Comment and more (Score 2) 80
"a name since reborn to climate change because the planet was cooling not warming"
How is this not an indictment on America's ability not to raise incredibly dumb voters? I mean
Comment truly the steward America needs (Score 1) 80
"We need to call it Super Intelligence!" Trump demanded, waggling a finger at an iPod.
Lol, this is the president some people are willing to tolerate for a party that promises you'll have lower taxes (while only giving them to the upper class) and less thinking about trans people or something. Communism! Boo! It's quite astounding.
Submission + - Smart Democracy (substack.com)
dpplgngr writes: The Future Dream: Can AI Help Democracy Think?
What might democracy look like if artificial intelligence were used to help people understand the consequences, context, history, and uncertainty surrounding complex public decisions?
The Future Dream — Smart Democracy is a new proposal exploring that question.
Rather than giving AI political authority, the proposal places human judgment at the center and imagines AI as an instrument for augmented judgment: assembling information, mapping relationships and consequences, maintaining civic memory, exploring possible futures, and explaining trade-offs.
The manuscript proposes several ideas, including Contextual Evaluation Engines, a Dual Transparency Doctrine, Recommendation Over Decree, a continuously developing civic memory, and a distinction between human moral authority and AI-assisted analytical capacity.
It also explores a possible economy of ideas, through an integration with the author's Smart Bank concept, in which contributions could accumulate contextual reputational credit.
The proposal is deliberately presented as a work in development rather than a finished political system. The author is interested in what happens when people can discuss the ideas with AI, challenge them, identify technical and ethical problems, and contribute new possibilities.
The complete manuscript: https://anthonypryor1.substack...
The central question is simple:
Can intelligent systems help people become better informed participants in their own collective decisions without taking those decisions away from them?
What might democracy look like if artificial intelligence were used to help people understand the consequences, context, history, and uncertainty surrounding complex public decisions?
The Future Dream — Smart Democracy is a new proposal exploring that question.
Rather than giving AI political authority, the proposal places human judgment at the center and imagines AI as an instrument for augmented judgment: assembling information, mapping relationships and consequences, maintaining civic memory, exploring possible futures, and explaining trade-offs.
The manuscript proposes several ideas, including Contextual Evaluation Engines, a Dual Transparency Doctrine, Recommendation Over Decree, a continuously developing civic memory, and a distinction between human moral authority and AI-assisted analytical capacity.
It also explores a possible economy of ideas, through an integration with the author's Smart Bank concept, in which contributions could accumulate contextual reputational credit.
The proposal is deliberately presented as a work in development rather than a finished political system. The author is interested in what happens when people can discuss the ideas with AI, challenge them, identify technical and ethical problems, and contribute new possibilities.
The complete manuscript: https://anthonypryor1.substack...
The central question is simple:
Can intelligent systems help people become better informed participants in their own collective decisions without taking those decisions away from them?
Comment Re:I haven't seen the movie (Score 2) 105
It's actually very funny. There's a reason word of mouth has been doing the heavy lifting for this.
Comment Re:Comic movies now suck. (Score 1) 105
"No, I grew up in the 80s watching the roadrunner"
The connotation that the roadrunner in the 80s was original is hilarious.
Submission + - Why Trump May Not Serve Out His Presidency (newrepublic.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In 2024, a group of 225 mental health professionals said in a published open letter (bankrolled, granted, by an anti-Trump PAC created by George Conway) that Trump suffered from “malignant narcissism” and appeared “to be showing signs of cognitive decline,” including “a dramatic decline in verbal fluency, tangential thinking, diminished vocabulary, overuse of superlatives and filler words,” and to be “exhibiting deteriorating judgment, impulse control, and motor functioning (including a wide-based gait).”
Submission + - Students are suddenly losing interest in computer science as AI coding takes off (nerds.xyz)
BrianFagioli writes: For years, students were told that learning to code was one of the safest paths into a lucrative technology career. New data suggests that message may be losing some of its pull. Nova Learning says the share of surveyed middle and high school students naming Computer Science and AI as their primary academic interest fell from 42.3 percent in 2025 to 27.9 percent in 2026, while Engineering rose from 11.9 percent to 23 percent. The biggest gains came from Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, while Software and Data Science saw a steep drop.
