Gosh, do you mean that THIS generation of AI can also only regurgitate its training database according to a statistical fit, and not infer any new about the data whatsoever?

The oldest problem in AI? That people literally try to pretend is solved by calling one part of the training "inference" now? Even though it doesn't infer a damn thing that's not in the data?

Gosh. Who'd've thunk?

I am struggling to envisage how this would ever work reliably.

The only protocol that the device speak is GCode, and that's so low-level it means you could rejig the same final print in a million different ways without compromise. I'm not sure how you'd ever detect that reliably.

If it's on the software then... wow... all someone has to do is keep an old "STL to GCode" slicer around that defeats that too.

This is one of those things that sounds great as a political soundbite but it's not even on the scale of "we'll just automatically detect all indecent images everywhere on the Internet in real-time with good false-positive rates"... it's orders of magnitude past that. It's completely unworkable. What mechanism are they intending to use to do this at all? An AI model running on every printer trying to guess from the overall shape of an object? That would just be endless fun with building building innocent looking models that "break down" into the necessary parts, and tons of "I can't print that" (and returned devices) when you just go to print a hook because it looks a bit like a trigger component, etc.

You might be able to blacklist a few chosen well-known, STLs but then people would just rejig them slightly.

If you want to legislate, you have to have an INKLING of an idea of how this would actually work.

And then you have to remember... 3D printers basically started as a self-built hobbyist thing. The components and software to drive them are easily recreated. They're just plotters with a moving Z-plane and hot plastic instead of a pen. 3D cutters (laser, CNC, etc.) are similar and in some cases even easier.

However "admirable" the intentions, this is akin to a screwdriver with a camera that detects if you're screwing into something that looks like a nuclear bomb and refuses to turn if it thinks so. It's ridiculous and unworkable.

The closest thing we have to this is the "can't photocopy money" markers, but they are clearly defined, a very fixed image, clear markers, very limited purposes when you would ever need to genuinely do that, very low false-positives, etc. This is orders of magnitude more ridiculous.

I have a new Framework laptop running Linux.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to trigger the Steam hardware survey on Linux.

So actually those numbers might actually be lower.

I also have to say:

- Never install the snap version of Steam (or any other app that you actually want to run the latest version of, it seems).
- My games "just work". 1700 games and I just double-click and, for the vast, vast, vast majority, they just work. I've actually got games that work first time on Linux but no longer work on Windows at all.

I don't care about "year of the desktop" nonsense. But I am entirely Linux at home now (again) and to be honest... it's boring. Things just work.

Valve needs to be given an industry award for Proton. It's honestly the best piece of technology I've seen in decades. Fuck AI, Proton needs to be recognised as a technological advancement of much importance.

They never cared when Windows / Office were basically the vast bulk of their product offerings and income.

It's a method of control that they want, and Windows is a good method of control. They can use anti-monopolistic practices to force you into their ecosystem, even decades after having been convicted of just that. There are Windows Server functions and even 365 admin functions that literally only work in Edge. They have shoved Edge and Copilot into everything because they want your data - browsing and now all your data. They integrate OneDrive into explorer because they want your data.

They don't care about users, even enterprise users, removing that control. They sometimes make it *technically* possible, presumably to avoid another unfair competition lawsuit, but they have no real interest in it whatsoever. Why support PXE booting if you can get an InTune licence out of people? Why support local admins if you can force them to pay for another Microsoft account?

And the thing is: People still fall for it. People still think you "must have" Windows, and a Microsoft account, and Office, to use a computer. Even people on iPad are buying Office. Not because they use even 1% of 1% of the features, but because they have been told its necessary or "easier" (often by people in the industry).

Nothing's changed in terms of tactics since the days when Windows was the monopolistic product that they use to force people in using IE instead of Netscape, etc.

Personally, I now need to be paid to work with Windows, or Office. At home, I'm now entirely Linux again (I previously ran Slackware as a primary desktop for 10 years, ironically while managing Windows networks). In Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 you had a decent OS and you could coax it to do what you want.

