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Comment This seems exceptionally stupid. (Score 1) 314

If you are trying to explain why we haven't detected any aliens, how is "they were massacred by even more advanced aliens" a remotely adequate answer? That just leaves you with "why haven't we detected the even more advanced aliens?". The question was never "why do we detect so many deathbots and so few little green men?"

If anything, superintelligences are presumably more capable of doing high-visibility things(if they want to) by virtue of being more advanced; and, while they could all be carefully hiding because they're paranoid that same explanation would hold for standard aliens as well.

Seems like an awful lot of hypothesis to explain nothing.

Comment Re:Want to save journalism is America??? (Score 1) 91

Ownership of media was limited BEFORE 1995?6?( give or take ). Before Clinton and GOP pushed a re-write on media ownership, we had some 50-100 companies that owned media (and that was LONG before the explosion with the Internet).IOW, we had competition. Now? Less than 10 companies own American media ( may be 5, I do not recall ).

If we return back to requiring limited ownership (as in how much someone can own), then we would see competition and would see decent media. As it is, we are as bad as China and Russia.

Comment Re:When I think "AI-powered personal device"... (Score 2) 51

They also aren't cheap even if the knowledge problem is solved. Something like a roomba lives in a special case where being more or less a toy RC car is enough robotics to actually attack a real-world cleaning problem(on reasonably uncluttered flat floors).

If you want "look for missing items, get things out of the refrigerator, scrub the kitchen floor, clean the toilets, and vacuum" you are suddenly talking about a *lot* more robot. Not necessarily 'call Boston Dynamics for their most humanoid biped', you might be able to get away with some sort of wheeled platform with robot arms since the arms count for more than the legs(as long as you can reach things that are a meter plus away from the floor); but you are definitely talking a much more involved piece of hardware with considerably more fiddly moving parts; especially if you don't want to overhaul your entire house.

Comment Seems like a terrible plan (Score 1) 56

âoeDonâ(TM)t just read the slide deckâ is more or less rule #1 of not completely ruining a presentation. Is there any room for optimism about the results of a tool that generates video of you reading the slide deck? Even if itâ(TM)s a goddamn miracle on a technical level it seems like a fundamentally mal-suited tool for the job. If anything, the better it works the worse it will likely be, since it will just be doing the wrong thing more attractively and easily.

Comment I'm not sure I get it... (Score 2) 113

I'd agree that a production system that actually relies on actual floppies would be rolling the dice in a deeply uncomfortable way at this point; but I'm a little puzzled by the extent of the fuss given that(admittedly, more for hobbyist and niche stuff, retrocomputers and synths from the floppy era, that sort of thing) the practice of emulating floppy drives is quite well established and, thanks to the age and (low) speed of the busses in question, pretty technically undemanding.

If I had a floppy-dependent system I'd have wanted people evaluating commercially available floppy emulators starting 10 years ago; potentially trying to push specific developments if my system requires things that the retrocomputing guys don't(whether in terms of features or in terms of not being hand-built in small runs by hobbyists); but, barring some especially esoteric complication I'm not thinking of, slapping floppy emulators into a floppy-based system and bringing it right up to the present day in terms of media seems like it would be both a relatively simple project and much, much cheaper, lower risk, and more predictable than a full 'upgrade' that promises to rip out the old system and replace it with a full new glorious IoT something something.

Comment Re:How will it do in precipitation? (Score 1) 153

You missed the point in that Tesla did NOT promise or say that this is what the system will do all over. It was showing what 1 situation was doing. The training made perfect sense. Why? Because it is a NEURAL NET. These require training over and over on the same route, which is why it is important to have such large data quantities. The ONLY thing that is wrong is when Elon says that all of the hardware is there. Obviously if ppl THINK about it, they would realize that only the front camera has a wiper. As such, precipitation becomes the main issue. Likewise, so does blinding sun. So NO, the 2017 was not wrong. Only ppl making up BS about it. And as to when this will be ready? When you see an EV deal with the precipitation issue (laser, etc), THEN you know that things are close. Until then, we are still off (and as I said, Elon's timelines have never been there). In the meantime, FSD remains safer than regular human drivers.

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