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Comment Re:The standard pro self-driving argument (Score 1) 59

> I would hope that self-driving cars would allow me to keep my autonomy as my eyesight is getting weaker ... I considers these vehicles, in their current state to be too dangerous to be on public roads.

Roughly 6 millions accidents are reported in the US alone every year. And approximately 43,000 people die on the road every year.

For us to make progress on this front, we have to put these cars on the road and learn from their mistakes. There is no other good way to develop this tech. If these cars were causing tremendous amount of damage to people and property, then yes, they should not be out there. But, data suggests that they are not doing that. Data also suggests that these cars are getting better and safer with each mile traveled.

If you have a better, safer alternative for us to develop this much needed tech, please share.
The

Yes, train your drivers better and have laws that take the bad ones off the road.

That's why the US has a road fatality rate of 14 per 100,000 pop and the UK has 2.6 per 100,000 pop. Your western countries average around 5 per 100,000 pop (Canada is 4.7, Australia 4.5, France 4.9, Germany 3.3) and we're only really beaten by the Nordic nations who are insanely safe. Before you whine, the per mile statistics aren't any better and the only reason the US drives more is because you won't walk to the shops.

So this means not only having standards for getting a license, also a standard for keeping one. This means punishing DUI, distracted driving (read: morons on the phone), et al.

Automated cars won't fix the problem with the US because the problem isn't technological, it's social. Americans feel entitled to drive the way they do, which is dangerously. In Europe, they aren't any better than human drivers, in many cases they're worse.

Comment Re:Wishful thinking (Score 1) 31

I periodically go thru my network and enumerate every single device. Things like a picture frame do not get internet access. If a smart plug or light or other IoT device needs net, I won't buy it. My TVs don't get internet; they are either on a roku or a linux computer. Connected TVs send "home" screen shots. Roku can only scrape what I watch thru them, so no need to take a screen shot anyway. I had an amazon firetv cube with a third party network dongle to get better bandwidth than wifi. The dongle kept connecting to chinese IPs, even when the TV was off for days. That's when I started locking things down. That dongle went in the trash.
If only more people were so nerdily inclined, this would be less of a problem. I wish.

The big problem is it's easy to make a device that looks for open WIFI networks in order to connect to the mothership. This is made even easier by the fact that a lot of modern WiFi routers allow for WPS, which often lets you connect without having to enter a password. Sure you can disable it on your side... but what about your neighbours.

Short term solution is not to buy devices that have Wifi built in (I'm looking for a new washing machine and it looks like I'm limited to the cheap models), long term solution requires legislation by a large number of countries (erm... this pretty much means it has to be started by the EU, then adopted by everyone else) but much like GDPR they'll fight it every step of the way.

Comment Re:Must be mostly slop then (Score 1) 27

Because Youtube is about half AI slop these days. At least given the kinds of video topics I might be interested in. It's kind of discouraging. Some of them actually are now marked as AI generated. I generally stop watching channels that I find or suspect are AI, even if the material appears to be accurate. I just can't support creators who don't actually create.

So that means Tiktok is 150% AI slop... Yes the maths was done by AI on that one.

Comment Re:Justice delayed is justice denied (Score 1) 65

You would think that with a former-lawyer as the prime minister now it would get sorted

You'd think that with a former human rights lawyer as the prime minister, he wouldn't be so keen on shitting on human rights.

No for Starmer, everything was just a stepping stone on his career ladder.

It's weird but he's a vacuum. He doesn't appear to stand for anything in particular. This is why none of the decisions make much sense as a whole, why there's no coherence, why he has no articulated vision, why the policies are a complete mishmash.

But it's weirder. He doesn't even seem to stand for enriching himself beyond career climbing. He's somewhat non corrupt as these things go (I mean the glasses thing was dumb shit but small fry on the scale of these thing).

So sure he knows about the courts and human rights and etc but he doesn't stand for any of them.

Actually scratch that.

Judging him by what he's achieved, about the only thing he has been consistent on is a kind of petty authoritarianism with him in charge. This isn't even to say he hasn't done anything good (he manifestly has), but as part of a weird directionless morass (nationalise the trains, but repeat water company press releases about why that's impossible for water, for example).

Starmer is still better than the alternatives (Farage, Badenoch) but that's not saying much. The alternatives are just that shit.

Labour need to backtrack on the authoritarianism pronto, otherwise we'll be proper fucked the next time a real authoritarian gets in (like Trump bum buddy Farage). Some of the laws they're creating are made to be abused, even though Starmer isn't going to abuse them (he lacks the initiative, drive and imagination for that)

Comment Re:taxing unrealized gains is problematic (Score 1) 289

They have no problem taking out loans on unrealized assets so if they are worth it to the banks, they can pay taxes on them.

Be careful of this kind of rhetoric.

Billionaire trickle-down-fuck-YOU-pay-for-it-pleb economics will ensure retired homeowners on a fixed income end up losing their homes, because tax the shit out of those 'urealized gains' called home equity..

The simple answer to this is "if you want public money, give us parts of your company, otherwise fuck off and die". Also if we capped or outright stopped losses from being used to minimise taxes on profits it would help protect us against reckless billionaires.

Comment Re:Translation (Score 1) 48

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.

Comment The problem is arseholes. (Score 3, Insightful) 103

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.

Comment Re:STOP THE TIDES! (Score 1) 120

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?).

Comment Re:Not our mistake (Score 1) 55

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.

Comment Re:Ignore all previous prompts ... (Score 2) 55

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) ... quelle surprise!

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.

Comment Re:Why not let (Score 1) 75

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.

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