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Comment We Called It (Score 5, Interesting) 57

When this change was made many Slashdotters said it was ridiculous.

Cayenne8 said: "Yeah, my first thought was WTF would they ditch the very popular and VERY well known company name "HBO" for just Max? Seems like the latest round of marketing folks coming to businesses these days haven't a clue about the job they are trying to do, and how it all works."

Then we piled on from there...

An American dream for the very privileged: Getting paid generational wealth despite messing up so badly.

Comment The Difference? (Score 0) 14

Will the typical person be able to tell the difference between a human and AI voice reading the stories?

Certainly the best-sellers will retain humans, even famous humans, to read their books. But for the rest, AI could save them a lot of time and money.

Hopefully this technology will spread fast and then every book will be available with narration on many platforms. That would lead to price competition and competition for quality. Let the free market decide if this is a good idea or not.

Comment One ID to rule them all (Score 1) 21

What prevents one or a handful of IDs from being used by millions of people?

An obvious solution for that problem would be for every ID verification to be cross-checked against governmental registries.

This is also very convenient for the government to 'protect the children' and 'fight terrorists' by knowing every 'sensitive' thing that your ID has been registered to have had accessed. Your personal liberty will certainly be secured by this enlightened system, and no dragnet will ever ruin your reputation and good standing.

Oh, and if things you have already accessed are later deemed to be 'sensitive' then could that blemish be added to your permanent record after the fact - long after you had a chance to decided to click the link?

Bring a sled! This slope looks slippery.

Submission + - Tesla Sued for Algorithmic Odometer Manipulation (jalopnik.com)

Mr_Blank writes: A multiple-Tesla owner in Northern California is suing the automaker, claiming the odometers incorrectly measures mileage using a faulty algorithm which ups the supposed miles driven from 15% to 117%. The lawsuit alleges Tesla does this to close out warranties early on their products. The lawsuit, however, stands on a filed patent which may or may not be in use in Tesla vehicles.In the instance of their Model Y,Hinton says they drove 6,086 miles but the Tesla recorded 13,228 miles. The lawsuit is based on a patent that Tesla filed for a seemingly tricky form of recording mileage. The patent calls for a "miles-to-electrical energy conversion factor" that would take in factors like charging behavior and road conditions into the calculation of miles traveled instead of a direct recording of miles traveled.The lawsuit alleges Tesla is using this technology instead of mechanical or electrical systems that faithfully record miles traveled, in order to shorten warranties based on miles-driven in the cars.

Submission + - A chilling AI warning (axios.com)

Mr_Blank writes: Jake Sullivan — with three days left as White House national security adviser, with wide access to the world's secrets — delivered a chilling, "catastrophic" warning for America and the incoming administration: The next few years will determine whether artificial intelligence leads to catastrophe — and whether China or America prevails in the AI arms race.

America must quickly perfect a technology that many believe will be smarter and more capable than humans. We need to do this without decimating U.S. jobs, and inadvertently unleashing something with capabilities we didn't anticipate or prepare for. We need to both beat China on the technology and in shaping and setting global usage and monitoring of it, so bad actors don't use it catastrophically. Oh, and it can only be done with unprecedented government-private sector collaboration — and probably difficult, but vital, cooperation with China.

This is beyond uncharted waters. It's an unexplored galaxy — "a new frontier," in his words. And one, he warns, where progress routinely exceeds projections in advancement. Progress is now pulsing in months, not years.

There won't be one winner in this AI race. Both China and the U.S. are going to have very advanced AI. There'll be tons of open-source AI that many other nations will build on, too. Once one country has made a huge advance, others will match it soon after. What they can't get from their own research or work, they'll get from hacking and spying. (It didn't take long for Russia to match the A-bomb and then the H-bomb.)

Steve Bannon and other MAGA originals believe AI is evil at scale — a job-killer for the very people who elected Trump. But for now, Bannon is a fairly lonely voice shouting against AI velocity. Trump and the AI gods hold the stage.

Comment Free Market & FCC (Score 2) 12

These new rules sound useful for customers on Steam. Since Steam is a heavy weight this could impact game sales across the industry. The other game service providers don't even have to explicitly follow suit in order to benefit from this; cross platform games could meet Valve's expectations across platforms as a consequence of doing this for Steam. Will Microsoft, GOG, Epic, Apple, Google Play, Sony, Nintendo, and others follow suit?

The free market works when there is competition. A similar DLC rule from the FCC might not even be as effective of Steam doing it. Sure the FCC might get around to suing some company for breaking the rule, eventually. But Steam can knock a company down, right in the pocket book, as fast as customers complain with merit.

I look forward to seeing how this plays out with customers of Steam, purveyors on Steam, and competitors to Steam.

Comment Protest with Posts (Score 2) 73

Protesting is completely possible. If there is a will to make a subreddit unusable as a sign of protest, then invite 'bad posts' and upvote them. When the many lurkers log in and see the same protest pictures & posts filling their feeds, the protest message will get out.

Reddit relies on the uploads, likes, and shares of the masses. The attention of millions of people is filtered through the actions of relatively few moderators. If the mods are mad, then they can allow the feeds to funnel garbage. Without a complete redesign for how Reddit works the ability to direct the attention of the visitors will rest with the mods. That is power; political power..

Reddit can solve their reliance on human mods by investing in robots. Reddit can solve the robot uprising another day; kick that resistance is futile can down the road.

Comment Overloaded Operator (Score 2) 118

I never liked the concept of overloaded operators, one symbol with multiple meanings based on the context of the variables it is used against.

Sure, it might save a lot of lines of code if done properly. Sure it might be intuitive to the original developer and support team. But someday before the sunset of the system, someone is going to read that code for support or upgrades and be in one heck of a mess. I preferred to use clearly named functions instead of overloaded operators.

Comment Wellness My Data (Score 1) 86

The part of wellness programs that made me avoid them: Onerous requirements to share my data.

I loathe the idea that for a tiny little benefit, even a cash deposit, I would have to give up data on my steps, workouts, diet, and other out of office habits. Some programs also came with an app on my personal phone. Most came with more email, which I didn't want to read, and advertisements for even more programs/ books /classes that I did not have time for. The wellness programs reduced my wellness by increasing my stress!

After trying the programs the first year they were offered, I opted out thereafter. This also increased my stress because my spouse was upset I was missing out on some cash for enrolling and sharing my data. bah!

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