Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:"they're not EVs" (Score 1) 72

Show us how you know essentially nothing about the Ford Pinto without telling us that you know essentially nothing about the Ford Pinto.

On the plus side, at least we still have enough readers on this site to have at least one person who meets that criteria. I guess that's something.

Comment Where does one find help with rehab? (Score 1) 72

Social media addiction is a subset of screen addiction, and screen addiction is destroying Gen Alpha at an alarming pace. I have so far found zero specialists who can help with this. It's not just a matter of taking screens away, we have literally turned an entire generation into junkies who will lie and cheat to get their fix. The adolescent mind never stood a chance; male or female.

If Meta wants a nicer spot in hell they can at least help with the mess they have profited off of. Help train the next generation of rehab specialists and help people find help. We made big tobacco do it, we can make these monsters do it as well.

Comment Re:Best outcome: End of Meta (Score 1) 72

because parents can't manage to keep their spawn off of social media?

That is not a trivial feat in the least. You don't have to give your kids smart phones, you don't have to have a PC at home. You can try to send your kid to a school that deemphasizes technology. And yet your kid will still end up with a screen addiction because it is that consuming. Kids don't have a chance. What today's kids face today is so far beyond what any of us grew up with that there really is no comparison.

My youngest siblings grew up on a heavy diet of Barney and Friends and it drove me up the wall. At least there was only a certain time of the day that was available on broadcast TV. And my 8 bit NES was not portable in any reasonable meaning of the word. Those barriers are gone now and the programming targeting kids makes Barney look like Mr Science.

Operating Systems

Ask Slashdot: What are the Costs of Switching Between Windows, MacOS, and Chrome? 66

UI changes, lost productivity, untransferrable knowledge... Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes the folly of switching to an unfamiliar new environment to be "more productive"... Champions of the switch often insist workers will be able to hit the ground running and get the same or even more work done from the get-go in the new unfamiliar environment because it's 'more productive', a conclusion often shaped by conventional wisdom or their 'gut' feeling. Decision makers may also mistake their own 'light-user experience' for universal experience and believe all platforms are fungible.

And while it's one thing for a business to delay their delivery dates and increase costs of by introducing a switch in computing environments that's of unquantified and possibly dubious value, how about when a switch in computing environments is made that affects schoolchildren's ability to learn for a period of time?

While a MacBook Neo is indeed cute, what might be the possible consequences of a decision to move 25,000 students off Windows and onto MacBook Neos...? Or even the impact on a single kid who moves from a MacBook school to a Windows or Chrome school (or whose home computing environment isn't aligned with their school). Or students whose teachers decide learning in their classrooms should now additionally require an understanding of the Minecraft computing platform/UI (used in over 40,000 school systems.). Learning Management Systems and now various AI Edtech tools used by schoolkids are also subject to change.

"Even if students and schools eventually benefit from a new platform, one wonders how much learning is lost during the switch," theodp asks, "and what the financial and educational ROI and payback period look like." Are there bigger problems than we realize? Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments.

What are the costs of switching between Windows, MacOS, and Chrome?

Comment Re:Hear Hear! (Score 1) 7

Well, someone had to add the ads, so there must be at least one pair of eyes on it, right?

Advertising has been on this site for over 20 years now. The only difference is which ads are here, but that's all automated as well. We see slightly fewer mail order bride ads now, which is a likely a good thing, but otherwise its nothing different. There's no reason for a human to screen them.

Comment Re:Hear Hear! (Score 1) 7

How do we get this legit complaint in front of more eyes?

I say this often, but honestly when was the last time any new code was written here? Stuff breaks over time but it has been years since anything was added or updated. We all know that of course Unicode is over 20 years past its promised rollout (beating even Duke Nukem Forever in terms of development hell cycle), but really it seems unlikely that there are any software developers left working for this site. I'm not sure there are any full time employees at Slashdot at all anymore.

In other words you can put the complaint in front of more eyes but it won't find any more eyes that can do anything about it.

Comment Re:Yeah OpenAI is a scam (Score 1) 73

You simply cannot make solar financially viable there.

What makes solar financially un-viable in Austin? I live a long ways from Texas so there might be something really obvious here that I'm missing. I know the solar power arguments are older than the hills at this point (I remember roof top solar panels from many decades ago) but I'm interested in what about that location makes it doomed to not work out.

Or is there just no way for Tesla to make it financially viable? Could a more honest company pull it off in a different way?

