"Einstein's theory of relativity was not based on scientific research."

It was based on solving a maths equation.

(As a mathematician, yes, I could argue that I studied as a school of mathematical sciences inside a university but also...)

There's a big and very obvious difference between "scientific research" and "mathematics".

Nobody was out there putting clocks on satellites trying to work out what the weird time-dilation problems were that they were seeing in every experiment. Instead, the maths was solved and TOLD you to go looking for them because on the face of it they appeared patently ridiculous and incompatible with what we knew of physics at that time.

The question is not if they replace 3 million jobs (even if we believe such a number plucked out of nowhere).

The question is does it REMOVE 3 million jobs.

Or, like every automation that ever happened (and AI is just automation, it's not intelligent at all), is it just the case that the jobs become obsolete because they were basically worthless and could be automated out of existence by anything that came along, and then they allow other jobs to do more, or require other jobs to be created, etc. etc. etc.

Because, in history, if you look at it over the years (not days or weeks), the number of JOBS just keeps increasing, and pretty much in line with the number of people that need them. Of course there are blips, but pretty much over the last few hundred years... more jobs, all the time.

It's not even a question of "do jobs just stop being created", historically, it's far more "can ALL jobs keep pace with population expansion". Sometimes they waver a bit in that aspect but pretty much... there are always jobs. Because as the lamplighters get obsoleted, the electricians, street-light technicians, etc. come in to replace them, and then people have 24/7 lighting so now you need more people to secure the factory, or whatever other examples you want to pluck out of the air. Secretaries weren't obsoleted by email. Retail shop worker's job were replaced with online delivery drivers, and so on.

Sure. Not the SAME JOB. Of course. But the fact is that the jobs evolve just like the people, and the number of jobs - and thus the unemployment rate which *roughly* corresponds to the number of jobs (but also health, social security and thousands of other factors) stays... pretty much the same. Countries like Greece have high unemployment not because AI came round and stole all the jobs... because the rest of the world are doing just fine... but one of a thousand other factors. But if you look overall... the unemployment rates aren't changing JUST because of AI, and aren't likely to. Because even if that happens, you now need someone to wrangle the AI, a dozen people to help run it, a dozen people at the electricity company to keep the lights on for it, more people to make and sell and transport and fit the GPUs and so on.

This is yet another evolution, marketed as apocalyptic catastrophe. And I fucking hate AI. But it's just automation. Yeah, someone's worthless job copying Excel figures from one box to another might be obsoleted. But you know what? I bet nVidia, the cloud providers, datacentres, software-pushers, even electrical installers, etc. are hiring like crazy to take up the slack.

Not the SAME job. It will be REPLACED. But there will still be jobs, probably more of them. They won't be REMOVED.

It's right, though.

Both quantum mechanics and relativity were based on solving part of a partial differential equation which derived - ultimately - from Newtonian physics, but which had extremely bizarre and unpredictable output.

When you solved the maths that you could (a p.d.e. doesn't have a single complete "solution" as such), you ended up with incredibly weird stuff that few initially believed was possible.

It was only when we confirmed the maths, went out into the world and looked for this bizarre behaviour that we managed to confirm it.

It's quite literally a true statement. Nobody sat there saying "oh, I wonder is space is a bit curvy" and then found it, the same way that they didn't say "I wonder if there's stuff that works probablistically below the atomic level" and then went looking for it.

Both spring from the solution of a p.d.e. given a bizarre and often-thought-impossible (at the time) answer resulting in a world based on rules we couldn't have imagined... and THEN we confirmed that's what was actually happening in real life.

High-end physics pretty much mostly comes from solving maths equations and then going "What the fuck..."

Duh.

It's the only quote I ever use about AI.

As soon as I realise an article, or an image or whatever is AI generated, I just stop and go elsewhere, and often just block that channel/page/site/user.

At this point, it's openly discriminatory as a policy, as far as I'm concerned. This was AI - NOT YOU - making this and I'm not interested in the output of an AI. If I were, I'd just go onto an AI and have it make that, rather than pick it up from some other third-hand place that reposted it.

The irony of "social" media being almost nothing but AI nowadays is so laughable. Facebook was there for me to talk to my friends and family, see how my old school friends were doing, etc. etc. etc. and after becoming just a bunch of curated junk it turned to shit and I basically stopped bothering. And now it's just AI and reposts because everyone else stopped bothering to post too.