The survey is not nationally representative, but broader enrollment data points in the same direction. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported declines in Computer and Information Science enrollment at four year institutions, even as Engineering grew. AI coding tools are not proven to be the cause, but as software development changes and AI handles more coding tasks, students may be starting to rethink what a future in technology should look like.
The survey is not nationally representative, but broader enrollment data points in the same direction. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported declines in Computer and Information Science enrollment at four year institutions, even as Engineering grew. AI coding tools are not proven to be the cause, but as software development changes and AI handles more coding tasks, students may be starting to rethink what a future in technology should look like.
Comment Problem with providing software for profit: (Score 1) 74
Posting this again:
There is a serious problem when a profit-making company provides software:
Deliberately giving limits to a present version allows a profit-making company to charge more for a new version, even if the new version provides few important benefits.
There is a serious problem when a profit-making company provides software:
Deliberately giving limits to a present version allows a profit-making company to charge more for a new version, even if the new version provides few important benefits.
Submission + - New tin-based solar cells trap heat 1,000 times longer, could beat 33% limit. (interestingengineering.com)
fahrbot-bot writes: Interesting Engineering is reporting that researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands found that tin-based perovskite solar cells can slow heat loss from high-energy “hot electrons” by a factor of 1,000 and could push solar cell efficiency beyond the theoretical 33 percent limit.
When sunlight strikes a panel, photons jump-start electrons into action. The most energetic photons create super-charged hot electrons. Theoretically, these high-voltage powerhouses should generate far more electricity, but, in practice, they are fleeting. In fractions of a trillionth of a second, these high-energy particles rapidly cool, dumping their bonus energy as waste heat before ever leaving the solar cell.
“This means that the energy is lost before the hot electron exits the solar cell material,” said Jan Anton Koster, Professor of Physics of Novel Semiconductors and Devices at the University of Groningen.
Using a specialized solar cell material called tin-based perovskite, Loi’s lab performed a feat many thought impossible: she slowed the heat loss down by a factor of 1,000. Suddenly, the extra energy lingered for nanoseconds instead of vanishing in picoseconds.
The study findings were published in the journal ACS Energy Letters.
When sunlight strikes a panel, photons jump-start electrons into action. The most energetic photons create super-charged hot electrons. Theoretically, these high-voltage powerhouses should generate far more electricity, but, in practice, they are fleeting. In fractions of a trillionth of a second, these high-energy particles rapidly cool, dumping their bonus energy as waste heat before ever leaving the solar cell.
“This means that the energy is lost before the hot electron exits the solar cell material,” said Jan Anton Koster, Professor of Physics of Novel Semiconductors and Devices at the University of Groningen.
Using a specialized solar cell material called tin-based perovskite, Loi’s lab performed a feat many thought impossible: she slowed the heat loss down by a factor of 1,000. Suddenly, the extra energy lingered for nanoseconds instead of vanishing in picoseconds.
The study findings were published in the journal ACS Energy Letters.
Comment Re:Why just there? (Score 5, Insightful) 63
"there is no right or expectation of privacy in public"
I agree (UK so different laws, but the principle is the same). However I increasingly feel this needs to be revised somehow. I'll admit up front I don't have all the answers here, but just intuitively it feels to me that this principle predates the era of cheap, automated mass surveillance whether government or private.
In the UK, privacy is protected via the Human Rights Act and UK GDPR. It provides for some level of protection, but it really seems to me that specific rules to address this kind of blanket recording need to start coming in. The definition of 'commercial', for instance. Is it commercial use if I record you on my glasses and then post it to Youtube? Arguably yes, since YouTube is a company and derives revenue from that. Same for Meta. But it's very, very far from clear to me if that claim has enough weight to prevail. A specific set of rules to address what is essentially a new phenomenon needs to be brought in.
Recording is not new. Photographing is not new. But the ease and scale via which it can be achieved, manipulated, tracked...that is new.
I agree (UK so different laws, but the principle is the same). However I increasingly feel this needs to be revised somehow. I'll admit up front I don't have all the answers here, but just intuitively it feels to me that this principle predates the era of cheap, automated mass surveillance whether government or private.
