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Comment fucked up (Score 4, Insightful) 44

When your preview function can compromise the user, you know that you've fucked up. Again. Why is anyone trusting MickeySoft with their business secrets? I'll never understand that. They are literally known for making insecure crap.

I guess the "features over everything" attitude somehow does vibe with the right market segment. Which I fear has influence on purchasing decisions far beyond what their competence justifies.

Comment Re:Sounds like the enshittification of education (Score 2) 55

AI isn't at that level. This is by far the most common misconception about AI, and you have fallen for it as well.

AI cannot reliably solve novel problems, nor can it reliably produce high quality work like a design for a bridge. We still need humans to do that. And, the evidence is right before our eyes: bridge architects still have jobs. If AI could do this, all the bridge architects in the world would immediately be fired, since they cost so much more than AI.

I must belabor this point: yes, we have seen AI do really complex things like generate really sophisticated code that was hard and that worked. But that does not mean that these AI can now do all the much simpler things that need doing in a software developer position. It seems like simple reasoning "wow, if AI can do something that hard, then surely it can do something this simple" but that is false. The pattern-matching that AI algorithms use is not the same as thinking a problem through (despite the much publicized efforts at accomplishing precisely this), and AIs still routinely get tripped up over simple things. Everyone who works with AI, including me, knows this, because it happens a lot.

And we have read articles right here on slashdot where harm has come from relying on an AIs work. In particular in legal filings. People keep thinking that AI's work is good enough precisely because it is designed to appear good enough. But it is not good enough once scrutinized.

So, we still need people with the mental skills to do the job. They have to be able to do it without the aid of AI in order to have sufficient competence to, at the very least, review and certify work that comes out of AI.

If we have a generation of students that had AI do their homework for them, and this was acceptable to the teachers who used AI to grade it, then we will have a workforce that is entirely bereft of competence. That will cause serious economic problems with real harmful impact to our lives. And it gets worse. We know that AIs hallucinate. They give false facts when asked direct questions, even if the true facts are available to them. You want those educating our kids?

Well, apparently colleges do, since AI is so much cheaper than teachers.

It appears we are going to have to keep learning this lesson, the hard way, for a while now.

Comment Aux In (Score 1) 202

I have a Honda with an obsolete "infotainment" system, but at least it has an Aux In next to a USB port that provides power, so I can plug in an $11 UGreen dongle and listen to whatever I feel like. If I cared there are some nice 7" 1080p screens for cheap in the Raspberry Pi space that could be shoehorned in and run at 12V. But I'd rather have no screen at all.

Funny thing is that UGreen pairs faster than any other bluetooth device I have and never doesn't work. For eleven bucks.

With the fickleness of Google and Apple there's no chance they'll even support the current CarPlay and Android Auto in 20 years. I like to keep my vehicles 15-30 years, depending on how well they handle rust.

Maybe Crutchfield will make bypass harnesses for these systems in ten years when absolutely nothing works but the screen and speakers are still useful.

We really should be looking for standards at that level, so the compute modules could be upgraded after the manufacturer abandons their platforms.

As Louis says, you shouldn't be a felon for disabling ads on your refrigerator that you never agreed to.

Comment Re:Not much new (Score 1) 29

In a full-blown trade war, both sides lose. That's obvious.

Yes, it is.
But there are first and second losers.

In China, economic problems would lead to who knows what.

Tianamen Square ?

If the Great Leap Forward with its mass starvation (most likely the worst in human history) didn't lead to a change, you seriously think that a few export problems will?

Comment *spoilers* (Score 1) 18

Spoilers ahead for people who haven't played the final games in the series.

From my perspective, the way they wrapped up the plot means that the story is essentially going to be a reboot either way. The original storyline involved relationships between several key characters and factions, including and especially Cortana, the Covenant, the Flood, and earth's government. And those plot lines are now all finished. Covenant gone. Cortana gone. The mysteries about the rings and such, solved. There is of course a new enemy that arose like a phoenix. It's an open-ended story that could go anywhere, but it's also essentially a new story with mostly new characters, so, a reboot in its own way.

