Comment Mod undo (Score 2) 78
(Undoing unintended mod.)
Comment You don't say (Score 1) 72
The video subtitles in the linked article. They probably should have placed them differently so they don't use the same line spacing and horizontal alignment as the video text, or used a visibly different font.
Scroll the video to 00:09 and see what you get.
(Unless that was an intentional pun.)
Comment Re:Early 80s is a poor comparison (Score 2) 71
When you want to compare two things you need to limit the factors that are different. There is one huge difference between the early 80s and now. Back then you could get a dirt cheap computer for gaming. For example a Commodore 64 for $200. If that's all you bought, it was effectively a console with a slot for a game on a cartridge. That's just way too different an environment from today.
Not quite that simple. You neglect two little things in your comparison.
1) On its own, C64 main unit was not quite that self-contained. Yes, you had the cartridge slot but very limited use for it. Almost all C64 games were released on cassette and/or disk, not as cartridges. Sure, you could buy the cassette drive for $50 extra. But - practically every C64 user had the 1541. If you wanted to write your own programs, the cassette drive was sheer hell. And for games? I shudder to think how U5 would have played on a cassette drive. I don't think those large games that required constant scene loading as you moved around were ever released on cassette - for obvious reasons. The catch? The 1541 cost $300 extra (initially $400). So the effective price tag for a working fully fledged C64 was $500, not $200.
2) Inflation. $500 in the early 1980s is not the same as $500 today. Factoring in the inflation, you needed to shell out the equivalent of $1600 - $1700 in today's money for a C64 + 1541.
Not quite dirt cheap, eh?
Comment Re:Crazy idea here... (Score 1) 90
(Undoing an accidental mod. Nothing to see here.)
Comment Holy guacamole, Batman! (Score 2) 120
So Paramount now owns Batman? (and Superman, Justice League, and the rest)
Comment Re:Never seen a Chinese film (Score 1) 124
There's a lot of stuff that's "historical", mostly about their heroes and their various wars.
...
I've seen one or two "modern" Chinese films and they are basically the same,
I've seen a few, and they definitely fall into this category. Set in the ancient imperial China, loosely based on historical eras or characters, often with fantasy elements, and yes, with lots of jumping and impressive choreography in the battle scenes.
There is a term for this genre: wuxia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Storywise and structurally, many of them are like swords-and-sorcery westerns in an exotic setting. And frankly, quite entertaining! Better than your average Hollywood fare these days. That's why I watched them, of course.
I remember two in particular.
The Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This one is wuxia but not the "Chinese western" style plot. Instead, it is full Game of Thrones, a precursor to the GoT TV series (but not the books, obviously) by several years. It's got the plot elements you'd associate with GoT - imperial power play, court intrigue, incest, betrayals, brutal and ruthless scheming, sudden plot twists and revelations, and of course lots of deaths and savage violence. Essentially Game of Thrones before Game of Thrones. All this in a movie just shy of two hours, narrated in a very unique fashion (including, IIRC, an invisible chorus that unfailingly announces the comings and goings of important people).
I also remember another one, this one was a "western" style epic, but sadly not its name. One humorous scene in particular. A female character wants to make the hero fall in love with her, so a more experienced woman teaches her. This woman gives her a magical means of making someone follow every gesture she makes, then teaches her some seductive moves. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to them, the hero is already (accidentally) under that magic when she practices those moves, and surrounded by a group of bandits...who are stunned when the hero starts making very suggestive moves. That scene still makes me chuckle when I think of it.
Comment Re:And the best part of operating in finland (Score 2) 19
This, and Finland is a country where the availability of fresh water is not an issue. Just look at the map.
Interesting to see how (and if) this affects energy prices in Finland. Google say they are doing "bring your own energy" but depending on how that turns out, there is a chance Finns could be in for a rude awakening.
Comment Re:Customer services (Score 1) 25
Posted to undo an accidental mod. Tried to give you +1 funny but blew it, sorry.
Comment Re:All these years... (Score 1) 46
- Why would your phone slow down? AI is used when you use it. When not, it doesn't do anything.
Apparently, OpenAI is already addressing this.
https://features.slashdot.org/...
