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Comment Re:Learning another language is fun, too. (Score 1) 100

+1 for "Language x isn't just for country x". In my favourite example, I spent a week in Hungary where nobody spoke English (this was a smaller town in the 1990s) but everyone knew German. So my rarely used knowledge of German came in handy, probably more than ever since. It meant I could hang out with the local teens in my off days, instead of hanging on to our guide for translation.

Comment Re:Ok cool (Score 1) 104

Machine learning/AI models to help with this are quite common in this field, and have been around for decades to help with spectral library lookups - long before the current LLM hype phase.

Yep, I once worked with NIR spectrometry in the paper industry around 2000. The company developed a kind of robot that measured various qualities of pulp and paper in realtime at paper mills. I was more on the hardware side, and I was kind of annoyed when they wanted to switch to spectroscopy for everything and ditch our nice old mechanical robots, parts of which I'd developed earlier. But at the same time I was excited about the ML and pattern recognition bits.

Comment Re:Today's AI is just Automation! (Score 1) 104

I've also been thinking along the same lines. To me, using computers is all about automation, and people in the know have been doing it since before the mainframe era. But to a lot people who got into personal computers in the 1980s and later, a computer is just a fancy word processor, fancy calculator, or a fancy tool for making art. Nothing wrong with those, but it's not exactly automation. To me, automation is something like telling the computer to edit 1000 pictures in a certain way, instead of editing them manually one by one. So in a way, AI is making the scripting/programming part more accessible (though it usually does so very inefficiently).

Comment Re:No commercial applications (Score 1) 59

Are you suggesting that Shor's and Grover's are the only possible quantum algorithms? I'm not holding my breath for commercial QC either, but I don't like being overly pessimistic or conservative either. Quantum computers now are a bit like the early electronic computers of the 1940s — proofs of a concept but not exactly commercial success stories. Sure, with those computers people could do the same old calculations much faster, but the really interesting and useful applications involved a bit more vision, and those didn't appear overnight.

While many people associate QC with breaking cryptography, in the end it's just a faster way to do classical math. There's a whole world of pure quantum problems that are more naturally solved with quantum computers; this is what Feynman meant when he conceived the idea of QC in the early 1980s. So instead of getting hung up on the number of qubits, consider for example what D-Wave is doing.

Comment Re:Wait, what? (Score 0) 200

It's important to realize that the so-called far-left Democrats idealize Bolshevism while the far-right Republicans idealize Fascism, both of which are forms of Big Government Socialism.

So if the Democrats are in power and they want to increase the size and scope of government the Republicans will go along with it 80% of the time. Because they know they will eventually be back in power and have more tools of power to control.
They will balk the other 20% of the time so they still have something to run on and false promises to make to their voters.

The base of both parties is mostly against all of this.

Comment Re: Standing Desks (Score 1) 88

I started using a standing desk soon after I quit teaching, and I guess there's a connection. But I also have some level of ADHD traits, and I find it easier to work on a computer if I can move around. I guess the commenters that don't understand standing desks have never used one extensively; the idea is not to stand in attention for 8 hours straight, but to allow your body some natural movement.

It also feels nice to sit down for a break, or for things like reading. I don't like the idea of moving the desk down to a sitting position, I'll much rather move myself somewhere else (undocking the laptop if necessary).

Comment Re:Oh it's not feasable (Score 2) 194

Space Data Centers are in the same category as fully autonomous self-driving cars within eighteen months that he 'promised' in 2019.

You can watch the 'Autonomy Day' video on YouTube. People financed Model 3's on the promise of renting them as robotaxis while they were at work.

Physics is a hard stop on false promises.

It's OK to back difficult challenges with no underlying physical impossibilities that's engineering. Radiating heat into space is a physics problem.

I didn't believe the robotaxi promise then and I don't believe the space data centers claim now.

If there's a new topological physics breakthrough then let's see the paper and get the Nobel Prize gears turning because that would revolutionize technology on and off planet.

I'd love to see it but I don't believe it.
   

Comment Risky Business (Score 4, Interesting) 89

Reddit isn't wrong about bots but odds are what they really want is your identity. That earns money.

The trouble is people in Saudi Arabia will use old. to read about liberation topics or people in the US will read about drug topics, or whatever the mala prohibita are that will land you in prison for things that are perfectly legal in other jurisdictions.

Even people with accounts who read other subs logged in.

"Just create a new anonymous account" is what people will say who don't understand how identity correlation works. Sure there are ways that 0.0000001% of the population can manage securely, but that's not how this will go down.

The UK just arrested an American attorney who was critical of UK politics and they have multiple people in prison for clicking 'Like'. If you think they won't arrest somebody for reading the wrong sub, give it a few months.

Also, don't connect through Heathrow ever again.

Comment Re: Color me surprised... (Score 1) 216

> I used to think that. Then I looked at the math. The amount of money possessed by the billionares and a trillionare pale in the face of the size (and needs) of the actual economy

The Derivatives Market recently surpassed 1 Quadrillion Dollars.

Notice how none of the politicians are talking about taxing that? It's all a show to stoke up conflict between the lower classes.

On the other hand, the same people do want to put AI in charge of totalizing Central Planning, because "this time Communism will work", because Magic LLM Dust.

We just need an AI Surveillance Police State to bring about the Great Utopia.

Every single time they say the same thing but with different nouns substituted as Madlibs. Then millions die.

Comment "forcing" (Score 2) 18

The way the article is written makes this seem sudden, but Wayback has a discontinuation article at least as far back as January.

https://web.archive.org/web/20...

Maybe third-party cookie blocking killed this. I can imagine automated personality profile builders being done in the background based on GIF's people choose to use.

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