Would have been a massive problem in Japan if it affected the New Years cards--but that tradition has largely died off in recent years. Yes, I, too, find it easier to send an email "agemashite". (Do repeated vowels qualify as a form of alliteration?)

Solution delusion? The postal services could make snail mail relevant again by having an opt-in database that maps email addresses to physical. Details cancelled for lack of interest and the timeout thing.

Mod parent Funny for the Subject, but I think it justifies a YOB joke. The tech link is the low-tech creators of the robotic tool in question... Premise of the joke is that my own handwriting is getting worse as I age, and I'm significantly younger than the YOB. Comparing my signature now to my signature of a few decades ago? I'm glad I so rarely have to sign anything now.

What if the YOB can't sign his own name in a recognizable way? Certainly can't use an autopen as much as he's screamed about that tool--so he has to use a robotic arm that clamps onto his arm and hand and the robot then uses his own fingers to hold the pen as it draws his signature. Technically NOT an autopen, right? But it clamps on so tightly (loyalty and secrecy over competency, as usual) that it is bruising his fingers. So when he signs the "executive orders" that are setting the dogs of ICE on the technical "furriners", the signing ceremonies are faked. The document has been signed in advance (in a secret closet where the robot arm is hidden). If they show a camera angle that seems to show pen on paper, then that's the AI fake. (But it becomes part of the joke that I used a generative AI to get the best "hick spelling" of "foreigners".)

Why feed the sock puppet and propagate the vacuous Subject?

In solution terms, it seems like a waste of time to say much, but I think the money could be cut off. Consider the numbers this way: Lots of targeting but only a few suckers. If some small fraction of the targets would help they could overwhelm the tiny number of suckers and prevent the scammers from getting any money.

I'm not saying the scamming spammers would become decent human beings. I'm saying that they would crawl under less visible and therefore less annoying rocks. In a few cases they might even decided that going straight is less work, but I'm certainly not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

Seems we are mostly in concurrence, but several confusing points in your comment.

I think the "time takes time" part was intended as something like "reading takes time" or "active professional society membership consumes time". Seems to be the kind of mistake I make too often these years, where my fingers apparently run off with a repeated word as I'm thinking about something else a few words farther on.

The part about divergent learning paths could be related to something I wrote about online courses, but I'm not even sure that was on Slashdot and it was several days ago, wherever it was. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was a story about Coursera acquiring another online learning platform, but the most memorable detail was a multi-billion dollar valuation. In relation to reading, I think it's a more difficult question. Obviously one of the main writing skills is knowing what to leave out, but as a reader I usually feel like I should try to read the entire thing and "capture" as much as I can of the author's state of mind.

Mod parent funny. But so far the joke seems to have sailed right over the heads of the moderators.

My new "tech joke" attempt involves a different kind of computerization. It's a conspiracy joke about the bruised hand. The YOB can't sign his own name now, but he can't admit that he's using Joe's autopen, so they made a robot arm that clamps over his arm and fingers and guides them in signing documents. It clamps on a bit too firmly, but they had to focus on loyalty and secrecy over competence (as usual) as they were building the device in a secret closet somewhere.

The signing ceremonies? Faked. The documents are signed before he even opens them. If they want to pretend they are showing a camera angle with the pen in action, then that's being handled with AI video (AKA AI slop) now.

*sigh*

s/along/a long/

Yeah, one of the things I like about Claude (and Gemini 3 as opposed to 2.5) is that they really clamped down on the use of "Oh, now I've got it! This is absolutely the FINAL fix to the problem, we've totally solved it now! Here, let me write out FIX_FINAL_SOLVED.md" with some half-arse solution. And yep, the answer to going in circles is usually either "nuke the chat" or "switch models".

Pretty sure I tried that but failed. I actually suspect it is some kind of manual problem related to minimizing FP abuse?

In my list of dimensions of evaluating generating AIs, I forgot three of the most negative ones. Criminal profitability is pretty obvious, though the crooks don't show their profits so you'd have to steer backwards by assessing their efforts, presumably correlated with the most profitable scams. Another negative dimension is related to "best for generating AI slop". The third that comes to mind is "best support for self harm". And I'll probably think of a couple more as soon as I click the Submit button...

I think you mean "effective opposition", but that's along story.

In solution terms, perhaps each YOB supporter should be obliged to talk to a couple of "nice" foreigners long enough to learn how much disgust the YOB is producing everywhere in the world. I think three minutes should suffice.

And in the process of feeding a troll and propagating a vacuous Subject, too.