Comment Re:Atari 2600 had 128 bytes of RAM (Score 1) 46
And the ROM only had 4K of addressable memory.
I hear what you're saying but let's be honest, Atari 2600 games had terrible, terrible graphics. Even back in the day, if your friends had something else, like a Mattel or a Colecovision, let alone a C64, you'd rather play them than your 2600. If you made Atari 2600 games today, nobody would play them. Aside from old retro geeks, the same guys who also insist on playing Mayfield's Star Trek.
But yes, the actual games were quite good and fun to play. More fun than many today.
Is AI Really to Blame for High Unemployment Among Recent Graduates? What Economists Say (npr.org) 51
47% of recent graduates say AI has already impacted hiring in their field, according to an April survey from ZipRecruiter.
"But is AI really the problem, or is it more complicated?" asks NPR. "Here's what economists have to say." According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for recent graduates — which it defines as 22-to-27-year-olds with a new bachelor's degree or higher — was 5.7% as of June, more than the rate for all workers, which stands at 4.1%... Stanford University economist Erik Brynjolfsson says AI is impacting the labor market for entry-level roles. "AI is not the whole story, but it's part of the story and the evidence is building," he says. Using payroll data, Brynjolfsson and his co-authors found that since late 2022 — when large language models like ChatGPT started popping up — early-career workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed roles, like software developers and marketing managers, have experienced a 16% relative employment decline. In comparison, employment rates for older workers in AI-exposed fields and for all workers in jobs that aren't easily automated — like home health aides, physical therapists and construction workers — remained stable or have grown over that same time period... [Though he also says often when companies pull back on hiring, they cut junior roles first.]
Harvard University economist David Deming isn't convinced that AI is to blame for the challenging early-career job market. "If you look very carefully at the timing, it looks like the decline in junior hiring actually started a bit like six months before ChatGPT was released. And so what that tells me is it's something else," Deming says. "I think it's more like remote work." A recent analysis from the New York Fed found that companies are less likely to hire recent college grads into roles that can be done remotely. As remote jobs increased following the COVID-19 pandemic, so did unemployment among younger college grads, the New York Fed found. The analysis also found that AI didn't explain the rise in unemployment among younger workers and that remote work was more of a driving force... Employers hiring for remote jobs may be less likely to choose an entry-level candidate because it's harder to train them from afar... [And with remote positions, there's many more senior candidates to choose from.]
And here's another thing to consider: University of Chicago economist Anders Humlum says if AI were replacing entry-level jobs, you'd expect to see companies that rely heavily on AI to hire fewer workers. But that's not what the data shows. Humlum points to a study done by the financial accounting firm Ramp and the workforce research company Revelio Labs. The study examined AI spending and employee head count across more than 21,000 U.S. firms, from early 2021 to early 2026. It found that at companies making the largest AI investments, entry-level head count grew by 12% over the two years following AI adoption.
"But is AI really the problem, or is it more complicated?" asks NPR. "Here's what economists have to say." According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for recent graduates — which it defines as 22-to-27-year-olds with a new bachelor's degree or higher — was 5.7% as of June, more than the rate for all workers, which stands at 4.1%... Stanford University economist Erik Brynjolfsson says AI is impacting the labor market for entry-level roles. "AI is not the whole story, but it's part of the story and the evidence is building," he says. Using payroll data, Brynjolfsson and his co-authors found that since late 2022 — when large language models like ChatGPT started popping up — early-career workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed roles, like software developers and marketing managers, have experienced a 16% relative employment decline. In comparison, employment rates for older workers in AI-exposed fields and for all workers in jobs that aren't easily automated — like home health aides, physical therapists and construction workers — remained stable or have grown over that same time period... [Though he also says often when companies pull back on hiring, they cut junior roles first.]
