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Comment so... (Score 2) 112

gaining access to a luxurious airport experience

So... ordinary airport before enshitification ?

Air travel used to be pretty cool. Now absolutely every part of it is annoying. Especially the booking and its 25 upsale offers.

A few years more of this and you'll have to book business just to get a seat and fresh air.

Comment Re:Lithography (Score 1) 28

Probably.
But the mirrors, for example, are made by Zeiss. Lots of parts are from the supply chain and ASML doesn't even HAVE their secrets.

You are right that some industrial espionage could be useful. I just say it's not as useful as most people would assume (which is basically the Hollywood plot of "steal this secret and we can copy it"). Nah. You can find on the Internet how a nuclear bomb is made. But it takes a lot more than a print-out to actually make one, and a couple of those steps are genuinely hard.

Comment Re:AI Company says their AI is the bestest boy (Score 1) 179

Fascinating answer.

It seems to me that the unablated thoughts fall into the category of "what would a human user expect that a good answer to this prompt would be?" - and out comes something that is clearly an aggregate of stream-of-consciousness writing.

But then the ablated models seem to go for a direct answer without much less interpretation and "pretend to be human". I wonder what that's about. I'd love the AI to answer more like the machine it is, and right now I'm getting that through skills.

Submission + - Europe's New Entry/Exit System Is a Mess, and It's Not Going Away (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: European bureaucrats are standing firm on a security program that has led to long lines, confusion and missed flights at airports this summer, despite an urgent plea from the aviation industry to suspend it.

The Entry/Exit System, or E.E.S., requires members of the 29-country Schengen open-border area to collect biometrics like face photos and fingerprints from travelers upon arrival and to confirm their identities upon exit. Since the system took full effect in April, airports and airlines have reported widespread chaos — including hourslong security checkpoint lines and confusion over procedures — and have feared the headaches could worsen as peak travel season begins.

The problems led senior officials from the European aviation industry last week to ask the European Union to suspend the E.E.S. requirement this summer. The system is "undermining Europe’s reputation, European tourism and connectivity," said the open letter to the president of the European Commission.

But on Tuesday, European Commission bureaucrats officially rejected the request in a meeting with industry stakeholders, saying that the new system’s security advantages outweighed its inconveniences.

E.E.S. is used in the 29-country Schengen area, which includes 25 European Union members as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The system applies to most visitors to those countries who are traveling for a short stay (up to 90 days in a 180-day period), regardless of whether they have a visa.

Since the system began to roll out across Europe in October, travelers have encountered an inconsistent set of procedures, taking anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. Some airports have self-service kiosks where travelers can register their biometrics. At others, border control officers manually register travelers. Only two countries, Sweden and Portugal, currently allow travelers to use a dedicated app. E.E.S. is intended to be an automated system, eventually.

"At present, the system is failing to deliver one of its core objectives: facilitating efficient border crossings while maintaining the smooth functioning of Europe’s transport network," the aviation officials wrote in the open letter urging the European Union to act.

Summer travelers are being forced to “endure needless passport control chaos,” Neal McMahon, Ryanair’s chief operations officer, said in a statement.

“Passengers and families should not be used as guinea pigs for a half-baked passport control system that risks creating long queues, missed flights and unnecessary stress at airports this summer,” he added.

In Rome, the airports have already been suspending biometrics collection on a near-daily basis this summer, said a spokesman for Aeroporti di Roma, which operates the city’s airports. Rome Fiumicino, Italy’s busiest airport, expects around 11 million passengers in June and July, which could be up to 180,000 passengers on peak days, the spokesman said.

Comment Re:Lithography (Score 1) 28

Not sure how far industrial espionage gets you here.

There's nothing fundamentally secret in lithography. We know how it works. The secret sauce is the experience, processes, know-how, highly specialised suppliers etc. The practical complexities are immense. Given the security incidents ASML already had, I'd make a bet that a large amount of the valuable data is already in China. But the supply chain and the engineering don't live on paper and are not easily duplicated.

Comment Re:Core concept is stupid. (Score 1) 172

The only interesting story you can tell about Superman is bringing up the question... "If you're so powerful, why not just use it for your own purposes? Nobody can stop you. Why help people?" And the answer, which has always been part of the Superman mythos, was that he was raised by two salt-of-the-earth good people out in the middle of nowhere who taught him good old fashioned American values. He does it because it's the right thing to do. Does anyone remember "Truth, Justice (and the American Way)?" I think the recent Superman movie did a reasonable job of leaning into that, in an environment where the audience is jaded about American institutions. It's a tough sell, particularly trying to sell the movie to urban audiences to see everything rural as something to look down on, and rural audiences who see everything urban as selfish and corrupt.

Comment Re:"Just" 59K (Score 1) 98

Central banks do a lot of useful things, but they don't give currency a value (they can, however manipulate the value others give it by printing it, destroying it, changing interest rates, changing the amount of reserve banks need and the multiple they can lend, etc). What gives a currency value is supply and demand- the fact other people want that currency. Which is also what sets international exchange rates.

There's also the fact you need it to pay taxes, which sets a base amount of demand. But beyond that it's all supply and demand when deciding how much value it has against other currencies or physical objects.

Comment Re:Would a Spar be Repairable? (Score 1) 61

Woah... Dumb question, but would a wing spar be repairable or replaceable?

Coward said, because when the wing falls off at 30,000 feet, rest assured - it's okay, because Airbus has good documentation. All fixed.

No, of course a broken spar is A Very Bad Thing when it happens in midair.

Is this changing-the-timing-chains-in-an-Audi difficult, or is this replacing-your-spinal-cord-without-killing-you impossible?

Are these planes repairable? I think it's a reasonable question.

(Of course, with the Audi, if has anything more than a loose gas cap it's not economically feasible to repair, but that's what you get with European engineering.)

Comment Re:revocable (Score 1) 154

Not always. If you pay money to get a ticket into a movie or a concert, cause some sort of commotion, you will be kicked out and you will not get a refund nor would you deserve a refund.

That is largely true.

But in the case of games, I'm not on your property. And we already discussed servers - I might not even be on your servers.

It might help to clearly separate these two cases: Pure online games with servers hosted exclusively by the game publisher, and the 90% of other games (single player or multiplayer with player-operated servers).

Because you are such an entitled moron, you don't realize how wrong you are about pretty much everything.

And there we have it, the usual ad hominem of people who have run out of actual arguments. Signaling the end of the discussion, because why the fuck should I bother talking to someone who says such shit?

Goodbye.

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