The parallels between this and letters of marque are scary.

I'm reasonably confident there were other, previous known-at-the-time deaths from trebuchets but the records of their deaths or the reasons for the deaths have been lost.

https://www.youtube.com/supported_browsers?next_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DCrbp8Y_yCIs

is not what you want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crbp8Y_yCIs

may be what you want.

Mod parent funny. This was the joke I was looking for, but Slashdot only reports the top mod. (Though this one currently has no funny mods.)

New idea about how to fix the moderation on Slashdot! Use AI. Can't be worse than the current moderation system, but AI is so trendy that maybe the latest owners (whoever they are, or perhaps incorrectly assuming someone still owns this mess) will eagerly embrace the AI.

So the idea would be for an AImod (AI moderator) to scan the posts and suggest the most likely moderation. It could even be done as part of the preview process to give posters 'objective feedback' about how their comment sounds. Perhaps even including candidate locations where a comment might fit better into the discussion and an easy move option? But the AI mod points should be easily countered by humans (which becomes training feedback for the AImod).

Another obvious joke would have been from the "What could possibly go wrong?" angle.

My actual feelings are mixed, but that got me to think of another possible angle for humor. The problem is that I don't know much about the current or even recent generations of video games, so I can't name the names of the games NOT to recruit from. I'm pretty sure there are games that involve lots of mayhem and Captain Chaos, Master of Mayhem, is NOT someone I want in charge of anything involving a plane (or bus or bicycle) that I might be riding.

Meta-angle involves the recurring brain worm in the form of that song about "Where have all the <category of people> gone? Long time passing..." In the case of Slashdot, it's the humorists of yore. Hopefully they've found a website with a humor-encouraging moderation system and all I need is that URL to make me happy. Or at least more amused?

You can bet that both black and white hats are poking around any popular tool that allows collaboration.

Teams, Discord, and others likely have high-impact bugs yet to be found.

If it has a high false-error rate the city may miss out on revenue and someone with a warrant may not be arrested, but any false-positive is an injustice to the person pulled over.

I'm willing to be the one-in-10,000 false-positive from a license-plate misread but not the one-in-100 (1% false positive) or 1-in-4 (25% false positive).

On the other hand I can tolerate my city missing out on ticket revenue or a missed warrant-arrest because only half of its license plates can be confirmed as "almost certainly correctly read."

If all characters had the same failure rates, that would be a plate-failure rate of about 25% per plate. Yes, I know it's not the same for each character, so the per-plate accuracy may be higher.

Until computer-only recognition is about as good as either human-only or human+computer-only recognition, you need a human in the loop.

You ask so rudely that my initial reaction was to ignore you, but you piqued my curiosity. Where did you see it? I thought it was just one of my personal peccadilloes. Or you're just referring to my comments here and possibly elsewhere?

The YOB loves his precious brand, so I strongly prefer not to use it. Makes me glad I'm only an amateur historian. In describing the reign of YOB I'm pert' shure they'll have to brand it.

YOB comes from YUGE Orange Buffoon. How many guesses do you want? Or you might prefer a different source word for the B?

I have noticed that there are many other euphemisms applied to the YOB and all things YOBbish. Context almost always suffices to clarify the reference.

Rather disappointed by the discussion so far, which saps the motivation to say anything. I think there's a deep problem in Japanese thinking, but the most clear evidence is probably the Reiwa thing. The Heisei emperor asked to retire, but there was no rush. He's still alive now so they had plenty of wiggle room about when to start Reiwa--but the LDP deliberately chose to inflict imperial stupidity on everyone when they had the easy option of syncing the start of Reiwa so the digits would match up. Insane decision for perpetual friction for the sake of the supremacy of the imperial system. Same reasoning that led to that little kerfuffle in and around the Pacific...

Rational heads might prevail? Feel the Chinese wind? Or maybe it will blow from India before the next decisions need to be made? But preparing for a nuclear war with China is not a rational solution approach. Or maybe the real target is Switzerland? That would make a better joke.

My bad. I forgot that Microsoft had been mentioned. More evidence of senility? Or I just can't take Microsoft seriously based on my experiments and experiences with Copilot? So let IBM hold the pot for old times sake?

That was the best/only joke Slashdot can come up with these years? Sadness.

I was hoping to see something about AI-powered FinTech counter-wagers to protect each other. Sort of a corporate cancer circle jerk.

Oh how about a grand scheme to get the money back based on wagers by human suckers as to which AI will win the race? They could let Microsoft hold the pot since they apparently got left out of the race. My money would be on Oracle for most secretive and ruthless and evil and therefore the most likely winner, but "secretive" makes it easy to make a bad bet...

On the insightful side, the "Why?" seems to be getting ignored. I actually think they are running scared. Not sure if they are most scared of each other or of the Chinese threats that didn't get mentioned, but I am reminded of one of the most famous Asimov stories. It was about a constructive question: "Can entropy be reversed?" As I remember the story, the super-AI answered "Let there be light." However right now I think we are facing extinction via a destructive question with a fatal answer. Back on the gambling scenario, I think the two most likely winning/losing questions that will lead to the fatal unleashing will be "Can you get all the money?" or "Can you destroy all the competing AIs?" (I do think we have a bit of breathing room because the robots aren't quite up snuff. As in up to snuffing us?)

Back to the Chinese side (but with goog flavoring)... Just started reading AI 2041 by Kai-fu Lee and Chen Qiufan. Quite an interesting idea of mixing fictional AI application scenarios with more technical explanations and commentary. Obviously hoping for some kind of synergy, but so far I'm not seeing much. Maybe the stories were better in the original Chinese? Or perhaps the Asimov bar is just too high?

And it should have a better Subject, too.

I noted the same thing, but my fuzzy recollection is that the editor Campbell was also involved in the original formulation in the '40s. Or was it earlier than that?