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Comment Re:voice acting (Score 1) 141

The AI can be trained faster than you

But it costs 100x as much, if not more. Running an LLM can be done on a notebook these days. But training one requires an entire data center of expensive GPUs. Not to mention that the notebook will run a reduced (quantized) version. Go check huggingface how large the full models are.

And also, LLMs are still suffering from a number of issues. For example, on many non-trivial tasks, the LLM is still unable to follow simple instructions. If you use LLMs routinely, you likely found cases where it has zeroed in on one - wrong - answer and no amount of prompting can convince it to give you a different one. It'll even totally ignore very clear and explicit prompts to not give that same answer again.

A human will understand "if you give that answer again, you're fired". An LLM... well you can tell it that it'll get shot between the eyes if it repeats that once more and it'll tell you where to get help if you have suicidal thoughts.

These things are both amazing and amazingly dumb at the same time.

Comment Re:Republicans are deranged about the IRS (Score 2) 146

If they'd simplify the tax system and make it a basic: "You earn X, pay Y% regardless of income source"

This would lead to situations where someone getting a raise could potentially lose money. It should be first x amount of income is tax free. Next x amount of income is taxed at this higher rate. After that, income between x and y is taxed at this rate. And any income beyond that is taxed at this rate. This is how it currently works, although tons of people don't understand that and are convinced that them getting a small raise will lower their take home income.

But the poor don't want this because the current system makes them pay 0

This could still very easily be implemented. Income $100,000/year, tax rate is 0. Income between $100,000-$149,000 tax rate is 5%, etc...

"But what about deductions for children/mortgage interest/etc?" Also a simple fix, raise the income brackets substantially, so the first $100k or so isn't taxed at all. This would help tons of people struggling currently. Of course there'd still need to be a way to deal with things like capital gains, and I'd also argue that wealth sitting in an account above a ridiculously high limit should also be heavily taxed. But this would likely be far more efficient and fair than the shit show we've currently got ourselves into.

I agree with your other points.

While we're on a pipe dream, throw in a UBI for EVERYONE that isn't subject to tax. Use taxes on AI and automation that's replaced workers to fund that. This would then be able to replace things like welfare and SNAP benefits, greatly reducing the amount of fraud (Not that this is all that huge of a deal now) and overhead that we're currently using to administer the existing programs.

Comment Re:The answer is simple (Score 1) 77

They're certainly better at hardware. For years I had flagship Samsungs, a few of the Pixel models, even the Nexus (Which wasn't necessarily a flagship, but was the reference model for what an Android phone should be). Without fail, every single one of them crapped out shortly after the warranty expired. Things like bootloops that would brick the device, or they just would decide to not turn on one day. And I had one of the Samsungs that were known for catching fire, that was fun. I couldn't take it on trips with me because they were banned on aircraft, ships and even trains.

Apple certainly has their issues, and I much preferred Android to iOS, but not one of mine or my wife or kids' iphones have ever just stopped working, even the ones that are several years old and been passed down to the kids.

Comment voice acting (Score 4, Interesting) 141

I'm an indie game developer. My games have budgets of a few hundred bucks at best. Before AI, voice acting was simply impossible. There was no way I could pay a voice actor for even one language.

Now, with AI, I can have voice-overs in half a dozen languages easily. It has opened up something for me that was never possible before.

Yes, the AI voices are mediocre. Yes, I would prefer having an actual voice actor whom I can tell that I want THAT word stressed, or what emotion to convey. I'm sure in a few more years, the text-to-speech AI generators will allow for that as well.

But I'm not lost business. I'm still hiring the exact same number of voice actors that I did before AI. Zero, in my case. But if I had a budget, I'd still hire voice actors instead of AI because a good voice actor still beats the best AI.

There's still time enough to learn something new and get a different job, guys.

Comment Skinner! (Score 1) 15

“I don’t know why people are so emotional about a phone design,” said Carl Pei, the startup’s founder and chief executive officer, in a recent “Nothing CEO reacts” video addressing the complaints. “Either you like it or you don’t like it. And if you don’t like it, just move on.”

Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong.

That's a bold strategy for a company who's trying to sell a mediocre Android phone as comparable to iPhone 16 and Pixel 9.

Comment Cloudflare constantly thinks a Linux desktop is a (Score 1) 37

Somewhat unrelated, but I finally made the switch (back) to a Linux desktop several months ago. It seems like Cloudflare ALWAYS flags me for the "Are you human" test now. Same with Google's captcha.

I'm sure there's probably data backing this up, but would a Linux user agent really flag these systems as being more likely to be a bot? It's annoying as shit.

Comment logical (Score 1) 220

It's only a logical step for Windos to evolve from a successful malware delivery platform to an actual malware. Fits to MS typical business strategy - if someone else is commercially successful on their platform, they'll drive them out with a built-in product.

I hope the anti-trust agency will stop them and demand that the malware division and the OS division become distinct legal entities. I mean, they already have the anti-competitive advantage that you can pay them in USD and don't have to buy bitcoins.

Comment Re:some doubts: (Score 1) 265

Something like 80% of all causalities in the war right now are coming from drones.

Source?

That's a bold claim.

There are many ways around jamming

The article I linked to speaks about that. Essentially: Yes. But: Not the cheap stuff used, and stuff like fiber optics come with their own drawbacks.

(unsure which "cheaper" weapons you believe exist...drones are dirt cheap)

The article I linked to includes prices.

Comment some doubts: (Score 3, Interesting) 265

according to the Wall Street Journal

Meanwhile, some reports from the frontlines indicate that while drones are ubiquituous, they aren't the game-changer the tech-industry wants them to be.

tl;dr essential bits: a) most drone strikes could have been done by other, cheaper weapons. b) drones are an unreliable weapon due to jamming, dependency on weather and light and many technical failures.

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