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Comment Microsoft Builds On Vulnerable Base (Score 1) 22

Is this the same OpenClaw on which a major vulnerability was recently discovered that allowed websites to take over your machine? The same OpenClaw whose stack comes with a list of remote execution and access control vulnerabilities?

Typical for Microsoft to do a lousy job of vetting their tool chain.

I'll pass.

Comment No pain, no gain (Score 1) 191

It may be a trite saying, but it's as true in education as it is in a gym. If you don't exercise your brain, it's not going to improve.

There's a reason weightlifters don't use a forklift or crane to pick up the barbells and do a dozen reps. The problem is not that the weights are in need of lifting. And that's the same problem with homework. The teacher doesn't need a stack of 5 page reports; what they need is for their students to practice using their brains.

Unfortunately the education system is designed to evaluate output instead of process. It's easier to grade a paper or a test, not evaluate a demonstration of knowledge. It's always been ripe for cheating, but now the cheat tools are everywhere and made legitimate by techbros demanding AI productivity. So either teaching will change, or we'll head straight for idiocracy and nobody will be left with the skills to wonder why it all went to hell.

Comment To note: This is individual-specific. (Score 1) 112

This study found that *on average*, a majority of PHEV drivers in _Europe_ don't both plugging them in, making them no better than a "conventional non-plug-in" hybrid.

But as an individual PHEV owner, you can make it far better than this study says - simply by plugging in whenever possible.

I got a PHEV (the BMW i3, what BMW officially called "an electric vehicle with range extender) as my "entry into electric vehicles" - and in four years of ownership, I used maybe ten gallons of gasoline. And I'd say half of that was "burning it up just so it doesn't go stale". It prepared me to fully commit to battery-electric-only with my next vehicle.

Comment Re:Yet another delaying tactic? (Score 2) 34

Yep. They're always saying solid state batteries are 2-3 years away.

Sure, when solid state actually does happen (and I expect it will) it will be a game changer for EVs.

But Toyota just keeps postponing doing anything serious with EVs because they keep claiming this is right around the corner.

Wasn't the 2025 Prius supposed to use solid state batteries?

Comment Not buying any smart-home that aren't local-use. (Score 1) 92

Specifically cross-platform, not vendor-app or vendor-cloud dependent.

I still have some Hue bulbs, and a few WiFi bulbs that are dependent on vendor lock-in that I'll be replacing when they go out.

Any newer devices are Matter/Thread compatible. Local control, no vendor lock-in.

Comment Not a "senior coder", I use it "sometimes." (Score 1) 57

The big thing for me is that AI doesn't "write the code I put in production" - it provides guidance on techniques to use, or solves bugs I have written.

The same as StackOverflow for me. Just more personalized to my exact situation.

"I'm writing a shell script to ssh into a remote system and run some commands, I have to use some environment variables defined locally on the system I'm executing the script on, and other environment variables that are defined on the remote system I'm connecting to, and I can't remember how to escape things properly to pass through correctly." I can just feed an LLM my exact command that isn't working right, and ask it to rewrite it. It takes 2-3 further prompts ("That produced this error message, please try again") but it generally bug fixes it.

Or "I need a python script to integrate this company's API, as documented on this url with this other thing, and do this task, what would be a good sample?" I don't take it exactly as it spits it out, but use it as a basis for my own code.

I would say that in the last four years of using LLMs to assist, maybe 10% of my actual deployed code is "directly from an LLM, because it produced clearly functional code" - usually only short snippets. One short function in a Python script, for example. Maybe another 20% was "came from an LLM prompt, then heavily rewritten, because I didn't want to feed potentially proprietary data into the LLM."

Comment We *HAVE* them, they're just pointless. (Score 5, Insightful) 92

They exist now. They're either small toys, or large horrendously expensive limited-purpose things.

The problem is that they're pointless. Anything a humanoid robot can do in an automated manner, a specialized non-humanoid robot could do much cheaper.

I don't need Rosie the Robot to use my regular stand-up vacuum cleaner. I have a Roomba.

I don't need a humanoid robot to sit in the driver's seat of a car to drive me around, Waymo exists.

I don't need a humanoid robot to stand in a factory using a spray can to paint a car, automated industrial robots that can do tasks like that (or welding) have existed for decades.

Comment Re:What happens when kindergarden write a paper (Score 2) 195

My Toyota Prius, at 300,000 miles, only got ~250 miles on a tank of gas.

Did I pay to get it fixed? No. Because it was still perfectly usable. Just as a Hyundai Ioniq 6 that gets ~50% of its original range at 300,000 miles would still be perfectly usable.

And ultra-high-mile older EVs are getting better than 70% at 200k miles.

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