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Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 1) 268

Yeah that changes the context somewhat. There's a difference between "We should remove the bi-annual time change, it's unhealthy" (which I agree with and would like to happen) and the wishful thinking "WhAt iF iT wAs SuMmEr aLl yEaR rOuNd" crap that seems beloved of legislators and others who sort of agree that the bi-annual time changes need to go, but have the worst idea of how to implement it.

This paper isn't advocating for keeping bi-annual time changes. It's advocating for standard time. And I agree standard time is probably a better approach, even if some people get butt hurt about the idea of it not still being light at 9pm in the middle of August.

It all depends on who you are optimizing for.

  • Parents with kids would do better on standard time, because they have to take their kids to school before work.
  • Everyone else with a 9-to-5 job may do better on DST, assuming a short commute distance, because sunrise at 7:20 instead of 8:20 just adds useless time before the morning commute, while sundown at 5:53 means driving home before dark.

There is no one correct answer, because which one fits your circadian rhythms better depends entirely on what time you wake up.

Comment Re:Abstract becomes practical over time (Score 2) 96

It's worse. OpenAI train on user conversations and monitor them for keywords, looking to scoop people's private ideas. This has been documented in individual instances, it is also implied in the terms of service, and it is common sense in a world where the primary training materials (books and web conversations) have been exhausted while the system shows no sign of improving on its own.

Luckily their financial ponzi scheme isn't going to last too much longer. Neither will Anthropic's.

Comment Alexa already "does whatever it wants" ... (Score 1) 46

I have a set of 5 Echo Dots around the house and ever since I "upgraded to Alexa+" -- it's a train-wreck. Sure, the AI gives much smarter answers to questions. But they continuously forget my preferences for the voice I chose for them to use. (My wife and I both prefer their "female 2, relaxed" voice, as most similar to the original and more "professional" sounding than the others.) But no, it keeps going back to a voice that sounds like a bubbly, annoying teenage girl. Worse yet, there's no way to set a voice as default for all devices. You have to go around changing it for each one independently.

And that's before all the creepy, info-stealing behavior it has. EG. Someone will come over and ask it a few questions. Next thing you know, it's asking them to share their name since it's a voice they don't recognize.

Comment Re:Maybe It's Unreasonable Public Records Requests (Score 1) 51

The private sector has a solution to all of this that "just works". You acknowledge the supply and demand. Swamped with public record requests? Great! Hire more people to handle them as their job description/title, and charge enough for them to cover their salaries or hourly contractor rates.

IMO, asking one group to pay $2.3 million for a records request is unreasonable. But why can't you ask all of them to pay a fair share so the process works smoothly and effectively for everyone involved? A qualified govt. contractor hired to fulfill FOIA requests is typically paid a midpoint salary of about $88K per year.

Comment re: TX as "The Republican state" (Score 1) 51

Fact of the matter is, TX has been more the extreme, modern Facist-Republican governed state than "traditional Republican" for decades now. It took a lot of people some time to come to that realization. But definitely by the 1990's, watching what was happening in Texas made me solidify my views as more Independent/Libertarian than Republican.

As just a couple of examples?

- TX passed a law requiring people get a permit to legally possess Pyrex glassware. (Thought was, if you weren't a research lab or a school, you probably only had it around your residence if you were making illegal drugs.)
- TX was well known for their "Vampire cops" who were legally allowed to hold a person down after they were pulled over, and draw their blood to check for alcohol.

The general populace of Texas doesn't necessarily reflect this at all, especially with so many liberal-minded people who moved there from places like California in recent years. But the people in political power there operate with a lot of support from those who like the traditional ideals Texas claims to stand for, while acting in ways contrary to some of those ideals.

Comment Re:Just for clarity (Score 1) 86

"Past performance is no guarantee of future returns" applies to any recorded dataset. Modelling a fictional being's mental states is fun, but stating that it is useful is premature.

The observed fictional being might be always sleepy in your dataset (because it's easier to record him when he's not moving much). And identifying the being's favourite colour (orange) may be irrelevant and wasteful in your model.

Comment Re:Just for clarity (Score 2) 86

If you observe yourself in the mirror, and see your reflection eating spaghetti, is it a useful framework to pretend that the spaghetti is real? If you're still hungry, will you reach through the glass to steal the plate from the other you? And should you first make a plan how to defend the loot, in case the reflection becomes angry and punches you in the face?

Comment Re:everything has to rust (Score 2) 30

Python isn't a glue language. It's the lingua franca of most programmers in the workforce at this point in history.

Try hiring some expert C++ programmers, or even competent Java programmers. They're in the minority. What you get instead is barely competent grads who only know Python. What do you do with those grads after you've hired them?

1) teach the grads a strongly typed industrial strength language so they can contribute.... eventually

2) develop your new projects in Python because the grads can be productive straightaway, and the long term issues with Python can be pushed off to a future manager.

Which brings me to my point: Python should be frozen as is. No more development. Tinkering with it just because some people want to contribute and get visibility in open source is not a good cost/benefit outcome for humanity.

Freeze Python. It's the modern BASIC. Move all the existing developers to a new, unrelated programming language project. Give them free reign to do whatever they want there.

Comment Re:But how do you know? - more data needed (Score 1) 90

So #1, I don't know...you could be right, but I am neither confident you're wrong or right. #2, even if it's not a deterrent, arrests are. If they drive a stolen car by a flock camera and it helps police find them and take them off the street for a few years, in a way, it has stopped them from stealing...at least until they get out, at bare minimum.

If they break into a car and the police look at the footage on the dashcam and see that they've kept their license plate out of view, but they are able to cross-correlate it with other cameras and figure out the plate number, then figure out where they drove that car, where it ended up parked, who got out, where they went, etc., then it can make arrests possible where it was not possible previously, making it *massively* more likely to be able to solve the crime.

The problem becomes when it turns into "show us all the plates that were near that spot within a few minutes of that time", and thus a fishing expedition.

Comment Re:Element Pro is not Open Source (Score 5, Interesting) 67

I call article shenanigans.

Element is a UK company. Which is not part of the EU. Why should the EU choose to use a non-European company, headquartered in a non-European country, with a non-European, non-compliant legal system?

The UK is already barred from offering unrestricted financial services in the EU, I expect communications services to be an area of concern.

Brexit is Brexit. The UK is out, and simply cannot be trusted with European communications backbones.

I may be willing to believe that there's been a tender process and their product is currently being evaluated, but on privacy grounds alone I doubt their product passes the bar unless they reincorporate in an EU country with 51% EU ownership, all other things being equal.

Comment Re:Crazy idea here... (Score 3, Informative) 90

It's the southern states which see comparatively little benefit from DST.
What I - and presumably many others - find amusing about this is Tom Cotton - loyal to the point of idiocy - not being loyal enough for His Master. I'd guess that Cotton is now seeing more mileage in separating himself from his Glorious dead duck Leader except that his position on this particular issue has been clear for some time.

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