To the best of my recollection, Opus is absolutely better than AAC, according to the blind tests done by hydrogenaudio, among others. Vorbis was very slightly worse than AAC, but much like all benchmarking, sometimes it did better, sometimes worse.

HE-AAC, the "High Efficiency" branch, has proven to provide higher quality than Vorbis at low bitrates (ie. 48-56 kbit, IIRC). That said, I don't know exactly how Opus fits into comparisons with HE-AAC. I seem to recall Opus is better than HE-AAC in the general case, but much like Vorbis vs AAC, the performance is similar.

Either way: I think it's kinda nuts that HEVC has been out since 2013 (nearly 12 years), has been succeeded by VVC in 2020, and HEVC still hasn't settled its patent wars. I don't keep track by any means, but I gotta wonder how many of the HEVC cases end up being tossed as "moot" because the patent expired...

AI has been running at a big loss to get the users hooked. It was inevitable that prices would start climbing. That process is nowhere near done, running AI is expensive as hell.

Once the market starts reflecting the actual costs, you can bet the cost/benefit will not be nearly as rosy as it looks now. But some customers will already have gotten themselves between a rock and a hard place and will be sucked dry, then discarded. Those "expensive" people that are getting dumped will start looking like a bargain, but they will have already been snapped up by smarter companies by the time management that can't see past their own toes figures that out.

All of this makes me remember a short story reading assignment in the 5th grade. It was about kids growing up in a society where machines did all of the intellectual work. To them, writing was 'squiggles'. They managed to disable a filter on their "bard" (a story teller for children) and had it tell them a tale of machines ruling over Man.

Nobody expects prophesy from a 5th grade reading assignment.

It's not just widespread, it's universal. What varies from person to person is the domain that they apply thinking to, and how they validate the authority they choose to trust.

Nobody is an "independent thinker" on every topic. Wherever one is an expert, one tends to be an "independent thinker" in that domain. Where you don't feel knowledgeable, you tend to accept an authoritative source...possibly after doing some amount of checking to see whether others think it reliable.

I don't think it's directly related to IQ. I also don't think it's restricted to chatbots. A lot of people are willing to accept the opinion of any authoritative source that they've accepted. Think religion or political party. Once they accept it, they stop questioning it's proclamations.

Note that this also applied to those who accept the proclamations of scientists or compilers. Once you accept an authoritative source, you pretty much stop questioning it. It's been multiple decades since I really argued with a compiler...unless it was a known bug from a source I trusted. I generally just assumed that I misunderstood what the language meant by that construct. (Of course, the few times I really didn't accept it, I eventually turned out to be wrong. Oh.)

Those techniques won't work on overeating because you need to eat to live, you can't just stop cold turkey like with smoking.

Overweight people have it constantly hammered into them that they're endangering their lives, it's not a messaging issue.

And if it's so bad, why is having the meds such a problem? Their side effects are minimal and they work better than diet and exercise and lifestyle change. Most of the arguments seem to be based on some weird puritanism, where only the "worthy" should be able to weigh less.

I suggest:

First offence: Have to watch CSPAN for 5 hours a day, for a week, without sleeping through it - evidence to be provided in court

Second offence: Have to sing Miley Cyrus songs and Baby Shark on TikTok - sober

Third offence: License to practice and all memberships of country clubs and golf courses revoked

The current administration is focused on making it look like they're doing something.

If they really wanted to regulate microplastics they'd regulate them, not put them on a list where they'll sit and do nothing.

"We spent a ridiculous amount of effort to stop smoking in this country but have done almost nothing in regards to obesity"

I disagree strongly. We have spent as a society uncounted billions on addressing obesity, including on government programs. The problem is it's just a harder problem than smoking.

At the end of the day, just about everybody knows obesity is bad and that you have to exercise and eat healthier. Lack of knowledge isn't the problem.

"You have to admit that the majority of people are not like diligent you but are more like those bakery patrons"

So then the drugs sound like the best option? The only other argument is basically that of a sociopath -- people should be punished because they don't have the willpower you think they do.

Yeah well, we can't all be a person who doesn't understand how things work. Kudos to you for being simple minded!

" The Kathmandu Post"

Ah we don't to pay for journalism, says a planet of suckers

Oh, that's pretty neat. Microsoft is definitely the right level to address this at - they already have permission to enumerate the HW, own the hardware and software infra to tackle this, enjoy economy of scale other players are not privvy too, and can deliver a solution in a vendor agnostic way. Thanks for the heads up. It's the right thing to happen.

Of course there are. Tragedy of the commons. My point is that no single entity is likely to absorb the costs unless they're already enjoying economy of scale advantages and there are business experience/optic benefits to doing so. The poster above you pointed out that Microsoft seems to be addressing this, which makes a lot more sense to me than doing it at the 3d HW vendor level.