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Comment Re:Transitions (Score 2) 240

Yup. And I've got my USB (A) to DB9 serial adapter handy.

Which is unreliable in many situations. I worked on several projects that had issues involving intermittent data loss on a DB9 port, and every time the culprit turned out to be a USB/DB9 adapter. When we'd install dedicated RS232 cards, the problem went away.

For laptops, the answer to this kind of thing should be a standard space where a customer can specify what ports he wants... you get X number of standard ports, and then you can choose what goes into one or two available spaces. But you're just not going to see that happen with manufacturers, even if the customer is willing to pay a greater cost.

Comment Re:Reminds me of a meme (Score 1) 67

It asks the question why don't kids play outside anymore and then in the next frame there's a picture of a pretty typical American city with absolutely no sidewalks let alone Parks or anything and the subtitle "the outside".
  You give up a portion of your life in exchange for cars and a car centric civilization. And I guess for most people they think it's worth it.

Except that I spent some years growing up in dense, street-centric areas, and kids simply played in the streets. Every day. Our substitute for baseball (so as not to damage cars or windows) was "whiffle ball", with hollow plastic balls and bats. In the summers especially, we spent literally all day outside. In the streets. For kids who did this too much, the criticism was literally that "you let your kids run the streets".

Being car-centric has nothing to do with kids activity. The spread of video games and Internet connected culture had everything to do with the modern dearth of outdoor activity by kids. All of my youngest's friends are online in distant places. There are other kids in the neighborhood, but very few of them play outside that I can see. Online is where all the action is. Maybe the answer is for parents to literally kick kids out of the house, they way they used to do ("out, and I don't want to see you back inside until lunch" was a common summer refrain from parents). Maybe if all the kids are turned out, they'll start doing the natural thing, and make their own fun, which is all "outside" is.

Comment Re:I predict everyone will want tips now (Score 1) 61

Tipping culture is absurd top to bottom, people should be paid a decent wage.

Tipping is great in good service jobs. You tend to make good money in mid-to-nicer restaurants as a waiter or waitress. Where tipping sucks is when you work in cheap joints with cheap customers. Or delivering pizza, like you did in college, where your customers tend to be either poor or cheapskates. Poor people can't afford to tip, and cheapskates simply won't. And then there are the groups that simply refuse to tip because they don't see labor or service as a value at all. "If I can't hold it in my hand, I ain't payin' for it".

Comment Re:Question (Score 1) 78

They've done this with every meaningful cultural and corporate heritage item in our world. It's disgusting.

You don't honor the heritage of a people by removing all symbolic representations of that culture from public life. The Spartans and Centurions were millennia ago but still have strong, important cultural imagery for today: the same is true of the Apache. The apache were known for being mobile and adaptable, which arguably is something very true of the Apache foundation.

Removing these imageries results in a symbolically empty, culturally irreverent pastiche. Who was it that said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”?

This is no different than the wanton destruction of ancient sculptures and art by ignorant tribesmen because it offends their sensibilities.

Comment It's bad for AI training data. (Score 1) 83

So we know when AI trains on data trained by AI, the LLMs become more and more unstable. (Source)

Meaning the problem is not just "Social Media will suck more." It also means that a large treasure trove of data used by AI companies to train their bots will become increasingly toxic. And this will hurt the value proposition of companies like Reddit (which depend on selling their data for training AI), as well as companies like OpenAI, who needs more and more data to train on.

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