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Comment Re:Doesn't it support it? (Score 1) 90

And is asking an AI to proofread something that much different than MS Word flagging spelling and grammar errors?

Great question, and I think there isn't any significant difference.

But LLMs use a type of math that apparently has the evil bit set. Meanwhile, up here in VirtueVille, the computer code we write to create things, uses different math that doesn't have the evil bit set. Conclusion: we can look down on those AI companies and their stupid users. ;-)

Now, I wouldn't expect an AI service to be better at copyediting than an average human, but I haven't kept up so I'm ignorant of their performance. (All my "AI" experience is that I used Claude twice to, it turned out, fix some typos in some RoR config initializers.) But whether an AI service is as good at copyediting as a human or not, it's that user's choice and, as long as they sign off on the work and really take responsibility for it (declare the words to be their opinion), then I've got no problem with them doing that, whether it uses LLMs or Markov chains or human slaves or Searle's Chinese Room.

The words will be judged by their quality, not provenance.

That said...

Here's a similar story where I'd probably come to the opposite conclusion(!), despite the clown in it pretty much doing what I preach above, though he was using the AI service to do a lot more than copyedit. Behold this 3M expert witness cross-examination (134 page PDF) in the Watson Grinding case. It's slow going at first, but eventually you'll be laughing and cringing like in a good episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Fuck. I don't know.

Comment Rural Electrification (Score 2) 147

We seem to be in a parallel to Rural Electrification now.

If someone lives five miles from the nearest connection, currently on 100A AC and POTS, is the limited budget better spent on running five miles of fiber or dropping off a satellite terminal?

They'll be going from either 3Mbps DSL to 300Mbps satellite or 800Mbps fiber.

If we had unlimited money I'd say fiber almost everywhere. But that isn't realistic.

The flip side is some of these rulings which ought to be applied to edge cases may well be applied to areas where FTTH is entirely reasonable and achievable.

Government almost always sucks at applying broad rules without subtlety at both the median and the far sigmas.

I live in an area where welfare broadband is offered for about $15/mo for about 60Mbps. Frankly I could live with that almost all the time. I do download some massive datasets every few months but my smoothed average is probably 2% of my max.

But those welfare programs exist because society has decided that some Internet is required for participation so there is some responsibility to provide.

The bigger risk is probably dual-use dangers. Ukraine has been using Starlink for terrorist attacks and while Musk has said he cut them off the Russian FM has warned that Russia will take out the Starlink constellation if it continues because apparently it is.

So we don't run fiber and then Starlink goes away, and then what?

There are also ice storms, hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, etc. that can take out landines for months so having a few satellite terminals in an area would be more antifragile.

FCC is seemingly treating this as simple when it's complex.

Comment Re:A company buying another company (Score 2) 24

I feel like I'm in a constant race to flee enshittification : Used to use Cursor (it's still my only option at work), but then Musk bought it, and they instantly went in on hard-sell tactics. Switched to vscode + copilot + OpenRouter, but was getting concerned about API costs. Just yesterday I set up a Tencent TokenHub account with their Max package, which required that I switch off copilot if I wanted to be able to use some models like Kimi K3 (had a temperature=1.0 requirement, copilot doesn't let you set temperatures and hardcodes them to very low), so now it's vscode + Pi + TokenHub.

Sigh. Please don't make me move again...

(Not that Tencent is in any way "the good guys"... but they're also providing a very generic product)

Submission + - Apple News, Google promote outlets that endorse Dem candidates shutout GOP (nypost.com)

An anonymous reader writes: All told, the most prominent outlets on Apple News and Google News had a 31-0 endorsement record in favor of Democrats.

“Big Tech executives insist their news platforms serve as objective public squares, but our findings lay bare the massive corporate tilt driving these algorithms,” MRC President David Bozell said in a statement. “Apple and Google systematically funnel tens of millions of users into media sources that have backed Democrats for president 31 times without a single Republican endorsement in 40 years.

