It may be a trite saying, but it's as true in education as it is in a gym. If you don't exercise your brain, it's not going to improve.

There's a reason weightlifters don't use a forklift or crane to pick up the barbells and do a dozen reps. The problem is not that the weights are in need of lifting. And that's the same problem with homework. The teacher doesn't need a stack of 5 page reports; what they need is for their students to practice using their brains.

Unfortunately the education system is designed to evaluate output instead of process. It's easier to grade a paper or a test, not evaluate a demonstration of knowledge. It's always been ripe for cheating, but now the cheat tools are everywhere and made legitimate by techbros demanding AI productivity. So either teaching will change, or we'll head straight for idiocracy and nobody will be left with the skills to wonder why it all went to hell.

Uh, the Trump administration is staffed by a bunch of people with openly anti-democratic views and they have strong opinions on how other countries should run their affairs as evidenced by J.D. Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference. From a non-US, non-Chinese point of view, while China is anti-democratic, it is still better than the US in that China at least leaves you alone as long as you don't step on it's tail while the US will without any provocation try to force you to run your country the way they think you should, or outright annex your country like your orange king has threatened Canada and Greenland. For most of the world China is bad but the USA is actually becoming worse and that took some doing on the part of the US.

Apple II, Mac, etc: write software to do anything you want to. Sell it, directly to your customers, if you want. Oh, you're just a user? No problem, just access the Free Market. It's your PC, to do as its user wishes.

iPhone: use the app store to access this approved list of software which does what WE want. Want something else? Go fuck yourself; this computer isn't yours. It is important that we all remain the same, and only do what nanny wants. (Oh, and if you do sell, and we deign to approve your software, we're taking a big piece of the action)

The iPhone is more like a videogame console than a personal computer. That's a step backwards, as if it's still the 1960s and those Jobs/Woz guys had never existed. I don't want a 1960s not-so-P C. I want a 1980s PC. Why the fuck would anyone want to go back to before Jobs & Woz?

Steve Jobs worked hard to undo his legacy as one of the people who helped to start the Personal Computer revolution, and the iPhone is his monument to the denial and refutation of his earlier role. He became a counter-revolutionary.

It wouldn't be so bad if the revolution were something lame, but the revolution was that We The People could use computers however we wish, instead of however The Company wants. That was innovation.

Thank you to 1977 Jobs, and Fuck You to 2007 Jobs.

It's just a matter of time until President Pedophile insists on a coin to honor Timothy McVeigh.

(No, Jobs isn't in that league, but he's a lot better known for the regression of the iPhone than the progression of NeXT.)

Your PC controlled by someone else's AI? That doesn't make any sense! Oxymoron.

Salesforce Says: AI Customer Service Saves $100 Million Annually.
Salesforce Customers Say: Salesforce AI Customer Service is utterly, utterly useless.

Do coral reefs really matter though? Sure, it's a milestone, but not an existential one.

Yes, they absolutely do matter, and yes it is potentially an existential one. Coral reefs are the most biodiverse part of the seas and are the source of many of the ocean nutrients that get carried around the globe on currents like the AMOC, so they play an essential part in the overall ocean food chain that many people rely on to survive. Removing the coral reefs from those people's food chains would be akin to the impact of removing Alfalfa from the US food chain that ultimately leads to all that beef and dairy produce.

Also, if their primary food source is unable to support them, they're not likely to stay put and starve for the greater good, are they? Where do you think they are going to start marching towards?

The AMOC relies on a cycling of warmer water in the tropics and cooler water in the Arctic Circle to generate the circulatory current. The warm water flows north, cools and sinks below the thermocline, then flows back to the tropics. It is not a loop on the surface like tidal flows, but rather a loop in an elongated cross sectional view that stretches right around the Indian and Southern Oceans as well as the Atlantic and is, in effect, a gigantic natural heat pump moving energy from the tropics to the North Atlantic ocean. The basic idea behind the potential shutdown of the flow is that as the temperature differential declines, so does the energy in the system, resulting a slowdown of the current and, ultimately (if taken to a logical conclusion), it stopping altogether - just as a heat pump would once the temperatures on either side have the pump have equalised.

