"You wanna tried disputing literally any of the points I made?"

  No. Because none of them contradict my post. Go back and reread the initial post. I did not offer an opinion on whether that was right or wrong. How badly do you read?

Look, you're the one going out of the way to muddy the waters over what was a very simple premise. In your post summing me up you got everything wrong. I am not a boomer, I did not go to university, I bought my first property in 2008.

In your rush to contradict you read a mountain into the molehill. Good lord. At least own up to it.

I did not retreat. I restated. What you see as a retreat is me refusing to own what you read into my post.

If you tell me everybody in a whole generation is going to fail, I'll call you a liar. And if some are going to succeed, announcing failure in advance of trying should earn somebody no sympathy.

Easy mode? Hardly. Not going to sit here and compare life stories, but that's just not true. Every generation had its challenges.

I had this discussion with my nephew. He was ranting about the way the whole world is skewed against his generation, and how there are no opportunities. I said, "I don't think you know that to be true."

After some discussion it was clear that he had been radicalized to this viewpoint not because he had really did his best and failed, but by the endless feedback loop online that told him he didn't need to try because he was doomed to fail.

I didn't have to go far for a counter example. His older brother is an electrical engineer and doing well.

My point was that letting the online community convince you it's hopeless makes the failure real, and it's not useful.

It's to give an idea of how many homes could be served by 1 such cable. Not that you would run it to every home, you would have different fiber for the "last mile" (or 10). But that 1 run could serve an entire city (unless it was a real biggie). Or all the cities along a long stretch of freeway, etc.

This would be a big blow to open-source AI. Not really sure why they gave away Llama to be honest. But it was good while it lasted.

Lots of people who travel abroad use a VPN service because various corporate sites are geoblocking countries for various b2b and other small scale portals. I see this pretty regularly.

Lots of people who travel abroad use a VPN service for some peace of mind in sketchy internet cafes etc. It ensures you are using a known DNS provider, all your non-encrypted traffic is opaque, and you can use 'nearby' endpoints so aren't running packets around the globe.

Another significant use for VPNs is to route around censorship blocks. And log-less VPN services can be used to drop leaks to journalists and stuff... assuming you trust the vpn service.

Some people just want to confound potential tracking and profiling by their local ISP... in exchange for potential tracking and profiling by their VPN service... but maybe they know the ISP is selling their data, and they trust their VPN isn't.

"minimum publishable unit"

You're right, it's a long-recognized problem, but a viable alternative has yet to surface.

Well, computer science has sort of deserted universities into corporations, where most impactful R&D is now conducted, and work is judged by people's willingness to use it (open source), or to pay for it (commercial). Does it really matter whether Hunggingface publishes a "scientific paper" or a good postings on a blog? Doesn't seem to...

is a thing.

In order to get a job in journalism, you are required to fail a test, showing you have no clue how units work in physics.

Good point. An army that sees all others as subhuman and sees only the next death is one that has to keep fighting. It has no choice. It's the only thing it knows. It can keep conquering more territory outwards, or it can slaughter its own government inwards. History shows those are your two options.

Whether or not Russia conquers Ukraine, it will attack other countries - vast numbers of bored, underpaid soldiers would seek entertainment elsewhere if they didn't.

A flamethrower negates this... Like instantly.

Which reminds me, almost never should you write a serious response to what at first appears as a genuinely clueless AC.

I wonder what are the comparable figures for manpower? It's not like only drones are dying...

It's like trademarking Osama Bin Laden's Bagel Store.