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Comment Computer science or programming? (Score 1) 202

I'm concerned they're conflating programming and computer science here. Computer science is the study of algorithms, learning about things like Big O notation, designing efficient algorithms. It's heavy applied math. Programming is programming. One can be a successful programmer with absolutely no knowledge of computer science. I am all for kids getting exposure to programming, but the vast majority of the population has no need or interest in true computer science.

Comment Re: Shag carpet of 2020s (Score 1) 142

Tesla manages to do the UI so well that I feel like all the newest cars are 2-3 generations behind them. Perhaps I'm institutionalized, but when I first drove a 3 everything was intuitive. It was off center, but it made sense. As long as they leave the UI as-is, it'll remain excellent. We've owned a Y for months and we love it.

3 weeks ago we were test driving cars and the interfaces all annoyed me. VWs id4 was absolutely the worst interface. Ever.
Subaru has a much better interface, but the '23s are worse than the 22s. Bigger screen and nonsensical button placement with data stern about the screen seemingly randomly.
We bought an Infiniti because, among other reasons, the interface wasn't a PITA to navigate and it was super easy to manage the temperature and music.

I would like to see how well each make does with it's voice commands. Teslas have always worked flawlessly, but the BMWs, VWs, Subarus, and even the Infiniti we bought all failed to comprehend complete commands that I found in their manuals

Comment Re:Nice Smackdown (Score 4, Informative) 603

Aldrin was involved in the program a long time. He knew scores of astronauts, several of whom died, both before and after the moon landing. I feel like most of us who will never be astronauts, especially during the nascent years of the profession, can never truly understand how insulting and offensive denialism like that is to someone in his position. Like, literally denying the thing that killed several friends and acquaintances. It's like when a covid denialist tries to downplay the pandemic to someone who lost several family members.

Comment Re:Making an Excuse (Score 4, Interesting) 115

I think it's a complicated one, more complicated than most people realize. People have legit concerns about the iconography, and I can understand that. However, Nancy Green, the first "Aunt Jemima" broke a ton of glass ceilings, and made a lot of forward progress for civil rights. She was an activist, a business woman, and the first female person of color to serve as a spokes-model. It seems trite, but that was a big deal. At least two of the families of subsequent models have stated that they disagree with the removal, because of similar legacies and that they feel it "robs them of their history again." Which I can also understand.

Comment Re:How was it trained? (Score 1) 91

Well, considering the article specifically cites using a human reviewer, I'm not too worried. If it ends up being used algorithmically, ok, I'd cede your point. But as of right now that is not the project as it's defined. As for appealing a ban, I'm not that worried about that as fall out. I have no fundamental "right" to access another person or company's systems. If they flag me and choose to remove me, that's their right to do so.

Comment Re:How was it trained? (Score 1) 91

I believe that's the purpose of flagging the user for a human review as described. There's a big difference between being nice to a kid, and being nice, then asking for location info, pictures, etc which could be grooming behavior.

Here's an example. Earlier today I was on a python forum and a kid was posting about learning Dijkstra's algorithm. So I sent the kid a message praising him for tackling it (because after learning it like 10x, it just won't stick with me). I told him/her that if they really like the algo, they should look into graph databases because pairing the two is extremely powerful, and potentially very lucrative. Kid wrote back that it meant a lot, that parents don't give them a lot of support on the things they like, etc. So I gave some guidance about other applications, told the kid I'd been through some similar things, and to keep doing their thing and let their interests guide them. Benign.

Now, if after the kid told me they were a kid I started asking them for pictures, where they lived, what they liked, etc, that's a bit more concerning, right? Especially since I'm asking those things after the kid told me they were a kid.

In either case, if the conversation was flagged, it would be pretty obvious one is benign, one is questionable and potentially warrants a closer look. If the reviewer looks at my other posts and sees a pattern of behavior, then it's probably safe to raise the red flag on me, you know?

Comment Re:And...? (Score 4, Interesting) 68

The real reason California is doing this - tobacco bonds. Thanks to the tobacco lawsuits and settlements years ago, tobacco companies must pay multiple states yearly payments based on the number of cigarettes sold. States such as California issued massive numbers of municipal bonds based on these predicted payments. Thanks to products like JUUL, the number of cigarettes sold has plummeted. This directly endangers the ability of states like California to pay the face values of tobacco bonds that are nearing maturity. So, here we are.

Comment So I assume.. (Score 1, Insightful) 68

...we can expect to see court cases pending against Grey Goose, Absolut, Bacardi, et al for making vodkas and rums that are flavored with fruit, right? Since if the bar is "fruit flavors," that means those liqours are obviously being marketed to kids too. Oh, and don't forget every single fruit beer out there, that's totally being marketed towards children due to fruit flavors.

Comment Re: No till farming (Score 1) 280

I don't think there is any supporting evidence that it's toxic to bacteria. About the only way I could see it presenting a major issue is by adding too much nitrogen to the soil (basically, the same thing you get from too much green compost). In a natural environment, you're going to see the occasional fruiting plant, but it won't be super heavily concentrated like we see in an acres-wide monoculture farm field. And even having too much nitrogen isn't necessarily "bad," it just isn't ideal and takes much longer to break down.

Comment Echoing Bell's Research (Score 5, Informative) 67

This echos the findings of Bell Labs research (discussed in the book "The Future X Network: A Bell Labs Perspective"). Basically, more and more technologies emphasize low latencies more than raw speed. As it stands, in many areas speed is plentiful. We can always go faster, but given current workloads we'll get a diminishing return. Latency on the other hand is a hard boundary created by physics. Electrons flow at the speed of light, the speed of light is 186000mi/sec, or put another way, 186mi per millisecond. That means if you need to send a packet 360 miles, you are never going to beat 2ms of latency as an absolute minimum, and that's before any asic/compute/dsp processing time occurs. Newer technologies have ever-more demanding latency requirements for round trip delay. For instance, VR requires sub 11ms response times or you can cause nausea in users. So instead of having huge core networks, it makes more sense to build resources in places like COs, and regional datacenters that are closer to customers to minimize that latency.

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