True, and they should be prosecuted as criminals. However, if your anger is directed more towards the police generally than the violent criminals they are hired to protect you against, I will be dollars to donuts, you're upper middle class and writing from a very safe neighborhood. Congrats to you! It's an accomplishment to be wealthy enough that you don't think about being a victim of violent crime. I didn't get there until my late 20s, myself. I couldn't help being born in poverty where I was much more afraid of the lawless than law enforcement.

Today, I live in an expensive neighborhood and can walk my dog at night and not be paranoid watching for people following me or emerging from dark corners or just random junkies and drunks looking for conflict. I can't remember the last time someone threatened my safety since moving away from Chicago. When I was in college, getting home after my night shift job was an adventure. It was a 15 minute walk and everyone who knew I did it, thought I was crazy for doing so. And yeah, multiple times, I had to walk faster to avoid someone following me. I got attacked in the subway by some teenagers for no fucking reason. I got mugged and jumped twice. I had to be careful not to make eye contact with the wrong person as I was walking down the street minding my own business. That's what life is like for many people in bad neighborhoods.

Anyone who has someone close to them who experienced stuff like that has a more nuanced opinion than "cops are bad." The people who live there? Like I said before, they want better cops...not less cops. They want to be protected from violent criminals. For you, they're clearly a theoretical concern, like bears and sharks for me. For someone who avoids them frequently?...crime is a massive issue and daily stress. Cops should be prosecuted for any crimes they commit, everyone agrees to that (even the unions say as much, in theory, although they clearly don't do it well enough in practice). There is lots of room for improvement. However, the last thing the victims of police brutality want is for the cops to disappear, because they're the vulnerable in society who rely on them.

Did you seriously just "ackchyually" us? It doesn't matter what it means to you. It doesn't matter what it officially means. My vote has never mattered because I've only lived in blue states. It matters what it means to people in swing states. He who explains, loses. I know exactly what you mean it doesn't fucking matter, the perception by those exposed to right wing media is that "Defund the Police" is a nicer way of saying abolish them.

Also, defunding really does imply reducing police presence and effectiveness, so perhaps that saying should be dropped entirely. It's failed messaging, at best.

Again, I'm not voting for a Trump 3rd term nor will I vote for a Republican for the foreseeable future....but hey, keep repeating "defund the police" and "ackchyually" anyone who uses the common definition instead of the one you think is best. It's a real winner politically!!!!

I'm the fucking messenger, dude. You're campaigning for the Republican Party and Trumpism, presumably unwittingly.

A difference between you and is that I was actually a victim of violent crime and lived in the ghetto on the South Side of Chicago for 5 years in the 90s and I grew up near an even worse ghetto as a child. I got used to going to sleep at night with the sound of gunfire. When I first moved, I naively asked someone why people set off fireworks every night. I knew a dozen cops by name just from my neighborhood and I knew another dozen from my student jobs. I only know a few now because I live in an expensive gentrified neighborhood. You must be fucking privileged to spout that bullshit. Now that I have a good job and expensive house, yeah, the police are a theoretical concern.

When I was living in Chicago and being violently assaulted for no reason on the subway once or mugged a few times as well as followed, they were people I was very glad to see. All Cops Are not Bastards. In my experience, even as a mixed race person, they're quite nice to you if you are nice to them.

Police brutality is a crime. Stalking people is crime. Some cops are criminals and need to be punished.

However, if I was living on the South Side of Chicago, I can tell you that everyone there who wasn't a criminal would tell you they wanted more cops and better ones, not less. They don't want them defunded...maybe augmented with social workers?...sure, but everyone who lives around crime eventually needs a cop to save them or prosecute someone who committed a crime against them. They hung out at White Hen a lot (like 7-11) and I'd make conversation with them when I saw them.

If the police are enemy #1 in your mind, you are QUITE ignorant of the ways of the world. The police are not perfect and have a LOT of room to improve, but they're not your enemy. Only those who grew up with silver spoons in their mouth have the luxury to say stupid shit like ACAB. For those of us who relied on them to keep us safe from FAR WORSE people...we were glad they were there...wish bad cops didn't do shitty things and want to see them held appropriately accountable, but we WANT effective police who follow the law.

Once you experience violent crime for yourself, you'll find your simplistic thinking as cringe as the rest of society does.

