I think this is actually a lesson in life each individual must learn - much like how to manage other risks as part of growing up. Many years ago, I bought a vehicle with all sorts of high-end tech (and have/had been a high tech promoter all my life). It was only after being stranded the third time in a remote location, was the value of lasting, proven, reliable technology hammered into my head.

I think this is just the clearest sign yet this company is run by MBAs (who don’t know shit) versus engineers. I had a Mercedes drivetrain many years ago - people should look up where they sit on consumer reports before buying (right at the bottom with Audi, my mistake at the time).

Very clear: and engineer would understand the limitations and problems of current natural language models, and NEVER recommend this be put in a vehicle. An MBA looking to hop onto current trends would jump right at this, trying to “be the first”. The safety of their customers will suffer.

What I find confusing is that the ruling seems to be the one they would want - Of course corporations are people, because all of the decisions and things they ultimately do are done by real people. the last thing you would want is a Corp being considered some other sort of being - that's what opens the door for laws to not apply to it. I understand this means a person can't place all the restrictions they like on a Corporation, but I have actually yet to see a good argument for why someone can do something as a person, but not as corporation (as I just argued should be conversely true). The same laws on fraud, theft, etc., just apply to all persons, corps included.

The real problem, is that most people on here misunderstand the concept of a "corporate veil", and mistakenly believe that being in a corporation shields you from criminal or civil sanctions. I'm here to tell you that is not true, however there is nuance that makes it confusing for many. Corporations often do get off without severe penalties, but that is usually due to (a) the judicial going very light on applying punishment from the range available, and (b) that corporations are used to obfuscate who and how key actions were performed, thus making intent and criminal charges very hard. A judge can, and easily will, peer into a corporate structure and nail someone to the wall - a good example is safety violations that cause harm, I've seen more than one foreman go to jail for egregiousness. So the fact that our justice system is incredibly and unfairly lenient to corporations and that corps are good at playing dumb and covering their tracks, does not mean we are approaching the concept or corporations incorrectly.

What was wrong with clippy is clear to anyone who lived and computed at the time. My desktop at the time (sometime in 97-98) was 75Mhz. Loading up an animation which performed a whole bunch of searching, at the time and like anything else that demanded resources, brought your system to a crawl. It was simply us figuring out that by turning clippy off, your computer performed far, far faster. No one even took the time to figure out if what he said was valuable, we simply didn’t have computers fast enough to tolerate that kind of thing.

Remembered the amusing little story/anecdote that drove this home for me a few years ago: George Clooney was being interviewed and asked why he doesn't run for presidency (with the Democrats I believe?). I believe everyone was thinking the same thing - why doesn't one of the parties run someone who is very articulate, attractive (let's just say a bonus), ostensibly compassionate and inclusive, balanced and lacking extremism in their views, youthful and energetic (compared to 80 year olds)... they'd fucking mop the floor in the election, right?!?.

Clooney just had a short chuckle, looked at the camera, and said "I've been to too many parties". And that sums it up. We've all been to too many parties. I'm guessing that Clooney, at this age, much like me at my current older age (admittedly nowhere nearly as attractive), live a pretty tame life nowadays. I don't hate any group of people or say offensive things - the same as Clooney or even probably most of us - but none of us want our past lives held up to the public. Who will be the first to step forth and succeed even with a life of past mistakes? When will society grow into being accepting of that?

Part of the problem is the moral purity everyone expects of their politicians, which simply doesn't align with what human beings are (having flaws and all). Trump is the perfect example - he says lots of crazy shit, which many find highly offensive, but that's comparing him to the peer group (and words of) other presidents. On a larger scale, his statements are not even anywhere near the range of offensive things I have heard uttered. He's has half a country digging into every minute detail of his past life, and the best they can find for charges is some valuation mistakes on tax forms? I bet every single one of us, if subject to the same level of scrutiny, would be in jail many times over. And that doesn't speak to the weight of the justice system on us vs. him - it's simply the fact we have all said and done bad things in our lives. It is fine to think Trump is not a role model and that he's a sheister, but criminal wrongdoing is non-existent, except to those who are determined to see it. We have proof of him saying objectionable things, but the best evidence of a sexual assault is a he-said-she-said rape in a department store from 20 years ago? If he was a predator who engaged in that behaviour, there would be more evidence and victims - it just doesn't add up.

