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Comment Re:Business model is dead... (Score 1) 133

I can close my eyes, hear the National Geographic television theme song in my head and see the famous yellow rectangle flying into the opening credits in my minds' eye. I had the same experience you did. The print magazines came to the house every month in their little brown paper sleeves, and I absorbed every one of them, for decades. This news feels like learning about the death of an old friend. What a gut punch. I'm almost equally troubled thinking about how little people value quality long form journalism today - what in the hell is society turning into? Apparently Mike Judge's dystopian scifi comedy "Idiocracy" was a documentary.

Comment Cloud Or DIe (Score 1) 55

Apple's insistence of keeping nearly everything on-device has been crippling their assistant and overall device utility for years. They either open up to more cloud-powered assistant and AI-powered apps or their phones will quickly become beautifully designed, very fast, increasingly less and less useful curiosities.

Comment The Cognitive Dissonance is Shrinking (Score 1) 30

Tech companies who for years have been selling cloud services & collaborative teams software had been denying employees remote work ability in one of the most ridiculous examples of hypocracy imaginable. Then.. the Pandemic. Then.. the birth of Generative AI. .. Suddenly, NOT building billion-dollar campuses on some of the most expensive land in the most expensive regions of the U.S. is starting to look like a good idea. The sheer absurdity of TECH COMPANIES building monolithic office parks in Southern California and other incredibly expensive cities around the world while selling COLLABORATION SOFTWARE and CLOUD SOLUTIONS is PEAK STUPID. Can you imagine other industries doing this? Could you imagine say, the #1 manufacturer of automotive brake pads in the U.S. building a $700 million dollar office park in San Francisco "for clout?" Absurdity. What we're witnessing is the cold water of market forces hitting the I.T. giants in the face.

Comment Engineer Fired, Claimed LaMDA Was Sentient (Score 1) 47

.. per title. Google, the same company that developed a chatbot so sophisticated that one of their software engineers swore it was sentient, even to the point of, and after being fired for publicly stating this? Given the stranglehold Google has on the public Internet's information given 20+ years of Search, their ability to crush ChatGPT will be limited only by how effectively Google can tie this lead into their existing scary-good chatbot.

Comment Re:North Carolina terror. (Score 1) 235

Yes, and both the FBI and the (numerous) news outlets covering the story handed the public a handbook on how it was done. Shooting transformers with a high powered (hunting) rifle creates 2 holes in the unit, allowing the mineral oil contained within to bleed out, and the internal components - no longer propely cooled - blow. I'm not telling you anything 10 seconds of Googling the California substation sabotage articles won't. Deer season in parts of North Carolina runs from Nov. 21 through Dec. 10th, making rifle fire out in the countryside something area residents have become completely deaf to and unconcerned with, compounding the "earwitness" problem. People most likely don't remember hearing any firing, and they'vre oblivious to it in that part of the country, this time of year.

Comment Awards Season/ Halo Polishing (Score 1) 31

.. They want to be eligible for awards season, primarily the Academy Awards, as AMPAS requires a film to be displayed theatrically for N days on X screens to qualify. Additionally, it's easier to attract A-list talent to films releasted theatrically, as it maintains their personal brand strength and visibility during awards season. "Movie Star" still has a little cache' above "streaming movie personality."

Comment Presidents cannot magically declassify because - (Score 1) 342

There are many reasons U.S. Presidents don't have unlimited power to classify, declassify or in some cases even KNOW classified material - - They may compromise programs that predate their administration containing information vital to national security now, and long after their term ends -They may unknowingly compromise human assets in the field, costing lives and destroying ongoing intelligence gathering - They may, by publicly sharing or describing imagery or information about persons, places, things foreign or domestic divulge the methods & resources used by US Intelligence to gather that information, revealing crucial technical information, capabilities, assets, and partners - blinding and deafening crucial intelligence channels that may have cost hundreds of millions or billions of dollars and human lives - The President - one fallible human being - cannot possibly see or consider, and lacks the full Technical, Historical, Sociological, Psychological, Economic, Military & Political ramifications of abruptly publicizing extremely sensitive material "in the moment" *However* As the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Military in its entirely, outranking all including 5-star generals in time of world conflict, one could argue The President DOES have the capacity to view and interpret all levels of classified material, and SHOULD be able to share select information with the public - HOWEVER, PRIOR TO DOING SO, should be forced to seek the counsel of their advisors, military advisors and intelligence analysts familiar with the source(s) of the classified material to consider any and all risks that publicizing the information would create.

Comment The real, ugly, unbroachable subject.. (Score 1) 445

..no one wants to touch, is that people simply need to control their child emissions. Sorry, as a child-free adult, I will continue to enjoy my ribeyes & rotisserie chickens. There is absolutely nothing you can do to lessen your environmental impact than reducing the number of human beings on this planet. Two, One, or None. It's really that simple. Have two children, one child, or no children. This allows you to fulfill your evolutionary mandate / psychological need to reproduce while still introducing gentle population shrink due to the unstoppable, eternally grinding wheel of human conflict, disease and accidental death. A fascinating National Geographic article (print magazine) 10 or 15 years ago on South America pointed out the rise of educated working women and a marked decline in average children per household, and the authors noted that nothing contributes more to shrinking family size than the education & socio-economic liberation of working professional women. The article ended with one woman stating that having more than one or two children today is "like prison."

Comment Motorcycles, Again (Score 2) 55

.. Here we are, copying motorcycle manufacturers carefully designing or modifying engines to tailor horsepower output or displacement to skirt a bewildering array of laws, regulations, import restrictions and licensing issues in over a hundred countries. .. Motorists in your country don't require a license to operate anything under 50cc, you say? Please allow me to introduce you to our NEW line of 49.9 CC scooters tuned like the devil to produce speeds up to 45 MPH / 72 KPH, completely defeating your motor vehicle administrations' health & safety goals. How long before Chinese chipmakers begin trottling their CPU cores but pack more in each die?

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