You're welcome to your opinion, but every cop I know today or have met would not condone this. There are approximately 737,000 full-time sworn law enforcement officers employed in the United States, according to recent Statista data. So a few assholes doing 1000s of searches, thinking they wouldn't be held accountable doesn't seem like a conspiracy to me. It seems like a few shitty cops thinking the rules don't apply to them.

Also, fuck off with the Defund the Police talk unless you're actively campaigning for a Trump 3rd term. Police who commit crimes need to be held accountable, just like citizens. You don't punish the entire police force. The same people that are victims of police misconduct are the most dependent on them to keep them safe from far worse criminals.

Look, you're having an emotional overreaction to misdeeds by police officers. However, if you're going to say "defund the police" I'm going to tell you to fuck off....that stupid shit helped get Trump elected. That makes people think democractic voters and liberals are a bunch of children with no common sense. There are a lot of people who never liked Democrats, but also don't like that diesel is $6.50 a gallon and that we're definitely not winning this war in Iran at the moment and the "dept of war" doesn't appear to have a clear plan. Some are finally seeing that "yeah, trump IS as corrupt as everyone said." Many votes are in play this Nov. Not as many as there should be, but there are folks that are curious as to what it would be like if grownups ran the gov and are considering not voting Republican... If they think the choice is more trumpism or nuts saying "Defund the Police" then you're really not making the alternatives compelling.

If you want to defund flock?...there's a reasonable argument there. However, I think you'd be a lot less smug and confident if it was your car that was stolen and the thief would have been caught if the cops could use an automated license plate reader, but were forbidden to because some dipshit stalked his ex. I don't know the right answer. I don't like cops committing crimes and stalking women. Apparently the ones in this report are having some sort of accountability, which seems good on the surface. However, I also want people harming me and and my family or stealing our stuff easily. I want to make life more difficult for criminals. So I don't think the answer is "Flock for everyone without a warrant or due process"...nor is it "No one can use surveillance technology in law enforcement ever!" The right answer is somewhere in the middle, IMHO.

If you were in Silicon Valley?...that tracks. Same with Seattle and probably a few other major cities with then current tech stalwarts. If you lived in middle America, the jobs sucked. They paid OK, but they were constantly laying people off. It was a high stress, low-security environment. Most programmers didn't work for tech companies, they worked in industry implementing software.

Most companies looked at software as an expense and few saw it as an investment and were eager to cut it whenever they could. They knew they needed it, but they wanted to have as small of crews as possible. My sister and all her friends were constantly getting laid off. The ones who remained were perpetually insecure.

When I entered the workforce, the greybeards would also tell stories about how they were mistreated. I was smart enough to move to a better city, but even in a tech city, it definitely scarred the generation before me. In the 80s, there were many, especially in Middle America, who got jobs for major corporations writing software. They loved it and were good at it...and they were laid off within 5 years or their company closed down and recessions were more frequent then for tech workers, so they often were competing in a saturated market. Quite a few just gave up and went into teaching or something else.

When I entered the workforce, the greybeards I met?...I am confident they couldn't get work outside the industry without a LOT of fundamental changes to everything about them. Now they're generally smart, so I am sure they could pivot to real estate, teaching, or whatever your choice of backup career is if they really really really put their mind to it, but it would be anything but smooth or pretty.

The job market improved DRASTICALLY after the dot-com boom because even the biggest idiot MBAs could clearly see technology as an investment with a clear line of sight to growth and not just an expense, which probably isn't paying for itself. This led to programming being a good choice for a career and not something you suffered through because you loved it.

You don't remember the 80s well. Programmers did smaller scoped work that accomplished less. It was much harder to do back then and their tools were limited. it wasn't their fault. However, it wasn't fun. Languages that managed memory, like Java...as well as easier programming languages, like JavaScript and Python attracted a lot of people who enjoyed coding. It brought in a lot of scientists and creative individuals that wrote amazing stuff. The majority of code before 1995?...those SHITTY text-based indecipherable client server apps that you saw in insurance companies, hospitals, and car dealerships. They SUCKED, did very little, and were so hard to use, you had to train EVERYONE who touched them for several days just to figure out the esoteric convoluted interface.

OK, so you didn't mind the ancient text-based client/server apps?...well they crashed often. GUIs were usually worse. Did you forget having your apps crash DAILY? Windows crashed daily and as an early Desktop Linux adopter, I can say the OS didn't crash much at all, but everything I ran outside a terminal did. So I suppose it's faster to restart Netscape than Window, but still...today? I only have 1 app that crashes often : Oracle's SQL Developer....a total piece of Larry-Ellison-grade-grift-and-garbage. Beyond that?...nope, thanks to frameworks and memory-safe languages...or just programmers getting better at their craft, crashes are very rare in my daily life. I never have to save my work often thinking my IDE or text editor or e-mail program will crash any minute.

