Comment It's a plan... (Score 1) 186
Expect BMW to spin this as offering their customers free heated seats in exchange for viewing ads.
Comment "EA Ruins Things"... (Score 4, Insightful) 46
Now complete with garbage misogyny, antisemitic genocidal nutbaggery, and the rest of the horrible baggage of the Saudi Terrorist Crime Family.
Comment Re:(shrug) (Score 1) 53
But insofar as I can tell, that original 404 Media story largely amounts to "my friend heard from another friend that they're doing it with RARE books". Â\_(ãf)_/Â
Why would LLMs benefit from scouring RARE old books? What benefit would the rarity serve, when likely the texts are reprinted in umpteen subsequent editions that - to put it bluntly - nobody wants?
Are they buying an original copy of Samuel Pepys diary (first printings $4000) when they can get the umpteenth reprint for 17 cents? So yes, they're "destroying an old book" but rare? Why would they pay for rare?
You know how I know? Because I've been trying to unload a cache of 'rare old books' for a decade and nobody wants them.
1935 Platt & Munk Indian Series 3 pics â" Iâ(TM)ve only ever seen sets of 8, this is 16
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Maximilian I., der Grosse (2 pics) 1876
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Massive Norwegian Bible 1891?, rough shape, 7 pics gorgeous rebinding candidate, probably 14â x 10â x 4â?
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Worldâ(TM)s Great Classics, The Federalist Papers 3 pics, 1901
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Roman London â" 1926? 1 pic (contents on web at https://archive.org/details/in... )
https://photos.google.com/shar...
William the Silent 2 pics, 1911
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Knightâ(TM)s History of England, 4 vols, first American Edition, 2 pics 1880
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Guizotâ(TM)s Concise History of France 1881? 2 pics (Curiously, different than the version in the Library of Congress in that itâ(TM)s missing the printing date (see pics) â" LoC version here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/c... )
https://photos.google.com/shar...
A Guide to the American Battle Fields in Europe 1927 4 pics great maps.
https://photos.google.com/shar...
England and Germany 1740-1914 3 pics, 1918
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Schillerâ(TM)s Thirty Yearsâ(TM) War â" 3 pics â" 1897?
https://photos.google.com/shar...
History of the United States, vol 1
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Operation Greenhouse â" briefing pamphlet, 2 pics 1951 âoeRestrictedâ
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Home Life in Far Away Lands (textbook) 1928 clearly loved
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Simondâ(TM)s Travels in Switzerland Vols I and II , 1822
https://photos.google.com/shar...
5000 New Answers to Questions 2 pics 1933
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Union Now With Britain, 1941 4 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Advanced Geography 2 pics textbook 1925
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Christian Stockâ(TM)s Hamiletisches Real-Lexicon 3 pics, 1890s?
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Thoresbyâ(TM)s Letters 4 pics Vol I and II, 1822
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Praediekener 2 pics, 1760
https://photos.google.com/shar...
On the Field of Glory 1906
https://photos.google.com/shar...
A Primer of the War for Americans 1914 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Sabotage! The Secret War Against America 1942
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Vore Husdyr 2 pics 1902
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Maori & Settler 1900? 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
The History of England 2 pics Vol V, 1910?
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Gregg Speed Studies, Anniv Edition 2 pics 1929
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Parallel Source Problems in Medieval History 1912, 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Swedish New Testament 1886 4 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
A History Of France, Arlington edition 5 pics 1881
https://photos.google.com/shar...
A History of Western Europe 3 pics 1904
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Auswahl von Predikten 1829 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
World Politics at the End of the 19th Century â" 1902
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Republic or Empire: The Philippine Question by Wm Jennings Bryan SIGNED BY WM JENNINGS BRYANT 1899 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Psalmebog 1833 3 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Danish-English Dictionary 3 pics, 1845
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Collection of New Testament Histories 1805 3 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Slips of Speech 1922 3 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Biblehistorie 1888 no cover 1 pic
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Contes et Recits 1896 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
A Handbook of the War for Readers, Speakers, and Teachers 1918 1 pic
https://photos.google.com/shar...
FM21-100 Basic Field Manual 1 pic July 1941
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Look to Jesus 1904 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Seven Chances (play) 1924 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Sherwin Cody Nutshell Collection of Books 1927 3 pics 12 books (2 maps pictures NOT included in this set)
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Minneapolis and St Paul Street Maps including streetcar lines â" year not yet determined
Comment I thought this had finally started in 2019 (Score 1) 171
https://www.science.org/conten...
I guess not.
Comment Re:Who's providing the "incentive" to do this. (Score 1) 162
It would be interesting to know what the numbers look like in terms of schools that are actually doing something at least modestly Apple-specific vs. ones basically reusing chromebook-focused plans on Apple hardware.
Anything you hand out is going to be 'a platform' and normalize it for the students(not necessarily a point in its favor; people tend to resent the deliberate limitations of hardware that IT has been told to at least try to make less useful for porn and cheating); but there is a potential difference in versatility and vendor flexibility between people actually adopting some macOS stuff and people concluding that chromebooks have been getting more expensive at an alarming clip, without feeling any less cheap, so Apple is now genuinely competitive even if you are just going to slap managed chrome on there and reuse your existing, chromebook focused, IT and curriculum stuff.
Anything you hand out is going to be 'a platform' and normalize it for the students(not necessarily a point in its favor; people tend to resent the deliberate limitations of hardware that IT has been told to at least try to make less useful for porn and cheating); but there is a potential difference in versatility and vendor flexibility between people actually adopting some macOS stuff and people concluding that chromebooks have been getting more expensive at an alarming clip, without feeling any less cheap, so Apple is now genuinely competitive even if you are just going to slap managed chrome on there and reuse your existing, chromebook focused, IT and curriculum stuff.