The next game in this cannon will need to give us a reason to care about the new characters and factions, because the ones we have cared about so far are done and gone. So, what's it going to be? Roll the dice on making something that people will get interested in that won't feel like a re-hash of what we have already seen, or just give the old-but-proven story to a new generation of kids, with shinier graphics?

The second bet is clearly the safer one.

Comment Re:Excuse my ignorance ... (Score 1) 66

Both. Most people are dumb, and many would use stolen money if they could (and many do, though usually not to buy video game cosmetics).

Intelligence and morality are both things that people are born without, and have to learn. Some people are born pre-disposed to be good at learning (be that knowledge, virtue, or both), but even so, if they are born into unfortunate circumstances then the things that they will learn will be wrong and harmful.

So, in order to reach adulthood with sharp intelligence and a functioning moral compass, several random elements must all work in their favor, including genetics, location of birth, economic status of birth, and a series of not-very-bad life events.

As a matter of raw statistics, most people wind up dumb and/or reprobate.

Comment Re:Short Sightedness Led to China's Dangerous Rise (Score 1) 29

It's short sighted of a special kind, even.

2-3 decades ago, it was car manufacturing. Every car maker by then knew that the Chinese would steal the tech. There's a famous example of a Mercedes Benz factory making busses which for the first year or two sold like hot cakes. Then demand suddenly vanished. Research found that the chinese joint venture partner (you had to joint venture in those days, not sure about now) had copied the entire factory, brick by brick, one city away. An exact copy making the exact same busses, just without Mercedes Benz in the loop. And, of course, slightly cheaper.

Everyone knew that.

And yet everyone went to China. They figured that it was still profitable to accept that risk.

Of course, the fact that CEOs these days change every few years and get a severance package large enough that they can immediately retire doesn't exactly make them long-term thinkers.

Comment Re:Rest of world should also target self-reliance (Score 1) 29

- Seafood - stop getting cheap frozen seafood harvested by China's fleet

Heck, stop getting any food that is available locally. It's insane that I can buy some food that was grown in South America, shipped to Asia for processing and packaging and then shipped to Europe for less than the same food grown in Europe.

There's quite a bit of utter insanity there.

Comment Re:Not much new (Score 1) 29

If a full-blown trade war broke out between China and the G7/friends, China would be forced to overload poorer countries with its exports, which is not sustainable

Yes, but this cuts both ways. These days, a LOT of essential day-by-day supplies are manufactured in China. If China and the G7 stopped all trade tomorrow, the damage to the G7 would be bigger and more immediate than that on China.

The problem for China is that a huge trade surplus is a drug that would bring huge withdrawal symptoms if the drug were not available.

True. Germany is learning that lesson now that cheap energy from Russia is no longer available and its export business can't compete anymore.

Comment Maintenance (Score 1) 99

> Why? Absolutely no idea

This isn't surprising to anybody who's studied the psychology of political science.

Those who identify as 'conservative' value maintenance much higher than those who identify as 'progressive'. You're more likely to see them in their driveway changing their oil and measuring their tire tread depth. It's just different kinds of people with different time-preference mindsets.

Note that with a limited budget maintenance spending is money that cannot be spent on immediate benefits.

You need to allocate some of the benefits money to upgrading the IT systems so there's less to hand out. "How could you possibly cut their benefits?" is the kind of misplaced empathy that undercuts the system that they feel is valuable.

Of course there's usually a Federal bailout in the wings for people who don't plan ahead so the incentive systems are all completely misaligned for good governance. Since the Lockdowns we've seen the weaponization of the Dollar through sanctions and tariffs that have pushed world oil markets to the Yuan and cross-border settlements in sovereign currency exchanges, so the Dollar is in freefall compared to commodities which means those bailouts are going to end very soon.

As this reckoning becomes too real to ignore the populations will move strongly to vote for candidates who seem to understand the value of maintenance.

Comment Re:Wait... (Score 1) 99

Yeah, and Healthcare is 20% of GDP.

According to Keynesian economists, if we were all much healthier the economy would be worse off.

I'm not sure how much more evidence you need that the entire economic school is a bunch of self-styled money-priests making excuses for government spending.

Keynes did some really good early work but then he got caught diddling kids and after that the King's spending was all the best thing anybody could do.

An early version of "trust the experts".

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