That was my main reaction to the story, which was actually interesting enough to keep me reading all the way to the end. I'm mostly focused on time these years, as in time >> money, but the details about how long this has been going on were pretty surprising.

Not surprised by the ineffectiveness of the slow humans in getting any attention to the matter. But that's also an ancient problem. All things support are classified as costs to be minimized. Most profit from ignoring complaints and hope they go away or at least become moot.

My own theory of support when I was doing the work was hilarious. I thought support was my opportunity to make customers happy while learning more about their real problems. Sometimes I even learned about the services we needed to offer, which upper management found even more hilarious. Suffice it to say I didn't last so long in the customer-facing role... (And no, it didn't make me feel better just because the company went away after I walked. There was a time when I hoped we were building something that would last.)

Funniest joke of a pretty good crop, but reminded me of the joke about the first priority of the new Congress. Legislation for the de-Cheesecake-de-Factorization of the White House.

(I personally think they should go for a bunch of high-popularity low-complexity single-focus bills with the double goal of trapping any surviving YOB supporters so they'll get weeded out next time while pressuring the YOB to start using an autopen to handle all the unpopular vetoes.)

What we think about electricity prices is a purely subjective metric, but the objective metric is profit and that has no limit, so the masters-of-the-universe building more AI will obviously be driven to use as much electricity as they can get without limit. And to heck with the price effects on the natural idiots fighting against artificial so-called intelligence. Figures don't lie, but liars figure. Now with AI support!

Weak joke, but the recent one I liked was that Ukraine decided the election behind the scenes when they took out Putin's data centers before they could ramp up for this year's international election interference.

My personal problem with the genAI chatbots is that they are too good at telling me what I want to hear and I don't want to hear that! But everything is a personal problem when you look at it that way. I think I need to start identifying as a crazy old fool. (Where are those cries of "Hear, hear" coming from?)

I'm pert' shure he thinks that giving a thumbs down gesture while trying to lock eyes is violence. Gawd forbid sticking a note under the wiper asking some obscene question like "Do you approve and support starving children to death?"

Just joking. I'm sure you can't get insurance for any Tesla without proof of security cameras. LOTS of cameras. The way the laws work these days, raising the wiper to tuck a note under it would surely be some form of assault.

Thanks for the Interesting mods though I was sort of expecting sarcastic Funny. Not surprised by the uninteresting negative mods, but if Slashdot could afford to fix anything, then a sock puppet detector feature should start by looking at the possible inhumanity of negative moderators of Musk-negative comments. Obviously? What else does Elon want his AI to do?

Funny news but funnier if it's the beginning of the end of Elon's string of lucky throws. Oh wait. I forgot about his wagers on a certain recent election.

For whatever it's worth, many local Tesla owners have become so embarrassed by Musk's antics that they have pulled the logos off the hoods of their cars. Never been a lot of them around here, but they are distinctive enough to spot coming as I'm walking around, but now I have to look quick to try to check the back of the car to confirm what it was.

And I've never seen a Cybertruck in real life. Recently I've started noticing increasing numbers of that Chinese electric brand...

ACK for funny.

In that book I mentioned, the definition of "algorithm" was given as an example of an algorithm of how to read the book. I can't recall any other jokes in the book, but if he'd included "recursion" in the glossary (and the topic was definitely discussed in the book) then the corresponding definition would have been "see recursion".

These days anything I read might be an AI. Worse than that, an AI just telling me what it "knows" I want to hear.

Pretty sure I have a DEC stock certificate around here. What's it worth as a collector's item?

But from a more historical perspective I regard the DEC saga as another example of how good guys finish last in America. Which makes me think of Sun and the old H-P and Palm and... (I even asked an AI for more examples, but it failed to understand the question and couldn't even guess what kind of answer I wanted to hear. But still long and verbose.)

But it still makes me laugh when the bad guys "over-invest" in politics and get burned as badly as just happened. Such a shame about Florida, but the rest of it created near-terminal schadenfreude.

Just saw this hilarious joke from ol' Vardi: https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/t... We are so... How many guesses do you want for the missing word?

Oh yeah. About the actual story rather than the funny icon track... I told you crypto was intrinsically worthless. But y'all didn't believe me.

Gimme FUNNY! Funny mod points on Slashdot have more intrinsic value than cryptocurrency.

And I wouldn't have if y'all hadn't propagated the Subject and tricked me into looking at an AC context. But I only saw a few words from AC and they were void and without form or meaning.

Or fix the bug in the History menu for recovering recent tabs. (But perhaps that was a transient failure overlooked in the regression testing?)

Glad to see the story got so many Funny comments, but I think yours was an overlooked candidate in the race for best joke. I only found it on the search for "blame" because I'm waiting to see who the YOB blames for this. Heads will roll, and the YOB's own punkin' head can't possibly be among them.

But all of the options seem so pleasant. Hegseth has been worth firing since his first day on the job, but how can the YOB spin his own war as Hegseth's fault without mentioning those pesky Iranians? Actually lots of cabinet members with heads worth rolling, but what lies could persuade anyone, even the YOB himself, that they are at blame for this pesky election fiasco? Or I could dream big? Maybe the YOB will try to blame Vance and that could finally trigger them thar' cowards to invoke the 25th Amendment? (I still think that one of Biden's mistakes was not taking the 25th for a test spin and thus setting the stage for Harris to run as the incumbent. What if Biden had arranged for special periodic cabinet meetings without the president where the consideration of the 25th could be added to the agenda?)

Oh well. Mostly just glad to see what happened and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the YOB suddenly announces a bunch of pardons and his retirement, flying away in his YUGE jet. Or even if the YOB goes away via implosion.

Also I'd like to see the accounting on how much money Musk wasted, especially in Texas. Not a genius by any stretch, but a better gambler on average. (And I still laugh whenever I notice a Tesla with the hood logo removed.)

Closing joke based on the famous Churchill quote? Americans will eventually do the right thing after trying everything else. Sometimes even trying it twice.

Hmm... I just added an attempted joke about North Korean one-way taikonauts... But the story is pretty much expired on Slashdot Savings Time.

Pretty good, though I thought Yu and Mi (which you didn't use) are Korean names. Wiggle room for using North Korean taikonauts as more expendable. With one-way tickets?

For sarcastic values of Funny? Better of the two jokes the story "earned" and I lack the motivation to peruse the discussion in search of deeper thoughts.

Also no major thoughts of my own that I want to clarify through the effort of writing. I suppose I should look for something substantive about how the google went from a pretty good thing to such a major part of all the problems? Or even worse, how about a citation of the book Algorithms that spent an entire chapter on a rather interesting analysis of how the original Pagerank algorithm worked? Though gawd knows what sort of garbage the google is using now to justify the AI slop, especially the stuff coming from Google Maps where I would argue they have some of the best data to work with. Maps is maps and the human reviews are practically aching to be purified and distilled.