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Comment Re:Shocked! (Score 2) 35

having someone do the work for you absolutely reduces your learning of the homework material. it also reduces your time spent but your red herring is glowing nice and bright.

He's got a valid point. For example, if you use wolfram alpha after you do a math problem to check the result you came up with you can actually learn MORE than just doing the problem yourself, and may even add to the time the work takes, as if your result is wrong, you'll spend extra time working out where you went wrong and fixing it. And ultimately learning more in the process.

OTOH - If you use wolfram alpha to DO the question for you, you will learn nothing at all.

But further to that, you can even use tools to save time and learn more.

The other day, my daughter and I chatted about docker build scripts while she was doing her homework (which used docker containers), and that conversation clarified a lot of details and subtleties. (I learned a few things in the course of that conversation myself.) Nothing we talked about wasn't in the documentation, strictly speaking, but the conversation was a more natural way to learn and address the specific details we were talking about, with examples, and use cases that we came up with on the flay to make sense of and highlight those specific nuances. She probably could have read and reread the docs and easily spent more time on it, while learning less.

Now, in this case, she was learning 'from me', but you could swap "Dad" out for an "LLM", and get the same benefit.

All that said, I don't think the AI systems we have right now are likely a good idea for homework. The temptation to use it self-destructively is just going to be too high for a large number of students. Probably the majority of them. But it definitely can be used to learn more, and even learn more faster in the hands of someone who uses it for that.

 

Comment Re:China virtually eliminated homicide (Score 1, Interesting) 53

So let me ask you .. approx. 4 deaths for every 100,000 people annually .. that's like 10,000+ per year people .. is it worth being able to go to a strip club secretly?

There's a lot wrong with your question.
Firstly, China's gun laws are among the strictest in the world. Private ownership of firearms is generally prohibited. You'll get better returns on matching China's homicide rates by matching their firearms laws than you will by catching up with them on surveillance.

Are you wiling to do that? I somehow doubt it. And to be a safe as china, you could do both -- give up your guns AND submit to a police surveillance state. What could go wrong?

China has done other things too - absolutely massive government investments in infrastructure and construction, creating jobs and reducing poverty in the process, uplifting people who would otherwise be more desperate and more likely to turn to crime etc.

And speaking of Crime, China is pretty busy with state executions too. And is quite adept at artificially making those numbers look smaller, frequently recording the execution of multiple people as a single execution. That may play a part in the lower homicide rate too.

Secondly, you imply the tradeoff is simple prudishness - we give up peoples lives for the ability to "go to a strip club secretly".
That's not that half of it, and you should know that. It's also the ability to go, for example, to a political party meeting secretly.

Do you really trust your government so much that you'd give them that power over you? That some fuckwit won't get into power and leverage this against the people? The best protection the civilian population has from government abuse is to resist giving them the tools to abuse you in the first place. The government doesn't need to know where every person is at all times, this will inevitably be used against you. The supposed 'safety' gains are not worth living in a police surveillance state.

Comment Re:This is kind of hilarious (Score 1) 72

When you think about it, you're allowed to walk in anywhere. Look at whatever you like. Listen to whatever conversation you want to. This is well and truly already established. Now that someone can remember everything they see and hear, suddenly we're talking about privacy issues. Lol.

When I think about it, I can see a clear difference.

There were all manner of places where human eyes were accepted, but still/video cameras were not, long predating "smart glasses". From changing rooms, saunas, locker rooms, and bath houses to performances like plays and concerts, and movie theatres to executive board room meetings, and even court rooms in many cases.

There are lots of scenarios where everybody accepts and consents that other people will see/hear them, but do not accept or consent to be recorded.

  Are you really incapable of seeing the multiple clear and obvious differences between "seeing/hearing something" and "recording something" ?

Comment Re:If he is found guilty (Score 1) 182

Yet the phone became evidence the moment it was confiscated. It was in the possession of the authorities.
It absolutely is a crime to intentionally destroy evidence. Been that way for hundreds of years.
It's a crime to destroy evidence of guilt and evidence of innocents too.
Until that evidence is deemed not relevant and returned to the owner, it is a crime to destroy it.

But the individual didn't destroy it. The agent did the physical act of destroying it.

Suppose you were at the border with your phone, and the agent confiscated it.
Then the agent had said, how do i get into this phone?
You said, "put it in a blender".
If the agent puts it in the blender, the agent destroyed it, not you.

