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Comment Re: Case in point (Score 1) 210

It also is not the novelty they are believing.

There was the Sci Fi version that's been around 70+ years. That's not new and sexy.

There are dystopia stories that are 50+ years old, not new and sexy.

There are the digital assistants that were popularized a decade ago. That's not new and sexy.

There are the chat bots that recommend pizza glue and eating rocks. Not new and sexy.

There are things it can do, but people have been experiencing it somewhat for generations. Star Trek holodecks from 40 years ago, Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot" and other stories from the 1950s, or even just home automation that is already becoming e-waste as vacuums, doorbell, thermostats, and speakers are bricked by manufacturers. The allure of "smart things" has passed.

What people see being delivered is the dystopia version.

Comment Re:Clippy on steroids (Score 4, Informative) 26

Yup, so many major fundamental bugs, but hey, they gotta keep the focus on the AI slop.

Right now on one of my Win11 boxes the start menu is empty, half the icons are missing from the taskbar. At least it means no more ads when I hit the start button, but I feel it is fundamentally, morally wrong for the operating system to be an advertising platform. Either way, I suspect Explorer crashed and restarted badly when switching between KVM systems, as it often does, leading to this.

Right now another of by boxes the task bar is seemingly set to the lowest z-order, covered by other programs, including visual studio.

Opening up a search on explorer breaks the back button, once it goes into "search" mode it loses the ability to have the regular folder display, you need to completely close the window and re-open it. And you can't copy the location, it stays stuck as "search results" mode with no meaningful location in the address bar.

Context menus in explorer are broken, sometimes showing the new UI elements, sometimes the old style UI elements, sometimes they're missing.

If you're unfortunate enough to have to use the preview build for testing, it's far worse. You wanted to click an item in a new-UI app like the start button? Nope! It behaves as though it were unscrolled, instead of the 17th button down, because it was visually third from the top the start menu immediately jumps back to the top of the list and starts the third app from the top, you're getting the calendar app, or photos app, rather than what you clicked on.

The rewrite of task manager dumped a ton of features, task manager frequently crashes, and when you look up the known issues on their public bug list Task Manager still remains with hundreds of "mitigated" and unresolved issues despite task manager being a core piece of functionality.

I'm constantly switching between systems, Kubernetes cluster terminals, both Windows and Linux. I only use Windows when I have to, it has thoroughly slipped into 'enshitified' territory. So many fundamental "the user can't even access what they clicked on" bugs, and "the Windows start button, the core user interface element needed to do things, is missing" bugs, yet somehow AI slop is the highest priority over the ability to actually run the program you want.

Maybe that's the real reason for the agent stuff: "Hey agent, please start this program because the start menu is broken again, and my Bluetooth mouse and keyboard no longer connect."

Submission + - Python Software Foundation refuses $1.5 million grant with anti DEI provision. (blogspot.com) 1

Jeremy Allison - Sam writes: The PSF has withdrawn a $1.5 million proposal to US government grant program.

"We became concerned, however, when we were presented with the terms and conditions we would be required to agree to if we accepted the grant. These terms included affirming the statement that we “do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.”

Comment Re: I think Thomas Jefferson said it best (Score 5, Interesting) 89

Yup. Some others companies fought were ingredients lists ("We'll lose our secret recipes!"), nutrition information and calories ("people can work it out from the ingredients!"), financial disclosures ("Competitors can take advantage"), standardized rates of interest rate comparables ("customers can do the math!").

Anything that exposes the truth, risks, or potential liability or unwanted data gets fought as an existential threat.

Comment Re:it's been a meme (Score 3, Interesting) 43

It's been more than a meme.

As the article points out, it's been a question in philosophy since antiquity. At least 2500 years of discussion, probably more. We have no way to know how different people process what they see without peeking inside the brain and comparing. This is newsworthy as it's the closest we've come to verifying it.

There are still open questions about perception and interpretation in addition to just neural pathways, particularly around those with different sensitivities, but that's at least a start.

Color blindness missing one, two, or three sensitivities, tetrachromats or having a fourth sensitivity, shifted sensitivities that peak at slightly different places for different people, all of them lead to ways the colors could be perceived and interpreted differently by different people. It's a good start at research, but there's a lot more that can be answered.

Comment Re:This has nothing to do with AI (Score 0) 162

Neither the FBI's assessment nor the CDC's assessment agree with your recommendations. They have a lot of heavily-researched recommendations filled with rigorous citations and backed by tragic data.

