Comment What about alumnus? (Score 1) 28
Will that work?
Submission + - Tesla imports $29,000 USD ($39,490CAD) Chinese made Model 3 Premium to Canada
ArmoredDragon writes: After Canada dropped its 106.1% tariff on Chinese imports to 6.1%, (which is Canada's standard tariff rate for most favored nations) and raised 25% tariffs against the United States, Tesla moved its inventory manufactured in Fremont, CA back to the US and began importing its Shanghai produced Model 3 to take advantage of the lower rates. This presented a problem for the Canadian government, which currently has a 49,000 unit cap for Chinese vehicle imports, as Tesla already had all the necessary infrastructure in place to begin shipping and distributing cars, where the Chinese competitors such as BYD do not. By becoming the first mover, Tesla would consume most or all of the 49,000 cap before any other competitors have a chance to sell any units.
It's worth emphasizing that this is the premium version of the Model 3, not the newer but lower cost Standard version. It also appears to be made to the same specification as Tesla vehicles that were already being sold in Canada, including using the US EPA standards for EV range estimates, as opposed to the more internationally used WLTC or NEDC standards, or even the Chinese CLTC standard. Deliveries are expected to begin no later than June.
It's worth emphasizing that this is the premium version of the Model 3, not the newer but lower cost Standard version. It also appears to be made to the same specification as Tesla vehicles that were already being sold in Canada, including using the US EPA standards for EV range estimates, as opposed to the more internationally used WLTC or NEDC standards, or even the Chinese CLTC standard. Deliveries are expected to begin no later than June.
Submission + - Chrome silent install of 4GB AI model without consent gets expensive. (thatprivacyguy.com)
couchslug writes: Widespread unasked for downloads devour bandwidth squandering energy:
From the parent article:
"Two weeks ago I wrote about Anthropic silently registering a Native Messaging bridge in seven Chromium-based browsers on every machine where Claude Desktop was installed [1]. The pattern was: install on user launch of product A, write configuration into the user's installs of products B, C, D, E, F, G, H without asking. Reach across vendor trust boundaries. No consent dialog. No opt-out UI. Re-installs itself if the user removes it manually, every time Claude Desktop is launched.
This week I discovered the same pattern, executed by Google. Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking. The file is named weights.bin. It lives in OptGuideOnDeviceModel. It is the weights for Gemini Nano, Google's on-device LLM. Chrome did not ask. Chrome does not surface it. If the user deletes it, Chrome re-downloads it.
The legal analysis is the same one I gave for the Anthropic case. The environmental analysis is new. At Chrome's scale, the climate bill for one model push, paid in atmospheric CO2 by the entire planet, is between six thousand and sixty thousand tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, depending on how many devices receive the push. That is the environmental cost of one company unilaterally deciding that two billion peoples' default browser will mass-distribute a 4 GB binary they did not request."
From the parent article:
"Two weeks ago I wrote about Anthropic silently registering a Native Messaging bridge in seven Chromium-based browsers on every machine where Claude Desktop was installed [1]. The pattern was: install on user launch of product A, write configuration into the user's installs of products B, C, D, E, F, G, H without asking. Reach across vendor trust boundaries. No consent dialog. No opt-out UI. Re-installs itself if the user removes it manually, every time Claude Desktop is launched.
This week I discovered the same pattern, executed by Google. Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking. The file is named weights.bin. It lives in OptGuideOnDeviceModel. It is the weights for Gemini Nano, Google's on-device LLM. Chrome did not ask. Chrome does not surface it. If the user deletes it, Chrome re-downloads it.
The legal analysis is the same one I gave for the Anthropic case. The environmental analysis is new. At Chrome's scale, the climate bill for one model push, paid in atmospheric CO2 by the entire planet, is between six thousand and sixty thousand tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, depending on how many devices receive the push. That is the environmental cost of one company unilaterally deciding that two billion peoples' default browser will mass-distribute a 4 GB binary they did not request."
Comment Re:What a fool (Score 1) 390
... wow, i just edited my profile.. last time i did i was 33... now i'm 50... amazing.
Comment What a fool (Score 1) 390
Wow, it has been a lot of years since I have bothered to login to my account here, but I absolutely had to to respond to this article.
Richard Dawkins is a complete fool. Many years ago, I thought he was really smart, and insightful, but as the last 15 years or so have gone on, he is just plainly dumber and dumber... is he getting dumber, or am I getting smarter?
I hope I don't get dumber as I get up to his age.
Comment VGA... (Score 1) 30
... I still use it esp. with my OmniCube KVM from Y2K!
Comment Re:OCR struggled? (Score 2) 47
Did they not use a slash in zeros to avoid confusions?
Comment Re:Why would a faster CPU revive demand? (Score 1) 89
I'm really not sure why they bothered to rev the CPU.
In theory I think it was more energy efficient, giving them a very slightly longer battery life. Plus there were probably supply chain reasons for it too, such as allowing them to stop making the older chip while continuing to make the Vision Pro.
The Vision Pro has always struck me as a device in search of a purpose. I think Apple was hoping someone else would figure out what it was useful for an then swoop in and Sherlock them, but so far, no one really has.
Comment Re:Ideologically fueled insanity. (Score 1) 287
It is a vast majority. The midterms won't go like people on the left expect. There's one group that's hated more than just about anyone else in polls of Americans: Democrats. They manage to be less popular than Trump and less popular than Republicans.
People may not be terribly happy with Trump and the way things are currently going, but it won't take too much to remind them how much worse things were when Democrats were in control.
Despite his current negative approval rating, Trump manages to be one of the most popular politicians in America right now, even with a net negative approval rating. That mostly because Americans just do not like their current politicians than Trump, but ultimately, there's a reason Trump won in a landslide. Americans may not really like Trump, but they loathe the alternatives.
Submission + - Should schools get rid of homework? Some educators are saying yes (npr.org)
Tony Isaac writes: Federal survey data shows that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students, in particular, has been steadily declining for the past decade.
Some educators and parents say this is a good thing — students shouldn't spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework is complicated.
Some studies show that students who spend more time on homework perform better than their peers. For example, a longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the amount of time they spent on math homework performed better in math, even one year later.
Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed.
Some educators and parents say this is a good thing — students shouldn't spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework is complicated.
Some studies show that students who spend more time on homework perform better than their peers. For example, a longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the amount of time they spent on math homework performed better in math, even one year later.
Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed.
Comment Re:"The new word is 'edutainment'" (Score 1) 47
Bah. Just put on old Sesame Street, 3-2-1 Contact, Mathnet, etc.
Comment What about AI? (Score 1) 79
AI was and is still crap.
Comment Re:FAT32 Gaslighting (Score 1) 85
Can't MS increase that 4 GB file size limit when updating its FAT32?
Comment Re:Can always get an iPhone SE (Score 1) 56
Most likely Apple won't be making any small newer iPhones since they didn't make a lot of money.
Comment Re:Can always get an iPhone SE (Score 1) 56
Replace the batteries if you want to keep using those iPhones?
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It is not for me to attempt to fathom the inscrutable workings of Providence. -- The Earl of Birkenhead
