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Comment Consistency (Score 1) 41

I assume this is kind of a way for a game to say "yeah, don't need all the clocks, thanks..." in a way that gives devs a testable max performance target that can be more aggressive than, say, just down/up-clocking the chips on demand based on heuristics (which is already happening today).

I can't imagine the average PS5 user will care about saving a few pennies a year by consuming a little less power, especially if it limits game functionality or makes the graphics worse. Even businesses displaying PS5s... I can't imagine the power ask is huge, but maybe it is?

Making it a setting with tradeoffs is the one thing that throws off my understanding. It seems like it should be automatic.

Comment Re:Seems like what you would expect (Score 1) 166

Billionaires are not workers; they may once have done work, but at the point where they're billionaires, their money is predominantly from OWNERSHIP not from INCOME. They aren't paid a salary (famously, some CEOs take $1 as their salary) that's meaningful, they aren't compensated by the hour. They're 'paid' in ownership and the ownership is what generates income. They make money off the work of other people.

Some CEOs are workers, no doubt, especially at smaller companies. They do some organizational and planning work. But once your wealth comes from owning rather than labouring, you're not a worker anymore. (Landlords aren't labourers either; by and large they do no work. To the extent that they work on upkeep, the actual JOB is being a maintenance worker, not a landlord. Landlords can and often do hire workers to maintain the property.)

Comment Re:AI Training (Score 1) 64

Maybe you've seen this paper, maybe not:

"Recent math benchmarks for large language models (LLMs) such as MathArena indicate that state-of-the-art reasoning models achieve impressive performance on mathematical competitions like AIME, with the leading model, Gemini-2.5-Pro, achieving scores comparable to top human competitors. However, these benchmarks evaluate models solely based on final numerical answers, neglecting rigorous reasoning and proof generation which are essential for real-world mathematical tasks. To address this, we introduce the first comprehensive evaluation of full-solution reasoning for challenging mathematical problems. Using expert human annotators, we evaluated several state-of-the-art reasoning models on the six problems from the 2025 USAMO within hours of their release. Our results reveal that all tested models struggled significantly: only Gemini-2.5-Pro achieves a non-trivial score of 25%, while all other models achieve less than 5%. Through detailed analysis of reasoning traces, we identify the most common failure modes and find several unwanted artifacts arising from the optimization strategies employed during model training. Overall, our results suggest that current LLMs are inadequate for rigorous mathematical reasoning tasks, highlighting the need for substantial improvements in reasoning and proof generation capabilities."

https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.219...

But you do make it clear that you think that regurgitation is sufficient in this case, and I won't argue with you; I'm no mathematician. Certainly, I believe that LLMs can be useful as long as we're not fooled into thinking that THEY'RE thinking.

Comment Re:Compact Camera (Score 2) 27

Indeed, the people complaining don't understand the niche this camera occupies.

Many photographers would probably want the a6700 or a7c if they need a fuller-featured camera.

This one is about being compact and simple. It occupies a similar slot as Leica's fixed-lens cameras, or for a less expensive variety, a Ricoh GR. You go with this camera when size is important, when you want to take a nice camera into a venue that doesn't allow interchangable lens cameras (concerts/etc.). Or, if you've got money to burn, simply having a nice sensor with a limiting feature set might aid creativity.

Comment Re:Human connections (Score 1) 215

Yeah, I think every generation thinks this.

But honestly, if you haven't found anything full of human spirit and culture, that's probably on you. There's still tonnes of original music made by indie bands out there. Go looking for modern punk/reggae/ska bands that are writing protest songs. Maybe explore some of the culture of other continents--I've heard that French African music is undergoing a bit of a renaissance (and there are plenty of European french people lowkey mad about it because they never like slang coming in from outside the country).

But even the pop stuff--yeah, it's generic. It always has been. That's what makes it pop music. But they've still picked up on the last 20 or 30 years of musical trends and integrated them into their songs. The tone and musicality of the songs has shifted slightly. It's not for me either, but it's not meaningfully better or worse than the pop of the past, tbh, it's just not MY music.

AI slop is so much worse, because in general, it's ONLY copying music from a single genre. Remember that musicians today probably listened to a bunch of stuff when they were young. If they're kids of GenX, they would've heard their parents' music growing up and then integrated some of that into their own work. You get weird crossings over of genres and sometimes something interesting pops out.

Anyway, AI slop can only ever be as interesting as the average of the current corpus of human music. It has no feelings, no experiences, no struggles. It will probably never write anything as hilariously bad as 'Friday' by Rebecca Black, which came back around and accidentally became the zeitgeist for a brief period, and now is actually weirdly nostalgic for a lot of people that experienced it at the time.

Comment Re:Interesting language (Score 1) 111

C++ is also largely changed by a committee. Honestly, the best thing that's happened to C++ in its whole lifetime is that the committee started ripping features off from other languages.

Gone are the days where a language can be designed, written and MAINTAINED by a single person. I don't know why we'd even want that, to be honest. Committees are fine as long as they get the job done.

Comment Re:Follow the rules (Score 1) 94

That being said, ...

I have the same suspicions you and everyone else do, but my comment was more about consistency of outrage.

Challenge hipocrisy by stating clearly that there is no double standard divisive bullshit. I really dislike that I feel compelled to do so, but I just see so much of it and Slashdot is definitely no exception.

Comment Re:Apple's Last VR headset had a bad design (Score 1) 65

Anyone who'd actually used VR or AR could predict the Vision's lackluster performance.

It was marketed as an AR device to compete with Hololens, but it doesn't allow you to move freely with confidence like a Hololens does because you can only see inside the tiny FOV.

It seemed to compete more with a Quest in terms of features and applicability, but they seemed to actively avoid marketing this, maybe to avoid comparison with a $300 device.

The first release was a toy for techies with disposable income -- I really can't believe they thought it would take off like fire. I'm curious to see which direction the followup leans in.

Comment Follow the rules (Score 4, Insightful) 94

It's hard to tell the full context of things like this these days, but if legally required process was not followed, then I agree with the decision -- even though the FTC's regulation was a clearly good one for us.

If you stop following the law, it's a slippery slope until it all falls apart. One day it's passing bypassing laws on enacting regulation, the next day you might start deporting people without trial or something.

Comment I'm of two minds (Score 2) 113

On the one hand, this isn't in the job description, so...no.

On the other hand, I actually think it's useful for people that are programming systems that other people use to actually use the systems themselves in a production environment to see how they function. If you're a programmer writing software that people at the warehouse have to use, it SHOULD be part of your description to do that job for a few days a year to understand what the biggest problems are.

And also: no volunteering. If you spend any time doing this, they pay you whatever your hourly wage is + overtime. If you're a high-paid programmer and you do this, they pay you your programmer wage and compensate you for your time. It's such a drop in the bucket for them, there's literally no reason but greed not to.

Lastly: fuck Amazon and their shitty labour practices and horrendous (reportedly) work environment. I wouldn't work there on a bet.

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