Regarding personalities? Yeah, obviously not every programmer is socially dysfunctional in the 80s. But every one I met?...definitely so. My sister would let me visit her office when I was 12 and I thought it was the coolest thing going to a big city office for a big company. All of my sister's friends? They had cool toys, but were tough to be around and hold a conversation with, even when you thought they were super cool and I was into everything they were into. Even as a young child I met them and said to myself "I love that you have all the cool video games and electronics and a really fast car, but I can't see you ever getting a girlfriend with that massive belly, your girl arms, your ill-fitting t-shirt and gross beard that looks like it needs to be washed...and certainly your personality can't be helping."

Many were cool, I am sure, but let's be real, well over 75% would not have thrived in other industries. It would take a LOT of adjustment for them to thrive in sales or healthcare or any environment that required more interaction with people than machines.

There are many smart people in the 80s that could have been programmers, but unless they were in a few tech cities, they chose medicine, research, finance, law, or accounting for better pay and job security (layoffs were very common back then...software was seen as a nuisance overhead expense more than an investment by most outside the tech business).

I think the office is better with some diversity. Not just gender/racial, but background and thought patterns. I don't want to go back to gatekeeping and making programming for the hardcore only. I will thrive. I'm good at my job, but the people I enjoy working with the most will probably find something else less stressful/hostile.

Counterpoint, Until the late 90s, programming was the domain of the autistic and severely mathematically inclined. In most areas, the pay sucked, and their output sucked even more. It was a hostile environment everywhere but in the bay area and Seattle...maybe a few others. My (much) older sister was a COBOL programmer...her life sucked. She was grateful to be laid off with severance and start a career elsewhere. Hearing about her experiences made me recosinder a programming job...I was great at writing code, but didn't want to live her life. Luckily the dot com boom pulled me back in.

Would you rather have the software of today or the software of 1995? Let's be real, most programmers before the internet couldn't find good work outside of working with programmers. They lacked the soft skills to work anywhere, but in front of a computer, FAR away from customers.

The programmers today certainly aren't as hardcore as those in the 80s, myself included, but we make MUCH MUCH MUCH better stuff. Plus I like diverse work environments. I've even got Asperger's and my version of hell is being trapped in a room full of hardcore autistic engineers who obsess about micro-optimizations (which happens to be a passion of mine).

We don't want shitty programmers, but we also don't want to scare off creative people with options. There's a nice balance. Plus it's nice to have at least a few coworkers who aren't white or Asian. We want to hire passionate people who put a lot of love into the craft.

AI is really killing programming. It's simply not fun. You write something by hand and put love and good work into it and you feel like a dinosaur failing your manager telling you to have Claude write it all...with a sense of guilt wondering "did I take longer than Claude and waste money?"

Then I do the opposite and have Claude write something simple (which is what my bosses want us to do). Today, it was writing a unit test for some underloved code I inherited. I wrote the skeleton and 1 test by hand to show Claude how it's done and told it to replicate the pattern for the other 16 endpoints. It took nearly all day, probably cost a ton of money and the output is SHIT. I keep refining things and pointing out mistakes and it just creates this indecipherable convoluted mess. Now I'm doubting myself. I had a simple functional project...here is an input, assert the output....why is it 10,000 lines of Java? I had to go helper method by helper method and tell it to use extremely common annotations in the classpath which we use elsewhere than write it's own bullshit.

Each minor optimization like "on method fuckMeUpTheAssWithABroomSideways(), the try/catch isn't needed. Use @SneakyThrows instead"...something an IDE plugin can do in 5 seconds, takes 10 minutes on Claude Opus 5.0. It'll copy and paste it's own code to an insane degree. It's SOOOO stupid that it makes me doubt my sanity and eyesight. Surely Claude isn't STUPID enough to copy/paste a boilerplate function into 5 classes within 1 single session?!?!....These 5 methods must be different somehow. "I" must be wrong because there's no way an AI can be THIS stupid..... Nope, I was right, so I told Claude to stop it....another 15 minutes to change 1 method to public, delete the 4 copy/paste and statically import the new remaining method 4x.

