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Comment I'm not that optimistic. (Score 1) 20

Even if the prediction of comparatively controlled impact is accurate; I think it's worth considering just how grim it is likely to be; not in purely economic terms; but in the character of the work.

Maybe this is a personal peculiarity; but I that there's something exquisitely dispiriting about beating your head against people who are stubborn or clueless enough that every conversation is just a baffling sequence of different confusions, some of the repeated from previously. It's a totally different thing from dealing with someone who is merely ignorant; but learning, especially if they are enthusiastic about it.

Even if everything is fine in terms of job pace and security and all; that seems like it is shaping up to be a really hellish aspect of dealing with bots. The experience is sort of a somewhat weirder simulation of dealing with a chirpy, people-pleasing, very-junior type; except they are far more likely to lie than to admit ignorance; and they never learn(possibly the SaaS guys hoovering up your interactions in the background will make the next iteration better, possibly not, progress seems to have slowed considerably after only a brief period of improvement; but a given release is more or less full groundhog day).

That seems like a nightmare. Everything that sucks about teaching or mentoring; but precisely none of the rewarding aspects.

Comment Re:This is not a job for a corporation to do (Score 1) 76

"why did we continue to feed them?"
Did you forget about how the whole industrial Western world runs on oil and that alternatives didn't meaningfully exist until the last decade (and even now they're basically edge cases)?

It would that spoil your little "durr it's all them corporations fault!" oversimplification?

Comment Does it run 90% or better of Windows programs? (Score 1) 99

If not, then it's going to remain a niche thing like the HUNDREDS of active linux distros.

Don't get me wrong, for certain things, particularly things that have a person of high computer-literacy to maintain it, some linux is probably great.

OTOH most people and businesses want their computers to serve as tools, not necessarily their "hobby" to constantly futz with. They don't really give much of a shit how much of their meaningless daily work is hoovered up by MS.

Comment Re:let's see actual statistics (Score 1) 256

Pesky facts.
Maybe try #followthescience?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/i...
"Just a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of migrants processed by the U.S. this year have received COVID-19 vaccinations while in federal custody, and half of them are unaccompanied children" - a few hundred k out of 1.6 million over the reported span

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a...
"The RIM community has (statistically significantly) lower vaccination coverage when compared to those born in the US."

(Japan) https://www.sciencedirect.com/...

https://www.thegazette.com/gov... This one tries hard to disprove it, the best they can get is "While vaccination rates appear to be low among migrants and asylum-seekers, data shows few are actually crossing the border and making their way into the United States" - in 2021, which would suggest that the tidal fucking wave of immigrants in the later Biden 'open border' phase were actually a big issue because then they very much WERE 'making their way into the US'.

Comment Re:Alternate headline (Score 1) 79

Ah syntax is so hard for leftists.

Justification doesn't imply constraint, duh?

(The need for a militia is important so) the right to have guns shall not be limited.

Nothing in there implies that guns are limited to official militias, not even slightly.
If you STILL insist on your dumbass interpretation, fine: every adult male in the US is the militia, by law.:
US Code Sec 246:
The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia areâ"
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

So even if your ridiculous interpretation is correct, all males in the US under 45 are "the militia" so if gun ownership is 'restricted' to the militia, that's every man under 45. Satisfied?

https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...
God it's hard to talk with retards.

Comment Re:College is not middle school (Score 1) 256

You think $70million for some meeting rooms is reasonable? Can I sell you a bridge?
It was actually a HALF $BILLION capital campaign.

https://www.minnpost.com/polit...
In fact that campaign was for both the student center AND a new 'training center' (not a stadium, but close) and the training center was 2x the cost, about 1.5x the size.

I *also* think that was ridiculous.

https://www.google.com/maps/di...
(the student center is directly SW)

Comment Re:Are they making a profit yet??? (Score 3, Insightful) 49

It's doesn't sound like a successful business venture if you're having to increase operation expenses at this rate and not be raking in the revenue.

Yes, Google is profitable now. Tremendously so. But they're at risk of losing revenue and ceasing to be profitable as people cease using Google search and switch to asking questions of their AIs. So to retain their position as the place people go first for information, they have to stay ahead of the AI race. Well, they could also just sit back and wait to see if their competitors are overwhelmed by the query volume, but that risks losing traffic and then having to win it back. It's much better to keep it. And Google is better-positioned to win this race than its competitors both because of its existing infrastructure and expertise and because it already has the eyeballs.

In addition, you seem to be assuming that doubling serving capacity means doubling cost. Clearly Google is not planning to increase their annual operating expenses by 1000X. As the summary actually says in the third paragraph, Google is also going to have to improve efficiency to achieve the growth rate, with better models and better hardware. This is what the AI chief is challenging the employees to do; he's not challenging them to write bigger OPEX checks, that's his job.

