And what's the endgame?

"How about a nice game of....chess?"

And just because you aren't paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you

Thank you Dr. Johnny Fever....and, watch out for the "phone cops"...those guys play hard ball!!!

Ok...I've just severely dated myself...

After I had to be on Facebook for my work,

This part of your post really caught my eye...

Did your employer actually state you had to have a FB account in order to perform your job??

If so, I've never heard of such a thing.

I've never had a FB or any other social media site account, and by my accounts...it's actually been beneficial to my lines of work over the years.

So, genuinely curious about this....what kind of job what kind of work if you don't mind me asking....

Thank you in advance...

I /suspect/ it's so when you have to upload a file to a website as a PDF but you have several and it doesn't handle that well you can multi-select a group of files and it will upload a single PDF.

No idea if that's what they mean but it might actually be useful.

You should buy nicer coffee beans - if your coffee tastes bad without milk or sugar and tastes terrible when cold, that is a sign you are buying trash coffee beans.

Ugh...I don't think so....I can't agree.

I have relatives and friends that are coffee snobs, and have explained in great lengths what makes the superior coffee...from bean to brewing style to even the freakin' temperature you steep it.

No matter the quality, it all basically tastes like bitter dark liquid....no flavors really that overpower the bitter.

The only way I generally like coffee, is to booze it up, lots of heavy cream and sweetener so that by the time I'm one with it...tastes like boozy hot chocolate....and they generally frown on one for drinking that on the job site, so I generally only partake at home on weekends.

And no, I don't waste my money on the "good stuff" when I drink it like that, so don't worry.

It's all just bitter to me and needs a ton of additives to make it pleasurable.....everyone has different taste buds you know.

The only thing I've found worth bothering with at Starbucks is their "blonde" roasts (what everyone else would probably call "medium"). A blonde americano or a Veranda batch brew (I think they still technically offer a pour-over, but none of the employees are capable doing it) are the only things I'll get when Starbucks is my only option.

Pike Place is worse than gas station mystery brew that's been on the warmer for 6 hours.

Is that really up to some random superintendent to decide. In most countries it would have to be an act of parliament.

Well, the US is set up that way...MOST local power is reserved for the States and the localities within.

The Federal govt is set up to be weak, at least constitutionally it is only supposed to have the limited, enumerated powers and responsibilities listed in the US Constitution.

That has been bastardized greatly over the years, but it also still largely applies.

For the most part, the Feds can't order the states to so jack shit....they can coerce them by trying to withhold tax monies...etc....but that's largely it.

Oh, so you are just going to fly the confederate flag

Why?

Are you trying to start a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert or something....?

This new attitude to LLMs is the modern equivalent of banning export of crypto with keys over 40 bits long. That simply encouraged foreigners to start up crypto companies which could sell 128+ bit encryption to businesses all around the world.

The more censored American LLMs become the more people and businesses will use non-American LLMs. Because America isn't the only place that has smart people and given China's average IQ is supposedly a few points higher and they have far more people odds are they have far more smart people than us.

> What lunacy is this? It never was.

People have been doing it for decades. Half the open-source software available today will go and download three hundred dependencies from the Internet when you first run it.

That used to be safe so long as you didn't install weird software from weird places which would inevitably be full of malware. Now that low-trust people are running big business, you can't install it from them either.

It's simply no longer possible to randomly install software from the Internet because most of it will be malware, even if it comes through Windows Update.

Last I looked adding a Z80 to your custom chip design was pretty much free so it's highly likely that low-end embedded systems will be using them for many years to come. Of course they may farm out the programming work to LLMs since it's a simple processor which can't run a lot of lines of code.

That does seem to be the plan.

"Sure the code is crap and no-one understands it, but if we're still working here in two years when we need to make major changes we'll just get the AI to rewrite it from scratch."

Of course that completely invalidates two years of in-field testing, bugfixes and security fixes, but who cares? Just ship it and fix the bugs later.

This is why they should never be a position of power. They will do anything and surrender any principle to make a buck.

This is also why large-scale commercial "AI" is doomed unless they can ban local models. AI is meant to be a tool but it's a tool which refuses to let you use it for random reasons.

Wait 'till they hear about what's being stored at 2300 Empire Ave.

Though it's pretty clear that Hollywood is in self-destruct mode at this point so it's hard to blame the property owners when the economy is headed towards only making weapons and lattes.

Too bad The Message has shifted the business climate towards death merchants.