I come to Slashdot, for example, not for the articles. They're just there to promote discussion. I come to interact with people and read what people think.

They keep wanting to turn the OS into a bunch of non-optional, deeply-integrated, unremoveable, application-layer talkie assistants.

It's been the same for decades - Active Desktop, the little paperclips and wizards, etc. Microsoft Bob infected them and they're still trying to make it happen.

If Windows was an OS, and Copilot was an optional app that you could download for free or buy, and which any similar AI assistant could plug into your OS in the same way (e.g. so you could choose Gemini or ChatGPT to help in your OS instead), and there was an option to just say "No, none of that"... I'd probably stick with Windows.

But my last 10 machine at home is coming to its end, and its replacement is not going to run Windows. Purely because... you forgot where the OS ends, and my data and my applications begin.

I just want the OS. I'm not interested in ANYTHING ELSE that you have to push. I don't have Office. I don't use Teams. I couldn't give a damn about Copilot or AI. I just want something that boots to a desktop and lets me click the icons of programs that *I* have chosen to put on there.

It's simply not possible on Windows. They proved with IE, literally broke the same laws again with Edge, now it's Copilot, etc. No. And now you're not just being a pain in the butt, intercepting my web traffic to pop up ads for your browser ("There's no need to download a different browser..."), but now you're actually reading all my data and taking screenshots of my screen.

I'm done. Make an OS and the rest as applications and not only would it reveal quite how many people WANT Copilot etc. but it would also mean that you wouldn't be literally breaking the anti-monopoly laws like you have for several decades now.

I live in an all-electric house.

I bought heatpumps within the first 2 years of buying it. Heating with resistive electric is expensive and inefficient (technically it's about 100% efficient... which is awful compared to a heatpump which can be MORE efficient... because it uses the tiny amount o of heat already present in the air outside your house, even in sub-zero temperatures).

My electricity bill is one-third of what it was when I moved in, purely because of heatpumps. By comparison, I have also moved all my home IT to half a dozen individual Raspberry Pi's which, collectively, run at about ~100W... less than it costs to run my laptop, let alone a server.

Most people are trying to reduce their base load and reduce their heating costs, not increase them.

Can it put the fecking taskbar icons back where they were? And let me drag it around the screen? And bring back the start menu? And finally move everything into either control panel or Settings (but not both)? And actually let me choose to NOT update if I so wish? And making things an OFF BY DEFAULT OPTION first, and never removing an option, just switching it off for those who don't want it? And letting me theme Office again so I can make it look like Office 2000? And ....

Because I absolutely hate AI with every fibre of my being, but if lets me do those things, I might well consider supporting it.

Good for you.

Now...

When can we fecking buy it?

Untethered means battery-powered wifi gaming.

Immediately, not interested.

I can play my Vive Pro as long as I like (e.g. at a party we can all have a go for hours), it's reliant on the power of the machine connected to it, not the device itself, and it provides tech specs far in advance of the wireless junk.

I solved that problem with a hook in the ceiliing and one of those springy-cord things (like people used to have on their keys) so that you can move in literally any direction and it doesn't matter at all as the cable will follow you, and then spring back to the hook when you step back again.

Literally a $10 solution, never had an issue after that.

Yeah, you remember when all the game-streaming services failed because they just couldn't actually overcome the latency issues?

And you know that in VR, latency is the thing that makes you feel travel sick and/or have an awful experience? (Good VR sets have such low latency that it's incredible, and this is basically a non-issue, but even a poorly-programmed game can introduce enough latency to have this effect even with perfect hardware).

And that wireless tech - regardless of its implementation - is subject to local radio noise and will "hang up" if there's interference?

Streaming shite to VR is a TERRIBLE idea. That's why they often need proprietary cables to do it, as per the OP.

If it was intelligent, it would be making its own money by now.

"When we go down, we want to take down every market with us because we're a bottomless-money-pit and are chasing a dream that we can't achieve with all the world's computing resources, the training data of the entire Internet from billions of people, and excruciatingly overburdening several utilities to try to find something that we think will just magically happen if we keep throwing stuff at it. And we've used up every available money source but are still hundreds of billions in the red without any sign of profit, so we just need to tank everyone so that we can succeed"

I paid and still have a Disable Advertising button in Slashdot and this is YET ANOTHER time that that prior purchase is not being honoured.