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Comment Re:Why is slashdot posting these garbage articles? (Score 1) 155

I think you're right as far adults go -- adults are having fewer children because children are unaffordable.

Teens, OTOH, were almost never making a conscious decision to try to conceive children anyway -- if they got pregnant, that was an unintended side effect of having recreational sex. So if the teenage fertility rate is falling, the most likely explanation is that teens are either having less sex, or they are using contraception more effectively (or both). It's quite plausible that teens are simply spending less time in each others' physical proximity, and therefore having sex with each other less often.

Comment Re: Maybe it's something to do with self-defense? (Score 1) 156

Is that correct?

I'm trained as a righty (born ambi) so my fighting stance is left side out, left arm blocking, right arm striking, initially.

That results in hips and stance angled to my right.

I'm cross-eye dominant so I always second-guess, but I don't remember the other students in martial arts class being different.

Comment Re:More power for my AI overlord (Score 5, Informative) 101

At least we can keep those coal plants running our AI data centers.

I mean, we could, but when the total expenses for building and running a solar farm are less than just the ongoing cost of buying more coal for an existing coal plant (never mind the maintenance or environmental remediation costs), that's almost literally lighting money on fire. It takes a pretty dedicated idealogue to hold out against the capitalist temptation of making more money solely to show the libs who's boss, and anyone who does so is likely to find themselves replaced by someone else who can "better maximize shareholder value". Hence the shift; even Trump can't stop an idea whose time has come.

Comment True Threats (Score 1) 84

True Threats have a legal standard and specificity of person, place, and time are elements.

Criminal Threatening usually has a state statute.

The summary sounds much more like "muh feels" and conclusory pleading so it's probably not true to the legal standard.

How many arrests were made?

Also getting arrested for a social media post is a special kind of stupid on all sides
  Posts are almost always powerless and can just get you in trouble. Don't do it to blow off steam. Or for clout.

Not worth it, get out there and take action if you mean it. Don't blab about illegal fantasies.

Comment Hell Hath No Fury (Score 4, Insightful) 35

like a bounty-seeker scorned.

Shoulda just paid 'em.

He sounds quite knowledgeable and it looks like he'll continue whipping Defender until morale improves.

It's worth noting that the black market would pay handsomely for most of his discoveries but retribution is sweeter than cash.

I get the sentiment.

Comment Re:This is madness. (Score 4, Insightful) 72

It's meant for the rest of the folks, who want to be seen as coooool.

Maybe I don't read the Zeitgeist as well as I should, but AFAICT anything AI-related is seen as extremely uncool these days (at least, outside of certain tech-topian circles). So if Visa thinks "Adopting AI means people will think we're cool", I suspect they are in for a surprise.

Comment Re:What about the cost (Score 1) 88

If the only goal is producing electricity at the current minimum price per kWh, then you have a good point.

OTOH if you also have a long-term goal of figuring out how to effectively design and build fusion reactors, then it's worthwhile to build them as best you can even if wind is currently more cost-effective.

As for why you might have such a long-term goal, I can think of several reasons:

1. Future fusion reactor designs might be much more economical to build and run, once enough hands-on experience has been gathered to make them so
2. Fusion reactors could be used in situations where wind power isn't available (e.g. space exploration)

Comment Re:Why is this all over the news suddenly? (Score 1) 34

I searched the CVE and saw dozens of "One Character Flaw" articles.

I wonder who came up with that angle.

It appears journalists bit on that phrase for clickbait. It got an article here, eh?

At least for Debian if you're current it hasn't been a concern for months, going by the version numbers. So not actually news, actionable, or interesting.

Comment Ultrasonic Jammers (Score 1) 97

The Business Reform channel on YT reviewed a couple of ultrasonic jammers that kill the audio on these recordings.

$400 for the better one but if you need it maybe that's cheap.

I didn't know about the technology so I was surprised.

The guy who runs the channel would fit in with the dominant privacy culture on this site.

Comment Re:many smaller less-obtrusive may be better for a (Score 1) 105

Good points.

nVidia is talking about paying homeowners to install a 10 GPU unit in their backyard along these lines, going highly-distributed.

The trick with the "data center jobs" is the estimate that 70% of them will be new H1B workers so even those claims to the locals whose politicians already waived taxes is that they're looking at maybe a few dozen local jobs for a huge data center.

It's worth watching the Tucker/O'Leary interview to see the mindset of these people. "Corruption and screwing the locals is how business in America is done, Tucker!"

Slightly paraphrased.

Comment It almost looks intentional (Score 4, Insightful) 105

If I was deliberately trying to cause a nation-wide backlash against data centers, I'm not sure what I'd be doing differently from what the AI companies are currently doing.

Has nobody told them that people don't like having their lives disrupted, particularly when they don't see any compensating benefit, or even a convincing reason for having any of it? If they were to ease off the gas pedal just a bit, they could probably do a boil-the-frog and get a larger number of smaller/less-obtrusive data centers built over a longer time period, and without the voter revolts and strict legislation that are likely to hobble them now.

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