“Silicon Valley has engineered these news feeds to quietly tilt public debate, insulating voters from conservative reporting while treating partisan, left-wing outlets as the nation’s default news authority.

Submission + - Evidence of the Covid origin cover-up emerging in court (telegraph.co.uk)

Bruce66423 writes: 'A British zoologist involved in risky bat coronavirus experiments in Wuhan is accused of plotting with a senior US health official to shut down the theory that Covid-19 leaked from a lab.

'Dr Peter Daszak, the former president of EcoHealth Alliance, sent bottles of wine to David Morens, thanking him for his “behind the scenes shenanigans” and promising further gifts, such as dinners at Michelin-starred restaurants, US court documents state.

'Morens, 78, a former employee at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and adviser to Dr Anthony Fauci, this week pleaded guilty to conspiring to evade public records laws and conceal government documents related to grant research funding and the Covid-19 pandemic.

'He is facing five years in jail. No charges have been brought against Dr Daszak.'

Comment Re:Isn't capitalism supposed to fix this? (Score 1, Troll) 76

> We have a massive shortage why is nobody stepping up to make more supply?

Look up some stuff instead of just commie ranting.

Apple is testing supply from an up-and-coming DRAM supplier in China. Hynix is working on converting old fabs into a smaller process to create more fast RAM. TSMC is building a fab in Arizona. Samsung is opening a fab in Texas next year.

> the big three can anytime they want drastically increase production within 6 months to a year

Tell me you've never been to a fab without telling me you've never been to a fab.

If they could double their capacity Altman would buy *that* too. At least presume that the greedy capitalists are greedy.

> Capitalism needs a referee and US dumbasses fired the ref.

How, precisely, did they accomplish this coup in China?

Also, why not move to China, Cuba, or North Korea? They have varying degrees of central planning that should take care of your needs. Nobody wants you to be unhappy.

Comment Re:What a benefit! (Score 1) 52

Reenlisting is tougher since you already got your GI Bill and VA Benefits and such.

On a recent talk show a military guy was saying that DoD was instrumental in nationalizing the student loans under Obama.

They knew infinite money for school would jack up the price of school for everybody but unaffordable college is what drives people to the GI Bill and their recruiting was dragging ass after the last time a President lied us into war in the Middle East over made-up claims of weapons of mass destruction (and then promised to leave Iraq and close Gitmo).

Say what you want about TikTok but the kids all know about the scam now. They didn't even bother trying to convince the country this time.

Have we had a story here about the record-short procurement process last month for the new Draft management software?

Comment Because the Democrats all went to Bluesky (Score 1) 214

X - nee Twitter has skewed Republican ever since Musk bought it because the Democrats went "Eeew, fascist!" and ran to Bluesky which was essentially a rewrite of Mastodon which was where all the Republicans tried to run to when non-Musk owned Twitter BANNED Republican accounts for censorship reasons.

If the bulk of the content is going to skew one way that's what the majority of the users are going to see. True of X, true of Bluesky.

The only way to "win" here is not to play. Which, I don't.

Comment Re:Is it ragebait, or (Score 1, Insightful) 214

Yes, to expand on your point - just looking at demographics the Democrats tend to skew younger and the Republicans tend to skew older.

Emotional maturity tends to skew older as well, so it offers two possibilities:
1) The results would be the same based on age, not politicial affiliation.
2) People with less maturity tend to want echo chambers, those with emotional control can more easily engage with challenging opinions.

There are other studies that look at gender, mental health status, psych meds, etc based on party that could be tossed into the mix if somebody wants to do real analysis of variance.

It's hardly worth it IMO as the X feed is not designed to help people reach their highest state of enlightenment. Hooking people for ads is inherently limbic hijacking so any data derived from that is going to not reflect the participants' best minds.

Comment Re:Once again (Score 1) 52

The benefit is for key distribution because you know whether that distribution has been intercepted or not.

The rest is more interesting than useful at this point. Clearly someone clever will find new uses in the future ... or at least it would be shocking if this is the end of the line (from a Philosophy of Science perspective).

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