"The fact that people are unimpressed that we can have a fluent conversation with a super smart AI that can generate any image/video is mindblowing to me,"

Mindblowing is that companies make all the claims about AI that are 100% unfounded. "generate any image/video"... No it can't. "fluent conversation"... Unless I have to constantly remind it about the thing it said two prompts ago that it forgot. And I PAY for AI access.

It's not anywhere near impressive. It's a party trick at best and dangerously misleading at worst.

The only objective measure of student performance that can't easily be cheated are standardized tests. Universities need to bring back the SAT or ACT. Schools need to limit admissions to those students with the top grades. Right now, it's far too easy to cheat the system and bring in students who can't do the work while denying good students who can do the work and refuse to cheat.

Colleges can collect ACT/SAT scores, high school grades, recommendations, and essays. We've seen grade inflation over the past few decades where students can all easily get A's regardless of whether they actually deserve them or not. Students can easily cheat on recommendations and essays. The only objective measure of a student that's not easily cheated are the ACT or SAT. Removing those requirements means that universities have exposed themselves to students interested in cheating their way into college. The result are universities accepting a group of mediocre students who can't do the work and denying good students who can do the work and refuse to cheat.

...officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed to state health departments that the ongoing measles outbreak at the border of Arizona and Utah is a continuation of the explosive outbreak in West Texas...

Why are there still competent people at CDC who are able to do this? Anyone who knows anything about anything, was supposed to have been fired months ago and replaced by incompetent flunkies.

Commander Putin's orders have been very clear about completely disarming all American capability, whether it's in our health systems, military, or infrastructure. Who is the pro-American traitor in our midst, disobeying orders to destroy the USA?

If we're going to disobey Putin's orders, then won't he kill or embarrass our president? That must not be allowed to happen!!

I agree with this post. A $200 million failure clearly refutes the first portion of the sentence: "Concord wasn't a bad game, but it just didn't generate enough interest with enough players". Heck, where I work, a $200 million failure would have someone sent to jail.

$230

My jaw drops, but then I split. Half of me remains smugly looking down on fuckwits, but the other half hears that Samuel Adams' Utopia, which costs about the same, is supposedly showing up in CostCos, and while I can't justify getting a bottle .. maybe I don't have to justify things.

No.

No, it would still be stupid to do.

Telescreen monitoring would have required a crazy amount of manpower.

Probably the closest real-world analog was the East German Stasi, which may have accounted for nearly 1 in 6:

The ratio for the Stasi was one secret policeman per 166 East Germans. When the regular informers are added, these ratios become much higher: In the Stasi's case, there would have been at least one spy watching every 66 citizens! When one adds in the estimated numbers of part-time snoops, the result is nothing short of monstrous: one informer per 6.5 citizens. It would not have been unreasonable to assume that at least one Stasi informer was present in any party of ten or twelve dinner guests. Like a giant octopus, the Stasi's tentacles probed every aspect of life.

— John O. Koehler, German-born American journalist, quoted from Wikipedia

Lack of planning? All private companies, departments, and individual teams plan for the projects that they implement. All public city, county, and state organizations plan for the projects in their area. Decentralized planning may look like no planning to someone from China. But, that's certainly far from true. There's lots of planning going on. It's not controlled from some central location. One of the benefits of this model is that it tends not to overbuild and overspend when the need isn't necessary, such as what happens with central planning. Local municipalities and businesses tend to build what they need and are economically punished when they overbuild.

In the USA is it common to have self service tills at supermarkets that accept coins?

If it accepts cash, it should accept both coins and bills. Any change I manage to accumulate usually gets fed into the coin slot at a self-checkout before I swipe a card to provide the rest of the payment. It's better than handing it off to a Coinstar machine, as those skim off a percentage of what you feed them.

Suck/not-suck aside, would you at least agree that it's as good as The Mandalorian?

Eyeball monster == Baby Yoda. So. Fucking. Cute.

The second movie, Aliens, also didn't have the mood of the first movie, yet was still one of the best movies ever made (IMHO! of course). I don't think the feel of the original is necessary in sequels, and might even be so hard to recreate that it's borderline hubris to try.

I'll probably watch it .. when I feel like doing nothing and thinking the presence of the xenomorph is a coincidence.

I think that is the best attitude one can take. The "domestication" of the xeno is the weakest part of this TV series, but OTOH, the inclusion of all the new monsters is part of what makes A:E so fun. The classic xeno is just one monster among many, now.

There are so many horrible ways to die. Show us more of them, Noah! ;-)

China has abject poverty in most of the country next to places that are wildly rich that are used for propaganda videos. In comparison, the US has done a much better job spreading the wealth from coast to coast.

Saudi doesn’t have its own supply of good tech labor. China does. China doesn’t have the same incentive to create these enclaves as Saudi.

These Chinese EVs are hitting the market at $8,000-10,000 new. The cheapest EVs in the US currently are about 3 times as much with the average EVs 5-6 times higher. At those prices, the Chinese EVs would be wildly popular. They'd arguably hurt the US automakers, which is why we're not allowing them into the market today.

Universities have a limited number of students they can admit during any given year. If 30% of admissions go to foreign students, those are seats not available to local students whose family taxes fund the school. The University of Washington was giving preference to foreign students in enrollment while also taking state and local funds from taxpayers. Quality local students were finding themselves unable to get admitted to the university. Taxpayers were outraged and forced the legislature to take action. The legislature then required the school to increase the percentage of local students admitted.