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Comment Re:Customized music is the future (Score 2) 68

You'd be surprised how difficult that actually is. Take the role of a DJ for instance - a good DJ will know what genre they're doing, play well know things from that genre but also introduce new music to keep it fresh. They might also step outside the genre a little - not too far so it's not dissonant with the rest of their set, but just far enough to give a break and a moment of "ah, that's nice/romantic/gnarly/metal/" for the listener.

It's a skill, and if you haven't got that ability to start with then you're unlikely to be able to give the correct prompts to create it. You might well get a lot of identical things, but a listenable varied set is more than that.

Comment Re:*some* games (Score 1) 97

A worry might be SteamOS as a requirement, rather than as simple support. You could imagine kernel modules being developed for 'anti-cheat' and them running under SteamOS but not some other distro that may (justifiably) block them.

Comment Re:Praise Gabe! (Score 2) 97

This is the most (in fact only) interesting thing about the announcements to me. Must say I'm not sure about it - can't see how mouse+keyboard style games, which the original Stream Controller was explicitly designed to work well with, would pan out.

I have hugely customised layouts for several games to the point where I can't imagine playing them without it - they tend to be RPG games like Skyrim and Elder Scrolls Online. It's that style of game I'm trying to imagine mapping to the new layout, and to be honest gen1 looks more amenable to me at first glance. Hope to be proven wrong though.

Comment Re:Amateurs (Score 1) 110

The proper way to do this is 1) fake it and 2) when queried, lie about it. I mean, this has been the traditional approach in all things AI and at least the LLM pushers know how to do it. I would have thought that Russians, off all people, understand this approach in a more general way. Apparently not. Some people will probably get an extensive "vacation" sponsored by the state now.

They did fake it. The "robot" was a guy in a robot suit, unfortunately, the guy in the robot suit got completely shitfaced.

Comment Re:Satanic Panic all over again + Fake Culture War (Score -1, Troll) 45

Honestly the issue with the story is Ken Paxton, he literally has negative credibility. I know virtually nothing about Roblox or this case, but if Paxton is the first AG to pursue it my automatic assumption is he's prosecuting them because they either failed to give him a bribe or he thought they were helping Democrats register to vote or something.

Comment Re:!free, good riddance (Score 2, Informative) 93

Sorry but from an outside perspective that just sounds nuts. So let's take your 'worst case' - $129M overall cost making it $434 per entry - you're saying there are only 297,235 (129M / 434) tax payers in the US? A quick search from me shows the number of filings to be at 145M+. If everyone could file for free, that $129M would be 88c per person.

And I'm speaking from experience. I'm in the UK. I've recently filed my annual self-assessment tax. I used the free service on the UK government web site and the thing that took the longest was working out how much to put as charity donation. Whole thing done in less than an hour and a half.

I seriously cannot comprehend the approach where you have to pay to be able to pay someone. It's...well...it's nuts.

Comment Re:Weird obsession with Iraq (Score 2) 128

Yes, there was oil involved, and Cheney had ties to the oil industry. That's certainly part of it. But I've never been 100% satisfied that this was the only reason for the invasion. I heard a more nuanced theory, that the US was dealing with terrorist organizations who could cross borders with impunity, and trying to fight them from country to country would be almost impossible, so they needed a way to convince the countries of the middle east not to let these organizations operate in their countries. The solution: a show of strength in Iraq... "this is what we could do to you if you give us a reason."

I still think the 2nd Iraq war was a terrible decision because it was the beginning of the end of the rules-based world order, which is something the US created for its own benefit, and benefited the most from, even if it was costly to support. And Cheney was an undeniable hawk when it came to Iraq. He wanted the invasion, and was looking for any excuse. His legacy will always be overshadowed by that reality.

I agree it was a terrible terrible decision, I hated it at the time and I believe it's been responsible for millions of deaths, but I think the motive wasn't as bad as you suspect.

Basically, the Middle East outside of Israel was a bunch of dictatorships, some theocratic, some military, and many awkwardly allied to the US, but none of the Arab nations had a functioning liberal Democracy.

The neocons believed that they could go in, overthrow the dictator, and a functioning Democracy would pop up in it's place and they'd have a grateful ally, one whom they didn't need to look away as they went around murdering dissidents.

The initial returns on Afghanistan seemed to support the idea is would work, the Taliban melted away from the major urban centres and there was a government in its place.

WMDs and terrorists were both an excuse to go in and try this grand experiment in one of the few friendless dictatorships in the Middle East (the other being Iran, which they were planning, but was a much tougher target).

The problem of course was arrogance, they failed to understand the country they were attempting to launch a revolution in, and they failed to realize the kind of situation you needed for a Democracy to take place.

I think if they just stayed focused on Afghanistan, and basically ruled them by edict for a decade while they nurtured local political actors, then they might have had a shot.

But instead, it was an incompetent administration attempting to implement an extraordinarily ambitious and difficult plan.

Comment Re:Winter (Score 1) 70

I wonder how they'll do in the winter. I have a Rav4 plug in hybrid. In the winter I get about 1/3 less range and on really cold days ( -18C/0F ) I have to run the engine in order to get enough heat to keep the windshield defrosted. I imagine that in a delivery van, without the cabin insulation and with the doors frequently open that the heating problem will be much worse. OTOH in the summer and for short trips, I hardly ever use the gas engine.

This is Vancouver, so I don't think they're too concerned about the winter.

Comment Re:Why is this site so obsessed with Twitter clone (Score 1) 56

Because the extremely polarizing Elon Musk bought Twitter with the intention of making it a having for the far right.

Perhaps the site survives is politics and meddling, but I don't think we've ever seen a major social media platform this vulnerable since MySpace.

We year about it because people are rightfully interested.

Comment Weight loss drugs (Score 1) 138

The percentage of adults who report taking this class of medicine specifically for weight loss has increased to 12.4%, compared with 5.8% in February 2024 when Gallup first measured it. Usage among women (15.2%) continues to outpace men (9.7%), but both groups have more than doubled their use in the past year.

It's crazy that more than 10% of Americans are taking these drugs. Especially since it sounds like a lot of insurance plans don't cover it (which actually seems surprising considering how much obesity related conditions must cost in healthcare).

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