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Submission + - AI Boosts Research Careers but Flattens Scientific Discovery (ieee.org)

erice writes: In a recent IEEE Spectrum article The authors studded papers "41.3 million English-language papers published between 1980 and 2025 in biology, chemistry, physics, medicine, materials science, and geology". They found that AI helped researchers publish more often and boosted their careers but the papers themselves were less useful.

Comment Slower than a bicycle though (Score 1) 171

"...about eight miles per hour -- barely faster than a brisk walk" -- I would challenge anyone to walk 8 miles in one hour. That is most definitely running at about 7:30/mile pace. Admittedly slow by automotive standards, but not the best analogy to start.

Sure, but definitely slower than a bicycle, which can easily manage 10mph in traffic. Being behind a bus is annoying as they are awkward to pass but you must pass them or be stuck at a reduced pace breathing diesel fumes.

Comment Re:Hold Up There Sparky (Score 1) 109

A smart TV can run on DDR2 or DDR3 grade RAM, which is not in competition with AI.

Not directly in competition with AI. However, DRAM manufacturers are motivated to move production where it generates the most profit. If DDR5 is where the money is, expect production to increase at the expense of older lines.

Comment Recruiters are not needed to fill remote openings (Score 1) 93

A recruiter's only function is to help fill openings that the client has difficulty filling on their own. Of course, he thinks remote work is dead, those reqs are easy to fill and, thus, few of them pass his desk. The money is in hybrid and fully in office reqs. Those are hard to fill because the candidates don't want them. More work for the recruiters.

Comment Re:So if your job requires precision and quality (Score 2) 26

You might not be replaced by AI just yet.

No. You can be replaced by AI even if your job does require precision and quality. At some point, the company will have to rehire people to replace those they laid off but the CEO gets to keep the bonus. And it doesn't mean they rehire you. Probably someone cheaper.

Comment Re: Holup (Score 1) 144

I pay cash for gas because it has a twenty cents a gallon discount versus a card.

Might be a regional thing, but here in central Florida the gas stations offering "cash discounts" are often still priced higher than other stations that don't play those silly games.

It is definitely regional. In California, stations that don't charge a higher price for cards are rare. It happens (I stumbled on one last week well outside my normal area) but it is rare. Card same as cash seems to be the rule in Missouri. Here is California, the stations that don't charge extra for cards tend to be in relatively low rent areas. Missouri is low rent compared to most anywhere in California.

Comment Well being aligns with power (Score 2) 23

The pandemic work from home move gave employees more power while managers and top leaders had a more difficult job as their control over staff was reduced. The decline in the job market and RTO have reduced employee power while making the jobs of management and top leaders easier. So, it is pretty natural that staff will feel reduced well-being while management enjoys a tighter grip on employees and easier hiring. Whoever gains power feels better than the ones who lost.

Comment Where are five character passwords allowed? (Score 2) 97

I'm surprised they found so many "12345" passwords. Not because it is a dumb password. It doesn't surprise me at all that people would try to use a password like that. It surprises me that, in an age when even useless logins require eight characters including mixed case, a number, and a special, that there were enough systems to allow all numeric five character passwords for "12345" to be popular.

Comment Re:What cancel-rebook sites (Score 1) 61

Certainly, I have never seen a cancel-rebook site. I do, however, do something similar manually. I will book a room or car well in advance with free cancellation terms. But I continue to shop. When better deals comes up, I make a new reservation and cancel the old one. When it gets close enough to the target date that I think it won't get cheaper, I may switch to a non-refundable booking to save a bit more.

Comment Is arithmetic that hard? (Score 1) 186

I see all the comments of people putting coins in jars and this is on a tech board where I expect most people to be reasonably good at arithmetic. Or is the problem that you don't have a reliable place to keep the coins? I seldom have more than five pennies or three quarters on me at any given time because I deliberately pay out whatever it takes to get the next denomination. If price is $1.24 and I don't have exact change, I could pay $1.25 that means another penny in my wallet but if I pay $1.29, those four pennies in my wallet become one nickel. Later, I might toss that nickel at a transaction to get a single quarter back instead of two dimes. And I never pull out a $1 bill if I have four quarters. The math is not that difficult though I do understand that it depends on me being able to keep my coins together and too many wallets have no useful coin purse.

Comment Re:A plant that burns nonexistent hydrogen. (Score 1) 76

Its chicken and egg. There won't be suppliers if there are no buyers.

It is not clear there will be suppliers even if there are buyers. Storing energy by making hydrogen is grossly inefficient. Even pumped hydro is much more efficient. It only seems to make sense if generation greatly exceeds transmission capacity for such a long time that no practical energy storage mechanism can buffer it. There are cases where wind farms are required to shut down but those are due to local weakness of the power grid and I don't think these wind farms have storage anyway.

Comment Has consulting companies EVER been cheaper? (Score 1) 16

Apart from offshoring, that is. In principle, they can save time as the company doesn't have to create and staff a team. Less charitably, they can reduce employee churn has the roles the company isn't sure it wants to keep are filled by disposable consultants. But I don't see how adding another company and associated management to the mix can reduce cost unless the people doing the work are just paid less. But the target company can do that too. Disclosure: I worked for Accenture for a while. It seemed pretty clear that our job was to perform the junk tasks that direct employees were not interested in doing.

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