In the UK, privacy is protected via the Human Rights Act and UK GDPR. It provides for some level of protection, but it really seems to me that specific rules to address this kind of blanket recording need to start coming in. The definition of 'commercial', for instance. Is it commercial use if I record you on my glasses and then post it to Youtube? Arguably yes, since YouTube is a company and derives revenue from that. Same for Meta. But it's very, very far from clear to me if that claim has enough weight to prevail. A specific set of rules to address what is essentially a new phenomenon needs to be brought in.
Recording is not new. Photographing is not new. But the ease and scale via which it can be achieved, manipulated, tracked...that is new.
Comment Problem with providing OS software for profit: (Score 2) 92
There is a serious problem when a profit--making company provides Operating System software:
Deliberately giving limits to a present version allows the company to charge a lot for a new version, even if the new version provides few important benefits.
Deliberately giving limits to a present version allows the company to charge a lot for a new version, even if the new version provides few important benefits.
Comment Re: what would you do.... (Score 1) 124
damn that's a lot of work. I prefer driving to ColdStone and getting a milkshake, but thank-you just the same.
Comment Re: As a consumer I don't want it (Score 1) 124
we've not even seen a hint of AGI. I am sure the LLM's will get better and faster, but will they ever be intuitive ? They are already great at taking huge amounts of data and making direct connections. When they can include the mystery factor that is free-will matched with stupidity, we might have something to worry about. I am an old man now so I worry less for me than for my 14 year old nephew. Luckily he reads, and plays pen and paper RPG's.
Submission + - AI: Many discussions, no underlying explanation. 1
Futurepower(R) writes: AI: There is a huge amount of AI news and comments, but apparently nothing that helps people understand how AI is developed, and functions.
We need a book, or other information, that explains how AI technology functions.
We need a book, or other information, that explains how AI technology functions.
Submission + - Why can't M$ get any UI/UX changes right? (pcmag.com) 1
golem100 writes: A couple weeks ago PCMag, and others, wrote articles along the lines of: "Microsoft Finally Backs Down: The Windows 11 Taskbar Update You've Been Waiting For". This is currently implemented with CU KB5120998 and since M$ has elected to defer "activation" of this feature--some two weeks later for most users it still needs to be enabled by the ViVe tool: vivetool /enable /id:59213768,61090762
Um, No...
The fundamental set of [lost] attributes that this "We brought Movable TaskBar back" lacks:
You can not control the position of the TaskBar on each desktop monitor--example: I have four displays on my desktop, three Landscape & one of which is in a Portrait orientation for reading documents.
With Windows7/8/10 you could position the TaskBar so that it was "Out of the way" and each display--on the right side of the right-most Landscape, on the left for the left-most Landscape display, & on the top/bottom for the Portrait. [same as my desktop on my Linux workstation]
Now you still get the same Taskbar alignment on all desktops.
You can not "resize" the taskbar. (well, you can--it has three sizes: too big, too small, and really way too small) For the previous three generations of the OS you could "Drag-Select" and resize the TaskBar to be the correct size for your needs on your desktop. [...just as I can on my KDE Desktop!]
With this implementation, 1/3 of the Taskbar real estate is consumed with "TaskBar-Tray Notification Icons."
Nobody asked for a partial, broken, re-implementation. The ask was: "Put it Back as it was!"
Dealing with M$ is pretty much like getting your 15 year old to do their chores on garbage night.
Um, No...
The fundamental set of [lost] attributes that this "We brought Movable TaskBar back" lacks:
You can not control the position of the TaskBar on each desktop monitor--example: I have four displays on my desktop, three Landscape & one of which is in a Portrait orientation for reading documents.
With Windows7/8/10 you could position the TaskBar so that it was "Out of the way" and each display--on the right side of the right-most Landscape, on the left for the left-most Landscape display, & on the top/bottom for the Portrait. [same as my desktop on my Linux workstation]
Now you still get the same Taskbar alignment on all desktops.
You can not "resize" the taskbar. (well, you can--it has three sizes: too big, too small, and really way too small) For the previous three generations of the OS you could "Drag-Select" and resize the TaskBar to be the correct size for your needs on your desktop. [...just as I can on my KDE Desktop!]
With this implementation, 1/3 of the Taskbar real estate is consumed with "TaskBar-Tray Notification Icons."
Nobody asked for a partial, broken, re-implementation. The ask was: "Put it Back as it was!"
Dealing with M$ is pretty much like getting your 15 year old to do their chores on garbage night.
