As somebody once said, "If I won $30 million, I'd spend half of it on hookers and coke. The rest, I'd just waste".

"We took on this high-risk, high-reward challenge and are proud of the milestones we reached along the way," [Katalyst CEO Ghonhee Lee] said in a statement. "We have already learned a tremendous amount."

I'd be delighted to learn a tremendous amount from NASA, and I'd be prepared to offer them my willingness to learn for maybe 10% of the $30 million they paid Katalyst.

A deal like that...how can NASA say no? I will wait with relaxed confidence by my desktop communications centre for their response to my generous offer.

The flaw here isn't that the software got it wrong, it's that a corporation is allowed to use it at all. What's next, cameras positioned to capture "legal" upskirt video because, of course, that's one of the best places for shoplifters to hide their stolen merchandise?

We need to let governments and corporations know that as citizens of a free country, we will not put up with mass surveillance backed by software that can track every individual person every moment of the time they are outside their homes, and even when they're inside them if somebody's interested enough.

Social media addiction is a subset of screen addiction, and screen addiction is destroying Gen Alpha at an alarming pace. I have so far found zero specialists who can help with this. It's not just a matter of taking screens away, we have literally turned an entire generation into junkies who will lie and cheat to get their fix. The adolescent mind never stood a chance; male or female.

If Meta wants a nicer spot in hell they can at least help with the mess they have profited off of. Help train the next generation of rehab specialists and help people find help. We made big tobacco do it, we can make these monsters do it as well.

That is not a trivial feat in the least. You don't have to give your kids smart phones, you don't have to have a PC at home. You can try to send your kid to a school that deemphasizes technology. And yet your kid will still end up with a screen addiction because it is that consuming. Kids don't have a chance. What today's kids face today is so far beyond what any of us grew up with that there really is no comparison.

My youngest siblings grew up on a heavy diet of Barney and Friends and it drove me up the wall. At least there was only a certain time of the day that was available on broadcast TV. And my 8 bit NES was not portable in any reasonable meaning of the word. Those barriers are gone now and the programming targeting kids makes Barney look like Mr Science.

What breaks privacy is the mass surveillance. EVERYBODY has their life recorded in detail. At best, all it takes is a friendly judge, and the police will be sticking their long, flexible noses into your business, and probably the business of your friends and relatives as well. But do you really think a nosy cop needs to run a plate? Existing software can track a car from the moment you park it in your driveway for the first time until the time you have it carted off for scrap.

Uber and Lyft drivers almost certainly wouldn't count on this, as they - with very few exceptions - use GPS to navigate. A taxi is a completely different animal in that regard.

"Taxi Drivers Rarely Die of Alzheimer's"

"It's usually the illegal left turns what does for 'em, guvnor!"

Yet you took the time to reply. You could have chosen to ignore it instead. Glad we can count on folks like you to continue to drive down the signal to noise ratio here.

Yes, I know my ID is also 7 digits long. I don't consider myself longtime, even having read and posted for over 20 years here.

Except they've already been caught doing exactly this...and at the highest levels. I believe one of the law firms representing Trump (or maybe opposing him...I can't recall) got caught when it turned out the judge realized some of the cases being quoted were made up.

This isn't going to stop at call centres. If not today, then very soon, there will be nothing an experienced legal secretary and AI can't do that a junior lawyer can do...at a fraction of the cost. All that's needed (at least for now) is a mid-level lawyer to scan their output and sign off on it. If I were a couple of years away from a bar exam, I'd be wondering about my career choice.

Advertising has been on this site for over 20 years now. The only difference is which ads are here, but that's all automated as well. We see slightly fewer mail order bride ads now, which is a likely a good thing, but otherwise its nothing different. There's no reason for a human to screen them.

I say this often, but honestly when was the last time any new code was written here? Stuff breaks over time but it has been years since anything was added or updated. We all know that of course Unicode is over 20 years past its promised rollout (beating even Duke Nukem Forever in terms of development hell cycle), but really it seems unlikely that there are any software developers left working for this site. I'm not sure there are any full time employees at Slashdot at all anymore.

In other words you can put the complaint in front of more eyes but it won't find any more eyes that can do anything about it.

What makes solar financially un-viable in Austin? I live a long ways from Texas so there might be something really obvious here that I'm missing. I know the solar power arguments are older than the hills at this point (I remember roof top solar panels from many decades ago) but I'm interested in what about that location makes it doomed to not work out.

Or is there just no way for Tesla to make it financially viable? Could a more honest company pull it off in a different way?