We need to funnel more money into our AI, games be damned.
The Games and Entertainment division has always been a loss for Microsoft. Long before AI came along it was supported by the more profitable divisions (OS and Applications). It's the same story over at Sony with the Playstation losing money and being funded by more profitable things.
It's just after 25 years of making a loss, the M$ management aren't seeing any benefit from it.
This. The problem isn't the technology; that can demonstrably be shown to work in models and simulations because of things like - as you say - needing less space between vehicles, and also more complex things like reducing capillary action in the overall traffic flow (the stop-start effect you often get in heavy traffic). The reason why you don't see those benefits is the growing number of entitled drivers who ignore the signage in the hope of gaming the system for personal gain (e.g. shorter travel time), so you do need robust enforcement with stricter tolerances and more punitive fines to try and deter that.
It's the classic Prisoner's Dilemma. The best solution for the greater good is to obey the signage, but the best solution for the individual is almost always to look out for Number One. Smart traffic flow systems do still seem to improve things, despite entitled drivers, although that's probably more down to the enforcement measures keeping those bending the rules from bending them as far as they'd like to.
Algorithms also assume that people know what they're doing and will act rationally. If anyone thinks people drive this way they are clearly not paying attention to the roads.
Every traffic jam starts with just one arsehole, just one who thinks they're different, special, above it all. One arsehole who decides that 30 is fast enough for everyone. One arsehole who sits on the phone, One arsehole who cuts people up, straddles two lanes, doesn't proceed at a green light. One arsehole who thinks the rules don't apply to him (and only him) and refuses to fit into traffic.
The kicker is, there are a lot more than just one arsehole on the roads.
And don't think that autonomous cars will save us, first off, they'll never work in our lifetimes but ignoring that they will be programmed to follow the rules to the letter (not the least important reason is to ensure the manufacture is as indemnified as possible from any blame), they will wait for a large enough gap, they will ignore faster moving lanes, they will wait for intersections to be clear, they won't speed... So the arsehole will decide that they know how to drive better because they will force their way into traffic, tailgate, so on and so forth.
Some Prime Minister decided his name is King Cnut and has ordered the tides of pornography to halt.
This order will work no better then Cnut's did.
I'm less worried about Starmer as King Cnut, he's well intentioned but delusional and incompetent... I'm more concerned about how these laws will be used by King Cunt's like Nigel Farage if they ever gained power. For this reason alone these laws need to be opposed but the fools voting for fascists like Farage are just telling politicians like Starmer that they want more fascism (and is anyone surprised they're getting it?).
AI told us to cut off the left leg.
Who was supposed to know it should have been the right leg?
Still better than removing a liver rather than a spleen.
To be fair, that was an easy mistake for a Florida doctor to make as the average Floridian has no heart, no spine, no brain and their heads and arses are interchangeable.
Prescribe me the best drugs!
You may actually get the best drugs. Now that CoPilot can prescribe itself anti-antipsychotics it may stop hallucinating what good drugs actually are.
The UK is one of the few places where you can still buy small amounts of codeine in over the counter painkillers (less than 13mg from memory). This is one of the reasons we're not having the same levels of prescription pain killer prescriptions as the US or Australia.
Australia banned it a bit over 10 years ago and everyone suddenly went doctor shopping for pain killers, now Australians are using strong painkillers as recreational drugs (A.K.A. Hillbilly Heroin)
It's the same story with pseudoephedrine, you can still get it in the UK without a prescription, even though it's a faff having to ask the pharmacist specifically for the product that contains it. If anything we need to be putting the prescribing of more low level pharmaceuticals in the hands of pharmacists and reduce the load on the NHS clinics and A&E departments.
Apple has not the size to forego 400 million potential customers. And they can still sell iPhones without Siri in Europe. Hence, the shareholders will pressure Apple management to realize the revenue, even if that means not installing Siri on the devices.
Besides that, many companies operating in both North America and Europe want the same mobile devices on both sides of the pond, to streamline roll-out and control processes for the devices, and if they decided for Apple in the U.S., they will try to strong-arm Apple into selling law-compliant devices in Europe, by threatening to look for alternatives for North America too, so they can avoid doubling their IT structures.
Apple definitely can afford to give up Europe, but that just means handing the market entirely to Android rather than it's current state of mostly Android. That will have a knock on effect to other markets... Apple can still afford this but they won't because they're too arrogant and greedy.
Instead they'll complain and try to undermine the EU.
What I'd like to see instead is an option to set chatbot to None.
Yep, I'd rather see the EU close whatsapp to chat bots in entirety.
