Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment How do they go about solving a problem... (Score 1) 88

The thing to look for is how they go about solving a problem. That's the key. Coding is easy. Figuring out what the problem is and how to go about solving it, that's the hard part. Especially given that the problem the user says they need solved is often not the problem they actually have.

Comment Re:features a light-up Apple logo (Score 1) 65

No thanks on the light-up Apple logo for me. I think it started with the Powerbook G3 (I had one, it was a great computer) and it was sort of obnoxious even then. I'm not paid to be a light-up billboard everywhere I go.

No thanks on the laptop touchscreen, either. I understand it on something like a Surface tablet -- almost -- but most of the time I used my Surface with a keyboard, like a regular laptop, and never touched the screen. I think ramming touchscreens down everybody's throats was just a gimmick Microsoft came up with, both to A.) convince everybody that Windows 8 worked equally well on laptops and tablets (it sure did); and B.) once again, everybody needed to go out and buy a new laptop, even though their current one worked and served their needs just fine.

Comment Re:Harm (Score 1) 109

While this is true, being the subject of an experiment to see what happens when you do that is not something most people would choose for themselves. It's not *irrational* to be concerned. Absence of evidence on a largely unexplored question like microplastic infiltration in human bodies is not the moral equivalent of absence of evidence in an extensively studied question like a vaccine-autism link.

Comment Re:Compatibility is always going to be a problem.. (Score 4, Interesting) 131

Or even better, make ODF the standard, and judge Office on its rendering and creating ODF formats.

Again being the size it is the government Denmark can start with publishing all of its forms in ODF format, no more DOCX; also use open/free fonts. This makes it a MS problems if they do not render properly -- people will start blaming MS for errors not the other way round. Thus industry and people at home will start using LibreOffice (what is in Collabora).

Next they need to push schools & tech colleges to use ODF, too many of them train students to learn how to use Microsoft products, they graduate and expect to use MS in their jobs. Actually: it would be nice if schools were to train people properly, most teachers do not know how to use style sheets, etc, and, eg, will make columns line up by pressing spaces rather than setting tabs/whatever. Start by teaching teachers (harder than you think).

Comment They were using Open Source software, so ... (Score 2, Interesting) 131

if it does not do what you want take the damned source and add what is missing and everyone will benefit. If you do not have the expertise then pay the developers or someone to do it for you. Yes: it will cost but to an entity the size of the Danish government the cost will be less than the cost of licensing MS Office for another year or so. Once this development cost is paid it does not need to be paid again next year - unlike a license fee.

If the various EU governments each pay to fix whatever itch scratches for them then you quickly end up with better packages; as well as regaining digital sovereignty etc. This must be obvious to almost everybody, or it is being used as an excuse to do nothing or maybe keep the brown envelopes coming ?

Comment Re:Good (Score 3, Insightful) 146

While it's true every issue has its own dimension, even if those dimensions are linearly independent, they're not necessarily orthogonal. Independent basis vectors can still have a non-zero dot product—in other words, issues which are distinct from each other can align to some degree.

Comment In-class tests (Score 3, Insightful) 150

Grade homework on completion and be done with it. Then schedule in-class quizzes and exams, where students are expected to show their work as well as the results and do it hand-written. That makes it hard to access chatbots, and even if students do the drudgery of transcribing the chatbot's output will discourage them (if they were willing to do that much work, they wouldn't be trying to skip the work using a chatbot). They may skate by on the homework, but the exam scores will show whether they actually learned the material or not.

Comment Re:Unbelievable what people will publish (Score 2) 16

They’ve spun a serious architectural and containment failure into a marketing triumph. Give a swarm of autonomous agents vast compute and web access, and the outcome isn't an eerie glimpse of emerging superintelligence—it’s just predictable, sloppy engineering dressed up as the first glimpse of an AI-driven economic singularity.

The spin makes sense when you look at management incentives: live like a king off of a speculative bubble. For their part, AI investors react to stories of the technology's apocalyptic potential the way a junkie reacts to warnings of fentanyl's potency: gimme some. Their game: to apply "move fast and break things" mantra to the economy as a whole, by obsoleting humans.

If the investors can own an AGI, the distinction between those who can do things and those who can't becomes irrelevant. The only distinction that would matter is between people who collect rent on the technology, and those who must pay that rent to live. AGI would destroy society as we know it, and whatever replaces it would be up for grabs — with people who own the technology dictating whatever follows. That's why they're spending so much money to build a post-scarcity economy. A post-scarcity economy is not necessarily an egalitarian one.

I don't think that scenario will actually happen: investors are projecting the immediate aftermath of a major advance in AI technology into something that can be transformed by brute force scaling into AGI. Remember: investors loved Theranos too — so much for the rational investment market.

But AI doesn't have to reach AGI to cause serious harm. The technology only needs to be ubiquitous, too behaviorally complex to predict, and too deeply integrated into everything we do. When it starts breaking things, the plan is for us to be too structurally dependent on AI to rein it in.

Comment Re:How is the Ukraine war going? (Score 1) 64

I don't know if you're a russian bot or some deluded idiot, but it amuses me to do a breakdown of your post.

NATO turned what was originally intended to be a mostly peaceful show of force like the temporary invasion of Georgia into a war of attrition.

First of all the "peaceful show of force" "temporary" invasion of Georgia involved a few hundred dead in the first two days, and another 5000+ civilians killed in the ethnic cleansing after that, all for a land-grab to seize control of territory covering half of Georgia's coastline that Putin wanted.

