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Comment Re:Doctors (Score 1) 19

How many doctors will be using this or something like it to diagnose their patients?

Hopefully zero. Because doctors have to abide by those nasty HIPAA rules that ChatGPT Health is trying to con users to circumvent. That may be legal, as others have pointed out in these comments. But it's not OK for doctors and other medical professionals with access to patient records.

I know a few doctors. And they are careful to the point of paranoia to only use compliant IT systems.

Comment Dell ... (Score 1) 45

First fix your batteries and charging systems. Every Dell laptop I've ever had to throw out has been due to batteries that mysteriously stopped charging. And were no longer available for that model as OEM parts. Meaning I had to go with flamable Chinese after market option or relegate the device to permanent desktop duty.

Comment Re:Uhhh... (Score 2) 167

we are giving poor people free access to the internet,

No. We are giving AT&T, Comcast and their ilk money to say that they are providing poor people access to the Internet.

Most poor people already have TV sets. It isn't necessary to upgrade hardware every few years because the latest PBS version won't run on current TVs.

Comment That's nice (Score 1) 52

the creator of Claude Code ...

"I run 5 Claudes in parallel in my terminal,"

How did he get to the first Claude? And is that all it's good for? Creating more Claude? What else can it do?

Could Cherny maybe hop over and fix some of the bugs in systemd?

Comment Re:does it appear precarious though? (Score 1) 38

Does it? Warning labels are a staple of modern American life,

Warning labels are a stable, perhaps, but only on tangible goods that pose a medical risk. When we are talking about speech: Items such as books or websites. You have a constitutional 1st Amendment right to free speech which includes the right to exclude anybody else's speech. Including warnings from a government, from the content of your speech.

The solution probably is a content-neutral warning mandate that new Cell phones come with a warning on the packaging, and a requirement for a conspicuous arning badge of specified text, colors, and font size required to be fully opaque, as durable as the display surface, and attached permanently above or below the screen. Since the phone is a physical good; a warning can be attached without including it as part of the speech content.

Also; they can specify a standard for apps and cell phones that after 15-minutes continuous screen time; access to apps other than direct messages, emergency communications, phone, or person to person text would be restricted with a mandatory timeout. A mostly content-neutral time and usage amount restriction with exemptions only for emergency communications.

Comment Re:what they should do instead (Score 0) 38

they should force any website or online ad platform that does A/B testing to get positive consent for each test from their human test subjects

You can't prevent companies from market testing. That one would have little chance of holding up in court either.

I thought testing on humans already required consent but what do I know.

Medical experimentation on humans requires specific informed consent and is governed by strict safety regulations.

Facebook A/B testing is merely experimenting with other versions of the project to see how it will work with their customers, or if their customers will accept or reject it. Treatment is applied to their product, and not humans, so there is no testing on humans..

While customers already agreed to it contractually; the sign up terms provided Facebook the right to change any part of the service, and you are not guaranteed to receive a level of service, nor the same service or experience as any other user. It's not quite the same as if you purchased a piece of hardware. Apple cannot swap out your iPhone with a new one of slightly different physical shape for experimental purposes without permission, because you already purchased it, but they absolutely can do phased or random-population rollouts of different betas, software updates, or experimental versions To test their product, and what kind of feedback versions of their product receive.

Comment Re:Uhhh... (Score 1) 167

is there some benefit to watching PBS/hearing NPR off the public airwaves

Yes. We don't have to give the broadband providers and cellular system operators a 'cut of the action'. Even if it is free/subsidized for the public, the aforementioned parties get quite a pile of money from the government*. And now they'll have one less competitor.

*The Universal Service Fund being just one example of a pile of money that never seems to trickle down to the public.

Comment Remember when ... (Score 1) 105

... PC mice only had two buttons (one for a mac). Only those weird UNIX systems had a middle button. For some reason, three button functions became the norm, whether an actual third button or the click function of a scroll wheel. Popular demand in action.

If you want to Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, go right ahead. Don't like the middle button? Don't use it. I'm not certain, but it seemed to me that this was an OS UI "style". One button on a Mac, two on a Windows machine and three on the various *NIXes. Not per application. Why not keep the default that way?

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