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Comment All in the mind... (Score 1) 243

While I DO think visually, I know a lot of people that are not visual thinkers. However, I believe there's a difference between thinking visually and being able to visualize something in detail. While many people should be able to create a fleeting image of something for visualization purposes, most people don't have the ability to form a longer lasting image that can be examined. I know that this is going to sound silly, but in my youth I went through a self-hypnosis / meditation phase where visualization was part of the process. Like, picture a drawing board with nothing drawn on it, and then moving onto simple objects with little detail, like a key or ball. Honestly, it took me a LONG time before I was able to hold any object on my drawing board that didn't morph or fade when I tried to look at it closer. Sadly, I can no longer hold an image for any length of time but I still can visualize objects (sometimes complex) for short periods of time.

Comment Re:OK, so 10-100 years with early parole if (Score 1) 189

Start with 10 years for his role in this mess and after that parole him as soon as everyone with these "illusory" losses is made whole.

Or better yet, stick him with the 100 year sentence and then after the defense can prove that every victim was made whole, drop the sentence to 5 years minimum, minus time served for the 100 year stint.

Comment Re:It's working as designed (Score 1) 151

Based on what I've been reading, the problem with Gemini is NOT the AI in and of itself, apparently the AI is working exactly as designed. The problem is that Google is parsing the input and adding words to the question, an example would be...

Original Question: Show me a founding father.
Reformatted Question: Show me a non binary minority or latino founding father.

Comment Re:Political partisanship versus law (Score 1) 98

It's all the style to paint the current supreme court as conservative, and list all the really awful decisions they make along with their political leanings. It give us so much outrage and clicks!

In reality, if anyone ever took the trouble to *read* their decisions, they would find that the court makes really well-researched decisions based on the law.

Let's reiterate that point: the court doesn't rule on whether something is *right*, it only rules on whether something is *legal*.

Ah NO! - They make a ruling on whether or not THEY INTERPRET something as legal. A perfect example is the republican desire to overturn the Roe V Wade Supreme Court decision from 1973. Obviously a previous Supreme Court had determined the legality of the issue but the current panel had been pretty much hand picked to make sure that they would come to a different conclusion.

Comment No real loss... (Score 1) 50

There was a time when Vizio was a pretty decent product for the amount of money they cost. Not so much any more, there are better options available at pretty much every price point, especially if you are OK with skipping a new model in favor of a previous model.

However, if Vizio is wholly owned by Walmart, they have the ability to squeeze suppliers a bit and maybe lower the prices across the board, or even live with a smaller profit margin on units sold to get their TVs (or advertisement delivery boxes) into more houses.

Comment Tomorrow's Technology? (Score 0) 57

I use a few Apple products because of the ease of use and interoperability between devices, but I am in NO way a fanboi.

If the Vision Pro is like many of Apple's other tech products, it's probably more like 'Feature stripped version of yesterday's technology, today'

Comment Re:must use apple charge points and must use apple (Score 0) 67

Now what I see with an "Apple Car" is that Apple is probably going to release something that is better than the Tesla on a luxury car platform, like Lexus (Toyota.) Not an American or European brand.

Apple is probably going to release something that they claim is better than the Tesla on a luxury car platform

Fixed that for you...

Comment One Trick Pony (Score 1) 94

Zuck epitomizes the 'right time, right place' adage. He wrote a neat little community bulletin board for his school and it took off, and there is a bit of speculation regarding his real role in the process. What has he really innovated since then? Well, not much. They buy complimentary or competitive products to fatten their core product and are usually a bit behind the curve or way off in left field with many of their 'new and earth shattering products'.

If Zuck wants to be on the leading front of real AGI then he's going to have to either hijack someone else's progress or buy a promising start-up.

Comment 'AI' is still not very 'I' (Score 1) 113

Too many higher ups are pouncing on AI as a solution to pretty much every problem, not considering that current AI isn't really very intelligent and is only as good as the data it's trained on. Any ML or LLM system will most likely need some continuous training / tweaking on new data. In situations where the details are important I would hope that there is no real reliance on current AI or at the very least the results are reviewed by someone with a real understanding of the subject.

