Sweet! I've always wanted a Robert's Toot Tone!

Then there's Excel, which I'm stuck using because work just loves their spreadsheets.

Where opening a 90mb file with some semi-complex calculations takes several minutes to recalculate after even the most basic change, drastically slowing down the machine. Where checking the "Processes" tab in Task Manager to see if there's a hung task eating all the resources and seeing Excel using 90% of the CPU and ELEVEN GIGS!!!!??? It's a 90mb file, it's the only one open, why the hell are you using 11gb??!!!

Frakking Microslop.

I'm still rocking a 2009 iMac. I don't need much, check my email, pay my bills, slice some .STLs, play some older games; thanks to Steam sales I have a lot of older games. When it's not being used I let BONIC run in the background. For those who don't know, BONIC is a distributed compute platform which helps Colleges and Universities across the globe leverage unused compute cycles from computers people have volunteered to let the researchers use when their machines are idle.

Over the years my old iMac has contributed to research efforts for cancer treatments, astronomy, SETI, protein folding, mathematics, climate change, and bunch of other stuff I can't remember. It's slow, but it's been quietly chugging away for years doing it what it can for the betterment of humanity, and I plan to keep it running as long as I can even when I eventually buy a new machine to replace it.

Meanwhile we got Anthropic over here trying to speed run the Kessler syndrome and forever lock humanity to a terrestrial existence when they could just pay me some money to share some of the compute I'm already sharing. Morons.

If books aren't your speed then how about the somewhat okayish Bruce Willis action flick Surrogates? A 2009 film that asks the question, "What happens when every human in the world lives their entire life through the eyes of a human operated android?"

I don't get it either, but then I'm sure some of the tings I do in my life don't make sense to those pushing for peak physical fitness. Though this does remind me of a documentary I'd seen years ago, I really wish I could remember the name right now, where they'd discussed how humans had evolved over the millennia to run as part of our need to hunt for food.

Since humanity started in Africa the typical animals being hunted were large, nomadic, and often faster than humans so we needed to evolve to keep up. Some evolved to run in rapid, short sprints, so they could get in with the spears and get a couple hits in. Once the animal was running the next group needed to keep pace with the wounded prey over long distances so they could finish it off once it'd collapsed. Because the tribes were nomadic and followed the migration of their food the rest of the tribe needed be able to run long distances to keep up with the hunters so, once the animal was down, they could start processing the carcass and frighten off any predators or scavengers looking for a free meal before they'd finished their work.

Just because we don't have to hunt for our food the same way anymore doesn't mean the evolutionary drive goes away.

It's crucial at the moment but, as pointed out in other comments, we'd gone from a concept in the 70's to Asimo in the 2010s to a robot that can autonomously complete a half marathon in the span of 50 years. How long will it take researchers to improve the perception engine and energy storage before they're able to strap on an integrated sealed backpack and use them as short haul delivery 'bots in compounds / cities with lots of stairs and / or traffic congestion?

I'm not worried right now but I've got nieces and nephews and I worry about their future where, as the tech improves, we'll see bits and pieces of the economy being increasingly replaced with 'bot labour which will have them fighting amongst an ever growing pool of job seekers competing for the last remaining specialty jobs 'bots can't do... yet.

The winning 'bot autonomously ran 25kph over a 21km course, that's a lot of computation to keep track of location while avoiding obstacles, especially at speed, but the article doesn't mention how tall / big this thing is. How much battery capacity did it have? Did it need to be recharged part way through the trip? What kind of processing did it have, was it on board or did it communicate via cell to an offsite server brute forcing the 'bot's movement?

I have to say it's an impressive feat of engineering and programming, but every time I read these stories I can't help but feel like we're inching ever closer toward the society outlined in Mana by Marshall Brain. Except, in our case, I don't see anyone with means volunteering to step up and create a society where everyone benefits over the small minority who are rushing headlong toward creating a global dystopia for the rest of us.

Greed is amazing, when you're the business owner... those greedy serfs generating the owner's wealth demanding higher wages and benefits, not so much.

Where do you apply the tariffs?