So the final product is of poor quality, took longer than it would have taken me to write it myself, and I feel ashamed to release it. But my boss is happy with me and thinks I did the right thing.

AI certainly hasn't made my life better. I can't recommend this career path as enthusiastically as I used to. When people ask me today, I tell them. "I really have no clue if your kid should become a programmer today. He/she needs to figure this out on their own. " But regardless, it would be nice to have coworkers who were talented enough to choose software development over other options...not just the duds who couldn't make it anywhere where human interaction was required.

Current AI will never be intelligent. It can only match patterns and training data. It can't conjure novel thoughts. We need an entirely new approach to achieve actual AGI or singularities. But as you state, AI is a soul-less tool. It's stupid people who will doom us. AI is just an accessory to our destruction. So no, the horrors of AI won't be Skynet, WestWorld or the Matrix or iRobot, but Idiocracy and Wall-E

I remember those, even dabbled with J2ME. I owned the Palm Trio PDA + phone before the iPhone. However, you're clearly straight and were married in 2007. And in fairness, I stated porn, but was including sex, so you're probably correct if we're being pedantic to the way I precisely stated it. Here's where I disagree with you. Remember, before I was born and probably you as well, they had VCRs. They were specialty devices for professionals. Once you had porn on them?...EVERYONE wanted one. The Palm Trio is arguably a smartphone. Barely anyone bought it. Really, the iPhone 1 didn't sell all that well. Rich people and nerds lined up around the block to get one, but not the mainstream. I've been a software engineer and attended many tech conferences in that era around the country and well over 50% of wealthy, professional engineers had flip phones or company-issued blackberries

In 2008, most gay men had flip phones like everyone else, unless work forced them to have a blackberry. Once grindr came out, EVERY gay man got a smartphone, even those with shit jobs. It completely transformed the gay experience. My neighborhood in Chicago had well over 20 major gay bars in a few block radius (nicknamed Boy's Town near Wrigley Field). These were bringing in literally millions of dollars back in the late 90s. Now? everyone open back then closed, TMK. I don't even know if my urban area has a gay bar. I assume there's on on the South end, but...I've never heard of one. The last one on our side of the river closed in COVID. So not only did grindr kill the gay bar, but they completely transformed gay culture. The gay lisp and affect? It was REALLY common among gay men in the 90s, now it's largely disappeared for young gay men. Why? In the 90s, men picked it up hanging out in gay bars. Now no one goes.

Similarly, tindr and other dating apps completely transformed straight dating and were certainly the death knell for flip phones...as well as the bar scene. I'm old now and most young adults I meet are family or coworkers and don't talk about their experiences, but I certainly haven't heard anyone talking about meeting partners in a bar.

Also, consider the green/blue bubble issue. Even if you don't meet your next girlfriend on tinder, you look mega janky with a nokia or cannot message her on her preferred apps.

Then there's sexting. I know a lot of married people who adopted smart phones to more easily take sexy pics and send them to folks: their partners, their side-pieces, strangers they will never meet in person...often with their partner's blessing. I am very confident there were a lot less amateur nude pics on reddit in 2006. Yeah...we had digital cameras, but you have to be motivated to open a web browser and connect the cable and download to your computer.

Smartphones would have thrived if they couldn't help you get laid. However, I am confident they drastically increased the penetration (no pun intended) among lower-income young users. I was a late adopter of the smartphone. I bought my first in 2012 (I had company issued ones before). I live in a city and ride the subway often. In 2012, flip phones were the default among old people, but impossible to find among young people. TikTok wasn't a thing and YouTube was kinda janky back then....so all those young people working minimum wage? I am pretty confident sex was a motivator for a notable portion of their peer group.

That brings about the network effect. Let's say only 25% of VCR owners wanted to watch porn. That increases sales and market penetration making it more viable for those who aren't into porn. The rapid adoption of useful apps would have lagged by a few years, IMHO, had it been impossible to use a smartphone for sexual purpose (porn, sexting, dating).

I think this is untrue. Every movie I've seen does a pretty good job of hiding that gap...you can see it with a sharp critical eye, but if you're not paying attention it looks convincing. The Higgsfield stuff looks AWFUL...any idiot can see it's fake and impossible. Also, how could the author help it? AI is the author. It already has good training data. If your assertion was that it will look like hollywood, give or take 50%, I'd agree with you.