In terms of impact, there's a bit more to it than that to do with variations in salinity between different parts of the ocean, which in turn being compounded with the inflow of fresh water from the melting Arctic ice cap and (mostly) Greenland's glaciers, that it also bring nutrients essential for the supporting the marine life in the Atlantic, plays a key part in sequestering the vast amounts of CO2 the ocean captures into the deep ocean (which is a whole other feedback loop). Even if it doesn't stop altogether, but only slows significantly, the impact on the entire biosphere, and especially around the North Atlantic, is going to be profound.

I've been online for a while and have not noticed Philadelphia being singled out in any way. Everything in the article's "notorious cultural touchstones" is unknown to me. Not that I'm celebrating my ignorance, but I just haven't seen anyone discussing those particular topics.

on the internet, Philly culture is inescapable

From my point of view, on the internet Philly culture is just one of thousands, not particularly emphasized.

I suspect the author has some connection to that city which has caused him to read about it more than average.

angry they can't make 10-second clips featuring their favorite characters anymore

Sorry, whose favorite characters? Did you mean yours or did you mean Disney's?

Not that I have a problem with you actually making a video of Disney's characters. I haven't seen any evidence that these AIs have any idea how copyright law and Fair Use work, so obviously it doesn't make any sense to restrict what they're allowed to do. The user is perfectly qualified .. well, ok .. the most qualified of the two, to make such decisions.

If Disney wants tools to try to figure out Fair Use vs not-Fair Use, then they should throw money at AI lawyers, which currently have an absolutely terrible reputations, since they're so incredibly unreliable and borderline-fraudulent.

And if Disney doesn't think they can make a near-perfect AI lawyer (at least one good enough to not enrage judges with fake citations) then they have no reasonable expectation that anyone else can/should do it, either, so keep your human lawyers away from our computers.

It would actually be quite wrong to just say "funded by taxpayer!!". It's funded by a central EU funding pot, yes, but that pot is fed from more than the individual taxpayers titheing money to their governments, which then use it to pay their EU dues. Both the EU's central pot, and the individual state's exchequer, will are supplied by more than the taxpayer and will include investment returns (that money isn't just sitting in a vault around doing nothing until it's needed), fines including the multi-billion $ ones levied against Apple/Google/Meta/Microsoft, etc., the sale of criminal assets seized through disgorgement like Bitcoin and tangible goods such as cars and properties, foreign visa fees, and customs fees, just for starters.

There's almost certainly a full breakdown of the sources on Europa.eu if you wanted to go and look for it; pretty much all of the EU's operational processes and finances are in the public domain.

They're also never actually free on the scamazon store, it's just a subscription that you don't ever own.

What's the reason OneDrive tells users this setting can only be turned off 3 times a year?

Because that's what their customers are demanding! Don't you hate when you're doing something, and you realize you've done it more than 3 times? Just yesterday I adjusted the mirror on my wife's SUV and thought "we keep undoing each other's mirror adjustments. Can't it just stop moving so that one of us permanently loses and one permanently wins? Why is this car letting us change it back'n'forth?"

Microsoft fights for the users!

It's coming to light due to the private equity buyout lead by esteemed real estate criminal Jared Kushner. This is likely anti-woke washing to entice a class of customers who have already moved along due to EA sucking for lots of other reasons which won't be addressed.

Why solve real problems intentionally created due to mismanagement when you can just play the culture war card and get a bunch of knee-jerk reactions?

That depends entirely upon whether US companies stand to benefit from EU anti-trust laws or not in any given situations. This is a far easier and more agile process in the US, you just keep buying Trump's meme-coin until he does what you want.