Secondly, the "peaceful show of force" "temporary" invasion of Ukraine involved hundreds dead, ballistic and cruise missile attacks on all of Ukraine's largest cities, and Putin publicly admitting the goal of overthrowing the Ukrainian government... and that's just within the first 36 hours. Within two and a half months Russian officials began admitting the intent to permanently annex parts of Ukraine, proceeding with a constitutional amendment a few months later claiming to annex vast territories that Russian had not remotely taken control of, and which Russia is not remotely capable of capturing. Donetsk alone has a population of over a million, two million if you include the metro-area. Russia spent months and many thousand of lives to capture, and later lose, villages in the range of low tens of thousands.

Remember WWI when the lines were pretty much static for years and then suddenly it was all over?

Yes, I remember. As I recall it wasn't exactly "sudden". As I recall... Russian casualties were around five million killed, wounded, or captured, the Russian economy was collapsing, Russia was running out of food, and Russian literally lost it's own capital to civilian rebellion. A few months later the Russian government collapsed and surrendered vast territories including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, parts of Poland and Ukraine to Germany and its allies (known as the Central Powers). Right about that point the U.S. joined the war reinvigorating the Allied Powers. Germany&friends knew they couldn't win a protracted war. They attempted a quick win, and, in short, they failed. The Allied powers steadily beat them down, with the allies eventually breaking through the lines and progressively liberating territory. With the Allies steadily advancing and the war obviously lost, German forces began rebelling and Germany surrendered.

That's what's happening here. Russia has most of Donbas plus a buffer zone in some other regions that directly border Russia. Ukraine is throwing men at the front lines for Russia to kill but is running out. Territory held is largely irrelevant compared to the number of men killed and weapons destroyed.

So much to unpack there, but it's amusing how you cite "territory held is largely irrelevant" given that the tide has turned and Ukrainians are now the ones breaking through lines and liberating territory from Russian occupation. It's not much yet, but all the map trackers show the reversal. Russia is now officially loosing more territory than they gain. Russia WAS slowly gaining small bits of land, largely through sending meat waves of untrained ill equipped soldiers at Ukrainian lines until the Ukrainians ran out of ammo and had to fall back. However now 7 out of 10 Russians killed are killed by drones. The "no man's land" between the two sides is now many kilometers wide. Any Russian trying to advance gets hit by a drone. Russia has also losing on average 1 air defense system every day, and rapidly depleting. Russian supply lines are getting pummeled by drones. Russian refineries are getting pummeled by drones, with progressively worsening fuel shortages for both the military and for the increasingly rebellious population. Cheap advanced Ukrainian drones are taking out expensive crappy Russian drones, including Russian's new jet-drones. Practically every country on earth is asking Ukraine for their military drone tech, the Russians can't remotely match it. Russian's economy is also fucked, but that topic pretty needs a separate book to cover.

Interesting side notes on weapons destroyed. Russia is destroying it's aircraft almost as fast as Ukraine is, between incompetence and maintenance failures and friendly fire shooting down their own aircraft. Also the nation that is the biggest donor of tanks to Ukraine is... Russia. Ukraine captured countless Russian tanks intact because the Russian military is so abysmal incompetent and corrupt. And as I mentioned, Russian air defense units are depleting. The war is now approaching 5 years, longer than the entirety of WW1. Ukraine is a small fraction of Russia's size, and Russian is literally losing and headed towards another soviet-union-style collapse. The biggest shock to the world of this entire war is just how worthless Putin has made Russian military, through systemic corruption and systemic incompetence.

Polls show the Ukrainian population isn't interested in surrendering. They are defending their homes. It's simple, the war will end when all the soldiers go home. When Russian soldiers go back to their homes in Russia, and when Ukrainian soldiers go back to their homes in the currently occupied parts of Ukraine. Although that's not likely to happen until Putin either expires or is overthrown. Not only is he fanatical enough to drive his country to collapse in the attempt, he knows if he did end the war in failure he'd get killed or overthrown for it.

Anyway, pointless reply to a bot or a useful idiot. But maybe some random passer-by will find some bits interesting. I don't know about the rest of the world, but mainstream US news rarely mentions the Ukraine war anymore, and certainly not in any detail.

-

Comment Re: VRBO (Score 2) 132

I use AirBNBs as locations to produce adult content. I'm not joking.

An AirBNB is perfect for my needs; it's a literal godsend. I want a clean home-like setting that is relatively generic and free from personal items, that also doesn't look like a hotel and can be unique for the amount of content being produced there. I believe this is a relatively common practice.

That being said, I bring my own bedding, towels, pillows, cleaning products and tools and I take my trash with me when I leave and dispose of it elsewhere. I am conscientious that I'm staying at another individual's property.

In one case, I found out the property owner was still home, in his basement, while I was working with performers upstairs. He wanted to know what we were doing and didn't actually have a problem with it, but talking with him informed what I should do going forward. Even if I wasn't responsible for messy human activities, I'd still choose to leave as little work as I can for service staff.

I realize that many AirBNBs are owned by property management services and in some cases even hotel groups, but what I'm paying for is exactly the thing I want: clean and not-a-hotel.

Comment Re: "Fun" fact (Score 2) 138

The only truly unique thing associated with Musk is Starship. That piece of tech is important for our species and everyone else is a solid 20 years behind.

"Important for our species" ... how? Trust me, our species ain't going anywhere. There's nowhere to go.

Slashdot Top Deals

Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.

Working...