Comment (shrug) (Score 4, Interesting) 53
Millions of books are dumpstered every day. MILLIONS. Ever go to a library used book sale? Ever notice that - in MOST cases - 75%+ aren't purchased, even at 50-cents a book?
Sure, some get donated but a lot of book donation places are filtering as they don't need a 100th set of Encyclopedias from 1981.
I know of at least a couple of organizations that fill 20' containers and send to some associated groups in Africa to provide books for kids, but "Morning Glory Milking Farm" as well as Chilton's 1999 Pontiac Minivan manual isn't going to make the cut there either. It costs $ to ship them and they don't have money to waste.
Largely...they get thrown away/pulped. For some reason I'd once noticed that a local library (part of a county-wide metro association) was dumpstering books. Like... a LOT of books - talking a half-full 5 yard dumpster EVERY WEEK. I'd look and there were dozens of heavy duty black garbage bags FULL of books, and not just shitty old ones, there were multiple copies of popular fiction titles, NEW periodicals, all sorts of good stuff. I recognized the dumps were clearly by section as one night several bags would be "history" for example. In the bags they were totally clean too.
I probably dumpster dived 1000 books over the better part of a year, before my wife drew the line bringing home 1-2 shopping bags (eventually i just left a heavy-duty recycling tub in my car for it...) every week. I'm a big reader but that's a lot.
This was a library in an extremely wealthy suburb of 50,000. So I called them and asked about it. IMMEDIATELY the library *insisted* they only threw away damaged books. When I provided pictures, they claimed they were moving to a new facility and someone was just being a little overzealous in their cull.
Their new building was - I shit you not - MAYBE 50 yards away.
Anyway, the point is, I am saddened by the loss of any book, but let's not cry fake tears over this just because it's AI and people are 'shocked' to find out that the public doesn't give much of a shit about books anymore. Because they don't.
Comment need standards for queries (Score 1) 100
It feels like the simple requirement of needing a warrant to search rather than "bored officer looking up his ex" would solve 99% of these issues.
Comment Re:that's a dumb take (Score 1) 83
Maybe you're just committed to rage (look, it's Mr Social Media) but IT SEEMS like you're "too stupid" to see that I was very, very specifically criticizing the commenter in the story that complained "How many people does it take to run a data center after taking up all this property and all this land that could have been used for something else?" eg, that data centers don't provide satisfactory employees per area numbers (when that land likely was being used for agriculture, which is generally EVEN FEWER employees per area).
That IS a stupid take.
What's even stupider is misreading my comment as some sort of criticism about agriculture, which it wasn't even faintly.
L2READ, dipshit.
Comment Huh? (Score 2, Interesting) 48
"The biggest being that the digitalization of content overall..."
Do they think what's on those discs isn't digital?
Do they think what's on those discs isn't digital?
Comment Re:Why is Microsoft doing this? (Score 5, Insightful) 77
I suspect that Microsoft, not unreasonably, thinks that the value of their AI slop will be enhanced if they can use an existing property to get people to classify particularly grating AI slop so that they can tune their copilot-related stuff to produce less grating or less obvious slop in the future.
Maybe someone in the org actually cares about linkedin's reputation as a hellscape for aura-farming lunatics; but I'd be shocked if the incentive that MS is actually motivated by is anything but the chance to get a dataset of text ranked by how unpleasantly bot-like it is to try to make their bots less visible.
Maybe someone in the org actually cares about linkedin's reputation as a hellscape for aura-farming lunatics; but I'd be shocked if the incentive that MS is actually motivated by is anything but the chance to get a dataset of text ranked by how unpleasantly bot-like it is to try to make their bots less visible.
Comment Ah, I see. (Score 1) 77
Looks like Microsoft is trying to convince people to classify more and less distasteful bot slop for them so they can tune copilot outputs in the future.
The winning move is not to play.
The winning move is not to play.
Comment legal... and financial liability (Score 2) 64
Let's make sure we make in the legal framework to ensure anyone hosting/building llms is held legal& financially liable for any damage they cause?
Comment Re:that's a dumb take (Score 1) 83
You know most agricultural work in the US DOESN'T require importation of menial workers, right?
According to grok by value, only 15-25% of farm production requires menial labor, eg migrant workers.
Robotics are likely to significantly reduce that.
My point was that it's just a silly take to say "look at all this land that could have been used for something else" (presumably employing more people) when in fact most of the large swathes of agri land in this country barely employ anyone.
It's like complaining about data centers "using up" 17bn gallons of water when golf courses take something north of 500bn gallons and not saying a word about that.
Comment The Age Assurance I want... (Score 3, Insightful) 44
...is the legal framework that I can hand my logins and all digital accounts to my heirs and assigns upon my death.
I'm going to provide them all the passwords etc regardless but I'd very much like the legal framework to recognize this.
Honestly my biggest challenge is keeping track of all the logins and remembering to update "that document" when I make changes. It's another reason I refuse to (only) use biometric unlocks on devices. There are plenty of use cases I can imagine where I might need someone to unlock something and I'm not present.
Comment that's a dumb take (Score 1) 83
How many people does it take to run a data center after taking up all this property and all this land that could have been used for something else?
You mean like farming, where hundreds or thousands of acres are only "worked" by a handful of people or less? I think there are scores of reasons not to cover the world in data centers better than "but they take up space".
