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Journal Journal: Antiques being melted down

A restoration expert in Egypt has been arrested for stealing a 3,000 year old bracelet and selling it purely for the gold content, with the bracelet then melted down with other jewellery. Obviously, this sort of artefact CANNOT be replaced. Ever. And any and all scientific value it may have held has now been lost forever. It is almost certain that this is not the first such artefact destroyed.

Comment Re:Wow this is very insightful (Score 1) 86

OpenAI's models, and most of the LLMs, are trained at least in part by having humans rate their conversations. That's what the "chat" in chatGPT stands for. Humans apparently rate chat partners that make up truthy sounding stuff more highly than chat partners that admit they don't know.

That's a useful finding for a company that makes LLMs. It should be an interesting observation for people who talk to other people too.

Comment Re:For those getting pitchforks ready (Score 2) 151

I'm sure he does. You can buy an induction heater that will be happy to melt steel for $20 off Aliexpress. There are lots of DIY plans for them too, although I doubt you could beat that $20.

E.g. https://www.instructables.com/...

The claim that you can't get things hot enough with induction is ridiculous. Induction is what you use when cheap old gas isn't hot enough. If you want even hotter, you use microwaves.

Comment Re:Transitions (Score 1) 241

I don't believe you that anyone bitched about the loss of the floppy drive.

Too young maybe? Releasing an iMac without a floppy drive had much the same impact as releasing an iPhone without a 3.5" headphone jack. A lot of the old articles have disappeared, and apparently the Slashdot comments, but e.g.

https://apple.slashdot.org/sto...

https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

There were a LOT of articles written about it. Tech journalist careers were made.

Comment Re:Unreliable data (Score 4, Informative) 157

There are different kinds of surveys. Established government survey programs in general, and the US Current Employment Statistics survey specifically, aren't usually just a random phone call. The CES is something a business agrees to do once a month for a period of time. For small businesses that seems to be about 3 years, and for large ones it's more indefinite.

It is voluntary, but the alternative is to make it compulsory. The montly CES is voluntary but quarterly reporting is not. Censuses and some census related surveys are usually compulsory but more frequent surveys are usually voluntary.

Comment Re:Transitions (Score 4, Insightful) 241

Somone quite possibly made a living bitching about the loss of the 3.5" headphone jack, and possibly DB9, parallel, floppy drives, optical drives, firewire, PS2 keyboard and mouse ports, micro USB, VGA, s-video, composite, RJ14, S/PDIF and PCMCIA.

It's always good fodder for an article or a Slashdot story.

Comment Re:Luckily (Score 1) 92

You mean like exactly what happened decades ago since Americans long since stopped wanting to do this low paying work? Oh, it turns out machines don't just magically invent themselves when needed.

Lettuce harvesting machines did in fact get invented when the need and the economic justification arose.

Better? Or are you going to claim that you literally meant "invent themselves" so you're still technically not wrong?

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