Comment Re:Second-generation homeschooling (Score 1) 210

I'm not in the homeschooling universe, but I have yet to meet a second-generation homeschooler. Like, anyone I know who was homeschooled sends -their- kids to school (public, private, parochial, boarding, single-sex, co-ed) - anything but homeschool. Thoughts?

I know a few. I don't know what it may or may not mean. It may be relevant that the ones I know used a community-based approach, where groups of homeschooling families worked together to create something akin to a school, with different parents teaching different subjects. This meant that while the kids socialization groups were small, they did hang out with and learn with other kids, not just their siblings.

Comment Re:Well, if we're going to consider that... (Score 1) 305

That there is no evidence to support it does not mean it cannot be true. But it should inform your assessment of probabilities.

It's more than that. Research into the possibility of a link between vaccination and autism has been done, and no correlation found. This is evidence that there is no connection and it's entirely different from a case where no research has been done. One is evidence of absence, the other is absence of evidence. The GP is equating them, but they're not remotely the same thing.

Comment Re:Well, if we're going to consider that... (Score 1) 305

...I want a statement that autism is created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. For reasons only He understands, He sometimes reaches out with his noodley appendage and gives kids autism.

Is that true? We don't know, we haven't rigorously investigated it, have we now? Since there's exactly as much evidence to support the FSM as vaccines causing autism, the CDC has a duty to mention both possibilities.

Show me all of the studies that have evaluated the correlation between FSM action and autism. There has been a lot of research on the possibility of a correlation between vaccination and autism, and no evidence of correlation has been found. There is an enormous difference between "We've looked hard and found no connection" (evidence of a negative) and "We haven't looked at all" (lack of evidence).

In addition, there's no need for the CDC to debunk a claims that are not being made, or non-harmful claims. To pick a less-ludicrous example, there's no significant population claiming that eating grapes causes autism, so there's no need for the CDC to address it. Further, if there were an anti-grape lobby touting a connection with autism, the CDC probably still wouldn't need to address it because some people avoiding grapes doesn't create significant health risks to others.

But there is a significant population claiming -- against strong scientific evidence -- that vaccines cause autism, and that claim is causing them to reject vaccines, which does create significant health risks for others. So, the CDC absolutely does need to address it, since public health is their job.

Your analogy is terrible, in every way.

Comment to be clear (Score -1, Flamebait) 210

I think homeschooling is generally a bad idea; what you learn from school is imo only about 1/3 from books, it's at least half about socialization and how to get along with your fellow humans in the myriad of contexts of human interactions: friendships, fights, love, hate, power relationships to authority, conformance (or non-), etc.

NONE of that extra stuff is really available for homeschoolies, aside from pre-programmed 'playdates' or whatever is the equivalent at older ages which help but are insufficient: part of the lesson IS the spontaneity, unplanned context of humans in groups.

THAT SAID, at least in the US schools are deeply fucked up.
They throw more money at each student than anywhere else in the world, and get worse results than most of their industrialized peers.
There is little to no ability to discipline students. (St Paul public schools for example were unhappy with the higher rates of punishment for black students, their answer was to change the rules so black students were not punished as much for the same penalties as white studients....I shit you not: https://www.apmreports.org/sto...)
Seattle schools abandoned math standards as "racist". (https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/wfddoi/seattle_schools_teach_students_that_math_is/)
They are ideologically captured, with Teachers generally being the reliably highest % donors to Democrat candidates for decades. Moreover, the 'crazy years' that we're only just emerging from seem to have enabled the most radical teachers to believe they could bukkake their radical (eg trans & other entirely inappropriate) agendas all over the kids down to the kindegarten level without consequence, and largely they're right.

I think homeschooling is bad, but until schools stop abandoning actual education in favor of being bastions of leftist indoctrination, I fully see why parents will make such a choice.

My kids are in their 30s, thank god, because I honestly can't tell you what my reaction would be if I heard some teacher had the audacity to tell me to my face the words of their union leader: "The children are always ours. Every single one of them. All over the globe." and later "Yes, we do [think your children are our children]." (https://x.com/DeAngelisCorey/status/1937316711159443658)
I fear how I would react.

Comment How cute. (Score 2) 23

It's adorable how they pretend that the 'well being' gap between the people who matter and the ones who don't is some sort of surprise that calls for urgent action; rather than a deliberate outcome carefully achieved.

It's the pandemic-period numbers that are the anomaly, from a period when at times downright existential issues forced people's hands(at least for white collar workers; if you are 'essential' good luck and back to dealing with the public in person); and a lot of work has been put into rectifying that period.

What's next; a comparative analysis of the labor markets of the 1950s and the 1980s that studiously pretends that it's not exactly as Milton Friedman and Neutron Jack intended?

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