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Comment Re:Do they die earlier, of stress? (Score 2) 70

I can't figure out whether the study considered someone's *previous* occupations, or simply their most recent occupation listed at time of death.

From TFOriginalScientificArticle: "Additionally, death certificates included a field for reported usual occupation (the occupation in which the decedent spent most of their working life), generally completed by a funeral director with help from the decedent’s informant."

Comment Re:Do they die earlier, of stress? (Score 2) 70

Looking at Figure 1 from the paper, taxi drivers and ambulance drivers are clear lower-bound outliers in terms of risk from Alzheimer's. But they also die a full decade before the eyeballed mean of the population. There are a couple of data points in the middle plot from that figure that have just slightly higher adjusted risk of Alzheimer's, but have lifespans at ca. 80 years that are well *above* the mean. Regrettably, the paper does not discuss those data points -- me, I'd want to have those occupations since they trade a very slightly increased risk of Alzheimer's for 15 more years of life.

And, then, the bit that's also not in the headline and TFS is that taxi drivers and ambulance drivers have *increased* risk of other forms of dementia, especially taxi drivers.

Also, disappointingly, the paper does not show the full ranked list of occupations (even in the supplementary data), highlighting only a small handful (taxi drivers, ambulance drivers, bus drivers, airline pilots, ship captains, and CEOs).

Comment Re:AI slop, amirite? (Score 1) 65

So you think a junior associate is the equivalent to a chat bot that costs two orders of magnitude less than actually paying a junior associate?

You're making a classic mistake of reversing an association: "this A is a B" does not mean "every B is an A".

Which is to say, you're ignoring the fact that junior associates have attributes and capabilities that LLMs lack, in a wince-inducing oversight. Indulge me with a Sophoclean interrogatory: what can humans do that LLMs cannot?

Comment Re:AI slop, amirite? (Score 1, Insightful) 65

Used properly with the right scope and proper mindset, the current generation of AI tools are incredibly effective and they keep getting better and better.

This is the idea that the anti-AI folks are getting wrong. I'm a vastly more efficient and better writer, of code or of English prose, with an assistant than without. Assistants are, however, imperfect, whether human or artificial.

The current generation of LLM assistants are equivalent in quality of output to having a junior human associate, but at 1/100th the cost. And they're about 100x faster. Is their output perfect? No, but neither is the work-product of a human associate. Does the LLM (or human) output provide me with much of the legwork necessary to create things of clarity, efficiency, and, sometimes, beauty? Oh, hell yes.

I had an argument just last week about didactic presentation with a stubbornly anti-AI professor for whom I have been hired as an instructor for the course he runs. I made the assertion that very shortly, the expectation will be that anyone in that profession who does not use AI will not be bringing their full potential to the task. Personally, I think it is already true that anyone who is fundamentally a communicator of ideas and is not using AI is not achieving their best, but the field does not yet carry the expectation or assumption that everyone has an AI assistant. Not yet, but it will.

Comment Re:Hemp? (Score 1) 41

Well, it can't grow in the same places, but bamboo into paper is already a thing. And it grows quite quickly in the appropriate environment.

Some bamboo species are even halophiles, growing where there is low-quality, brackish water and pulp-yielding trees are rare as hen's teeth.

Comment Re:Don't ever use hotel WiFi (Score 1) 31

If they ask for a birthdate, reply like Crocodile Dundee: "In the summer."

For services that have no damned business knowing my real birthdate, I always use the start of the Unix epoch: 1/1/1970.

It has two advantages; (1) most calendar picker widgets default to January 1, so it's fewer clicks, and (2), for me at least, it is close enough to being true that no one would ever challenge it, even in person.

Comment Re:This ladies and gentlemen (Score -1, Troll) 224

The factual reality it ignores is that mistakes by the judicial system in cases covering petty crime, family court, domestic disputes, civil torts, etc., have nothing whatsoever to do with mistakes made in capital cases. Asserting that mistakes made in a local municipal court, which would never see a capital case, is grounds for banning capital punishment is like saying that worms in avocados imported from Mexico means the sale of all fruit grown in the US should be banned.

Conflating capital cases with non-capital cases works against your cause, not for it. If you don't understand that, then you are less likely to achieve your goals. Zealotry -- which is fundamentally a political pose -- is not an efficient means to create change.

Comment Re:This ladies and gentlemen (Score 0) 224

Cool story, but this wasn't about the death penalty.

Every story about a wrong conviction is a story about the death penalty

That is the most politically saturated comment I've read on Slashdot in years. It completely ignores factual reality in order to push a specific agenda.

Here's a hint: if you want your cause to be taken seriously, don't become blinded by zealotry. In this case, there are plenty enough things wrong with the death penalty that you don't need to make this sort of off-putting overgeneralization, and, by doing so, you are harming your cause, rather than helping it.

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Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me. -- Ambrose Bierce

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