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Comment Only ten years? (Score 2, Insightful) 23

"The botnet was used to launch more than 370,000 attacks in 80 countries, including China, Japan and the U.S., prosecutors said."

And no one was harmed or killed? Normally manslaughter to murder 1 (in the USA) is 10 years to life. A third of a million attacks targeting 37% of all nations on this panet gets at most TEN years? What the fuck is wrong with the US justice system?!?

They might as well start pardoning the criminals in DC (oh, right, they did that in January). What a banana republic

Comment OBLIG: Literally *EVERYTHING* is in space!!! (Score 0) 108

"... but few people are going to care. Its not like there's much to see out an airplane window anyways outside of takeoff and landing."

EXCEPT: https://youtu.be/7Y3jRaUGg-A

How about you take a long, tall drink from a cup of shit-the-fuck-up? Maybe that'll be a relevant clue-by-4 to illustrate to you, that you -- have your head up your ass.

Other people do not think like you do.

Go learn something and stop being an arrogant, narcissist shit.

Comment Re:Sold his stock (Score 5, Informative) 98

I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out.

Programming

The Toughest Programming Question for High School Students on This Year's CS Exam: Arrays 65

America's nonprofit College Board lets high school students take college-level classes — including a computer programming course that culminates with a 90-minute test. But students did better on questions about If-Then statements than they did on questions about arrays, according to the head of the program. Long-time Slashdot reader theodp explains: Students exhibited "strong performance on primitive types, Boolean expressions, and If statements; 44% of students earned 7-8 of these 8 points," says program head Trevor Packard. But students were challenged by "questions on Arrays, ArrayLists, and 2D Arrays; 17% of students earned 11-12 of these 12 points."

"The most challenging AP Computer Science A free-response question was #4, the 2D array number puzzle; 19% of students earned 8-9 of the 9 points possible."

You can see that question here. ("You will write the constructor and one method of the SumOrSameGame class... Array elements are initialized with random integers between 1 and 9, inclusive, each with an equal chance of being assigned to each element of puzzle...") Although to be fair, it was the last question on the test — appearing on page 16 — so maybe some students just didn't get to it.

theodp shares a sample Java solution and one in Excel VBA solution (which includes a visual presentation).

There's tests in 38 subjects — but CS and Statistics are the subjects where the highest number of students earned the test's lowest-possible score (1 out of 5). That end of the graph also includes notoriously difficult subjects like Latin, Japanese Language, and Physics.

There's also a table showing scores for the last 23 years, with fewer than 67% of students achieving a passing grade (3+) for the first 11 years. But in 2013 and 2017, more than 67% of students achieved that passsing grade, and the percentage has stayed above that line ever since (except for 2021), vascillating between 67% and 70.4%.

2018: 67.8%
2019: 69.6%
2020: 70.4%
2021: 65.1%
2022: 67.6%
2023: 68.0%
2024: 67.2%
2025: 67.0%

Comment So people reject reality and substitute their own (Score 1) 160

The entire reason we have a philosophy of science and peer-review and the null hypothesis, is this. Reality doesn't conform to your beliefs. If it did, people could wish shit into existence. Wish in one hand and shit in the other. Which fills up first?

Senses are fallible, too. Setup 3 buckets of water with cold, lukewarm, and hot water. Stick your hands in the cold and the hot water. Wait 5-10 minutes. Put both hands in the lukewarm water. Your hands will *NOT* report the same temperature. These people need to learn, not be lied to.

Additionally, the title is misleading. You don't lie to people when you want to express the truth. You tell them the truth. That they reject the truth indicates they lack critical thinking skills. Teach them.

I don't think lying to the gullible is a solution. Indeed, the article supports this: "Philosopher Byron Hyde and author of the study suggests that public trust could be improved not by sugarcoating reality, but by educating people to expect imperfection and understand how science actually works."

How is that proposing lying to the people who lack mental tools? The title is straight up misleading.

Teach them. Engage with them. Some might be incapable, but that does NOT support that they should be lied to. This is terrible reporting.

