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Comment Re:Self-serving process (Score 1) 36

Just as they flag up copyright material, they'll flag up humans talking to each other as "AI". There'll be no way to talk to a human about the mistaken flag, there'll be no human verification of your appeal and your account will be closed without human oversight.

Honestly, self-serving or none, it's going to get harder to actually put any sort of content onto YT. On aggregate, that's probably a good thing because there's a lot of dross, but it's going to piss off the "influencers" no end.

Comment Re:that still exists? (Score 3, Insightful) 9

I ditched 'em years back, probably when they got acquired, so just took a look to see what they were about. They've accepted that Spotify et al. are really where it's at, and now all they seem to do is track what you listen to on those platforms and then offer suggestions.

I suppose if you're listening to multiple platforms, then having all that history consolidated in one place could be useful, but otherwise, I wonder how their recommendations are going to be any better than Spotify's?

Back in the day, last.fm was pretty awesome though. I found a load of new music through listening to them, which back then resulted in me actually buying physical media. I suppose now, even if they found me something new, the best they/the industry could hope for would be that I bookmarked it or something for a couple of plays later on.

Comment Re:perceived (Score 1) 240

> A "tool" that lets one programmer do the work of 20 means that 19 will be laid off,

For me personally, I'm looking forward to a future where I get to do *engineering* a lot more than I ever have done. For a few decades I've been trying to get programmers to engineer solutions to problems instead of just patch them. I've even pushed devops folks to engineer solutions too, so it's not just programmers. The point is, there's a difference between a "software developer" and a "software engineer", likewise a "devops analyst" and a "devops engineer". Assuming the name has been used correctly, the latter in both cases possess skills that no AI has yet assimilated. Never say never, but I can't see the current crop of AIs becoming capable of engineering either - sure, they might start putting logging and metrics in their code by default and claiming it's because they "get" engineering, but that's really not what engineering actually is. I actually think most employers will need a lot more engineers than they currently have - sure, that might mean some programmers/devops/QA get fired, but the actual engineers will likely be collecting a decent salary and likely will be turning out work pretty constantly too.

I'd also disagree with the 1:20 ratio, I'd say it was 1:2 in some cases, but 1:5 is probably a more reasonable guess. Tech CEOs blaming AI for job losses isn't a reliable source of information, nor are the tech-bros claiming their new model can do the work of 20 people or whatever.

Comment Re:Life? (Score 1) 197

> Anything that tastes or feels good IS BAD FOR TOU.

Probably, but we keep hearing "occasionally is fine" - all things in moderation.

As far as this TFS/TFA go, I'd like to see the government embarking on some education rather than moving straight to banning things. Alcohol is already on something of a decline in British society, so a bit of education might be all that's needed. Likewise ultra-processed foods and so on, there have been some news articles and documentaries on the subject, but something more sustained would probably do some good. Education won't solve every problem of course, but it might as well help those that it'll help. We've all had our self-destructive phases in our lives, and I don't imagine that will change, so rather than turning those into some sort of underground, illegal affair, just let people do it - they pay plenty of taxes to do it, so it's not all bad for society.

As for sex... get married. That takes care of that problem in more ways than one ;-)

Comment Re:Oh goodie (Score 1) 40

> Just what we need: the ability for anyone to publish a vibe-coded Android app.

No - AndroidStudio only lets you built the apps. To publish, you need to get through the labyrinth that is the Play Store. There you need to jump through several hoops to even get an account, and then you need to jump through several more hoops to publish an app to the test store. Getting to production... yes, more hoops. Oh, and then you *must* update something every 6 months or they close your account, leaving you with nothing to show for the many, many hoops you had to jump through.

Honestly, it's a wonder anyone ever actually manages to *publish* any apps at all.

Comment Re:Diabolical. (Score 1) 33

I'd say 'diabolical' could fit here, for these reasons:

1) Github is owned by Microsoft
2) VSCode, and it's extensions marketplace are owned by Microsoft
3) The data lost was far in excess of what any one developer with a malicious extension should have had access to

They, more than anyone else, could have/should have vetted the marketplace before letting their people install random crap from it. They could have potentially made VSCode more resistant to malicious extensions. They could have publicly vetted the marketplace so malware never got into it in the first place (so we all get the benefit), or even just vetted it down so that only their whitelisted extensions were available for their devs or whatever.

They also could have limited individual developers access to small numbers of repos, rather than giving them access to thousands that they probably will never so much as look at, much less ever actually work on.

They chose to do none of these things, and so someone used something they shouldn't have done. Probably a bit stupid, but in fairness, it's hard for random individuals of varying levels of skill to be able to properly assess the safety of an extension to their IDE. Especially as their environment is likely deceptive because they don't have any access to production networks, they mistakenly believe they don't have access to anything 'important'.

I'm astroturfing this link at this point, but all this on this backdrop: https://blogs.microsoft.com/bl... - so yeah, 'diabolical' fits.