Does every nation in the IP chain get a cut, you did use their infrastructure after all, or do you only pay at the point of consumption? What happens when it's a multi-port stream being sent in pieces from mirrors across the globe, are there different tariff rates based on the source of each specific portion of the stream or does it only count from the nation which runs the service and where you're buying from?

What happens when you're redownloading a file you already "own", do you need to pay tariffs again or will the stream be flagged as already bought? If an "already bought" flag exists, how do you prevent someone from spoofing it to avoid paying the tariff?

To prevent that kind of fraud at the national taxation level wouldn't they require regulatory bodies in each nation to have a repository, tied to your legal name, containing a list of all the digital goods you "own", so you're not charged a second time? Wouldn't every single potential nation worldwide need to have this list in case your file request is somehow routed through one of their country's servers, stopping them from charging their portion of the tariff? What if some of those less reputable nations magically "loses" your purchase history and charges you the tariff anyway, who do you go to to get that recovered? Or will the amount be so small no one bothers, thus leading to rampant fraud by the third party corporations paid to administer the program who'll just add those "illegal" overcharges to their bottom line?

How would something like this align with global privacy and the protection of human rights? Some might not care if the feds know they bought "Paw Patrol" for their kids, but what about authoritarian regimes - would you want some dictatorial nation state's loyalty office targeting your family who might still live in their police state hellhole because you'd dared read Orwell's 1984, Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, or Attwood's Handmaid's Tale in a nation which has a stable democracy and might talk about it with your oppressed family?

(Bolded for context.)

Damn did this ever trigger a memory, I just wish I could remember it fully.

A decade, or more, ago I vividly remember a period of time where Slashdot attempted to foster conversations on controversial social topics but the person they had writing the articles was extremely polarizing, threads easily going over 1,500 comments with some of those commentors being absolute monsters. Eventually, when the posts started becoming more of a meme, "Oh look, it's another one of his posts - wonder if he's gonna blame X, Y, Z or A, B, C this time!", coupled with the toxic negativity spreading to completely unrelated posts and bringing the site down they eventually stopped posting them.

Unfortunately I can't remember the specific writers name or the exact period this "experiment" took place, I just remember it happened and for a while it turned Slashdot into a polarized shitshow.

They're probably using a non-English keyboard on mobile and autocorrect pushes a "fix" containing character accents which don't render correctly in English, it happens.

Oh come on, be honest now, it's totally better! Back in the '80s the homeless were sitting on the street corner tweaked out on drugs while begging for change. Now, in 2025, those same homeless people sitting on the street corner tweaked out on drugs and begging for change gets to scroll through Slashdot on their dubiously acquired smartphone!

See, isn't that so much better!? /s

I'm Canadian, but I'll write it as though I'm in the US - or at least try to - so as to reduce confusion.

3. Elections are now publicly funded.

1. 1. Media, both physical and digital, organizations are required to provide a reasonable amount of free advertising space to local, and federal leadership, candidates starting six weeks prior to the election date. No campaign advertising is permitted outside this timeframe; yeah yeah, First Amendment, but if we're already modifying the Constitution might as well add some language regarding election campaign speech.
2. 2. All campaign paraphernalia: posters, signs, buttons, etc... will be provided to the potential candidate by both the state and federal government.
3. 3. To prevent an unfair advantage to any one candidate, they will receive the same predetermined stipend to be spent on incidental items not covered as campaign paraphernalia: food, hall rentals, music licensing, safety inspections, transportation costs (I'm thinking presidential and senate races should be government covered due to the large amount of travel they need to do during the campaign).
4. 4. All candidates will provide a detailed account of how the allocated incidental campaign funds were used, any significant expenses outside of typical campaign activities are fraudulent and will be prosecuted; I don't want to see someone who swiped the wrong card at dinner get busted, but we also want to make sure people don't have a way to transfer the funds offshore and bolt.
5. 5. Any candidate who has failed to win three consecutive elections will be barred from participating for ten years.
6. 6. Should any successful candidate elected to office create, and have passed, legislation which is later adjudicated to have violate constitutional rights and no appeals are remaining will immediately be removed from office and barred for life from running for office. If the next election if more than six months away after this occurrence, a new election will take place in the affected area within six months. Additional campaign funding will be provided due to the shorter timelines a "snap election" calls for.