The Mafia is protected under "cultural heritage"
I think you mean Protected Designation of Origin. It can only be called Mafia if it comes from the Mafia region of Italy.
Well, I'm sure governments get better rates. But yes, it's likely a nationalism thing. Stripe, being American and Adyen being European. People are dropping American tech when they can switch, and I'm guessing the UK contract was up.
And while they may be expensive, it's probably cheaper since they can handle card payments online without having to do all the PCI security stuff.
It's less of a nationalism thing and more of a national security thing. The US has demonstrated that it's an unreliable partner.
When it comes to government, you have wholesale, then you've got wholesale, then you've got government wholesale. They're probably getting transactions for pennies compared to the extortionate rates that small business pay (this is why companies rarely advertise their rates, at least the full rates rather only the headline rates that are at best, obfuscating the actual costs, small business get raped by the card machines) The UK is generally pretty good at managing their suppliers, when you find out how little the NHS is paying for medication, often less than half the OTC price (the OTC price in the UK, not the inflated prices Americans pay at that). That's because the NHS can go and say "you see those 3 factories, we want to buy all their output".
Foreign scam callers get angry if you ask if their mother knows they steal for a living
Not every culture places an emphasis on being honest and forthright... They probably feel just fine about it as long as they can't be held to blame because in some cultures being seen not to be at fault is far more important than almost anything else. If you get a lot of foreign scam calls who you really need to be angry at are the telco's who make money off it and the politicians who allow the former to happen because these are the people who have the power to stop it. They just don't want to. You'll always find people desperate enough to take crap jobs, would it really be any better if the scam caller really was Jethro from Alabama instead of India? Certainly in the UK there are (or at least recently were) UK based scam call centres, notably the "we's heard you bin in an accident" scam (yes, the standard of English really is that bad, they are hiring people who can't get any other job), I certainly didn't think these scam calls were any better than ones with foreign accents, it's still a time wasting scam call.
Because Deere is going to be paying big bucks to lobby every government in the world to apply strict emission control standards on tractors that will be impossible to meet without all their electonics.
They don't want "strict" emissions controls because then they'll have to make products that meet those standards. What they want is a specific loophole that they can easily meet but is difficult or expensive for everyone else, such as a critical "safety feature" that John Deere owns the patent of.
Let's be clear: Attempting to prevent the customers that 'bought' your product from repairing them is NOT capitalism.
Capitalism is all about the free market. When you try to enslave your 'customers', forcing them to come to you to repair rather than competing on the open market for repair work, you are not a capitalist. You are at best a plutocrat.
People want freedom, not to be owned by the company they thought they were buying stuff from.
Erm. that is capitalism, it's the ultimate expression of capitalism. Monopoly is the end game of capitalism. If you can literally prevent your customers from going elsewhere and being dependent on you for all future maintenance, upgrades, et al. you have the holy grail of capitalism.
Never confuse market liberalism with capitalism. A free market is not, by any means, a prerequisite for capitalism.
A strong legal system preventing abuse is the defence against that form of capitalism and what enables a free market to flourish.
Stargate has some of the strongest franchise potential out there, and a well developed universe that is wide open. Few properties have that.
There are whole new generations that have never seen the original, nor care to, but would respond to a modern series.
Canning it because of fears it would only attract old viewers is idiotic.
Stargate died 15 years ago, let it rest in peace.
Stargate effectively had a single gimmick, the underdog vs incredibly powerful enemies and somehow winning. This resulted in a trope I called "Stargate Syndrome". The Underdog, in order to beat the uber-powerful enemy needs to become more powerful to defeat them, once this happens they need to create another, even more powerful enemy which the heroes need to become more powerful to defeat and then they need an even more powerful enemy to keep the series going, so on and so forth. SG1 started fighting fake gods with high tech and ended up with all the tech fighting almost literal gods.
Joe Mallozzi, one of the writers of SG1 did another series in the 2010s called Dark Matter, which started out incredibly well but suffered from Stargate Syndrome in S2, it was cancelled before the end of S3. A shame as it had a lot of potential if they didn't make the heroes effectively untouchable.
SG1 should have stayed finished at S8, Atlantis was pretty much the perfect length at 5 seasons. Leaving you wanting just a little bit more compared to SG1's a season too far (as much as I like Morerna Baccarin, it really was terribad). The reason it has a following is because it was good, the later iterations were not good (SG Universe and Origins), it will lose it's following if they keep making terrible sequels and spin offs. What we need is more original Sci-Fi, not comfort blanket spin offs.
"Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile." -- Karl Lehenbauer
