If you're prevented from leaving, isn't that technically kidnapping?

I work in localization. Technical writing is often easier for machine-translation systems, because the writing is (ideally) deliberately clear, concise, and structured.

The terminology issue you mention can be addressed at least partially by feeding any such machine-translation system a list of words and phrases to keep as-is in the target text.

Fiction, meanwhile, often involves complicated and subtle wordplay, which no AI system is going to handle very well.

Already thrilled to learn what erotic literature..

.. will read like, after it has been dragged through the automatic translation process. Even the automatically translated descriptions of sex toys on Aliexpress are hilarious, and those are really short and not sophisticated.

I can see it now:

"I put on my robe and wizard hat..."

How about giving the choice for an analog control and taking the wasted extra money spent on computer chips + design + digital display and making the motor last longer?

I would love it if some manufacturer would produce tried-and-true analog designs without all the extra add-on, planned-obsolescence, enshittified bullshit. I suspect this approach would do quite well in the market, at least in certain product categories -- blenders, ovens, washing machines, etc.

Actually, this reminds me to take a look at Lehman's catalog, see what they're getting up to these days. I bumped into them quite by accident ages ago when a relative was living in Amish country. Poking around their website just now, I see things like ovens and hand-cranked mixers. A bit pricey, but no "ET phone home" rubbish and solid workmanship.

• https://www.lehmans.com/

(Crikey, slashcode still doesn't render bulleted lists correctly. How stupidly embarrassing.)

That's going to be expensive as hell.

I thought that was the entire point of consumer IoT goods? Rent-seeking by manufacturers?

(Serious question, not just snark.)

PhbGPT

Oo, oo, I know, I know! "What is Bill the Cat?" :D

It's too late for that.

We can't afford to quit now. None of the world's militaries or three letter security agencies will give up a weapon that might give them and advantage, ever. If we stop, we've lost any future conflict that might arise.

Imagine a future in which the world is controlled by Iran or North Korea. Competitive AI is the only way to prevent this.

This is the real world of realpolitik and real military power. Idealistic pearl clutching at this point is just noise. A ban won't happen, can't happen now.

I agree. The functions provided by this bed do not require internet connectivity AT ALL, let alone some ridiculous cloud based architecture. $5000 is enough to include a $200 miniPC to monitor temp and positional sensors.

the phones are NOT selling for $5,000

iPhones can go for around ¥5,000 (US$700)

Oofda, that was some brainfart-induced whiplash. I'm used to seeing ¥ used for Japanese yen, not Chinese yuan / Renminbi, and at first I was gobsmacked at what had happened to the exchange rate. Then in my foggy morning brain, I rediscovered this thing called "Context" and realized I was tuned into the wrong channel.

JPY ¥5,000 ~ USD $32.91, at ¥1 ~ $0.0066 (two-thirds of a penny)

RMB ¥5,000 ~ USD $702.02, at ¥1 ~ $0.14

... I should go get some coffee.

The tax, aside from lost revenue, are inevitable security breaches and uncontrollable outages. If a state actor decides to take down AWS or Azure, literally thousands of businesses would be down for an indefinite period.

This incident was nothing, a glitch. That doesn't mean the next one will be.

Which is what happens when you let MBAs make decisions instead of engineers.

MBAs hear the magic words "CAPEX vs OPEX" and their tiny myopic brains turn off as do the compliance officers with wet dreams of shifting liability elsewhere.

lt all works (with ever rising costs), until it doesn't.

It's just that the government is in denial and those geniuses with journalism degrees haven't caught onto the fact yet.

At which point it will hallucinate that every building is a McDonald's only to get you murdered by a drug cartel gang.

Lying to you to give you that terrible restaurant recommendation. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.06105 is a white paper mathematically proving that LLMs will lie.

I have said this all along- most of AI is GIGO- Garbage in, Garbage out. LLMs were trained on the largest garbage producer in our society today, Web 2.0. Nothing was done to curate the input, so the output is garbage.

I don't often reveal my religion, but https://magisterium.com/ is an example of what LLMs look like when they HAVE curated training. This LLM is very limited. It can't answer any question that the Roman Catholic Church hasn't considered in the last 300 years or so. They're still adding documents to it carefully, but I asked it about a document published a mere 500 years ago and it wasn't in the database, but instead of making something up like most LLMs will do, it kindly responded that the document wasn't in the database. It also, unlike most AI, can produce bibliographies.