Are they machines? Are they capable of deliberate movement? Do they have any decision-making of their own?

From TFA:

The externally generated [emphasis mine] magnetic fields made the robots spin and tumble through the liquid and squeeze through tiny water-filled gaps in the soil.

So, why are they referred to as robots? If I mulch my bushes — is each chip a "robot" fighting the weeds around the plant? When a brick wall is sanded, is each grain of sand a "robot"?

I gave you the link with all the data citations if you'd like to check the margin of error.

Translation: you don't know the margin of error either.

eclipsing the Dust Bowl's July 1936 by an eighth of a degree

What is the margin of error? Asking for a friend...

If only that was cheaper than hiring a human to do it..

I purchased a used Radeon Instinct MI50 with 32Gb VRAM on eBay for $360 — in December. it is quite usable with llama.cpp under FreeBSD inside an older (DDR3) workstation. I use it to filter incoming email (with a plugin to SpamAssassin).

That same model is now being sold for over $500. On the one hand, this is the first time in my life a witnessing a piece of computer hardware costing more seven month later.

But on the other limb, it is still cheaper than simply providing a Western developer with coffee for a few months — much less than actually hiring him...

The incident raises questions [emphasis mine] about supply chains, audits, and cybersecurity in the British armed forces

Raises questions? No, boys and girls — who slept through the journalist lecturer's implorations against cliches — it does not raise questions. It provides clear and obvious answers...

The money men are the only ones who want this shit.

Better not drive near any normal cctv cameras or ring doorbells then without covering your plates first.

The whole point of plates IS to identify a vehicle and where and when it was. Whether thats done by eye or by machine doesn't make a huge amount of difference so long as in the latter case the data isn't stored if the plate isn't flagged in some way.

Visiting the US and canada I always felt their plates were fairly useless even for human eyes never mind AI beyond a fairly snort distance. The characters are too small and the varying colours and designs of the plates doesn't help either.

A mistake was still made

Yep, it happens. And it was not even a mistake by Flock, apparently — not that it matters. Mistakes will continue to be made — they don't mean, Flock is doing anything wrong, or that police has to be "defunded", or Capitalism overthrown. But Slashdot is running multiple anti-Flock articles every day, it seems — like they did against Walmart some 15-20 years ago.

Can't shake off the feeling, this is a part of a propaganda campaign...

The argument against it was in the summary.

The argument, that participants can influence the outcome — if financially motivated by the betting — is but a tertiary afterthought. That may have some merits, but it is not new — regular financial markets have learned to deal with insider trading, and we have criminal laws against such activity. It is not a reason to ban the betting outright.

But the original journalist, the submitter, and BeauHD obviously emphasise the "ghastly" aspect... And this appeal to emotion is, what I find contemptible.

I'm 99% sure somebody has already been killed because of Flock

But you don't have evidence, do you? Just like those January 6th "insurrectionists". Only they don't get any "Insightful" moderation for some reason...

Flock does not pull any triggers — it only informs police, that a suspect (or, more likely, the suspect license plate) has been spotted in a certain location. That's all. The actual reaction is than up to the officers.

If anything, it is only more certain, multiple murders — and other crimes — have been prevented by the timely(ier) detention of the criminals. And, additionally, by successful prosecution of them thanks to the video-evidence. But Grok could not find any comprehensive stats for me, so I'm not including any evidence either.

Fuck Trump Musk AOC Sanders far right n' left tech bros ICE Islamophobes antisemites mullahs pedopriests nationalists

Some libido you've got there!!

still fine ?

Fine? No, I'd be devastated by the death. But why would somebody else's making money — not "out of it", but by predicting it — affect me at all? They didn't kill the child. They didn't contribute to his dying.

Yeah, going home from a funeral — of anyone close to you — and watching people carelessly enjoying their lives unaware of your tragedy is annoying. But you don't get mad at them. Or, maybe, you do — because you're a fool controlled by emotions, rather than rational thought.

Bettors should not be rooting for an experimental medicine to fail just to earn a buck

Why not? If that is one's way to pursue happiness and it does not hurt anyone, what argument is there against it?

"It's quite ghastly."

That's not a reason...