My assertion is the gap is 4-10x wider and more exaggerated. AI is a pattern matching tool...it matches and generates based on it's training data as you stated, so it's a miracle if it improves on the training data, but if it's 10x worse....well....we're going to be waiting for this to impact movies people actually care about. Some late night SyFy slop?...eh, possibly, but even then....this stuff costs a lot of money and looks like garbage today and no one likes the end result...so I can see it help with some shitty background scenes where they just don't care, but I can't see it replace the cast or core film anytime soon.

Have you ever seen a long movie that's actually convincing that is generated by AI? I've seen sloppy ones. Even the "good" ones, like Higgsfield ones are impressive for AI, but not convincing. The shots are claustrophobically close...mostly to keep from rendering hands or the bodies. The physics are just WRONG...which is something you'd think AI would be able to do OK. Like punches are a foot away from making contact and things are just really really off.

There will definitely be a niche for this...but AI movies are kinda like fruit-flavored candy. Grape sales didn't plummet once nerds candy came out in grape flavors.

The AI movie experience is slowly improving, but is still terrible. You can make a very short 5s shot that's QUITE convincing...so long as there's a single subject...really closeup.

There's an interesting parallel in AI porn. A girl in a bikini? AI gets an A+. I am not confident I can spot the AI vs a real image. Most of the time, I can detect mistakes in the background, but they're quite great at the foreground. At first, they'd always make lighting mistakes, but I just looked at some reddit examples and they've gotten quite better.

OK, the woman gets naked? B- Real women don't have perfectly circular symmetrical nipples. It's mistakes like that really mess things up. The shadows and proportions are often just "off"...however, where it fails nearly universally is any sort of liquid. if she's in the shower? (or any other fluids on her)...definitely F.

Video? Well...if there's on subject...it's definitely getting better. I've seen videos where I can't tell if it was generated by AI or was a real video through some sort of AI correction filter....so long as it's a closeup of the subject's face and has minimal movement. If there's a second person? I've seen C- videos here and there, but mostly horrible Fs. There's a LOT of physics mistakes from basic movements to fluids. Objects change size from frame to frame, etc.

Why do I bring up porn? Well...not just because I'm a pervert...TBH, AI porn isn't for me. However, it's because I believe many great consumer technology leaps were driven by porn: photography, home video, the internet, the smart phone, etc. Most of us love sex, don't get enough of it, and are willing to pay to get our thrills.

But also, there's a LOT of porn on the internet that would make for very easy training data. LOTS. Also, the subject matter is limited in scope, making the data more likely to be applicable. Next to sports, I can't imagine much filmed more often than a woman taking her top off...so...it is logical to assume it's the easiest thing for AI to generate. Few things are shared on the internet more than images of breasts. Why can't AI render a topless woman convincingly?

Once AI masters recreating a basic porn, I think Hollywood has reason to fear. However, if AI only works if the subjects is EXTREMELY closeup, doesn't show their hands, there's no fluid, there's little movement...then the movies it can make are really limited. Also, AI movies are EXPENSIVE to make today. I can't imagine people paying top dollar to see AI slop...and today, they cannot make them cheap enough to just give away for free for very long.

So while I can see a few scenes here and there or backgrounds using AI...we're FAR from replacing actors in convincing movies that don't look like shit. Also, AI is just not that popular. People hate AI slop. I don't see that changing until it actually does something cool...custom content?...maybe...but making slop with AI and charging us movie theater prices?....I don't see that working very well.

So you're seriously stating that these LARGE tech companies are using human beings and not self-driving cars because humans are more affordable? FUCK RIGHT OFF, with your bullshit shilling. They hire all these human beings because automation can't do the job. If they could, they would roll it out widely. Tech companies are heavily financed and whoever solves self-driving cars will make a MASSIVE fortune. Yeah, there are limited pilot programs, probably with remote operators at this point. (there are mixed reports about Waymo...I believe they have to rely on remote operators a lot more than they'd like to admit, hence why their rollout is so limited.)

Think of it this ways. Taxis are hard. You have to drive in busy areas and time matters and safety is a greater concern. If the technology COULD self-drive, there are MANY problems a LOT more lucrative than fucking taxi fares. How about shipping? Imagine how much money would be made if long haul trucks could drive while the driver is sleeping, even if at reduced speed? Highway driving at reduced speed is a LOT easier than running cabs in SF or Austin. There are millions of jobs that involve driving in areas no one wants to drive. There are many militaries would would pay TOP DOLLAR to keep troops out of harm's way transporting fuel through warzones. Even just having a car that can valet-park itself would be HUGE for bored rich tech bros willing to shell out huge sums of money.

