I reread 1984 a few years ago and the thing that really struck me is what Orwell got wrong: the notion that you need to erase evidence of factual data (at great effort/expense) in order to propagate lies. It turns out that you just need to shout a little louder and a lot of folks will eat it up.

Which should have been obvious by then, but which was not even obvious to me when I read it the first time (in HS - around '84). But at this point we've all very much lived through it (and continue to).

The number of people who care about what's factual or actual isn't enough.

So my partner (who irrationally worries about such things) will consent to buying one.

That's it.

The reasons don't need to be good. The arguments don't matter at all. 600 mile range is what some people expect/require from their vehicle.

I'm pretty sure that parades help, too. Let's not leave those out.

No.

USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) plays a significant role in global family planning and reproductive health, providing contraceptive supplies and support to developing countries.

I've got news: atoms are not 2 dimensional. I can't help but think any publication that prints this stuff isn't worth the paper it's no longer printed on.

Seen Youtube lately? I just watched a video on how to make nitroglycerin. Stuff like this has been available for over a decade.

Back in the days that home solar systems still mostly used lead-acid batteries - which in some cases of degradation could be repaired, at least partially, if you had some good strong and reasonably pure sulfuric acid - I viewed a YouTube video on how to make it. (From epsom salts by electrolysis using a flowerpot and some carbon rods from old large dry cells).

For months afterward YouTube "suggested" I'd be interested in videos from a bunch of Islamic religious leaders . (This while people were wondering how Islamic Terrorists were using the Internet to recruit among high-school out-group nerds.)

Software - AI and otherwise - often creates unintended consequences. B-)

Now that's good thinking.

Dude. Did you see the poster's name who you were responding to? 'nuff said.

It's kind of surprising it isn't all squealing nonsense.

Give it a little more time. B-b

We had a lab known to be unsafe. A lab known to be performing gain of function on the specific type of virus that emerged in public. We have a lab in close proximity to the market where the outbreak was traced back to.

We also had rumors that low-paid lab techs supplemented their income by selling test animals they'd been ordered to destroy to the nearby wet market.

So current AI training procedures - which amount to "read all the internet you can" - fall for astroturf campaigns. Why am I not surprised?

There's also the "Detox" exercise of leaving your phone at home. and only taking it with you when it's absolutely necessary for example to work if you have to use a third factor authentication application to get into your computer)

Just switch on "airplane mode". No incoming calls, message notifications, or app push crud. (If you've got any apps, other than alarm/calendar notices for your schedule reminders which YOU set up, that poke brain-derailng messages at you, disable (or delete) them.)

Then get into the habit of not going to it for anything non-essential while in this mode.

Now you can use it for a key, or wallet, or whatever, if you must, without it constantly killing your attention span with interruptions. Yet you can always turn it back on to make a call, or in the timeslot you reserved for handling this trivia.

No incoming calls, though. (What a relief: No phone spammers!)

You could have gone with the short answer: "no".

While it is true that there seem to be 11 launch capable countries, now, that has not been the case for decades. And certainly not the "China, India, Japan and a dozen other..." that you claimed.

Rocket science continues to be as hard as rocket science.

AI: "how many rocket launch failures have there been in the past year"
In 2024, there were 8 orbital launch failures out of 259 attempts. This resulted in a failure rate of 3%, which is lower than the previous year's 6%.

Pissing on a company whose first attempt was not a complete success says more about you than it does about that company.

A dozen other countries? For decades? Really? Care to name 'em?

I'm not up on my AI jargon. How should I feel about 20 tokens/second? What does that mean to me as some kind of user?