Windows' real only advantage over macOS and Linux is its gaming audience. Xbox is a huge part of making sure it's expanding that audience aggressively, since many gamers only play set-top rigs, and not desk-top rigs. If MS starts bleeding gamers, even on the set-top side, it means they're losing their foothold in defining the primary gaming platform, which is a huge part of their moat around Windows users. AI is adding generic uncertainty to the future of every vertical, so without loss of generality, it makes the most sense for MS to hold onto Xbox. That could change if AI can generate new games with a snap of the fingers in two years, but until that becomes clear, MS will not release its death grip on Xbox.

...meeting online is not the same as being paired up with someone based on a profile which you submit, which may not be reflective of who you are, and where the matching itself is not a holistic process that accounts for your entire personality and demeanor. On the other hand, asking someone out who you routinely interact with in a shared online game, forum, or other program or site is a much healthier way to meet people, and gives both parties the essential act of choice in initiating.

It is literally impossible to call the IRS and talk to a human being unless you are a registered CPA, even if you have security or fraud emergencies you want to report. Other agencies are only marginally better. This does seem like the absolutely perfect use case for AI, it will be strictly better than what we have now, where they simply don't answer the phone, and without significantly increasing cost on the tax payer. A lot of paperwork, like getting a passport renewed, etc..., can all be streamlined, both internally and externally, cutting down these barriers, which would have secondary effects like making voter ID and security measures more palatable for everyone by making the red tape thicket less intimidating to get proper ID. Overall this is a great initiative.

True, that's great context as well.

It took Microsoft 25 years to go from "[Linux] is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches" to running it natively in Windows.

It's all just a PR stunt.

Your plan is to throw all the AI researchers in jail. That sounds a teensy bit like an overreaction/unfair.

There are some crazy drivers on the road, and very impatient easily enraged drivers as well. To get a number that lets the rest of us determine how safe Waymo is, they need to benchmark themselves against the subset/selection of drivers that drive well, are patent, leave sufficient distance between themselves and others, are less susceptible to road rage, etc... Otherwise the number is essentially meaningless if its averaged across all the drivers, including the crazies/newbies out there.

I love how it assumes we all agree, despite political leaning or background, on exactly what the list of "pink slime" sites ought to include, and exclude, and what should be considered authoritative, non-partisan, factual news, and what should be considered partially/completely propaganda, and that the real problem is LLMs aren't tapping into this list when generating content for users. Give me a break.

I truly believe John Furner CEO of Walmart truly believes what he is promising. However, market forces are like gravity, and cannot be defied. The pressure on every marketing person, product buyer, campaign leader, and up-and-coming whomever to "create value" by engaging in high frequency retail pricing is going to set up an army of motivated, intelligent, hard working people to constantly ask "is it OK now?" until they just ultimately backpedal and start doing it. In the mean time they will weasel around whatever public statements they made like lawyers. None of this is intentional, it's just a force of nature. Ultimately, the customer won't get any remedy until there is an app or some way for them to negotiate/lock in a price in advance before they go to the shop, so they have bargaining leverage, and aren't just relying on good will, to lock in a reasonable price during some period of time where Walmart's algorithm/AIs wish it could extort them instead.

Yes, you're right, I misremembered the name.

Years ago, back in 2002, when I was looking at different colleges to go to, I had my heart set on writing video games for a living. I looked at and toured several universities, but one of them was Digitech up in Seattle. A lot of their graduates went to work at Nintendo, but the school taught you how to make video games in various languages, C/++, etc..., graphics drivers, etc..., all circa 2002. The building was a small squat little thing, and the school community was very small. There was a lack of diversity, a lack of culture, and a lack of exposure to the larger world that I immediately experienced when I visited the larger traditional university campuses. University isn't just about what is taught or how, but also what your other college peers are being taught, what is going on around you, alongside you, and not just the explicit skill you end up with at the end. These smaller places fail to be immersive and are always very focused on a narrow band of related vocational skills. For me, it felt limiting and like I would have been missing out on the wider world.

AI, or SI (why not?) is better at some things than we are, e.g., its really really really fast, it never gets tired, and it doesn't have to sleep. However, it's not as good at other things. Thinking of it as a powerful alternative form of intelligence that can compliment us is a positive way to look at it, and reframes things to be forward looking and optimistic, making us think of it as a tool to apply, not a storm to be weathered.

Completely agree. Computer science is more relevant than ever to how the world works, and thus, being able to recognize and avail yourself of opportunities in the future. These are the same people who think doctors will be useless because of AI too, and they'll be wrong about that as well.

Serious students of computer science only need apply. If you want to understand how to make computers do what you want, and how today's existing systems work, then study them, but if you are looking to be a Doctor, Dentist, or Lawyer, then just go be one of those.