Comment Air India's "Perfect" Flight Record. (Score 1) 108

Hi. I think you are confused.

Air India crashes/fatalities:
* Air India Flight 101 CONTROLLED FLIGHT INTO TERRAIN -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
* Air India Flight 855 PILOT ERROR -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

What does the word perfect mean to you? Those are crashes. People died.

We can even add:
* Air India Flight 182 BOMBING -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Though that's also on the staff at the airport doing security screenings.

Comment Re:You're going to see a lot of weird businesses (Score 1) 72

I grew up down the street from her house. Went to the first Chuck E Cheese's across the street often.

Civilization didn't collapse due to her house. It wasn't even the first revision of her house (IIRC got leveled in the great SF earthquake) There's a lot of people that look at the Victorian adornments of her house as a sign we had civilization. Compared to the Soviet Bloc style housing we have going in today that has surrounded it, the Winchester house now looks out of place.

All kind of sad really. Town and Country was a beautiful shopping center. The trailer park next door provided low income housing, and the Styufy dome theatres looked straight out of a moonbase. Nothing is allowed to have exposed wood beams or rounded edges anymore.

Comment And where will AI get it's data from? (Score 1) 58

As more sites start seeing a drop off due to people getting their answers from AI, where will AI get it's data to train from if it has nothing to scrape? (Legalities and morals aside). It feels like it'll become self defeating over time or hit a wall of not having any new things to reference.

Comment I don't think he's far off. (Score 2) 129

Today I was looking at an AI Asian woman on Facebook. She had a whole page setup of her in various outfits, and I am not kidding I was having a difficult time discerning if she was real or fake. It wasn't until I went to her profile and saw all the videos was I able to tell the difference. Even here, I'm using a "She" pronoun, when it should be an "IT" pronoun, because it is not human.

No joke though, the realism and attractiveness was just.. off the scale. I'm not one of those guys into Waifu anime, hug body pillows, etc. I'm married, got kids, I'm older and I've been in tech a long time. I removed myself from my emotions for a minute to examine what was happening, and I closed the page.

If AI visually can do this to me, a guy with a 138 IQ that has been on this site forever, can usually discern if these things are real or fake, imagine what happens when these things are talking to people of lower IQ, coupled with realtime voice chat and response, programmed to understand your likes and interactions on facebook, to get you the perfect group of attractive friends, that treat you like the center of the universe.

Or worse yet, overlayed on the actual people you interact with on a daily basis. Like "Mudd's Women" from Star Trek TOS or Pike in "The Cage" Slapping on some Meta Quest glasses so everyone you meet and interact with is attractive... for only $99.99 a month.

Zuck isn't stupid, the population is. People will be throwing money at this if he gets it right.

Transportation

Class Action Accuses Toyota of Illegally Sharing Drivers' Data (insurancejournal.com) 51