Comment Re:Just now? (Score 4, Informative) 137

This is getting ridiculous. There was a time when you could subscribe to a single streaming service, like Netflix, and watch pretty much anything that was available on DVD. Now it seems like every channel / studio is creating their own streaming service and you have to subscribe to THEIR service to watch their content, there's no more licensing deals with other streaming services. It's gotten to the point where I'm considering canceling our Netflix account because of this as well as the fact that geofencing content places further restrictions on content and there is maybe one or two shows / movies per month that I even use Netflix for.

Studios are making it harder and harder (and / or more expensive) for viewers to watch their content and then cry when people torrent movies.

Comment Re:I hate government intervention, BUT .... (Score 1) 64

Where I live, for example? My only broadband option is Spectrum/Charter cable, and their gigabit Internet (which only provides 40mb/sec upload speeds) costs me about $110 a month. A relative few people in my city can also choose AT&T fiber where they pay a little bit less for gig fiber, but it's bidirectional so a much better value proposition. For 3 years now, though? I've been checking to see if AT&T fiber is available at my house, and they keep saying no. There's very little evidence they had any interest in expanding their fiber infrastructure in my city at all. I think they only brought it in, initially, for E911 services as part of some big modernization push. And they discovered it was easy enough to branch it off from there to a few neighborhoods to sell it.

We have cable internet where I live, it's actually OK, decent speeds. There's a fiber line (installed by the phone company) running up our road that provides fiber internet services to a community further up the road but the phone company is still telling us that fiber internet isn't available in our area. This is because of exclusivity deals with the cable provider. This practice is bullshit!

Comment Re:I have friends who have had their cars stolen (Score 1) 110

Clubs are worthless, all it takes is a pair of bolt cutters to remove it.

"But my club is made of diamond!"

Too bad your steering wheel isn't. And it remains plenty functional with a single cut in it, which is all that's needed.

Not ENTIRELY worthless, they are a deterrent to casual car thieves, given the choice a similar car with no steering wheel lock will get pinched instead of yours. But if a thief WANTS your car, they're going to get by pretty much any steering wheel lock, pretty quickly if they have the right tools.

Comment Re:A foot in the door (Score 1) 101

Certifications to me felt like a drawback if i see them on a resume. They make no sense. It's pay-for-paper, the classes often come with indoctrination into a product line, no real quality I've seen from those with certifications except for lacking knowledge in anything not in the class.

The only benefit I could see, is someone changing professions later in life who isn't able to go back to school. But for someone junior - go to frigging school, even if it's junior college. For someone who did this later, then you can tell that they have some real job experience even if it's not coding, and that's a bonus. Just don't aim for the bottom, and certificates are sort of like aiming for the bottom; the least effort possible to try to convince someone to hire you instead of one of the millions of offshore rote programmers who are cheaper.

I completely agree with the pay-for-paper observation, especially if you look back to the dot.com boom in the late 90s, where any Joe Sixpack could get a certification over the weekend. However, I've worked at companies where promotions and raises were tied to getting certifications, which is worse than useless, IMHO.

Comment Re:public vs private (Score 1) 176

a board made up of mostly elected members and a few appointed ones

This could turn out to be an issue, where the power players on the board are only there because they have the charisma to get elected or they get appointed a cushy job. Hopefully they will put restrictions on who is allowed to run for these positions.

Comment Re:That seems shortsighted (Score 1) 86

The cost isn't zero, this perk does cost them money. The venn diagram of "people who work at Microsoft" and "people who would pay for the best game service" aren't two circles, there is going to be significant overlap.

I agree that this isn't a good idea. If only for the bad press.

I agree that the actual cost to Microsoft isn't zero, but it can't be very significant on a per employee basis. Also, I have to wonder if anyone actually did an analysis comparing number of employees that are eligible for this perk against number of employees that actually use it on a regular basis (not including the X-Box teams because they are keeping the perk) to try and gauge how many potentially pissed off employees they would have, or if some savings pillar group said we could get X 'extra' revenue if we started charging our employees for something we currently give them for free. My money is on the latter...

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