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Comment Re:An AI what what? (Score 1) 135

Not sure how exactly you can make money off of people who feel the need to use "AI girlfriend."

You aren't thinking creatively (or suspiciously) here. Personal information is worth hard cash - how much depends who (and how many) you are willing to sell it to, Consider the kind o personal information a bot posing as a "girlfriend" could collect. First it builds up the sucker, err client, creates a feeling of trust, then starts creating the urge to share more information to "impress" the "girlfriend" and get emotional rewards for doing so. To amp this up provide a hot semi-animated GenAI image, which changes its appearance perhaps to entice the client.

If someone feels the need to have a girlfriend they are ripe for scamming. Lonely hearts scams are the oldest in the book.

Comment Re:The History of Codebreaking Began... And Ended (Score 2) 5

None of that matters.

If he wrote a history under NSA auspices it would be classified regardless of much of the material being about public developments. Recall that they successfully suppressed material in 1967 all of which was about publicly available information. Recall also the large amount of formerly classified stuff that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s that Kahn never wrote about - the electro-mechanical crypto machines which were the backbone of spy work into the 1990s. It is a fact that Kahn never published a significant update on his 1967 book.

Also, although the NSA does naturally rely on the open literature on cryptography they have in addition their own math geniuses doing highly classified work on top of it. I recall that when the NSA recommended new public crypto-standards, which they had deliberately undermined, academic researchers found evidence that the weakening was so specific that it hinted that the NSA had a theory of the algorithms that was unknown to the outside world.

What do you suppose that journalist-historian was doing as an NSA Fellow for 15 years? Little or nothing has emerged about that. We know that classified agencies hire historians to have classified histories written about them - the CIA has that, Betty Perkins at Los Alamos wrote a whole series of histories about nuclear weapon development, which only one has ever been releases in any form (very heavily redacted).

Comment The History of Codebreaking Began... And Ended (Score 3, Informative) 5

The Codebreakers was a ground-breaking, deeply informative and fascinating work when it was finished and published in 1967, although parts of it were removed and never published due to government pressure so it was not entirely up-to-date to the public state of knowledge even for 1967.

So the enormous Second World War codebreaking operations, the work of Turing and Bletchley Park, Engima, and knowledge of crypto-machines generally is absent as this information did not start coming out until several years later. And the vast changes driven by computers and algorithmic advances are nowhere to be seen. So it would have been wonderful if Kahn had updated his work, which remains very much historical -- more or less the story of cryptography and codebreaking before the modern era.

In fact he may have done just this. Only we can't read it or even know of its existence because it is so highly classified. After the publication of The Codebreakers the NSA found a more effective way to suppress the publication of code-knowledge by this gifted historian -- they hired him. Not right away, but when we might have hoped he would produce a The Codebreakers II to cover the dramatic changes of the preceding 30 years in 1995 he became a scholar-in-residence at the NSA. When his original work was republished a year later it had a cursory add on chapter that skimmed the developments since, but did not rise to the level of an actual history of them and provided no knew insights to the subject. He maintained his NSA ties for the next 15 years.

Comment Re:Great news (Score 3, Informative) 61

This was an end-of-life test, operating JET above its design power level for the highest power level of any tokamak ever to date: 13 MW for 5.2 seconds. It had Q=0.33 because this was not its most efficient power level.

This is 2.6% of ITER's power level for about 1% of its planned operating cycle time -- quite impressive for what is strictly a laboratory instrument. JET will always have a legendary status in fusion power history as it provided the design data and proof of scaling principles used to design ITER, which will be engineering test bed for a full scale power plant.

Comment Re:French example (Score 1) 200

"Environmentalists" protest even hydroelectric dams.

Since dams create artificial lakes that entirely destroy all of the habitat on the submerged land it is odd that you regard damming up rivers as being particularly benign, and opposition to destroying such habitats particularly deluded.

Comment Re:Any solution will do... (Score 1) 194

The gas flow is way down from the start of the war, about 30% of pre-war levels and steadily declining. Ukraine allows the gas through because it is needed by countries supporting its war effort, especially Poland and Slovakia. These countries are in the process of transitioning off of Russian gas, and the level of flow is expected to go to zero next year.

Yeah I know, you meant to provide context then totally forgot.

Comment Re:Low self-esteem? (Score 1) 85

key skills for success are a) being convincing in person

b) playing golf

- I can't see an AI really filling those roles. The COO does all the day-to-day execution work that an AI might actually be good at.

LLMs seem more than half-way there in putting out glib bullshit ("being convincing in person"), so it seems what we are lacking is the robotic golfer. "Full self-driving", also "full self-putting".

Comment Re:Stupid government (Score 1) 74

Silos are unmanned. No one is there, except when people go out to do maintenance (rarely). There are control centers that are a long distance from the silos, and they are underground heavily shielded facilities. So the notion that the balloon was getting cell phone signals from soldiers manning the missile system is just fantasizing.

Comment Re:Seems pointless then... (Score 2) 130

Solar panels are 15% efficient, and only get effective use 25% of the day. So 25% vs 3.75% (.15x.25). I am still skeptical of the costs though.

Try not to do low-balling, it is irritating. Commercially used panels are in the range of 18-22%, so lets take a current average of 20%, not the incorrect 15%, and over time (remember you are comparing it to pie-in-the-sky systems that won't exist for a decade or more) the steady improvement of panel efficiency makes a long term target of 25% realistic (laboratory silicon has broken 30%).

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