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Comment Re:Wrong major (Score 1) 62

Anybody trying to get a degree in "AI" right now that takes them out of the workforce for 4 years is going to get an incredibly rude shock when they graduate and find that most everything that doesn't relate to fundamentals (like data science, OSI, etc.) they learned is no longer relevant.

Yeah, you've nailed this. This part of TFS made me laugh:

"This is so cool to me to have the opportunity to be at the forefront of this," one 18-year-old told the New York Times.

LLMs aren't new any more, given how fast the computing industry moves in general, though they are still the hot thing. This kid is nowhere near the forefront in any way. This is just the latest development in a field that's as old as computing.

Remember how hot "prompt engineering" was at one point?

It's still relevant. In particular it's how you get around restrictions.

Comment Re: Trump will solve this problem (Score 1) 84

Time for the US to nationalise all things vehicle.

If they did that it would increase emissions a lot. They also have already tried to do that but courts ruled that a) California could still have its own emissions standards because California invented emissions standards as far as the US is concerned and b) other states which previously chose to follow California's emissions standards before the US had them can continue to follow California's.

Of course there's no guarantee that the conservative-owned SCOTUS won't change that again.

Driver licensing (including for trucks, busses etc).

The standards for operation of commercial trucks, busses etc. are already set by the federal government. States implement them but are not in charge of them, except for filling in the blanks left by incompetent and inadequate federal law as usual. Maybe you should educate yourself about the status quo before agitating for changes to it.

Comment Re:Renewable fuels? (Score 1) 84

Catch up to the Chinese on battery tech? They don't have any special battery tech.

Every battery company of note has proprietary electrolyte. The differences between one battery chemistry and another can be significant.

There's nothing special about Chinese EVs components, they're basically the same stuff everyone else is making their EVs out of.

Most of them are using Chinese batteries.

Comment Re:No ECC? (Score 1) 54

If you want a good example of how quickly these supposedly simple systems can get complicated, look into the CAN bus CRC bug.

It's not simple to figure out what you're talking about, a search doesn't return anything obvious through the flurry of marketing content.

This fault is present on EVERY system that uses the CAN bus

It applies to every CAN standard? There's like five of them.

basically any vehicle since the 1990s

Since after the 1990s, you mean? While there were a few CAN vehicles in the 1990s, it didn't really become popular until the 2000s because the interface chips were still relatively expensive.

Comment Re:What's wrong with an accounting trick or two? (Score 2) 19

Most of them aren't video cards as they don't have video output. A DAC and ports cost money that you don't need to spend to run LLMs. The other uses for these cards are mostly scientific, and there's not enough money in that to justify owning them. Perhaps the AI bubble crashing will lead to a push towards some kind of crypto still efficiently mined with GPGPUs. Eew.

Comment Re:even if they succeed it'll suck (Score 1) 31

There are 3 wheel cars on the roads now.

Yes, and they suck now.

Motorcycles are all over and often driven by morons; those things are death traps without any other cars on the road.

Generally agreed. They are also slow in common real-world driving scenarios, e.g. on twisty roads. You can't ride them at 10/10 in case you find a little patch of sand or oil as you will then die. I have been stuck behind sportbikes and superbikes in a 240SX with a stock motor a bunch of times, the motorcycles probably have 4 times the power to weight ratio but not enough traction. Also if you lose the front tire at speed you will likely die.

Aptera wants to create commuting vehicles that will be in the crush of traffic going 70+, and can lose pressure in just one tire and end up with just two left which don't naturally track straight. It's an insane proposition right on the face of it.

Comment Re:I still write about 15 checks a year... (Score 1) 135

Theoretical scenario, no?

Yes of course, but realistic in that skimming fraud is still occurring and it is still only really viable when involving the magstrip.

Going that route, the attacker can fill the whole damn card slot with epoxy, and no card, be it magnetic stripe or chip, can be inserted at all.

If you're doing an attack it's beneficial to have it not be noticed. Also most readers I have used have two different slots- an insert and leave one for the chip, and a slide through one for the strip.

Comment Re:3D printing wasn't the problem (Score 1) 98

I'll find out in mid January, lol - it's en route on the Ever Acme, with a transfer at Rotterdam. ;) But given our high local prices, it's the same cost to me of like 60kg of local filament, so so long as the odds of it being good are better than 1 in 8, I come out ahead, and I like those odds ;)

That said, I have no reason to think that it won't be. Yasin isn't a well known brand, but a lot of other brands (for example Hatchbox) often use white-label Yasin as their own. And everything I've seen about their op looks quite professional.

Comment Re:Old News? (Score 2, Informative) 114

Just put it in context: Today Russia struck the Pechenihy Reservoir dam in Kharkiv.
Russia launched the war because they thought it would be a quick and easy win, a step towards reestablishing a Russian empire and sphere of influence, because Putin thinks in 19th century terms. Russia is continuing the war, not because it's good for Russia. I'd argue that winning and then having to rebuild and pacify Ukraine would be a catastrophe. Russia is continuing the war because *losing* the war would be catastrophic for the *regime*. It's not that they want to win a smoldering ruin, it's that winning a smoldering ruin is more favorable to them and losing an intact country.

Comment Re:what is meant by serious? (Score 1) 77

Fortran has some optimizations involving pointers that are invalid in other languages like C. So it can be the absolute fastest outside of hand optimized assembly (which is very difficult to do better than a compiler these days). It also has advanced math libraries which are highly tested and optimized. So its niche is highly performant math and scientific programming.

Comment Re:Not going to happen anytime soon (Score 1) 135

It's too easy and they refuse to change.

It's not just "easy". Fax is as secure as the phone network we pretend is secure, so if you act on a fax which appears to come from a specific phone number then you have some level of legal protection from liability. If you use a website or email then you are only as protected from liability as your identity verification system.

My monthly bank payments are electronic, but a few don't have bank account destinations, so it gets done via the bank's paper check service.

If I need to deposit a check, I take a photo of it with my cellphone using the bank's app and it gets processed just fine. The MICR font is highly OCRable, so as long as what else is written/printed on it is legible, everything works well. Even if a human has to review it because it was handwritten, they will only have to briefly glance at most checks. The only thing I actually write checks for any more is my rent. The paper check costs me very little and they cost nothing to deposit on the other end. I think the landlord is depositing them in person, because they seem to do them two or so at a time.

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