With Windows 11, I have basically warned my employers over the years that... I'm not in control of it any more. If your data ends up in Copilot? Nothing I can do about that. If your browser gets forced back to Edge? Nothing I can do about that. If your system decides to apply Windows Updates at an awkward time? Nothing I can do about that. I used to have controls. They used to work pretty well. But... no longer. No matter what I do this month, next month another update, hidden option or whatever will appear and I have no way to guarantee what that will do and, yes, quite often it'll undo or introduce "new controls" for the above.

You want to use MS, and Windows, and Office, and Teams, and Outlook, and all the other pieces? Then you just have to accept what they give you and deal with the consequences. They are kind of on a mission to remove people like me. They just want everything in the cloud and then they can manage your PCs for you. That's clearly the end-goal here. As such... I have to warn my users and employers that... this option... I can't guarantee it will stay off.

At home, I'm entirely Linux for a reason. It does what I say. There are bits that I still hate about modern Linux (systemd, etc.) but, it does what I say. It doesn't suddenly run off and index the entire network for no reason. It doesn't constantly question my choice of browser. It doesn't try and install a bunch of secret apps behind my back that I can't remove. It couldn't care less what I decide to use to open .docx files. And it doesn't have dumb ideas like wanting to screenshot my PC every few minutes and then run the screenshots through online AI.

I've got RPi's. I've got a Steam Deck. And since Christmas I have a Framework laptop. They all just do what I say. And, do you know... computing is boring again. Things just do what I tell them, and then stay fixed. And the OS is how I like it. I double-click an application and the OS gets the hell out of my way. That's it.

Honestly, I'm done with Windows unless you're compensating me for the sheer hassle of having to deal with it, and then I'll just tell you that there are things I cannot do or can no longer guarantee.

(Typed on a Samsung phone using DeX because again - that's an OS that just gets out of my way).

Sigh.

I'm going to have to do it, aren't I?

I'm going to have to change all my forwarded domains to my own mailserver for webmail just so that I don't have shite like this running around in my email.

I have everything switched off, but there isn't going to be an option at some point.

I cannot express this enough: I do not want AI.

"Someone sold me something that wasn't Sandisk, so I decided to arbitrarily punish SanDisk for their popularity."

Before they stopped updating the software (Classic mode still can't cope with a UK pound sign typed directly from the keyboard: £ See? But SoylentNews runs on the same software too and that works just fine), flooding it with dupes, crap and even ads-masquerading-as-articles (I remember a bomber jacket or similar?), and then sold it out a few times to people who literally DID NOT UNDERSTAND what they'd bought, and then they all gave up ever doing anything about updating it or curating it or actually building on it?

Yeah, I remember.

Welcome to the same story with AI since its inception. The same nonsense spouted since the 60's and before then, even.

"If only we had more processing/storage/nodes/money/training data/time/scale, I'm *sure* this statistical blackbox will magically become intelligent through some unexplained mechanism never once observed in all of existence."

It's always been the same. It's literally a superstition that has dogged AI and hindered AI research for decades. That there's some kind of "intelligence critical mass" beyond which a system collapses unavoidably into intelligence.

Well... now we know that's bollocks, finally.

Because we've never thrown so much money and resources at it, we've never had the whole of the planet using it and funding it and training it, we've never hit a point before where we'd RUN OUT of training data and now all potential new training data is actually corrupted by... AI output.

All that nonsense might FINALLY be laid to rest within the next few years and people would be so much more reluctant to try this same bullshit again, having cost us TRILLIONS this time around.

Now, maybe, just maybe, academics in the AI field can actually start to study... intelligence. With a view to developing... an artificial analogue to it. Rather than just bashing on statistical black boxes as if they're going to become the next messiah.

It's also been the same way, but with any luck this generation of AI will kill all that bullshit once and for all.

No, that's infraintelligence.

Literally "below" / "beneath".

Containers are for lazy developers who can't be bothered to actually make software that works without a shed load of libraries sucked in.

It makes their lives easy, and the sysadmin's life far more difficult (especially given the range of potential docker formats).

