This seems to be the open-access link but in searching for that I saw another article from the authors about the small intestine metabolizing fructose into glucose.

So it's probably more complex than we thought. Another 5-6-fructase pathway, I'd guess, haven't read it yet.

With the ESA supplying the spacecraft, most of the software is likely to be competently written and/or open-source. This will prove to the Martians that there is indeed intelligent life on Earth.

It's a good question and one I'm working on trying to get an answer to. By giving AI hard, complex engineering problems, and then getting engineers to look at the output to determine if that output is meaningful or just expensive gibberish.

By doing this, I'm trying to feel around the edges of what AI could reasonably be used for. The trivial engineering problems usually given to it are problems that can usually be solved by people in a similar length of time. I believe the typical savings from AI use are in the order of 15% or less, which is great if you're a gecko involved in car insurance, but not so good if you're a business.

If the really hard problems aren't solvable by AI at all (it's all just gibberish) then you can never improve on that figure. It's as good as it is going to get.

I've open sourced what AIs have come up with so far, if you want to take a look. Because that is what is going to tell you if good can come out of AI or not.

I would think it goes further. If the company has already failed (ie: no longer exists) then the action is not taken by the company but a former employee of that company (even if said former employee was the CEO). Former employees are not granted special authority over PII or over company-owned information.

Irrelevant. PII protections are not subject to company discresion.

The conversations are not private, but PII laws nonetheless still apply. Anything in the messages that violates PII privacy laws is forbidden regardless of company policy. Policy cannot overrule the law.

Now, in the US, where privacy is a fiction and where double-dealing is not only perfectly acceptable but a part of workplace culture, that isn't too much of an issue. The laws exist on paper but have no real existence in practice.

However, business these days is international and American corps tend to forget that. Any conversation involving European computers (even if all employers and employees are in the US) falls under the GDPR and is under the aspices of the European courts and the ECHR, not the US legal system. And cloud servers are often in Ireland. Guess what. That means any conversation that takes place physically on those computers in Ireland plays by European rules, even if the virtual conversation was in the US.

This was settled by the courts a LONG time ago. If you carry out unlawful activities on a computer in a foreign country, you are subject to the laws of that country.

Unfortunately, it was all of our responsibility to make sure our neighbors didn't turn out to be uneducated assholes, and we collectively failed. As it turns out, abdicating that responsibility to a department of education in a far-away land didn't actually satisfy the need.

I used to have a workstation that had a sliding cover for the camera. Maybe it was an SGI Indy? I forget. I think only some linux laptops have hardware covers / kill switches for camera and mic? I would *really* like such for MacBook Pro, how about a physical low-profile sideways cover / toggle switch that disables camera and mic together? As for biometrics, I was always against it. But then.. iPhone Face ID, so useful. And kind of necessary with the default settings though maybe we should just keep them unlocked for longer? And then the Macbook's finger print scanner button. Actually super useful. Mainly to get around system password prompts. And local keychain fine. But then I tried Google's passkey. Also quite useful though scary, it seems to use a passkey Apple hands out if your fingerprint works. The only thing is, if your fingerprint ever is allowed one day leave your machine (probably it has already) then your biometrics are in somebody's cloud, and in a year or two someone could deepfake it. That's the obvious part. Retinas? Don't get me started. I'm guessing it probably will be robust even after laser surgery.

You buy a ticket with a credit card, you get a receipt. No one can buy more than 4 tickets on a single credit card. The machine to let you in has to run the physical credit card to let upto those 4 people through the gate.

You buy a ticket with cash, your photo gets printed on the ticket. That face can buy upto 4 people. Gets checked at the door by a person.

Not that hard to do. They keep the current system because they use ticket scalping as an excuse to raise prices. Oh, sorry all of the 'premium' tickets are sold out, would you like to buy the 'gold' tickets? How about the 'Diamond tickets'?

So say we all.

Apple is its own thing. It is not fully inconceivable that the feds (and therefore everyone else) would switch to MacOS if Windows became [even more] unsupportable, but I doubt Microsoft can provide Office at even the sad level it achieves on Windows and it would take Apple time to ramp up supply.

Linux is an easy sell unless people are hooked on some application or game that doesn't run on it, then it's hard. The interface is familiar enough now (especially with KDE, but there are some other basically credible options) that they won't have a lot of room to complain so long as they don't have problems. That part is going to depend on the hardware, and IME they will have the fewest problems with AMD CPU and GPU now. If they have Intel it might or might not be OK; if they've got Nvidia they're likely to have a bad time at least sometimes.

Business is increasingly using web-based tools for everything, which is not itselft a bad thing- if only more of them were self-hosted. But either way, this decreases the dependence on Windows. I've worked where there's a few Windows machines for clerical staff, or where there's a Mac for the graphics department. That can be Windows' fate again.

It was an unusual campaign in that 95% of campaign promises weren't not just unfulfilled but 180* opposite of policy. Ultimate con man.

But now that Philippines is nearly out of oil China has made overtures to take care of their oil needs which have been defacto accepted.

The quid pro quo isn't stated yet but US caused their oil crisis so this announcement isn't real.

What an odd thing to say.

I rip my DVD and Bluray discs to a NAS and play them with Jellyfin. There's not even an optical player near a TV anymore. The last one died in about 2008.

But I have put some of those files on USB before for the kids.

Used Blurays are about $5 usually and much better quality than any streaming service rental.

The Onn is an excellent device for the money and most questionable aspects can be disabled or piholed. Jellyfin and SmartTube and Projectivy are all fine.

I should go see if LineageOS has added any new low-power devices in the past year. That's the best option but nothing supported was for sale when I last looked.

Exactly.

Somebody said they spent a lot of time and money coming up with a new "nonbinary" mascot.

I started using Firefox over 20 years ago and never had any idea whether the fox was male or female. Since thunderbirds are fictional I'm not sure about the sexual dimorphism of their plumage.

It's hard to understand how they think these days. At least Ladybird will offer a second rendering engine when the bubble pops. Engineering-focused software organizations used to be the norm.

I guess a Ladybird is a female, not that it matters at all. The AI should have Majel Barret's voice anyway.