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Comment No thanks, just bring back what was nerfed (Score 1) 36

by ArghBlarg (#65604198) Attached to: Gemini For Home Is Google's Biggest Smart Home Play In Years

Assistant used to:

- let me play music not on Youtube Music;
- play some actually fun party games;
- have an SDK for custom voice-controlled apps.
- (the BIG one) let me ask for and play podcasts outside of Youtube Music. (newsflash: not everyone hosts podcasts on youtube!)

All this was nerfed in the past 2-3 years and now our Assistants at home are used for nothing more than asking the time, date, weather, maybe an alarm or reminder, switching on/off some lights.

If they gimp the platform any more I'm just going to throw them out at this point.

Submission + - Boffins report: "AI" creates more "work" than it saves (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by Mr. Dollar Ton
Mr. Dollar Ton writes: Moreover, previous estimates of huge "productivity gains" are largely faked and the new "work" it is not necessarily useful.

A new study analyzing the Danish labor market in 2023 and 2024 suggests that generative AI models like ChatGPT have had almost no significant impact on overall wages or employment yet, despite rapid adoption in some workplaces.

The reported productivity benefits were modest in the study. Users reported average time savings of just 2.8 percent of work hours (about an hour per week).

The finding contradicts a randomized controlled trial published in February that found generative AI increased worker productivity by 15 percent on average. The difference stems from other experiments focusing on tasks highly suited to AI, whereas most real-world jobs involve tasks AI cannot fully automate.

Submission + - Apple Maps putting Long Island drivers at risk with false red light camera alert (betanews.com)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Sigh. It’s May 2025, folks, and believe it or not, Apple Maps still hasn’t caught up with a change that happened on Long Island way back in 2024. If you’re driving through Suffolk County, New York, chances are your iPhone is still screaming about red light cameras that no longer exist. You see, the county shut the whole program down in December of last year, but Apple hasn’t bothered to update its navigation data. The alerts keep coming like the cameras are still up and active — but they actually aren’t.

For years, Suffolk’s red light camera program was a point of frustration. Sure, officials said it was about safety, but many residents saw it differently — especially once it brought in nearly $290 million. Then came a court ruling that said the extra fees attached to the tickets weren’t legal. That basically brought the system to its knees. Suffolk shut it all down. But Apple? Still acting like nothing’s changed.

In case you are wondering, I personally tested this on an iPhone 16 Pro Max running the latest iOS version. I was getting the false alerts as recent as May 3, 2025! Quite frankly, it isn’t just annoying — it is worrying.

Drivers depending on Apple Maps are now stuck reacting to ghost warnings. You approach an intersection, the app warns of a red light camera, and you hit the brakes — even though there’s no reason to. It’s unnecessary and disruptive. And it could cause accidents. Truth be told, it’s a bad look for Apple. For a company that pushes out flashy features every few months, you’d think updating map data would be a basic task.

Let’s not forget — this is a Suffolk County issue, not all of Long Island. Nassau County still runs red light cameras. But Suffolk pulled the plug months ago. That’s not a small detail. It’s a fundamental change in how driving enforcement works in that area, and Apple is still stuck in the past.

Apple Maps is on every iPhone. It’s not some niche product. It shapes how millions of people drive and make decisions behind the wheel. So when the app keeps shouting about enforcement that ended last year, it makes drivers question how accurate any of its other data is.

At this point, there’s no excuse. Apple has the money. Apple has the data. Apple has the engineers. But somehow, Suffolk County drivers are still being spooked by alerts tied to a program that hasn’t been active since 2024. That’s not just outdated — it’s careless.

Submission + - Dying satellites can drive climate change and ozone depletion, study finds (theguardian.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Right now there are more than 9,000 satellites circumnavigating overhead, keeping track of weather, facilitating communications, aiding navigation and monitoring the Earth. By 2040, there could be more than 60,000. A new study shows that the emissions from expired satellites, as they fall to Earth and burn up, will be significant in future years, with implications for ozone hole recovery and climate.

Satellites need to be replaced after about five years. Most old satellites are disposed of by reducing their altitude and letting them burn up as they fall, releasing pollution into Earth’s atmosphere such as aerosolised aluminium. To understand the impact of these growing emissions from expired satellites, researchers simulated the effects associated with an annual release of 10,000 tonnes of aluminium oxide by 2040 (the amount estimated to be released from disposal of 3,000 satellites a year, assuming a fleet of 60,000 satellites).

The results, which are published in Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, show that the re-entry material will accumulate at high latitudes and could result in temperature anomalies of up to 1.5C in the middle to upper atmosphere, reduction of wind speeds and ozone depletion, which could jeopardise ozone hole recovery. Other metals including titanium, lithium, iron and copper will also be released and their impact is yet to be modelled.

Submission + - New snake antivenom developed from snake owner's blood (abc.net.au) 1

Submitted by piojo
piojo writes: Tim Friede, Wisconsin man, has been injecting himself with snake venom for 18 years to gain protection from his pet snakes. The antibodies he developed have formed two components of a three-part antivenom, which gives partial or total protection against 18 of 19 species of venomous snakes that were tested. Notably, the antivenom is ineffective against vipers.

The team's results have been published today in the journal Cell... The new antivenom described in the study is very different to traditional antivenoms, according to Peter Kwong, a biochemist at Columbia University and one of the study's authors.

Comment Re:No way it went like that (Score 1) 134

He stole computer time at the local college, and dumpster-dove for source code to the BASIC others there were working on. He admitted as such decades ago, now he's trying to whitewash/rewrite history.

He bought MS-DOS from another dev in the area, relabelled it and then sold it to IBM via a contact he got into IBM's management via his mother's social circle.

He had the arrogance and nerve to shame members of the Homebrew Computer Club for sharing code for free amongst themselves, stating that he thought software should all be for-profit and proprietary.

F*ck Bill Gates, never forget his true colours. He can afford to sound gracious in his old age and ill-gotten wealth, now that he no longer needs to do, well, anything.

Comment Will he 'forget' to mention dumpster-diving for it (Score 1) 134

He full-on admitted decades ago that he dumpster-dived for some of the BASIC source code at college, and outright burgled into the labs to steal computer time to work on what would ultimately become MS BASIC.

Never forget, he was a conniving ruthless huckster. A smart one, but nonetheless. Don't let him whitewash his legacy.

Comment Simple, make AI's creators legally liable. (Score 1) 91

by ArghBlarg (#65031155) Attached to: 'Yes, I am a Human': Bot Detection Is No Longer Working

Oh, your AI is now lying about it being an AI? Lawsuit and damages for any computer time wasted by a bot bypassing a captcha. Lawsuit for any incorrect/hallucinated information causing material damage, plagiarism, health-care outcomes.

Oh, that makes your AI an unsustainable business model? Too bad. These AI tech-bro CEOs love "the market" so let "the market" decide (including economics of fraud/malpractice law) their bottom line.

Comment Re:Surprised (Score 1) 98

by ArghBlarg (#64898765) Attached to: Europe's Crooks Keep Blowing up ATMs

Perhaps ATMs need to be upgraded such that each and every single bill put into them has its serial number scanned when going in, and marked as disbursed when going out. That way, no dye packs or alarm/anti-theft systems are needed at all. If a bill ever shows up in circulation that wasn't recorded as going out of an ATM or bank by legitimate means, it's been stolen. We have more than enough compute power and image/OCR tech to achieve such a tracking system.

Or course, this will reduce the anonymity of cash somewhat...

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