists on this board directly benefit from grants due to the clock or their statements surrounding their analysis related to the clock?

At least it's science-based politics, which one hopes some would consider at least better than the usual utterly self-serving and corporate greed based politics out there.

Kids should start with raw machine language and fairly quickly move up to assembly, and then maybe plain old C, and only then get to higher level languages later. These lower levels don't have to be mastered to high degrees, but just introduced to lay the foundation to build on logically. I think these intro courses look at things backwards.

Higher level languages should be saved for experts as a tool for getting stuff done faster, with greater amounts of complexity, by people who understand how things work and are less likely to shot themselves (and their users) in the face.

That being said, good programmers can start with any language... doesn't really matter all that much.

Letting kids go outside is cruel and stupid when it can be so easily avoided in our modern society. Have you people not heard of lightening? This is not paranoia, it's verifiable fact. On average 50 people are killed each year in the USA from lightning. Thankfully the average is going down, and we less now... thanks probably to more people staying inside. But it's still more than are killed in the average terrorist attack or school shooting, or pedophile rampage, which people seem to be very concerned about. Since irresponsible parents historically have not seen fit to make sure their children are properly shielded from lightning each and every time they leave home, it would seem there is no choice but for a society who cares about children to make sure the children are secured indoors.

I would mention the actually astronomically greater threat posed by automobiles, directly and indirectly, but I understand that our society has made the conscious decision to holds cars sacred. So that's fine.

It might be helpful to know what linux distro you tend to use, because the type of distro may indicate which BSD variant you would be most comfortable with.

I have in times past run 3 of the original BSDs and all have (many) strengths and (a few) weaknesses.

I would generally recommend FreeBSD for the community and documentation. Ever since it adopted OpenBSD's PF firewall many years ago (which is wonderful), I have generally recommended FreeBSD for it's generally greater modern compatibility and larger community for anyone who isn't entirely hardcore into a particular BSD for particular reasons.

It's a bit superficial, but why not fire up some VMs with all OS's you may be interested in and give them an install to kick the wheels... get at least a bit of a feel for the thing.

I love my progressives. When I used to have dual monitors they were near a window which I used to look out of often, switching from close to far vision. I remember the wavy distortion and the slight feeling of disorientation when i first went progressive (especially when walking), but it didn't last very long for me, and I loved the option of distance clarity too much to give it up. Single vision lenses are definitely clearer, with a larger field of vision, for reading. I have reading glasses, but I find I rarely use them... I can't be bothered. I prefer the flexibility of the progressives, despite their quirks and limitations, and have just grown used to moving my head up and down to get the clarity where I want it. I don't even think about it anymore.

Different people have different priorities and different tolerances, but I can say that for myself I have gotten entirely used to progressives and prefer them.