That's the joke I was looking for, but Slashdot failed again. Either at the comment level or the moderation level, and I don't even care enough to search to find out which.

Tracking license plates is nothing compared to tracking the MAC identifiers.

That's the joke I was looking for, but considering the current state of today's Slashdot, I wonder how many of today's visitors to the website even know that that own smartphone keeps a list of all the MAC IDs for the Wi-Fi networks it has connected to at some point in the past.

Oh, wait. I only learned about this recently.

But I suspect there are some places like China and the US of Surveillance where they are logging LOTS of MAC data. And now developing the AI systems to analyze it. Why aren't you laughing yet? You think you have a solution approach?

Hmm... Only "insightful" comment in the FP branch? Maybe the moderators have been replaced with genAIs?

(And no Funny anywhere, as expected.)

As regards the story I'm remembering a recent MIT video. Long section about how to make AI work with the course. On the negative side, it recommended an anthropomorphic approach, basically treating the AI as though it were a human collaborator, but with "usage limits" to keep it in a subordinate status. On the positive side, I forgot. Maybe I should ask an AI for help?

I'm feeling increasingly bleak about the future of humanity. We definitely need to change the reference frames of our thinking, but we humans have never been that quick on our wits. In theory I think we could learn how to think about problems at new levels of abstraction that would make the AI tools useful, but in practice the tools are changing faster and faster all the time and we are already past the point where we humans can keep up with them. They have become almighty black boxes, spewing words that appear meaningful while we have no clear idea how the words are being created.

The YOB just wants to get his own beak wet and Bernie is worried about people getting hurt. The motivations matter.

Sam Altman's use of the same words may be more troublesome. He sometimes sounds like he understands the risks there.

Too bad there's no funny here. And the FP branch was disappointing, too. Didn't lead anywhere interesting before I lost interest in following it... Both par scores for Slashdot these years. Almost enough to make a nerd want to invite comments from a genAI: "What is the best joke for this story?"

This thread is supposed to be about wrongs that aren't necessary?

Or perhaps some sarren of the horde of sarrens intended "necessarily"?

Symptoms of something. Would that it would be funny something? Just on my way out the door, but an even less amusing visit than average. Am I diverging from Slashdot or is that just necessary? Necessity was the mother of a better website I hope to find somewhere?

(Irrelevant failed joke of the day, since I always feel the need to go a bit tangential and I already used the on Bluesky: Is it necessary to vote for Rumplicans or Dumbocrats? R where their noses are or D for belief in flying elephants? ROFLMAO. Not.)

Musk has no wife that I know of. Only contractual sperm recipients? Or maybe he's converted to one of those religions with the sister wives? But if you tried to film a Bond movie with the villain based on Musk, no one would believe it.

Why the FP brain fart? Or am I just reflecting too much.

I actually started using GitHub for a new project, but without the Copilot seasoning... Which somehow led me to these rants of the day?

So how do y'all feel about Microsoft's new Copilot websearches? It seems to me that the successes are minor and forgettable while many of the failures are spectacular far beyond merely being wrong. The better to sell more advertising? I wonder if some AI can explain to me how this makes economic sense as the stock markets tumble to new highs, TACO and NACHO notwithstanding. I'd websearch the google, but that has become even more ridiculous. And my last short question to DeepSeek apparently drove it insane?

Meanwhile, the people who appear most influential in today's world appear to be divided between a league of Bond villains and a gaggle of pompous puppets, with the biggest and most orange puppet playing with nuclear weapons... Not seeing a path to human survival in this mess.

So I should go for a joke? Something about no wife, but several contractural sperm recipients? Or how about the Bond villain who has sent his own family to Argentina to protect them from the mess he's making in the country where his money and influence comes from? These are the (negative) resolutions of the Fermi Paradox we have all been looking for? (With the usual spirited apology to the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi?)

That's actually the area of my interest. This would seem to be a natural situation for local power grids without the need for investment in long distance high voltage transmission. There can be an advantage to skipping over the earlier technologies if you pick the right stuff. The problem is knowing what "right" means because that's largely dependent on the "maturity" of the technologies in question.

But where is the angle to go for the funny? I'm not really seeing any good ones for this story. Something about the AI advice to investors in Africa? (Maybe something about what the AI said when it found Dr Livingstone?)

Mod parent funny. Too obvious and low-hanging for insight, if'n I ever had a mod point to give.

So is this a legal marriage or one of those common law things? Maybe the expenses you avoided involved the expensive wedding and so forth?

Trying to bridge to the "state of sin" joke that I was expecting on this story. Yours was the best of the jokes on offer, but I had much higher hopes for the story.

Me? If an AI certified the system as random, then I have my doubts.

Oh yeah, I suppose I better complete my citation of the ancient joke, hadn't I?

"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." -- John von Neumann, 1951

Should have picked a different room, but typical Japanese houses are so small...

That is exactly what it programmed to say, said exactly in the way it was programmed to say it. Even if we humans are too stupid to understand how the programming works. But what is it really "thinking"?

Last week's https://existentialcomics.com/... is relevant. SMBC often gets into the same territory, as in https://www.smbc-comics.com/co... from a few days ago.

But what's at the top of the list? I think it's a fundamentally fake problem: More profit. There is NO number of digits of profit that could possibly solve the need for more profit. Or you could call it the gold rush mentality. The result is that they will work really hard and with extreme energy feeding their greed. Another result is that "We can't get there from here" where here is any stable solution state. These CEOs are always looking for fresh pyrite.

In contrast, most people are normal and easily satisfied. They want a comfortable life and some leisure time to pursue their interests. But they aren't the ones making the "big" decisions and they don't have the resources to implement any major decisions.

The typical counterargument is that things are getting better, and that has mostly been true. However it's a long term average and the oscillations matter. I think the velocity and size of the oscillations is increasing, and there are many oscillations that can produce "game over" states by dipping below zero. How soon they forget the last (and greatest yet) financial implosion? (Just one example. Population oscillations are probably the most threatening from the Darwinian perspective.)