You're talking about current AI. There's scant reason to believe it's going to stop improving. AI molecule folding just keeps getting better. Larger and larger systems are being "understood" correctly (i.e., the predictions about how they will act are borne out). In many areas AI is already better than "experts in the field".

You *could* be right, that it won't get better at your job, but you tempt me to call you "John Henry" ("John Henry drove 16 feet, and the steam drill only drove 9" and "he laid down his hammer and he died").

Sorry, but no.

I mean, on the one hand, sure, eventually _something_ else will displace the US dollar as the world's leading reserve currency, because that's how history works: nothing stays in a dominant position forever.

But the statement you added "yet" to was much more specific. And no, Communist China's ridiculous "dedollarization" propaganda campaign is not going to have any measurable impact on the dollar's dominance, any time soon. Among other things, the RMB has never been anywhere near stable enough to make it into the top five currencies, and as things stand now, it looks to only be getting worse. It's relatively heavily traded, but it's not stable, at all. (Contrast with, say, the Canadian dollar, which is stable enough but nowhere near heavily-traded enough.)

The further into the future you try to look, the more difficult it is to see clearly, but if I had to predict based on what we know now, I'd say the currently-existing currency that is most likely to eventually unseat the US dollar would probably end up being the Euro; the Pound Sterling and the Japanese Yen are potentially also in the running. History is seldom predictable, and it'll probably end up being something we cannot forsee right now; but even something like the Brazilian Real, has a much better shot than the RMB, which will never be stable with the CCP in power, and probably cannot survive the CCP's collapse.

As for gold, that's not new, at all; we know what its role is, and that isn't changing. People have always turned to precious metals as a reliable store of value whenever financial times are tough. And that generally works except when new technology messes things up (e.g., what happened to the price of aluminum when people figured out how to do high-temperature electrolysis). For gold, the most likely new technology to mess it up would be if somebody managed to devise an energy-efficient way to extract the dissolved gold from sea water; but even then, gold would still be a precious metal, just not quite *as* precious as it is now. (The total amount of gold in the oceans, is only a few times the quantity of gold in circulation, and less than the amount of silver in circulation.) Short of affordable transmutation (which would be *much* more disruptive than just lowering the price of gold), I can't think of any other way to turn gold into a base metal like aluminum.

Honestly, I can't think of a single use case for bluetooth on a desktop computer, that isn't better served by some other set of physical-layer and data-link-layer standards.

For a cellphone, yes, it makes sense to have e.g. a bluetooth headset.

On a desktop computer? Are you kidding? I don't even. *Maybe* on a laptop, but even that is a bit of a reach.

With that said, Windows 11 is undeniably a terrible OS option for a desktop or laptop, either one. Its main use is to make a modern multicore 64-bit system with gigabytes of RAM, perform like a Pentium-era single-core system with RAM measured in megabytes, spending most of its time ignoring user input while it swaps memory pages in and out. In case that is an era of history that you wanted to revisit, for some reason. Nostalgia for the Good Old Days, perhaps. Enjoy.

I'll be over here using a system with a virtual memory subsystem that actually works, and an update subsystem that doesn't try to store half the internet in virtual memory every time there's an update. Because I like being able to actually *use* my computer. Call me crazy.

That has nothing to do with the comment you replied to. I was talking about Trump's cluelessness what is needed to retain the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency which is at best weakly related to its valuation relative to other currencies.

Only if hedge fund managers don't understand how the Fed chairmanship works. Trump can't replace Powell until February 2026, when Powell's term expires. Not unless Trump can make the case that he needs to be removed for cause, which would require evidence of misconduct, not just policy disagreement.

Honestly, I think there are probably more such users on Libera chat (the largest IRC network) than on Slashdot at this point.

That does look pretty bad, Tom Arnold in the Tom and Arnie picture just jumped out at me as having the uncanny valley thing going on which shouldn't be a thing with real photos of real people.

All the more stupid because they're 4K AI upscales of 1080p of... 35mm movies. They could have just gone back to the film and rescanned it. I'm guessing laziness is a factor here? They'd rather spend gobs of money on a computer doing this thinking, despite decades of experience telling us otherwise, that computers will just do the job without any problems, than laboriously check a scan frame by frame for film artifacts.

What is it about directors crapping over their own movies like this? First Lucas with the "enhanced" OT, now this? I expected better of James Cameron, he's notoriously perfectionist, but apparently he doesn't actually care if it's any good any more before slinging it out the door in the name of marketing.

Yes. There's this society where people say some convicted felon is good and should make all decisions. They attack anyone who disagrees, belittling them and sending them death threats. So obviously, that makes them less likely to embrace being told what to do by "AI", because they'd rather be told what to do by "convict".

Agreed. The industrial capacity and expertise in China today dwarfs the American equivalent. The size of the population does too (= more intellectual cream on top, because the cup is bigger). The proximity and access to emerging and established Asian markets through both land and sea is better than America's. And btw, the Chinese aren't using the ISS. They've already built their own space station.

Well, advanced lithography equipment isn't easy to make, so it's not surprising they're having problems. If they solve those problems it will be a permanent benefit to them.

Also, there's no particular reason to believe that "the AI bubble" will pop. Certainly parts of it will, but other parts are already solid successes. The rest is "work in progress", which, of course, may fail...but the odds are that large portions will succeed. (Much of the stuff that's "not ready for prime time" is just being pushed out too quickly, before the bugs have been squashed.)

Because it takes effort to actively remove functionality? Things break as much when you remove things as when you add new things.

It is like thinking of a Trillion, except that it is backwards.

Well done! You now understand logarithms! Here's a slide rule, please sit anywhere you like :)

That's because their role models in America are con-artists and rich brats. When society accepts and encourages the rot, it's no wonder kids pick up on it.

Micro-reactors create more nuclear waste per amount of power generated than do standard reactors. But there are special use cases where they would be preferable.

Well, the army is probably only significant to it's neighbors. Transporting lots of troops is difficult and expensive. The navy and the air force, however...not to mention the hypersonic missiles.

When talking about people and environmental effect, the general rule is "your model is too simple". Probably both have a common cause AND there is some direct effect. And also something the study didn't consider (though nobody knows what..perhaps air pollution or micro-plastics).