Now clearly, one would expect the agent to know that putting it in a blender would destroy it.

And equally clearly the inference here is that the agent did not know that the password he was given would wipe the phone as part of opening it. But isn't the onus still on the officer?

If it had been a physical safe, and you gave him the code, but the safe contained something that would self-destruct in exposure to air, and must be opened inside an enclosure with inert gas to get at the contents... who would be responsible for destroying the evidence inside the safe?

As a second scenario, what if you had printed a PIN password on a piece of paper and included that in your wallet. If the agent had confiscated your wallet and discovered the paper; and then used that password on your phone? If that was your duress password, who is responsible for destroying evidence in that case?

Legally, Isn't the onus ultimately still on the agent to apply caution before pushing buttons on a device they confiscated?

To blame you the suspect for destroying evidence on something the agent had custody and full physical control over seems a bit far fetched to me.

Comment Re:Display (Score 5, Insightful) 31

On a 13" screen most people would have scaling enabled to see it anyway. Not really sure its worth the extra horsepower to push quadruple the pixels, and average them out.

Don't get me wrong, I love 4k screens. My desktop has a pair of 32" 120hz 4k screens.

But on a laptop, especially a 13" model, my priority is going to be battery life, not performance; so 4k is not a hard requirement. Plus this unit features a more old school 3:2 aspect ratio which is arguably more practical and useful than a 1.78:1 widescreen at 13".

Higher than a 13" dell xps. Higher than the 13" Macbook Neo. Higher than a 13" Macbook air... hell it just edges out the display on the Macbook air 15".

Its 120Hz. It's matte. It's touchscreen (if you care).
It seems to be a very solid 13" laptop screen overall.

Comment Re:Why is this newsworthy? (Score 1) 30

I presume that this "God data structure" is referring to the Higgs Bogon, the basis of the bogomips metric. Splitting the bogon is the first step to creating a kernel that can run on quantum computers. Or, possibly, the first step to causing vacuum collapse and the destruction of the universe as we know it. Hard to tell when messing with God stuff.

Comment Re:most of the US slightly west of their solar tim (Score 1) 263

EST extends well past the city limits of Chicago up here in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Most of the UP is in EST (except for a strip along the border with Wisconsin) including areas 100 miles west of downtown Chicago. Granted, the moose don't really care about time zones, but there are a few humans around here as well.

Comment Re:Dictionaries Mysteriously Not Sued (Score 1) 109

Copy protection on the original sleeping beauty is long expired.
Copy protection on the Disney version is good for years yet.

In the original versions, the scene i quoted? There is no scene like that in the original version. But it is beat for beat straight from the Disney version. If you want to tell a sleeping beauty story, you absolutely can, the original source material not copy protected, you can faithfully tell that story, including the unconscious rape of the princess to impregnate her so that she finally wakes up at child birth... or you can create more family friendly version all your own with whatever you like. But you can't simply lift a bunch of scenes that only exist in the copy protected Disney version and call it your own original interpretation by changing a few details.

Comment Re:Dictionaries Mysteriously Not Sued (Score 1) 109

The chatgpt story is a ripoff of the Disney version though.

The scene I quoted with the three "magical gaurdians" bestowing three gifts at a celebration crashed by the sorcerous who places the curse -- that is not from the original source material, its not novel either, its a scene ripped straight from the Disney version. And its not an isolated issue with the AI version.

There is no question that Disney doesn't "own" sleeping beauty, but they do own their telling of it. This was an obvious ripoff of that particular telling in several places.

If a child handed in the Moonlit Princess the teacher would give them a lecture about plagiarism. Because its not remotely original enough. It is so clearly taking so many things straight from Disney's version. Sure the names are changed, and the words "aren't the same", but its far too derivative of that particular version to credibly claim its an original telling of the sleeping beauty story.

Comment Re:Dictionaries Mysteriously Not Sued (Score 1) 109

"No. It is not copyright infringement"

Go ahead, prompt for that story and publish your own 'moonlit princess". It is not a court case you'd win; the details taken from the Disney version are beyond excessive.

" and there's no reason to hold copyright so sacred anyway. Are you seriously wanting to protect hundred year old fairy tails from being retold?"

That's an entirely separate discussion. Legally it is infringement. Whether it should be is completely separate question, or how long it should be are separate questions.

FWIW, I don't agree with copyright being 100 years.

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