I wholesale reject your bullshit theory that these tech companies are not doing everything they can to master self-driving technology because human labor is affordable. You must not know Silicon Valley. The founders? They're nearly all autistic...even if the founder is Neurotypical, his lead engineers aren't. They hate people even more than they like money. Tech is cool. Tech is inspirational. Meatbags? They suck. They make mistakes and sleep and quit and are very unpredictable. Tech companies would rather innovate at modest to little profit than rely on unreliable gig workers to make a fortune. They're famously logical, but not in this respect. The notion of being transported to the place of their choosing without having to interact with a human being is too exciting for people like them.

They're already "behind automated technologies". No, the gig workers have nothing to lose. They're getting exploited now. You can't outsource their job to Bangladesh. There's really no way to treat them more poorly. Fox News must have really done a number on your brain to think otherwise.

I call bullshit. They're never going to slow down due to ethic's sake. Either they're running out of room to actually improve their models and looking for an excuse for a disappointing string of releases in the pipeline....or they're posting this and are still going to actively develop their models and hope their competitors let their guard down? Altman doesn't care about humanity. If he did, he'd be fired. There are no ethics in AI. If the frontier models got ethical, their Chinese competitors would surpass them...we DEFINITELY know Musk doesn't care about ethics of any sort, given his lack of concern on the child porn grok generates.

Your mind goes at roughly the same pace as your body. There's no biological reason for that, but it just so happens. My ability to adapt and learn has been compromised, despite my best efforts to avoid it. I acknowledge this and do what I can to be better than most, including most young people, but I still see it. I could pick up a brand new programming language in a few months when I was in my early 20s and now it takes me 4x as long, despite more experience...or just the difference in learning Spanish in high school vs now.

This parallels the changes in our body. Similar to being a lifelong learner, I've been staying in shape all my life. I'm in better shape than I was in college, but it was difficult to workout to failure back then. I could walk for 4h (and did often) and be a little sore and grumpy, despite being in pretty bad shape because I didn't have time to workout between student jobs and difficult courses. If I walk 4h today, I probably would have to take off work the next day. I can do more pullups than at any point in my life today because I've been working at it for so long....but recovery time is now measured in days, whereas in my early 20s, it was in hours. It's just biology, it happens to all of us.

So yeah, being old sucks. I'm not necessarily worse than someone younger, but I am worse than myself at a younger age in my ability to adapt to change. The best an old person can do is to defy nature and do what we can to be a better version of ourselves than when we were younger, but we're fighting biology and entropy. I am leaner now than in my 20s, but it takes 4x as much work. I am smarter than my 20s, but I have to work a lot harder and be more focused and disciplined to be so....

But most importantly, I remember all the old boomer greybeards when I started my career...telling me the internet was a fad, no one would ever do real business like banking online, Java is a joke and no one will use it, etc. EVERYONE knows someone like that. EVERYONE heard some old person say the iPhone was stupid. I'm now as old as many of those old guys when I started...I work very hard to not be that greybeard...but I am also aware that just because I don't understand something, doesn't mean it will be a flop.

Since posting this comment, I saw the reviews of the phone and was impressed with the IOS UX on it...but criticism still stands....it may be "cool," but novelty wears off and you're stuck with a laptop-priced phone with a visible crease and hinges that no longer line up that is a lot more likely to break on the next drop than the regular iPhone Pro, which I happen to love. It's tedious to put a phone twice as thick in and out of your pocket constantly. The hinges trap dirt and pocket lint. It's a viable phone...if it were 20% more expensive, it would likely have a huge following, but it's VERY expensive for some features that seem pretty gimmickey. It's a worse phone and a worse tablet in one. I'd rather have a nicer tablet and a nicer phone. It's like a cargo bike. I have a bike...a very nice on that's perfect for when I go biking. I have a car. It's perfectly suited for me carrying cargo. A cargo bike? It's a slow, heavy, and clumsy bike (even as an ebike) that's not fun to ride. It's a poor hauler of groceries or kids or anything I need to haul. It's worse than my car for hauling and worse than my bike for exercise and getting around quickly in the city. Similarly, the iPhone Duo will likely be a worse phone and a worse tablet for me and most others, but hey, I'd love to be wrong and this brings a lot of joy to well-heeled customers.