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Comment What are the odds (Score 1) 53

I just got the encl nastygram from our corporate IT
"We have recently noticed your use of unapproved AI tools, which creates a risk of data leakage. You must not use any AI tools that have not been officially approved when working with business-related information. This includes data such as profits, order quantities, and similar metrics, as well as MS Office files, emails, or any other content containing business information.
We want you to use MS 365 Copilot. ....Microsoft Copilot MS 365 protects our intellectual property."

(I'd asked grok for some lunar orbital data and calculations for fun...so not business-related in any case...)

What are the odds that pointing out in writing to my corporate IT that MS's own terms say "for entertainment purposes only" to say nothing of "We donâ(TM)t own Your Content, but we may use Your Content to operate Copilot and improve it. By using Copilot, you grant us permission to use Your Content, which means we can copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, edit, translate, and reformat it, and we can give those same rights to others who work on our behalf." is just going to get me more nastygrams and probably on someone's shitlist?

I would guess 100%, and didn't even need Copilot or grok or gemini to figure it out!

Comment didn't they have this on tollways in oh years ago? (Score 1) 186

As I recall, Ohio toll highways did this years ago; if your time stamp at the booth was less than a certain number of minutes since the previous, you got a ticket for speeding.
Infallible, and took away the point really.

Sure, I guess you could speed and then pull over waiting before you cross the next gate but... Why bother?

Comment Re:Not diversity hires (Score 1) 183

The primary stated goal of NASA's Artemis program for several years was to land the first woman and person of color on the moon. It was emphasized repeatedly, trumpeted, and openly stated on NASA's website for years (before it was taken down in March 2025).

While I certainly understand your attempt to strawman the point, this doesn't logically mean the woman and person of color on the crew are necessarily unqualified.

What it does suggest to anyone who isn't crying racism/sexism on a daily basis, is that given equivalent qualifications, these individuals - to fill the stated goal of the program - would have been preferentially picked over other candidates afflicted with the regrettable conditions of whiteness and/or maleness.

IF NASA would have gone so far as to pick someone to fill those gendered- and ethnically-preferred roles over someone more qualified, I can't say. (Then again, we have KBJ as Supreme Court so anything's possible.)

Comment Bad for us, but not "our fault" (Score 5, Informative) 108

https://medium.com/predict/thi...

"The real reason we will never be able to "fix" the drought is because the American West is not in a drought right now.
And you can't fix something that isn't broken. ...
The West's rapid aridification isn't being caused by a "once-in-a-century" weather event like the flooding in Kentucky or the nearly constant hurricanes that pummel the Southeast each year.
It's not even the direct result of climate change (although that's definitely accelerating the process and making the effects more intense). Western states are running out of water because they are located in a desert. ...
What we're dealing with in the West is not a drought because the current lack of rainfall isn't "abnormal" for a desert. Dry is the default setting. And you can't call it a "drought" because you wish deserts were wetter.
The problem isn't the so-called drought - - it's the city planners, developers, and suburbanites who built cities in a desert with no plan to provide water beyond wishful thinking and praying for rain.
The fact that we got weirdly lucky with unseasonably wet weather for a few decades has helped us ignore the reality that the American West simply doesn't have the water to support 65 million people - - and half of the country's agriculture - - at least not at anything near our current water usage levels.
And there's really nothing we can do about it." ...
According to researcher Lynn Ingram, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley, "The 20th century was abnormally wet and rainy." Ingram goes on to claim, "The past 150 years have been wetter than the past 2,000 years." (cf "The California drought is helping return the weather pattern to normal" https://archive.ph/0m3BI)

In other words, what we're experiencing now isn't a drought. It's a reestablishment of the norm."

Comment Re:Good but they 'summarized' al the science. (Score 1) 71

I didn't miss the jr. high "figure out what g is" stuff in the beginning of the book. I was kinda bummed at how much the selective breeding was glossed over as they had to cram a line into the movie to explain the disaster at the end. But a the same time the movie is two and a half hours long. While there are a handful of other cuts I think they could have gotten away with (the extended Karaoke scene maybe), there wasn't a ton of fat to trim to keep the runtime reasonable.

Comment Re:Has Anyone Here Seen It? (Score 1) 71

I don't think Xenonite is made of Xenon exclusively, but it is strange enough that handheld spectrometers can't deal with it. Maybe it offgasses xenon when bombarded by charged particles? One thing the movie glossed over is how Rocky's species is in many ways much less technologically advanced than Humans. Their materials science is outstanding due to the hellish nature of their home world, but they don't have electronics. Their math and science are back in the early 20th century. They went interstellar before discovering relativity. Mostly due to the fact that the astrophage is basically magic. In the book one background character mentions offhand that the astrophage is a miracle that will solve countless problems and everybody just glares at him angrily because even though he is right it's also killing them. On the other hand, while reading the book I had thoughts of an interstellar ferry service that collects astrophage and brings it back to Earth where it is tricked into releasing its energy into the atmosphere to warm the planet and light up cropland. Spin drives open up the entire solar system to exploitation and the astrophage is the perfect energy storage medium.

Comment Re:Taxes (Score 1, Troll) 86

"We used to have super high taxes for the wealthy and corporations."

Did we?

Because what I see is a high marginal tax rate really only in the postwar years. ... And anyone who begins their economic model in the late 40s is a moron or a liar.

Remember anything important that happened, say, midcentury?
Something that may have left the US fabulously wealthy, particularly relative to all the other industrialized countries who were shattered & left in ruins by the same event?

Anyone who points to that time and stupidly says "durr, we should do it THAT way" conveniently disregards the (hopefully unique) economic environment resulting from multiple, cataclysmic, economy shattering wars and the luxuries available to those left standing thereafter.

Comment Re:advice to children (Score 1, Redundant) 193

At the same time, "but I don't like this law" isn't going to protect you from punishment if you break it.

Fight unethical laws with every fiber but you're going to be far more effective if you Chesterton's Fence than if you just stomp your feet and whine.

Comment Dumped Grok over this (Score -1) 72

Grok was constantly say it was doing something that it had ZERO ability to, and I kept calling it out and it kept apologizing and then immediately doing it again.

As a guy who spend 5 figures a year on Ai, the last thing I want is that. I know Claude and ChatGPT also do it, but Grok was doing it CONSTANTLY.

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