"A federal class action lawsuit filed this week in Texas accused Toyota and an affiliated telematics aggregator of unlawfully collecting drivers' information and then selling that data to Progressive," reports Insurance Journal: The lawsuit alleges that Toyota and Connected Analytic Services (CAS) collected vast amounts of vehicle data, including location, speed, direction, braking and swerving/cornering events, and then shared that information with Progressive's Snapshot data sharing program. The class action seeks an award of damages, including actual, nominal, consequential damages, and punitive, and an order prohibiting further collection of drivers' location and vehicle data.
Florida man Philip Siefke had bought a new Toyota RAV4 XLE in 2021 "equipped with a telematics device that can track and collect driving data," according to the article. But when he tried to sign up for insurance from Progressive, "a background pop-up window appeared, notifying Siefke that Progressive was already in possession of his driving data, the lawsuit says. A Progressive customer service representative explained to Siefke over the phone that the carrier had obtained his driving data from tracking technology installed in his RAV4." (Toyota told him later he'd unknowingly signed up for a "trial" of the data sharing, and had failed to opt out.) The lawsuit alleges Toyota never provided Siefke with any sort of notice that the car manufacture would share his driving data with third parties... The lawsuit says class members suffered actual injury from having their driving data collected and sold to third parties including, but not limited to, damage to and diminution in the value of their driving data, violation of their privacy rights, [and] the likelihood of future theft of their driving data.
The telemetry device "can reportedly gather information about location, fuel levels, the odometer, speed, tire pressure, window status, and seatbelt status," notes CarScoop.com. "In January, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton started an investigation into Toyota, Ford, Hyundai, and FCA..." According to plaintiff Philip Siefke from Eagle Lake, Florida, Toyota, Progressive, and Connected Analytic Services collect data that can contribute to a "potential discount" on the auto insurance of owners. However, it can also cause insurance premiums to be jacked up.
The plaintiff's lawyer issued a press release: Despite Toyota claiming it does not share data without the express consent of customers, Toyota may have unknowingly signed up customers for "trials" of sharing customer driving data without providing any sort of notice to them. Moreover, according to the lawsuit, Toyota represented through its app that it was not collecting customer data even though it was, in fact, gathering and selling customer information. We are actively investigating whether Toyota, CAS, or related entities may have violated state and federal laws by selling this highly sensitive data without adequate disclosure or consent...

If you purchased a Toyota vehicle and have since seen your auto insurance rates increase (or been denied coverage), or have reason to believe your driving data has been sold, please contact us today or visit our website at classactionlawyers.com/toyota-tracking.

On his YouTube channel, consumer protection attorney Steve Lehto shared a related experience he had — before realizing he wasn't alone. "I've heard that story from so many people who said 'Yeah, I I bought a brand new car and the salesman was showing me how to set everything up, and during the setup process he clicked Yes on something.' Who knows what you just clicked on?!"

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the news.

Comment Re:We're headed for Venus, but still we stand stro (Score 1) 66

To be extra clear, here: titanium melts around 1,900 kelvin. The temperature of re-entry is 3,200 kelvin. Yes, 3,200 kelvin is "below" the temperature required to make titanium boil (by 300 kelvin), but you'll note that the 1,900 is 3,200 by 1,300.

Who honestly thinks titanium that's been heated to 'just below' its boiling point for half an hour, will be somehow intact once it's slow enough to not self-generate plasma due to atmospheric drag?

Ridiculous.

Comment Re:We're headed for Venus, but still we stand stro (Score 1) 66

How does a thing that isn't water, 'water in the ocean'? What? A thing can't water. The only thing that is water, is H2O.

Also, no -- it will not survive atmospheric re-entry. The atmosphere see to that. The heat of re-entry exceeds the temperature of Venus by *THOUSANDS OF DEGREES*.... It will not survive in 1 piece. This isn't a matter of atmospheric pressure, nor is this a matter of G-shock. It's plasma; it'll be in an envelope of super-heated plasma. Why do you think they can't use the radios on the Shuttle during re-entry? High energy plasma -- at THOUSANDS OF DEGREES.... Sheesh.

Comment It won't survive re-entry. (Score 1) 66

'"As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact," Langbroek wrote in a blog update"'

Uh, no.

1) High-energy plasma at 3,200 K upon re-entry. This occurs for 25 minutes or so. This is why Columbia became ... a large number of pieces of wreckage strewn across multiple US states.
2) Venera probes use drag-parachutes to reduce velocity to the point that they can survive entry into the atmosphere of Venus. But, this was built by the Soviet union -- it didn't get out of low Earth orbit. Do you think that parachute functions? It doesn't, it won't.
3) The reasons cited for it 'surviving' re-entry are ... G-forces and atmospheric pressure. None of those address the fact that, though the surface of Venus is ~= 737K ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ), you'll notice that the surface temperature of Venus is 2,463 kelvin 'colder' than atmospheric re-entry. What material do you think the probe is made of? Unobtanium?

Ridiculous. It will not survive atmospheric re-entry. it will not be 'a single piece' when it (or most of it, the parts that weren't vaporized by high-energy plasma), gets to sea-level.

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