Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:One Way Trips (Score 1) 51

Sorry to hear you have a terminal prognosis.

I'm not sure there are enough terminally ill but still fairly healthy people who also have the right skills and mindset though. When you think how few people manage to become astronauts... And they would want to be extremely sure that your condition is stable and you won't deteriorate during launch g-forces, in zero-g, en-route, or shortly after arriving. A lot of the work is quite physical. Even in Mars' lower gravity, those suits are heavy and bulky and stiffer than normal clothing.

Then there are the legal aspects of it. Countries that allow assisted dying only tend to do so in fairly narrow circumstances, so the legal landscape for suicide missions is, at best, unclear.

Submission + - Why Solarpunk is already happening in Africa (substack.com)

schwit1 writes: You know that feeling when you’re waiting for the cable guy, and they said ‘between 8am and 6pm, and you waste your entire day, and they never show up?

Now imagine that, except the cable guy is ‘electricity,’ the day is ‘50 years,’ and you’re one of 600 million people. At some point, you stop waiting and figure it out yourself.

What’s happening across Sub-Saharan Africa right now is the most ambitious infrastructure project in human history, except it’s not being built by governments or utilities or World Bank consortiums. It’s being built by startups selling solar panels to farmers on payment plans. And it’s working.

Over 30 million solar products sold in 2024. 400,000 new solar installations every month across Africa. 50% market share captured by companies that didn’t exist 15 years ago. Carbon credits subsidizing the cost. IoT chips in every device. 90%+ repayment rates on loans to people earning $2/day.

And if you understand what’s happening in Africa, you understand the template for how infrastructure will get built everywhere else for the next 50 years.

Comment Re:Jira tickets and long texts are too much (Score 1) 29

While AI is unreliable, I have to point out that human summaries aren't all that reliable either. I've read more than a few textbooks that were full of obvious nonsense and terrible advice.

I tried AI for a web app I made for personal use. It couldn't build a working app, but it did at least get me the keywords I needed to google to build my own. Some of the tech it suggested was outdated and deprecated, so basically about as reliable as the Reddit posts it was trained on.

Comment Re:And this will go on and on. Until? (Score 1) 116

Typically we don't destroy an entire firm for the misconduct of one employee, unless it's so extreme that it justifies screwing all their other clients. Imagine if your case was headed to court and your lawyer said their firm had been wiped out by another employee using AI, so you need to find another lawyer and hope the court is willing to accommodate the delay. Even if the court is, re-doing much of the process, document exchange, and so on will take a lot of time and create more expense, that you might end up being liable for if you lose.

Comment Re: Make it stop quickly (Score 1) 116

To be fair, lawyers do use external services that in theory leak a lot of information about their cases all the time, and have done for decades. Databases of case law are the obvious example. The searches give an insight into what the lawyer is thinking, what their likely arguments will be, things they may have overlooked.

Naturally those services offer confidentiality, the same as the phone company promises not to listen to the lawyer's call to their client, unless legally compelled to.

The question is, are there any AI legal research services offering that?

Comment Re:How stupid are Mozilla? (Score 1) 55

Knowing them, they hired some AI wiz kids who wanted to move fast and break things. Meanwhile the poor engineers who are slowly making really important and valuable improvements to the core browser aren't getting any help. Maybe some vibe coded Javascript engine updates are next on the list.

Comment Re:Developing AI to research biology is good (Score 5, Insightful) 32

You can't trust these billionaires. Musk said if someone explained how he could end hunger for $6 billion, he would do it. He was presented with a credible plan by the United Nations' World Food Program, and quietly forgot about it his promise.

This feels self serving. What are the chances that if they discover some miracle cure for cancer, they charge top dollar for it?

Comment Re:As you would do (Score 1) 175

Clearly some of their customers want EV trucks. But why don't more of them want them?

Could it be because Trump doesn't like EVs, and because Republicans have done everything they can to stifle installation of the infrastructure that makes owning an EV convenient?

Comment Re:All I can say is duh! (Score 2) 82

It's about half the size of the larger cargo ships too, but still quite competitive. I'm sure they can scale up, Running costs should be lower due to less fuel use (it still uses some around ports).

Speed isn't such a big deal for this sort of thing, that can be worked into the logistics. Maybe they will have drone ships eventually anyway, so it's not even costing any more in wages.

Submission + - World's Largest Cargo Sailboat Completes Historic First Atlantic Crossing (marineinsight.com)

AmiMoJo writes: The world’s largest cargo sailboat, Neoliner Origin, completed its first transatlantic voyage on 30 October despite damage to one of its sails during the journey.

The 136-metre-long vessel had to rely partly on its auxiliary motor and its remaining sail after the aft sail was damaged in a storm shortly after departure.

The French-built roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) cargo ship, which has two semi-rigid sails, first stopped at Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French overseas territory near Canada, before continuing its journey to Baltimore in the United States.

Neoline, the company behind the project, said the damage reduced the vessel’s ability to perform fully on wind power. The company’s CEO, Jean Zanuttini, said the crossing was a valuable experience in handling large sail surfaces across the North Atlantic, especially during late-season storms. He added that despite the difficulties, the ship showed strong resilience by reaching its destination with only a short delay in Saint Pierre.

The Neoliner Origin is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 90 per cent compared to conventional diesel-powered cargo ships. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), global shipping produces about 3 per cent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

Slashdot Top Deals

When all else fails, read the instructions.

Working...