Harvard University economist David Deming isn't convinced that AI is to blame for the challenging early-career job market. "If you look very carefully at the timing, it looks like the decline in junior hiring actually started a bit like six months before ChatGPT was released. And so what that tells me is it's something else," Deming says. "I think it's more like remote work." A recent analysis from the New York Fed found that companies are less likely to hire recent college grads into roles that can be done remotely. As remote jobs increased following the COVID-19 pandemic, so did unemployment among younger college grads, the New York Fed found. The analysis also found that AI didn't explain the rise in unemployment among younger workers and that remote work was more of a driving force... Employers hiring for remote jobs may be less likely to choose an entry-level candidate because it's harder to train them from afar... [And with remote positions, there's many more senior candidates to choose from.]
And here's another thing to consider: University of Chicago economist Anders Humlum says if AI were replacing entry-level jobs, you'd expect to see companies that rely heavily on AI to hire fewer workers. But that's not what the data shows. Humlum points to a study done by the financial accounting firm Ramp and the workforce research company Revelio Labs. The study examined AI spending and employee head count across more than 21,000 U.S. firms, from early 2021 to early 2026. It found that at companies making the largest AI investments, entry-level head count grew by 12% over the two years following AI adoption.
Comment Re:I wonder⦠(Score 2) 95
I'm just wondering what this will do to their market value in the end. American cybersecurity companies are doing pretty well internationally; they are generally seen as highly competent, reliable (ok never mind Crowdstrike), and independent. With the U.S. government using them as an extension of the military to conduct hostile cyber operations, there's not a chance they will be considered to be independent anymore. In fact, they will be no better than Kaspersky. Will foreign companies and governments trust their security to a company that is known to be conducting U.S. government sanctioned hostile cyber operations? Worse yet, a company that could be conducting hostile cyber operations against their own country?
I'm not a prophet but as in so many recent executive decisions recently, the eventual long-term outcome could be something very different from what was expected and desired.
Comment Re:Who's Who? (Score 2) 125
Nearly everybody I know buys them for sheet music
Which is a whoops move. I brought a tablet exactly for that, a samsung. Almost none of the software standardised in the music industry for sheet music actually runs on android
For classical music, sheet music normally means (in ~95% of cases these days) PDFs from imslp.org. PDFs actually work quite well on Android tablets, and you can attach pedals to flip pages while playing.
You see that a lot in symphony orchestras these days, especially in amateur ones. (Professional orchestras may still prefer printed parts.)
Comment Re:Greybeards are evven older (Score 2) 79
The years of the old 8-bits like the VIC-20 and TRS-80 have started to wane
True but a slight understatement. C64 essentially killed off VIC-20. It did everything the VIC did but so much better that there was no practical reason to cling on to a VIC-20. (Aside from being morbidly addicted to a specific game cartridge.) Everyone were upgrading the first chance they got.
64KB ought to be enough for anybody, darnit.
Comment Re: Have you ever been able to buy the software? (Score 1) 154
Well, in the really old days this was it. You could "copy that floppy" and have your own pirate version of the software.
It was actually a bit more complicated. In many cases, the original install floppy served as your license 'token', and the software required it to be present in your floppy drive or the software wouldn't run. This was especially true for games.
Various tricks were used to make straightforward copying of the main install floppy ineffective. They usually involved nonstandard floppy disk formats, such as deliberate bad sectors, unusual data density, data outside the normal disk data range, etc. Many of these methods were used already for Commodore 64 games, and later adapted for Amiga, PC, etc., although serial number checks were sometimes used instead (esp. for business software), or even physical hardware 'dongles' that needed to be present while running the software.
But as is commonly known, the C64 years were also the golden age of binary hackers. They would invent a number of means to circumvent those devious copy protections. Low-level nibble copiers were widely circulated - mainly on floppy, and practically every C64 user had acquired one somewhere. Those copiers would make 'low-level' disk copies, ignoring the normal disk layout. Or you could 'dump' the memory image of a loaded game state where the copy protection check had already been passed. Of course real men would settle for nothing less than manually editing the game binary to work without a special disk.
Honestly, the last part was way above my meager skill but I occasionally had the privilege of watching a true artist at work. He would wade through pages and pages of hex dumps, immediately recognize the interesting calls, and then modify them...to disable copy protection, to give you infinite lives, to take you to the level/map of your choice, etc. Whatever you wanted in a game.
Needless to say, that guy went far.