Hey, the sysadmin won't let us spin up virtual machines, so we'll create fake miniature virtual machines that all include massive amounts of out-of-date dependencies in an independent manner so that they're obfuscated, locked into older version that we're "not allowed to run", and which become a management nightmare the second one of them needs updating globally.

But, hey, at least we don't have to comply with "IT" and their ridiculous security protocols.

"No DRM" isn't about the legal purchaser.

It means that your book will end up on a thousand torrent / ebook sites by that afternoon.

And, yes, "This move may actually incentivize authors to apply DRM to their ebooks." is nonsense. They're introducing an option to turn it off... by default it's already on.

Of course we *COULD* do it.

But we're absolutely not even trying.

Biosphere 2 (failure) was the last significant attempt, and everything else is "growing cress on the ISS". Given that we've had humans constantly in orbit for decades, and been to the moon, you'd think we'd have SOMETHING working by now. But we don't.

And you missed off oxygen. Pretty important. And do you know how much green matter you need to generate net oxygen with humans around? We're talking lab-based forests of the stuff, something that it would take some time to get up and running reliably (e.g. Biosphere!). How many small logistics issues like that (e.g. generating oxygen rather than just taking it with us like we did on Apollo) are actually viably tested for long-term reliable usage on another planet sufficient to sustain any kind of research population, even? One vent accident and you're in trouble and you better hope you have the CO2 scrubbers (95% of Mars atmosphere) to regenerate it quickly enough.

Let's learn to walk before we announce that we're participating in a worldwide ultra-marathon every day for the next few years.

I keep saying it:

We have not fed one human for one entire day using food produced independently of Earth.

Not one day. Sure, we've played and grown cress on the ISS and all sorts of other nonsense but we've never made FOOD in FOOD quantities to FEED even a single human for a single day.

If you go to Mars, you have to send a regular, consistent, constant stream of food up to them. As well as all the other materials and any experiments you want to do... like soils and hydroponics.

But even with all the kit, we've never fed a human for a day.

And not only does that mean sending resources wherever the planets are in orbit (and Mars suddenly becomes MULTIPLES of its closest distance away from Earth or even the entire other side of the Sun), but you have to coordinate them all to launch, survive MONTHS in space, land near the humans on Mars, in order, and if you MISS even one... people could starve to death.

It could well be that things launched even every month aren't sufficient for any sizeable small "Arctic research station" size population.

We can't even arrange a fucking sandwich on Mars, and you want to talk about colonising it and having scientists roaming around on it?

I had 64Gb in my last laptop and 24Gb in the laptop before that. That's over 10 years of laptops.

Not once have I ever "run out of RAM".

People talk utter shit about this kind of thing. Sure, it's STUPENDOUS resources compared to my 48K ZX Spectrum had, and I have a screenshot of an "about:blank" tab taking up 24Mb just for the tab alone.

But it's really not that affecting of anyone using a computer, even a power user.

And it still pisses me off that people still sell 8Gb machines in this day and age. Ridiculous. I had THREE TIMES THAT over 10 years ago, and that only because it was the literal motherboard limit.

Buy sensible fucking amounts of RAM, and then you don't care if Chrome takes up 10Gb, it really won't matter at all.

(All numbers in bytes, because the other stuff is a bollocks measurement)

But at no point are you REQUIRED to eat nothing but ultra-processed foods either. It's entirely optional.

Of course some will be cheaper, but that's like saying "Ah well, we can afford to smoke the PREMIUM cigarettes, which are healthier" - it's WORSE.

And the listing of what's in your food is a million times better than what's in your cigarette or your vape, for instance.

Allergies and preferences also don't come into this. If you have an allergy, you can't just force every food to be hypoallergenic to you when most people aren't allergic.

Sure the cheap crap burger isn't as good as the premium steak. Obviously. But this is then trying to sue the burger maker... even though what they are doing is within all the guidelines. And ultimately the result of that is... no burger for you. Can't afford steak? Oh well. You're not eating today then.