None of this is actually to defend Trump, though no doubt the appearance of that is going to set a whole gaggle of Slashdot posters into blinding rage. The real problem is that it took a brash person like Trump, who's also lived his entire life in front of media and is well-trained on keeping things truly private, to pass that level of moral purity and scrutiny we put upon politicians. What kind of normal human flaw will voters ever accept in such an election? You know the answer is none. Joe Biden is is complete shit for a president, but the best guy they could squeeze through that scrutiny.

"Weather disasters related to warming"? I challenge you to name a single one. My challenge to you has nothing to do with disagreeing on the basis of CO2 emissions and AGW science, rather, it's based on what I think is your misunderstanding of the facts and impacts.

The added energy from AGW stays in the atmosphere or is collected in oceans, thus the first and most major impact we expect to see is in relation to storms (which added heat in those vectors produces). We have actually seen world cyclone/hurricane activity decrease for 30 years running. This is not to say it won't get worse in the future either, just that we have not seen an onslaught on major storms, which will be the most pronounced effect of climate warming.

You're probably thinking about forest fires, tsunamis, or floods, which means that you're conflating other causes with "climate change". Pretty common nowadays, it seems every mainstream media source blames every single weather or disaster event on climate change. That doesn't mean there is any link at all.

One of the problems is that the supposedly main source for collecting the science here, the IPCC, is complete garbage. I spent a weekend recently going deeply through their AR6 updates - not just the summaries, but underlying reports and data. If one has a science background and is able to read data and analyze conclusions effectively, you can gain a decent idea of the scientific state of AGW and CO2 emissions by doing this deep level of reading, but let's be honest, no one and especially not politicians read that deeply.

And the garbage part unfortunately is what they most often read - the summaries, synthesis reports, etc. These are loaded with so much non-specific, non-scientific, and downright political language, this UN department has clearly rotted far away from the science and needs to be rebuilt. Perfect example - the frequent references to "Indigenous knowledge". I think I know what their trying to say, although their point seems to be one about placating social movements rather than anything scientific. I searched far and wide for a good definition, and especially examples of "indigenous knowledge". Isn't all knowledge just knowledge? Was there any Japanese or Irish knowledge noted anywhere (of course not)? There are exactly zero examples anywhere of a piece of this kind of "knowledge", nor where it has been used to alter or augment any of the climate models. It's political nonsense, and whether you support those views or not, it doesn't belong anywhere near a supposedly scientific document and pursuit.

Huh? From December 2022, a little bit newer than 40 years ago:

Hilariously typical for someone who espouses knowing the facts and science to have not read any, or in this case, probably more typical of someone who doesn't really know how cold our planet really is. We're nearly six months into the year and my major city is just now leaving risk-to-human-life cold temperatures.

Also, if you care even a little about the science, check out the ClimateGPT program released recently - it can highlight where you're wrong about our environment. Yes, AGW is real and we're coming to understand it, but in terms of global impact, we are undergoing a massive greening event and global biome ranges are increasing. In other words, the slightly warmer weather and increased CO2 has been a boon to plants and animals. Of course, the people (poor and rich) who've gathered in our warmest climates already (also on coastlines), are the ones really damaged by AGW. Seems to rarely be the underprivileged we hear from there though, moreso wealthy people from California crying about needing to crank up their AC.

I’ve always been a huge proponent of moving fast with technology and being cutting edge for what appears to be massive benefits. Out with the luddites, tech will roll them over. And a younger me would have fully agreed with your sentiment.

However, these are not new phones we’re taking about here. Countless people worldwide live in cold climates, myself included, and the fact this is slowly changing aside, the reality remains that cold exposure risks and causes much more death worldwide than heat exposure (and will remain true for many more years to come). What really tips my scales though is now having the experience through many years in IT of working with critical, life-dependent operational systems. And I know the systems you propose, while promising, are nowhere near the readiness needed to replace such safety critical systems. If we rushed into changing so many people’s heating systems with new tech, my experience convinced me that would lead to big problems, which in this case means deaths. Isn’t people dying what you’re trying to avoid?

