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Comment Sympathy for librarians loss of relevance... (Score 1) 45

Like your presentation but not your Subject--even though I had a couple of negative encounters with rule-based librarians recently.

Unfortunately I think libraries are losing there relevance and it's related to the AI reference in your FP. However I just started thinking about a more insidious version of the problem. You can say that it's a big problem that generative AIs will fabricate BS, but even when we realize an answer is BS, we may learn the wrong lesson from it. After all, many of the AI answers are pretty good (on the theory you can make sufficient allowance for your own tendency to believe what you want to believe), so there's a kind of reinforcement in favor of those questions and prompts. Most people like oracles and want to get "authoritative" answers to their questions.

Yet it's not so much that we may learn to think like machines (which is still a big problem), but rather that we may learn not to ask certain kinds of questions. We won't even be able to ask why those questions are so problematic because we already "know" the oracular AI can't handle them. (Even if the government or some greedy megalomaniac intervened to make sure the question was unanswerable.) Hallucinated books may the smallest of our future worries.

(Also a concern that reading is being crushed by cute cat videos, but out of time just now...)

Comment It's spelled PIZZA (Score 1) 107

You must be American and can't even spell "pizza". And what does it matter how well the students can eat pizzas?

Just joking and lamenting the lack of humor, even though the topic is so serious. Anyway, on Slashdot time it's time for the discussion to die. Also a bit of a complaint about your propagation of the sock puppet's almost vacuous Subject, even though you didn't feed the troll and talked about other aspects of education... (Also funny that the troll sort of raised an interesting aspect of the problem--if anyone wants to talk to a coward.)

Anyway, I did websearch the PISA test and found out it exists. Didn't bother to research why that test matters because I also have a fundamental take. Sort of a cross between "It's too late" and "We can't get there from here", both as regards solution approaches.

So let me put on my official historian's hat and go even farther away from attempted humor. I think the destruction of America's education system is a leading candidate for the Rubicon Award that will commemorate the end of Franklin's republic. If so, then it might be post dated to the early 1980s or a little after 2000... Unfortunately REAL historians only do posthumous awards so none of us will get to see the final results. (From the perspective of Fermi's Paradox, I also consider it plausible there won't be any of us around to worry about it. The oscillations are becoming too dangerous.)

Comment Re:Going for gold (Score 1) 242

Only joke out of 200+ comments. Slashdot used to have a better batting percentage for Funny.

And I'm not even sure if the joke works. It might not affect the price significantly, depending on how much competition there is from "dumb" refrigerators...

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 57

I think the FP was supposed to be a joke or setting the stage for a joke, but yours appears to be the first attempt to actually answer the question at a non-superficial level.

However my answer was just a superficial joke: "Don't be evil" => "Be as EVIL as possible".

(Also, "All your attentions is belong to we googlers.")

Comment Re:All eggs in one basket! (Score 1) 21

Better of the weak jokes on the story, but don't see much potential for humor.

However I have a couple of personal anecdotes and the first can be fit into your Subject if the "basket" is a building. The building in question is on prime real estate close to Shibuya Station, which is a kind of "King Youth" neighborhood. I visited the building a number of times as construction was being completed and before the security was tightened against such tourists. I think I even met Masayoshi's brother, who was supposed to be in charge of the innovations. That's "met" in the sense of I saw a honcho and someone told me about him. Not sure, but that building may be the "physical home" of the so-called "Vision Fund" and some of the fired folks were probably working there...

On your [Mr Dollar Ton's] joke, I have met a number of those VCs over the years, mostly at a "Venture Cafe" near Toronomon that one of them runs. I have definitely met the bigwig there and we had at least one interesting little chat. But mostly I remember talking with another VC who was complaining about not being able to find enough projects to throw money at. He understood that most of the projects are going to fail and he won't make any profit from them, but he has so much money that he doesn't know what else to do with it except roll the dice for more winners. Not sure how much of that was true or perhaps just a compulsive gambler's bravado, but it got me to thinking...

Comment A fairwell to voting, etc... (Score 1) 3

Above is the title of a rant I'm working on. Summary will be something like 'not with a flash-bank of orange BS, but with whimpers (for money from the Democrats), cowardice (of the Republican politicians), and burps (from the insanely greedy bastards who have taken over the world).

Comment Re:People believe what they want to believe? (Score 1) 93

Not sure what part confused you.

Maybe the attempted mix of "common sense" philosophy and comedy via cultural references? The main place I see for potential confusion is in the references to the WH occupant, but on principle I refuse to use that brand name. The YOB clearly believes there is no such thing as bad publicity and welcomes every mention, anything to keep the spotlight on him, but at least I feel a tiny bit of satisfaction in not mentioned the mal-brand.

Comment No funny? (Score 1) 242

Active "discussion", but no funny? Okay, I admit that all the jokes I can think of sound cheesy.

"Buy more cheese!" said the refrigerator. "I'm really good at storing cheese."

It's not funny because the big-cheese companies will just pay/bribe Samsung to send those messages.

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