Unfortunately I'm not sure how we cover off independents, potential new candidates, or the creation of new parties. You can't make people pay to run for office, though the system is largely pay to win anyway, since anyone is supposed to be able to run. At the same time we also don't want thousands of people applying to be a candidate, we'd need some way to weed out the "joke" candidates from the ones who are actually serious. I'd also like to see a proficiency test which proves candidates have a general idea of the existing laws, both at the state and federal level, and what the Constitution does and does not allow but again I'm not sure that would be legal since anyone is supposed to be able to run.

Either way, when it comes to elections, the only way to fix the problems we have now is to get private money taken entirely out of campaigning and elections.

There's a middle ground between doing nothing and full government control, we just have to find it and make the rules tight enough to close loopholes which could be used to skirt them. Though, from what I've been seeing lately, "ghost jobs" are typically being used to skirt rules around the hiring of foreign labour over qualified local candidates.

I live in Canada, so this doesn't exactly apply to a US discussion, but we do have a similar problem here so perhaps there's some overlap. We're seeing companies advertising "ghost jobs" for $37/hour doing things they should have zero problems finding someone local to do: tow truck drivers, dump truck drivers, restaurant managers, applications developers, equipment installers, welders, butchers, pharmacy assistants (non dispensing), admin assistants, long haul truck drivers, etc...

Hell, I've even seen "sandwich artists" listed at $37/hour! Which unemployed young person struggling to find do you know who wouldn't jump at the chance to earn $76k annually making sandwiches?! Anyway, they run the ad for a while then go running to the feds, "Oh noes! We couldn't find anyone local who were qualified to do the job, can we apply for a Labour Market Impact Assessment now?", requesting approval for the hire of a foreign worker to do the job instead.

Honestly though, I don't know how we'd enforce a law like this but I have some broad ideas:

• * Employers requesting foreign talent, claiming they're unable to find any local talent to fill the position, must pay that worker five times the local market rate typically earned by local talent for the role. It's an excessive amount, I agree, but if they truly need that employee due to their ultra unique and difficult to find skill set they'll still gladly pay it, simultaneously such an excessive wage requirement discourages employers from shopping for below market rate talent and contributing a negative impact to the hire-ability of job seekers in the local labour market.
• * Before employers are allowed to post they're looking for a new employee they need provide the government with details of what the job is, what specific skills they're asking for, and the expected salary range. 90 days after the ad's original posting they need to provide details on who specifically applied for the role, copies of their resumes, which of those potential applicants were interviewed for the role, and any notes / recordings taken during the interview. Right now we're all relying on "trust me bro" when employers say they can't find someone, but we obviously can't trust them so we need to have someone checking their work to verify the veracity of their claims.

I think another issue is employers simply don't want to spend the time, at market rates, doing any on the job training for their new hires anymore. Employers these days seemingly just want someone to come in pre-trained, already having the exact specific skillset they're looking for. I can appreciate concerns of their training someone only to later have them jump to a new employer, though instances of this happening could be mitigated effectively by having a better work culture, work life balance, robust benefits, and the payment of sufficient compensation where the employee they'd spent all that time training won't want to leave. But let's be honest employers don't want to do that and would rather hire a way less expensive, easily exploitable, foreign worker to do it; until they receive permanent resident status, which takes years, they're effectively locked to that employer.

But honestly any law like this will probably consist of lax enforcement with token fines high enough to appease the public, who aren't used to seeing a number that large in their bank account, while being low enough for companies to see it as the "cost of doing business". Then the agency which gets created to police this, or the agency tasked to handle it, will receive substandard government funding thus ensuring any complaints received will take years to investigate and even more years to litigate - but hey, some politician is gonna get a nice little photo op for "sticking up for the little guy" that'll look good in a campaign ad.

Probably because, for many people, YouTube is used like cable TV was back in the day - something you put on for noise while you focus on something else. Feeding you something you'd already seen and possibly enjoyed lets you fulfil that need by providing something familiar to have on in the background so you can focus on the other task.

It's like throwing Star Wars on for the umpteenth time, sometimes you really want to watch it while others it's just something you can have on in the background while doing something else simultaneously giving you the opportunity to "take a break" when the Falcon gets caught in the tractor beam.