I gotta say, if this were true, I and nearly everyone I know would happily be first in line to lead the fight back. Why is it that I feel your statement is one of personal political preferences, and why the joke “everyone I disagree with is a N@zi” has a truth weight behind it as do such jokes? It seems the word N@zi is just an escalation of other words (eg racist) used to identify those who don’t identify with a particular movement - in other words, not based on reality. Have you taken the time to consider you might be too deeply involved in, and yourself escalating, some sort of culture war when you believe the rise of N@zip’s is an actual problem?

I don’t think this is a left or right issue. I have no idea what a “typical” drag show is, but I do know that “drag time story hour” as they call it had been going on around here (and many other places) for probably a couple of decades with no issue. The average parent didn’t care. It was when these shows started having a strip component with children encouraged to slip bills into their underwear is where the average parent threw a hand up in complaint. I would think the drag supporters would differentiate the two, but most seem oddly reluctant. A person is drag reading is fine, stripping for children is not. Why is everyone opposed to that labelled a far right acolyte now?

Not to claim any proof or evidence of malfeasance in the 2020 election, but there are integrity holes you could drive a truck through with the mail-in voting surge. One would think mail-in ballots are more useful (and therefore used) by folks in rural areas, who have no option but driving some distance to reach central polling stations. I've lived in a city through many elections now and it was never more than a walk down the block to the closest polling station.

I think the biggest loophole though is the (theoretical) ability to collect mail-in votes and submit them on other's behalf. I lived in many large apartment buildings shared by many low-income folks - I can guarantee if I walked through the floors with a stack of $5 bills, I could have got dozens of people to hand over their ballots for just a few hundred bucks in total. Perhaps even less. In fact, if I was straight up canvassing to campaign, I'd think it would be much easier to convince someone to hand me their mail-in ballot if they agreed to vote for me - as the Democrats know, convincing someone at the door to vote for you, then getting them to show up at the ballot box is one of their classic foils.

I'm not sure this is the insightful point people think it is. Comparing prices in an inflation-adjusted manner is meaningful and useful for many things, but this is not one of them. The 2019 dollars are still the exact same as the 2023 dollars - inflation is the metric we've made up to simply show you in percent form how much less car you can get for the same money over the years. In other words, Tesla raising the price is what defines inflation, not the other way around.

I've brought this up a number of times recently with the wife - we are in Canada but sounds like something similar happened here. A law passed just in 2021 that kind of flew under the radar for people in terms of the ultimate impact. I think the general attitude here (regardless of political stripes) is that gambling was somewhat overregulated, or perhaps, that being true most people didn't see it in their face to have any issue with it.

I say this as someone who definitely enjoys gambling more than the average, and also has a pretty hard-line small 'L' liberal approach to such issues (I firmly oppose morality based prohibitions, sin taxes, and the like): the situation has become totally ridiculous in the span of less than two years. It used to be illegal to discuss gambling, now the latest "odds and parlays" and the CENTRAL point of discussion on national sports programs, many dear to the culture of Canadians (hockey playoffs, or any sport where a Canadian is currently doing well). These are programs kids watch, and while I hate the kids argument, perhaps it is my familiarity with gambling that I know how problematic it can be. Gambling is terribly addictive, and interestingly enough right about on the level with cocaine and nicotine in those terms, though it involves no drug ingestion at all. As I said, gambling discussion is central to so many programs now, and every athlete/b-movie star/local celeb has commercials out now hawking their gambling site sponsor. All which lead you right to quickly to illegal, offshore, unregulated casinos. I don't know what the solution is but we fucked up and went to far. I was a resolute libertarian on these types of things in my youth, and while I still lean that way, I can now see the pragmatic side of the shit caused by letting certain things run unchecked in your population. No different from the long history of opioid addition crises throughout human history. Some stuff we need to put guardrails around and at the very least, ensure conscious, affirmative choice before exposing people to certain activities.