My thoughts exactly! I have a few (very old) copies of Wikipedia hanging around somewhere. I should go torrent a fresh copy. Way back when, I used to keep a text-only copy on my phone (Kiwix, which appears to still be a thing) for when I didn't have data. I bet I still have that SD card somewhere. I think it was about 10GB uncompressed back then.

I guess it goes to show how stupid and greedy these AI companies are. I'm sure that a lot of the primary training data for most models *is* Wikipedia. So letting all these AI bots go nuts hitting the public servers over and over again for slightly updated content is just plain lazy. Grabbing diffs from a mirror every month and updating a local copy isn't even hard, or maybe just spend an infinitesimal amount of that VC money on a Wikipedia API subscription. Sheesh.

I sincerely hope you're right about that, though it seems to me that stupidity itself isn't the problem we face, that would be greed combined with irrational fear along with the societal delusion that all of us are temporarily embarrassed billionaires, just waiting for our "big break". Spoiler alert: the big break isn't coming for *any* of us that aren't already billionaires.

My last phone was a moto G (2017) and it was the perfect size at 5.2". I just recently had to replace it with a (second hand) pixel device, not because I wanted one (I wanted another Moto G, but they're 7" now) but because it's (just) pocketable at 6.1". "Small" smartphones seem to not exist anymore. I don't care at all about "thin" phones either. I just want an android phone that fits comfortably in my front pocket and has 2+ days of battery. The Zenfone would have worked, but is expensive and att & tmobile only.

This study may be biased, but that doesn't change the fact that a single 12 oz can of soda can contain more than 40 grams of sugar. Most humans shouldn't consume more than about 100 grams of sugar per day, and 50 is more like it. Come on people. Have your sugar in your after-dinner dessert. If you're thirsty, drink water, or at least find a beverage that doesn't contain more sugar than a slice of cheesecake. Hell, drink beer. That's better for you than pepsi or whatever anyway. I wonder how much sugar is in Brawndo.

Sure, I've had those. Brown ales aren't my favorite, but Newcastle is one of the better ones for sure.

Ok, I'll give you that, though a well poured Guinness should have no more than about a half inch head on it. It does have a nice mouthfeel, though I typically prefer a heavier stout than Guinness when I'm in the mood for a stout.

I live in the US, though I can't stand "regular American" beer, which is mostly crappy "pilsner" at best, though there are a few good ones from Canada. I like German-style (dry, crisp) pilsner, and enjoy a hefeweizen from time to time. There is good Belgian beer, though I've not experienced it as particularly foamy. The English make ale I like (Bass for one, though I don't like it above 10C) and I like a good heavy porter or stout with dessert sometimes, but I mostly drink a locally brewed IPA or two with dinner. No such thing as too hoppy for me, though some varieties are better than others for my taste. I find it aids digestion.

10-20 years ago, there was a craft beer (mostly IPA) renaissance over here, and man were there some great IPAs, though unfortunately that has faded, as many of the good craft breweries get bought up by Inbev or other huge conglomerates and ruined. There are still a few good ones left, but at some point I'm probably going to have to start brewing my own.

I've never seen the point of a "head" on a beer. For me, it just gets in the way of being able to actually drink the liquid, but I guess to each their own.

I'm all for science and research for it's own sake, but who actually wants foamy beer?

I love science fiction as much as the next person, probably more, but the headline is totally delusional. There's no way that's happening by 2050, though if we cut it out with the hair-brained schemes (and wars and other stupidity, like the race to be the world's first trillionaire) and actually continue doing (and meaningfully funding) the work of installing solar panels and other renewable energy sources everywhere, ideally in micro-grids, with distributed local storage and/or more long haul HVDC lines, we could not only have enough solar energy for Europe by 2050, but a good chunk of the rest of the planet too. That is not a technological problem anymore. Hasn't been for at least a decade. It's a social/political problem.

Hypercard + Internet (sort of) = WWW

Hyperscript influenced Actionscript, Applescript and Javascript.

Ahh, the "Mythical Man Three Decades"

Yes! I've been approached by hummingbirds in the wilderness on more than one occasion. I also feed them, and have experienced the "Hi! we're here!" buzz when they first arrive, even though I usually have the feeders out several days before they arrive by monitoring the hummingbird migration map, but they are curious and seemingly interested in us for reasons other than sugar water. I usually get a "See you next year!" buzz before they leave in September too. I've observed them observing me while gardening. I really do wonder what they think about us.

It won't, unless (and that's a really big unless) human coding keeps improving and the LLMs are carefully, iteratively updated to take advantage of the best written code there is. That's not happening, and is increasingly unlikely, IMO.

Ditto for any and all other text-based "machine learning" systems -- unless someone literally starts over building LLMs from scratch, and rather than using any old garbage they scrape off the web or pirated books or whatever, actually train it on well written, well understood (by humans) verifiable basic information that has been hand-selected (or at least classified) for accuracy and (such as can be determined) truth. This is no small task, and would require "Manhattan project" level work, and I don't think anyone wants to actually do that.

Absolutely this. I mean how hard is it to mic the actors saying their lines and bump that up in the mix, or even just make it the center channel, and have a volume for *just the dialogue* -- I used to have a 5.1 setup with a center channel speaker, and had a setup where I had volume control for all 5 audio channels, half the time that worked great, but the other half they didn't bother putting the dialogue full-on in the center channel, so turning that volume up didn't help. I mean WTF?!? It's like they don't *want* us to be able to hear the dialogue?!? Now I mostly just use the speakers in my TV, and often the dialogue audio is actually better than with the hi-fi setup, for whatever reason, but still occasionally can't hear it properly without turning it up uncomfortably loud, even using the "night mode" audio setting. I get that, yes, if you turn the volume up high enough, you can hear the dialogue just fine in most movies and TV shows, but it's sometimes ear-splitting loud at that level, especially for some titles, and sometimes I just don't want that and if you live in an apartment, or someone is asleep in the next room, that's just not an option. It's sometimes so bad that I want to put an audio compressor in the mix, but from what I've read, even that doesn't always fix the inaudible dialog problem. Sheesh.

Yeah, you're probably right that it's still not for everyone yet, but with a at least a little up-front configuration support, a lot of people could make the switch now and barely notice, since many people only need a browser and maybe office apps anyway. It's a heck of a lot easier to install, customize and manage a linux desktop now than it was even 10 years ago. Maybe still just out of reach for most non-techies without support, but it's tantalizingly close.