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Comment Shallow Distraction (Score 4, Insightful) 41

"testament to the incredible work of our UX, design, product, and engineering teams who brought this innovation to life."

You don't give a damn about "UX" to the extent it means user experience. You should be asking extension writers what they need from you to improve their work and truly improve Firefox users' experiences. That goes 10x for ad-block writers.

But it's easier to get TIME to jerk you off and Google to dump money on you with forgettable chintz like this.

Comment Who owns a virtual being? (Score 1) 99

A more interesting question I think is, does anyone own this AI actress?

That is to say - if a company took her likeness, and used other AI to make porn - could "her" agent sue them?

Or in other words, is a purely AI generated likeness even copyrightable, when technically no human made it?

Comment Consensus (Score 5, Informative) 54

About 30 years ago I read Clan of the Cave Bear and thought it was considered to be well grounded in then-current scientific knowledge. The story was all about Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens living in the same space at the same time. This article makes it sound like this is a new idea.

Anyone know what the actual consensus was and is?

Current consensus is that Neanderthals and modern humans are the same species. Genetic analysis shows a couple of percent Neanderthal DNA in modern Europeans. The image of Neanderthal as "hunched, sloping forehead, and ape-like" is thought to be incorrect, it comes from one skeleton that is believed to have been deformed, possibly having acromegaly.

About half a dozen distinct human "types" (Neanderthal is one) are known to have existed, it's thought that there were several more, possibly many more, but evidence from that far back is sparse. It's thought that they were all the same species and could interbreed successfully.

Neanderthals were shorter, stockier, and had larger cranial capacity, but sometime around 70,000 years ago, a different subtype, homo sapiens sapiens, got the upper hand cognitively. Around 40,000 years ago they were the only subtype remaining. (Note that there was an ice age at the time.)

About 10,000 years ago we switched from hunter-gatherers to farming and herding, stayed in one place for generations, and began to build civilization. About 3,000 BC we started casting metal, which was the start of the bronze age.

All of these are approximate, different sources give different dates, the dates change as new evidence comes up (usually pushing the dates further back), and you can't really pin down a specific date anyway. For example, lots of cultures went through the bronze age at different times: it started somewhere in the near East, and swept over the globe over the course of hundreds of years, agriculture was independently invented in 10 or more places, and so on.

Comment It's not news (Score 1) 80

Students at a prestigious business school (where they are trained to make successful businesses) are more likely to focus on their business's wellfare than on what's fair ... and in other news, water is wet.

People likely to succeed in managing a business will be low in trait agreeableness. This is well known and has been known for years.

Despite the apparent implication of "disagreeable" people being bad, it means that such people are more focused on themselves, unlikely to be swayed by the opinions of others, and more self serving. It's a trait that allows businesses to succeed, by having the owner focus on the success goals of the business instead of the success goals of other people.

Contrast with high agreeableness, where the person is more externally focused. Psychologists and nurses would typically be high agreeableness.

Everyone has an agreeableness score, and it's a bell curve. The fact that there are people who aren't "fair" is compensated by people who are exceptionally giving.

Comment Early 2017 (Score 2) 144

I remember the article where I first noticed the chart:
ACT Test Scores For US Students Drop To a 30-Year Low

Scores have been falling for six consecutive years, but the trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That pegs the beginning of the decline to 2017 (probably in the spring), before most of his first four years.

Comment Exactly Forward (Score 1) 39

I don't give a shit if some Russian/Kazakh/Malaysian bot farmer wants to take over my phone.

So you do no banking on your phone? Unlikely.

For the 99% of people that do in fact use a phone for banking, protection from lower level criminals is invaluable. For most people there is real financial loss possible from a phone being taken over, at the very least to monitor banking access mechanisms.

Comment Re:can you get an dui in one / who (under the law) (Score 1) 18

can you get an dui in one / who (under the law) is deemed in control?

This hasn't been tested yet legally.

However, if operator guidance is needed (autodrive levels 1, 2, and 3, driver must remain engaged), then you are operating the vehicle and can be charged.

For levels 4 and 5, if you're behind the wheel and could turn off the autodrive features, legal opinion is that you can still be charged (you're effectively in control).

If you're not in the driver's seat and the car is level 4 and 5 (and autodriving), then there's a strong legal argument that you're not operating the vehicle and can't be charged.

(And note that if you're autodriving, there should be no reason for the cop to pull you over in the first place.)

IANAL, this is just something I researched awhile ago.

Comment Re: Better (Score 2) 111

Lab grown chicken, ideal conditions

So far, lab grown meat hasn't done particularly well in terms of flavor, so it's hard to say what is ideal outside of an actual chicken.

Factory farmed chicken, pumped full of antibiotics and hormones

Actually the interesting thing about that propaganda is nobody actually sells any meat like that. Antibiotics also aren't cheap and aren't used unnecessarily, rather, they're only used in the event that the animal is sick, and only slaughter it after there's no more indication of infection or antibiotics.

The "antibiotic free" meat comes in one of two varieties: Either it's done the way it has been done in the history of modern medicine, or the rancher doesn't treat sick animals with antibiotics at all, generally opting for increased suffering in order to satisfy the desires of people like you.

then ground up into pink slime to make chicken nuggets

Yeah that's false too. The "pink slime" is one part of the chicken, not the whole chicken, that used to go to waste because it's tough to chew. But after a bit of preparation, that changes things. We've done this a lot in the past, take brisket for example, an otherwise tough cut of meat which now goes for a premium after it's been prepared. But given you're obviously a soyboy, I don't expect you to be familiar with any of that.

But after people like you raised a shit, now McDonald's wastes it again, even though other restaurants don't, all because you didn't like the way it looks before it is cooked. Meanwhile a lot of you insist on only eating food grown in cow shit as opposed to nitrates created with the Haber method, because natural is better or something, and shit is natural.

Comment Re:hmm (Score -1, Troll) 81

We could have a great "star trek" type of a society except for greedy scumbags who feed hate and greed.

Well, you are in fact othering unnamed people and feeding hate against them. More than half of the people living in the United States are among the top 1% of global incomes, both in absolute terms and in terms of disposable income, which I guess qualifies half of this country as ultra-rich, but who has the authority to set that arbitrary goalpost? Last I checked, I haven't been fighting with anybody else, and nobody has been fighting with me. Nevertheless, you're apparently coveting my income, which makes you the greedy one. All I'm doing is working to earn my salary, and the only reason that pisses you off is that you don't get to stick your hands into it.

Anyway, so how does this fight work? Are you trying to piss rich people off by spitting gum on the sidewalk so they might step in it? Do tell.

Comment Re: Contempt or SEC violation? (Score 1) 21

They're under no such obligation to the general public, only to their stakeholders, and only to the extent that it is legally relevant to each. However, and this is the important part that you're all too familiar with, without being mindful of: Anything they do or say may be used against them in a court of law.

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