Comment Notepad++, really? (Score 1) 244

Notepad++ just takes the best features of Kate and rolls them into a free Notepad replacement for Windows users so they don't suffer from its eternal failings. We don't need it in Linux, we already have all of its features. Windows users do need a functioning text editor out of the box, which Notepad++ provides as a free add-on instead.

Comment Re:Taller hoods? (Score 1) 330

Car manufacturers should be taken to the woodshed over this awful decision.

Why not the car buyers? The manufacturers are only responding to what buyers want.

That could well be a chicken-and-egg problem. Are the buyers buying what's available because it's available, or are the manufacturers making it because the buyers actually asked for it? I'm not aware of any Equinox driver anywhere who ever complained about it not being tall enough (or it being short enough to make it unnecessarily difficult to run over small people) yet Chevy raised the hood anyways.

The other problem is that the auto manufacturers see a distorted picture of car buyers. New cars are too expensive for a large fraction of all drivers; many drivers won't ever buy a brand new car. New car dealers are selling to people with more money, and making decisions around what those more affluent people might want in their cars - or more so are telling such people what they should want.

Medicine

Non-Invasive Stimulation of the Brain Ended Opioid Addiction, Cigarette Craving (jpost.com) 37

The Jerusalem Post reports that doctors at Haifa's Rambam Health Care Campus "have successfully treated their first Israeli opioid addiction patient using an experimental noninvasive brain technology, easing him through withdrawal in just 20 minutes..." [T]he team of specialists at the Haifa medical center intervened in the electrical activity of an area of the patient's brain called the nucleus accumbens, the core of the brain system responsible for feelings of satisfaction, pleasure, and reward. The treatment, based on technology from the Israeli company Insightec, is similar to the one used to treat symptoms of essential tremor and Parkinsonian tremor, under MRI control. In this case, the treatment was carried out with the help of a new technology that performs noninvasive neuromodulation, without heating or burning tissue, and allows stimulation in the same area of the brain to increase or suppress activity...

"Tests carried out a week later produced negative results for opioids and other substances," [said Dr. Lior Lev-Tov, director of the functional neurosurgery unit in Rambam's neurosurgery division and the one leading the new study at the medical center.] "The patient himself reported a craving score of zero out of 10 for using the drug, and even another side effect, a drastic drop in the desire for cigarettes, from three packs a day to just a few cigarettes, and with no urge to use alcohol. In other words, in a treatment that lasted about 20 minutes net, our patient was completely freed from an extreme dependence that had accompanied him every day for years. This is nothing less than a medical and therapeutic revolution."

Dr. Lev-Tov added that "This experience opens doors for us to treat a wide range of very serious illnesses such as PTSD, OCD, eating disorders, other addictions, severe depression, severe pain disorders, and I hope we will also be able to reach cognitive areas and treat attention deficit disorders, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and more."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.

Comment Re:Taller hoods? (Score 4, Interesting) 330

One does not negate the other.

That said, my own current work car is a 2025 Chevy Equinox. I previously had a 2021 Equinox. The 2025 pushed the top of the hood up a good 3-4 inches compared to the previous, and changed a few other functional angles as well. The goal was evidently the "truckification" of a small crossover SUV. The result was terrible. Sight lines are dramatically worse out of the front of the vehicle. Short people can disappear in front of the hood now that it is that much taller. This is even worse on actual trucks; Chevy Silverado full-sized pickups are leaving dealer lots with hoods that are 5 feet off the ground for no functional reason.

It is fair to point out that such collisions shouldn't happen often at normal driving speed. However you're overlooking other places where collisions do happen often between vehicles and pedestrians; namely parking lots and driveways. While the new cars have far more mandatory cameras to help drivers spot obstacles, they don't prevent every situation. Car manufacturers should be taken to the woodshed over this awful decision, and it's not just the American auto makers.

Ever wonder why so many new pickups pull backwards into parking spots? I had a new Silverado recently as a rental and I believe I discovered why. Those new trucks don't have forward facing cameras, but they do have backup cameras. They sit so high the driver can't easily see the lines or obstacles in front while attempting to park but when backing up the camera shows what's coming up behind. Terrible, terrible decisions.

Slashdot Top Deals

"If you want to eat hippopatomus, you've got to pay the freight." -- attributed to an IBM guy, about why IBM software uses so much memory

Working...