Funny story time. I knew one of the seminal trolls many years ago. Perhaps he thought he was a flame warrior? When I first encountered him he was actually a master's student in the same department where I got my CS degree. He just loved being a nasty offensive and trollish person, apparently for the sake of being nasty.

Later on I heard that he was working in a fast food place, perhaps flipping burgers. Hard to imagine a person with his personality at the counter. Later I heard he had died. At that time I actually wanted to discuss his history in terms of "lessons to be learned", but the reaction was "We mustn't speak ill of the dead." (Which may remind you of one of the YOB's latest gaffes.)

Yeah, I'm going for Funny again. And failing. As usual.

But if I had been asked which feature I WANTED to pay for, then disabling the AI is much more likely the feature I would donate for than the feature to add "AI" to Firefox in the first place. If I WANT AI, then I know where to go looking for it. I've "played" with lots of the so-called generative AIs--and so far I hate them all and I am currently unable to imagine the "project pitch" that would persuade me to donate for that feature.

But maybe they could ask the AI to write such a persuasive proposal that I would donate to pay for adding AI. However my counterproposal is that you don't hold your breath while waiting for my donation.

I'm still looking for a useful comparison of the AIs. For example, on the dimension of best apologies, I think Copilot is first with Google's Gemini running second. On the dimension of most sycophantic, I think DeepSeek is the leader but it's a close race for second among several candidates. Then there's the dimension of programming support, where I actually like ChapGPT. Has anyone tried to assess the various AIs on their hallucinations? I'm inclined to give that prize to Gemini, but perhaps only because it's always in my face when I visit the formerly nice Google search. But on the dimension of utility so far it seems to be an aggressive race for last place.

[And what's with the graying out on Slashdot? When I first saw the story it had only three comments but was unclickable. I'd think I should know after so many years, but...]

Yeah, when thinking of the typical air fryer market, think "working mom with kids who wants to serve something nicer than a microwave dinner, but doesn't have the time for much prep or waiting". You can get those mailard reactions that microwaving doesn't really get you, nice crisping and browning of the surface that you normally get from an oven, without having to wait for an oven to preheat. I don't think anyone disputes that an oven will do a better job, but the air fryer does a better job than a microwave, which is what it's really competing against. They're also marketed as easy-clean, which again is a nod to their target audience.

How costs build up is really staggering. I'm getting into the business of importing 3d filament. In Iceland, it currently sells for like $35/kg minimum. The actual value of the plastic is like $1. The factory's total cost, all costs included, is like $1,50. If it's not name brand, e.g. they're not dumping money on marketing, they sell it for $3 for the cheapest stuff. Sea freight adds another dollar or two. Taxes here add 24%. But you're still at like $5/kg. The rest is all middlemen, warehousing, air freight for secondary legs from intermediary hubs, and all the markup and taxes on those things.

With me importing direct from the factory, sea freight only, I can get rid of most of those costs. Warehousing is the biggest unavoidable cost. If I want to maintain an average inventory of like 700kg, it adds something like $5/kg to the cost. Scanning in goods and dispatching user orders (not counting shipping) together adds like $2,50. And then add 24% tax (minus the taxes on the imported goods). There's still good margin, but it's amazing how quickly costs inflate.

Your "junk" is someone else's "must-have".
Your "must-have" is someone else's "junk".

I don't see how this is sustainable, and I was a dues-paying member of the IEEE Computer Society for about 20 years and of the ACM for about 10 years. I even attended meetings and donated quite a bit of time to the CS. Minor writing and enough refereeing to become a "senior referee" at the end. I think they are doing some important stuff, but there are costs... And eventually I stopped paying dues. (But now I'm also remembering a database conference that may have been paid for by my employer.)

By the way, I used to read the magazines I received cover to cover. That time actually became a significant negative factor. Lots of good stuff, but too much time required. On that front I think the main effect of paperless publishing will be to significantly reduce the incentive to read all of an entire issue... Why not just ask an AI to summarize the parts that are most relevant to my work?

So if you're going to push me for an overall assessment, I think it's a net negative and will make the ACM less relevant. Perhaps even imperil it's survival.

But I also have a solution approach to ignore: What if the ACM supported books with special webpages to address the time problem? Each computer-related book would have some QR codes pointing to the errata, a bibliography, a searchable and dynamic index, and even forward links to later work on related topics. Kind of a post-publishing future bibliography? In this fantasy, at least the publishers would be providing some funding to sustain the relevance of the books they are selling.