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Comment insanity (Score 4, Interesting) 60

Has everyone gone insane or are we witnessing a major PsyOps ?

Since AI isn't magical, for it to be able to "kill all humans", it would have to be able to acquire the means to do so. Which means that these already exist. It means someone is able to do it right now. And we're chill with that, but worried about AI?

No doubt a bunch of autonomous weapon systems linked into a C&C could cause considerable bloodshed. Given that most of the existing weapon systems of that kind are essentially suicide drones, it'll still be limited damage.

Human-killing virus? Still need a means of creating and delivering it.
Nuclear war? We have humans in the loop.
Drive us all insane with AI-slop TikToks? A few percent of humanity still don't use that.

So what is the actual scenario ? When someone shouts "AI will kill us all", why don't we ask them "how, exactly" ?

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 37

Engineers need to remember that time exists.

You have three months to teach a teen how to control a robot with a microcontroller.

OK, how much of that do you budget to CS and assembly?

Month 1: Architecture and data structures? You have 18 40 minute periods and maybe homework assignments.

Half of the class won't even gain mastery in that time. By time your class is over they will still be having memory management problems.

So then you've failed to achieve the goal.

There are engineers who remember that time exists and for the rest we have engineering managers. Not ideal, just how it is.

To be sure engineering schools are doing a bad job at teaching reality. Even in a dx/dr environment, it's so weird.

Comment Re:Ok, but⦠(Score 5, Insightful) 155

Considerably more difficult than you imagine. Between them, they have almost 70 command-line options or flags. Taking into account that many of those behave differently depending on the presence or absence of other flags, there's a couple hundred different code paths. Then you need to handle directories, files, sparse files, sym- and hard-links, on and across different filesystems, not to mention the various file-like things scattered around (pipes, streams, etc.)

It's not rocket science, but neither is it trivial.

Comment agencies (Score 1) 165

agencies can't be trusted to oversee themselves.

We knew that. But now we have proof.

Will anything happen because of that? Nah, I don't think so. A few token gestures maybe. A friendly mail to everyone saying to write better reasons, followed up by an informal mail that tells them to ignore the previous one.

This isn't a mistake. It's intentional. The more arbitrary and uncontrolled the police can act, the more it is feared, the more it is a tool for oppression and not a part of civil society, the more likely the cops will stand on the side of the powerful when there are protests or uprisings against the increasing oppression and economic divide.

Comment Re: You're shitting me! (Score -1) 165

Exactly. It's a field they are told to fill in, but don't care.

If a police chief "stood in front of a city council and asked for permission to install hundreds of cameras just so his officers could investigate the high crime of 'haha,' they would be laughed out of the room," argues the EFF blog post, calling this proof that agencies can't be trusted to oversee themselves.

Don't be so stupid. Don't confuse what officers put in an unrequited field on a form with actual, legal reason.

The field, based on the summery was not required to be filled-in since many users left the field blank and still their search happened.

No one is contending that the "reason" an officer performed a search was because "haha", the officer (obviously) didn't care to type anything meaningful in the (unrequired) field. If your complaint is that nonsense was entered into an unrequired, unverified field on a form, it's a very weak argument/small problem.

Comment Re: Cost... (Score 1) 122

Ride sharing also covered far wider service areas than taxis. The canonical example was it was really easy to get a taxi in Manhattan but quite difficult in the Bronx or Queens. Ride sharing covered the non-Manhattan boroughs much better.

NYC only has so many taxis, and the easiest place to pickup rides and keep busy is to operate in Manhattan, not in the Bronx or Queens...

Comment Re: Just stop ... (Score 1) 122

My point was, simply, if the costs get too high, there's nothing keeping them in CA. They don't have employees, they don't own cars, they don't have maint. Facilities, etc - they just have an agreement to skim a certain amount of money off the top of every drive. If the amount they skim gets too low, "the juice might not be worth the squeeze"...

Ride share companies can stop operating in a city, state, etc for any period of time, from hours to days, with nothing more than a simple programming change.

It is possible for CA to regulate the ride shares out of the state - and if that happens, that leaves a whole lot of "gig workers" scrambling to find work. I'm not saying it's likely, I'm saying there's very little keeping them there if the regulations get to onerous.

Comment Re: If they could, they would (Score 1) 122

They're already "behind automated technologies". No, the gig workers have nothing to lose. They're getting exploited now. You can't outsource their job to Bangladesh.

You lack imagination - the drivers have no leverage - Lyft, Uber, etc can choose to leave a state and make it happen within a few hours, and, as the drivers aren't really full-time employees of the ride share companies they 'gig' for, they really have no advance warning protection that I can see.

If drivers demand excessive compensation and ride share companies can't make a profit, the companies will just close up shop.

What will stop them?

Comment Re: Service fees (Score 1) 122

He'll run. The political consultants are salivating at the donations this guy can attract, and the consultants are paid a percentage of the as buys they make on behalf of a campaign.

There is absolutely no way Newsom won't be in the 2028 Primaries. He may not make it to the General election, but there's no way he'll sit out the election - just ask yourself why he's traveling to all these random states for the mid-terms?

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