Comment Re:No longer just SpaceX (Score 1) 120

I wonder who, if anyone will really "invest". I can well imagine a lot of people will be looking to ride the share price changes, but who's going to *invest* for multiple years at a time?

I ask because I'd imagine the first thing the collective shareholders will ask for is that the crappy bits of Musk Inc. get divested as quickly as possible. They're all going to be loss making - whatever notional value (say) Twitter has, it'll actually make way less than that when it gets sold off. None of that looks like a sensible investment at all. Again, by all means ride the share price changes around the announcements and actions, but invest... I don't get it.

Once all of that is out of the way... yes, you'll be able to invest in SpaceX, and it'll probably be worthwhile too. Just maybe wait 5+ years.

Comment Re:No company lasts forever. (Score 2) 79

Google have forgotten what good search is - I suspect the airy fairy 'designers' have taken hold, and are warping the managements minds with tales of how they're gonna optimise the user experience by leveraging some of the core assets, without boiling the ocean. or some such.

Aside from the search results being different from the thing you asked for, they have of course been adding in AI. I actually don't have a problem with that, in some cases it's good, albeit at the expense of the website that gave them the information in the first place. I also note that 'search' is no longer on the home screen of Google Play - that decision seems probably the most crazy to me. Even Cloud Console seems to be getting harder to find things in, although it does still have a useful search. Don't get me started on the so-called Search Console though - that thing is just a crapfest. I'm glad I don't work in SEO.

If I were running Google, I'd make it an internal law that all pages, everywhere in all circumstances need to have a search on them - that's the core reason for their existence, and so they ought to be promoting "don't remember, just search". They ought to be returning search results as honestly and quickly as possible - by all means come in with AI or the bullshit results afterwards, but give me what I actually came for right away.

As for the search market, I can't see Bing getting anywhere, and DDG needs a new name. There's no one else worth thinking about, and boring old search isn't gonna get any investment money these days, and you can't vibe-code a new search engine in a weekend, so sadly, they might be as good as we can have for some years yet.

Comment Re:Tax is the wrong term (Score 1) 24

If you're paying a million a year (and making 9 million) you definitely should be thinking how you can get off that platform. You could hire a bunch of AI-wielding programmers and devops to make a site just for you for less than half a million a year - and actually run it professionally enough too - no vibe coded crap. I'm sure there are other providers who would love to host your well visited content and so whatever other services for less than substack charges.

Usually sites offer discounts on volume, because there's no way it's costing substack a million, or even half a million to run the site for that one content creator. Without the discount, they're just opening the door to competition - which apparently is happening on quite a scale.

Comment Re:Isn't this about 25 years too late? (Score 2) 58

Probably what you describe is part of it, for sure. However, the EU has been on a general trajectory of self-reliance for eons. Trump V1 was a bit of a motivator, and Trump V2 is an obviator.

Microsoft has always been something of a problem for the EU though. It's interwoven into everything, and yet it's rounded disliked, if not hated. Those two points are really indicators that something in the market isn't working - if you're everywhere, you must surely be 'popular'? The thing is, it's hard to find anyone who actually says "yes, I really like Microsoft's products because..." - most of what you get is "we use it because we have to", or if you speak to the CIOs and IT departments, you hear "the others can't do all the things at once", or "we use that thing because we've got this thing".

Lastly, given MS's recent performance security-wise, making it a bit harder for them to operate seems like good business sense as much as anything else.

Comment Re:Teams harms civilisation..... (Score 1) 58

What's the meme..?

Slack has users, Teams has hostages.

Yeah, Teams is the poor stepchild of Slack for sure. Slack's also got 'apps' and webhooks and other integrations, which most people use to link it to their internal systems so it becomes a central place for all your communications and information updates.

What I would say is that Slack isn't great for actual meetings. It's fine for a "quick call", and if you're already text chatting with someone, it's better than zoom or teams because it just takes place where you want it. However, for several people, on a call, or external callers or whatever else, it's Zoom versus Teams. Zoom's better, but Teams is actually manageable if you have to.

Comment Re:No clue (Score 1) 65

I tried Wikipedia, but resorted to AI... it puts it very simply:

> Because space and time are linked, when gravity warps space, it must also warp time. This phenomenon is known as gravitational time dilation.
>
> The Rule: The stronger the gravitational field (the steeper the curve in spacetime), the slower time passes.
>
> The Reality: A clock sitting on the surface of the Earth ticks slightly slower than a clock floating in deep space.

Thanks for helping me get there :-)

Comment Re:No clue (Score 1) 65

Again, I'm no physicist, but my understanding of Relativity was it's the difference in velocity that causes time dilation - not gravity. That is, if you and I both leave the earth at the same time, but you travel 10 times faster than me. Someone on the ground somehow tells us to stop at the exact same moment, you'll think it was only an hour, where I'll think it was a day (or whatever). Gravity hasn't really got anything to do with that.

But then, I'm sure there are details to it I've either forgotten or never learned in the first place ;-)

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