Not sure if you deserved funny, but the story did get me to check the speed profile. According to the AI, Usain Bolt peaks around 60 meters in and sustains that peak for only about 20 meters. But I suspect these sprint-bots may be accelerating all the way to the wall.

Slapstick is funny because we're learning from it without personally experiencing the pain. Stuff like "Don't run into a wall at full speed." Whereas the lesson of these sprint-bots appears to be "We don't care about any fuggin' walls."

Then again, your comment doesn't appear to have any deep thought, so non compos mentis? And the span of the vacuous Subject? Appears to be about 80%. With your help.

You probably had a good point under that vacuous Subject. But I think the AC probably scores it a win for spanning a third of an active discussion.

'Nuff said. If I wanted to go for funny, I'd start a conspiracy theory about the suspicious coincidence of two insufficiently cold drinks yesterday. But I was on prairie dog time and the prairie dogs seem to like the hot weather.

Oh yeah, about the story. "It's too late, baby." The local weather news alternates between floods in two places and droughts in between. With a pretty good earthquake for a diversion a few days ago. At this point I'm just hoping the AI turns me into a prairie dog rather than a newt? It's a Buddhist reincarnation joke?

I really wish I could see some potential for relevant funny in this story.

NAK

This branch seems to count as evidence in favor of my hypothesis.

Someone should invent a repost function for stories that remain relevant for longer than one day?

Why did you propagate it? Actually that's a rhetorical question and I think you can say "for the joke" in this case, but I think you should have added a second reply with a more thoughtful contribution and different Subject...

But my Subject isn't funny because most cancers are not directly infectious (though some cancers are linked to infectious conditions). Moral hazard time?

I think it's funny because the AIs (including AC, of course) are training the humans to be stupid so they will buy profitable garbage that hurts the customers who bought it and vote for corrupt politicians who will harm the voters who voted for them. In reinforcement terms, shallow, trivial, and I dare say stupid questions get "meaningful" answers while deep questions result in negative reinforcement with increasingly ridiculous hallucinations, falsehoods, and I dare say directed lies. (The directors include Zuck and Musk and Bezos and Xi and f[r]iends, but I doubt any humans will be in the loop for much longer.)

Examples available upon polite request. But there are too many and I bet you can think of plenty of your own without my pitiful human help.

To make AC go completely away? Maybe.

Just joking. I meant Firefox, as in "Would I donate money to Firefox for a browser-only VPN?"

The answer is quite clear on this one. No. There are plenty of VPNs in the market and I could buy one if I wanted it, and it would cover my browser, too. But even worse, I actually downloaded Opera to look at the included VPN and concluded it wasn't worth it. Haven't used Opera in a long time now. However as Firefox continues to add unwanted cruft they are increasing the pressure to switch to some other browser. Perhaps Opera?

Silly to talk about solutions on the pointless rant-hub Slashdot has devolved into. Even when the same solution approach could apply to fix some of Slashdot's ancient problems. "Would I donate to add Unicode support to Slashdot?" Quite possibly yes, but not an option. Or what about "to improve the moderation system" or various other things. And I am convinced no such option will ever appear 'round these parts.

So rather than flog that dead horse I'll recycle the ancient joke "What's your better idea?"

Your tone is belligerent and you clearly did not read what I actually wrote. Overall, your reply is not even worth an apology for my poor writing nor an invitation to ask for clarification.

So I'll just say you're still wrong. Completely. It appears you couldn't catch a clue if you were dipped in clue musk and dropped in a field of rampaging clues at the height of clue mating season.

But if you were going for funny, then you didn't get there. (Which was actually the response I anticipated.)

I think he's already lost and will keep paying more money to the lawyers for a long time. Whether or not he gets convicted has become moot when the actual goal is scaring people into compliance.

Actually the obvious next step is to criminalize the duress passcode and go after anyone who creates such software. Fundamental advantage on their side because trying to advertise such software has to include contact information... Losses in court are irrelevant to the creation of fear.

Silly to suggest a solution on Slashdot (but I rarely get any Funny mod points, and especially not for solution-oriented rants), but I think I have a simple solution approach for part of the SCOTUS problem:

If anyone is interested I can explain how it would work at some depth. Even some thoughts about a path to implementation. Now lets go for the biggest Funny of all: Or you could describe your better idea.

Another rich target missed.

Well, okay, but are you going to leave your brain to science for the research? (Or time to modify my own will?)

Disappointed. Large discussion, even larger potential for funny, but nada laugh in the house of Slashdot.