Research over the past 30 years is clear on how to do it: First and foremost, socioeconomic disparity needs to be addressed. Second, availability of mental health care to minors, especially by decoupling it from parental employment, or said differently, universal mental health care for minors at the very least. Third, external groups auditing schools for signs of bullying, social classes or have/have-nots, especially by administrators and teachers; data shows schools and districts cannot self-assess because the ones doing the assessments are part of the bias, and typically blind to their actions.

The data shows, and the FBI summary is clear in describing, that regulations on firearms themselves are statistically irrelevant. In fact, the FBI summary explicitly calls out that is one of the biggest pieces of misinformation and false claims, the demonstrably wrong belief that easy access to weapons is the most significant risk factor. The data shows it has virtually no effect whatsoever. Anyone wanting to commit violence at school can do so.

The four-prong assessment model, looking at the personality of the student, the family dynamics, the school dynamics, and interplay/leakage between any of those with society at large, tends to give the best view of risks. Schools and local officials especially tend to downplay their role, dismissing teacher favoritism to cliques as "school spirit", "supporting the team", and similar, and dismissing their prejudice because they are blind to it, believing it justified.

Unfortunately the research-backed guidance isn't popular with lawmakers. The plans cost money. Addressing the disparity is labeled terms like "woke" and "communist". Universal healthcare labeled "socialized medicine" and given labels like "death panels" as though insurance companies don't do the same today. The republican party is against it claiming individual liberties, the democratic party is against it due to high costs.

Submission + - "lost" Apollo 11 footage online? (youtube.com) 4

Stephen Samuel writes: Back around 2024, Redit user tantabus posted a question about accessing 'Ampex 1" Video Tapes with Apollo 11 footage'. He later upscaled and posted some of the video from the tapes on his youtube account.

Having viewed his video of Armstrong's first walk, I'm convinced that these videos are from the 'missing' tapes from the Parkes Observatory in Australia that have long been presumed destroyed. This is certainly, by far, the best quality video of Armstrong's moon walk that I've ever seen. View for yourself and comment.

Comment Mining+power (Score 1) 25

I guess the logical next step is to capture the heat output as hot water, concentrate the heat somehow (or heat the water a bit more) and use steam to drive a turbine producing electricity. Ye cannae break the laws of physics, but it should be possible for a datacentre to recoup at least part of its electricity costs this way? Essentially a steam-driven power station where the heating element is a bank of GPUs with water running over them.

Comment Re: Nutshell (Score 1) 240

They took things they knew from the outset they didn't have a right to, like the oft-discussed Books3 database. They knew it was pirated, had an email chain discussing paying for the books, and decided to use it anyway. It was a wilful disregard of copyright law because it was faster and easier to use piracy for profit.

Comment Re: Nutshell (Score 2) 240

The only difference between

There are a TON of differences. Probably the biggest is that the machine version can read the entirety of all known creations.

Humans can study some a book in a few days, watch a movie in an hour or two, a web page in a few minutes. Machine learning can pull in thousands in the time it has taken you to read this.

Similarly for output, writing a book takes months to years, staging photos takes time and tools, feature films are hundred million dollar multi-year endeavors.

The human cost is a huge part of the economic difference. The AI industry has made fortunes by sweeping in everything ever created, authorized or not. Companies like Meta now have email trails showing they could have moved for authorized access, but like a thief that it was easier to just grab known-unauthorized materials and profit immediately rather than compensate people for the use.

Combined the two are unacceptable. They could pay but they refuse, they claim the only way to operate is mass infringement on the scale of all humanity, that if they don't get unfettered access to everything humans have ever created, without compensation, so they can maximize profit.

Comment Re: Vim is already available for Windows (Score 1) 105

Well I know that you can't argue over personal tastes, and many people like modal editors, but I don't think it is about "educating yourself". Perhaps the opposite is true, as this interview with vi's creator, Bill Joy, explains:

REVIEW: What would you do differently?
JOY: I wish we hadn't used all the keys on the keyboard. I think the interesting thing is that vi is really a mode-based editor. I think as mode-based editors go, it's pretty good. One of the good things about EMACS, though, is its programmability and the modelessness. Those are two ideas which never occurred to me.

Comment The Surface Studio had a good screen, at least (Score 1) 16

I never had a Surface Studio. But I always wanted one for its 4500x3000 display. Microsoft did a good job in pushing 3:2 aspect ratio and driving the PC market away from the horrible letterboxing that dominated laptops and monitors for a decade. It's a pity that panel was never sold in a standalone monitor (Huawei talked about it but the product never reached the market).

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