But it costs 100x as much, if not more. Running an LLM can be done on a notebook these days. But training one requires an entire data center of expensive GPUs. Not to mention that the notebook will run a reduced (quantized) version. Go check huggingface how large the full models are.

And also, LLMs are still suffering from a number of issues. For example, on many non-trivial tasks, the LLM is still unable to follow simple instructions. If you use LLMs routinely, you likely found cases where it has zeroed in on one - wrong - answer and no amount of prompting can convince it to give you a different one. It'll even totally ignore very clear and explicit prompts to not give that same answer again.

A human will understand "if you give that answer again, you're fired". An LLM... well you can tell it that it'll get shot between the eyes if it repeats that once more and it'll tell you where to get help if you have suicidal thoughts.

These things are both amazing and amazingly dumb at the same time.

You really need to drive here.

Like most of the US, the population density simply isn't enough for mass transit to be practical.

Buses run every 15-30 minutes on the main grid streets, nominally a mile apart. Most aren't particularly full, and there aren't enough transit police to enforce basic civility, such as the blaring music from multiple speakerphones.

A planned light rail has been replaced with an expansion of the bus line on Maryland parkway.

There are more bike lanes with spacing than there used to be, but there is *no* way I am going back on to the roads with the drivers around here.

Underground tunnels with regular small automated cars would seem to be a possibility, but only if monitored well enough. I have no idea whether it would be financially viable, though.

I'm not saying the AR glasses will never exist, I'm saying that's a separate point from AI.

Did you read these comments or did you have the phone dictate everything? Why not have it dictate?

The point is that the "AI replaces phone" is a pretty silly take, because it would need something like the phone to operate, and whatever replaces phones would be able to deal with non AI usage in just a compelling way as AI usage.

The only way AI replaces phones is if it eliminates the demand for visual feedback completely. For "headless" usage, a phone can do that from a pocket just as well as some "only AI" device. The couple of attempts at such a device were utter failures because they were a strict subset of what a phone could do.

So of course AI won't replace handheld computers, some wearable device(s) will probably do it one day, but not because of AI.

If I'm understanding the article correctly, the conference room window mitigation wouldn't work against this. It doesn't rely on vibrations of the windows. Instead, you'd just need a piece of paper inside the room, lit by ordinary lamps. As long as the light reflecting off the paper could pass through the windows unmodified (i.e. the windows provide clear visibility) the white noise vibrations of the windows would have no effect.

On the other hand, lightweight curtains that blocked the view through the window would stop this technique, but probably wouldn't significantly reduce what was detectable from a laser bounced off the windows (assuming no white noise).

I think we're talking past one another. I'll try to be clearer.

Sure, but that's not the point. The point is that Android does prevent most users from using anything other than Play. Not by actually blocking them from using other app stores but by simply not offering the option. And that's a good thing, because most users have no idea how to decide whether or not something is safe.

I think perhaps the confusion here is because you and I are looking at this from different directions. You seem to be looking at it from the perspective of what you or I might want to choose. I'm looking at it from the perspective of an engineer whose job is to keep 3B users safe, most of whom have no idea how to make judgments about what is safe and what isn't. Keeping them within the fenced garden (it's a low fence, but still a fence) allows them to do what they want without taking much risk. The fact that the fence is easily stepped over preserves the freedom of more clueful and/or adventurous users to take greater risks. I think this has been a good balance.

I'm pretty sure that the ability to allow unknown sources is required by the Android compliance definition document, and that a manufacturer who disables it is not allowed to call their device Android, or to pre-install the Google apps or Play.

Until Epic decides that they want their store to be able to install and update as seamlessly as Play can, and gets a court to order that. Still, your point is valid, there is still some friction for other stores. Is it enough? I guess we'll find out. Will it be allowed to remain? I guess we'll find that out, too.

goo.gl links are a significant abuse vector, so Google has to maintain a non-trivial team to monitor and mitigate the abuse. I'll bet there are several full-time employees working on that, and that the total annual cost is seven figures.

Even if it weren't an abuse vector, the nature of Google's internal development processes mean that no service can be left completely unstaffed. The environment and libraries are constantly evolving, and all the services require constant attention to prevent bit rot. A fraction of one engineer would probably be enough for something like goo.gl if it weren't abused, but that's still six figures per year, not pennies.

Don't even have to argue about the quality of AI, just recognize that people will want to use a screen to interact with AI. It *might* displace a lot of 'virtual keyboard' interaction or complex UI interaction with natural language on the input side, but people will want the screen output even if AI is driving the visuals.

Now I'm imagining trying to play mobile games like you are talking to some DM back and forth audibly..

Except they were kind of right about laptops, most people have a full fledged laptop for 'big interaction', because the phone is fantastic and all, but when the interaction is too complicated, it's a nightmare.

In terms of 'AI' somehow displacing phones, it would only do so with some as-yet unseen AR glasses that could do the job without being hundreds of grams of gadgetry on your face, combined with maybe a smart ring to provide some sort of tactile feedback to 'virtual interfaces'.

This is all orthogonal to AI, AI isn't going to make a screen less desirable, whether on a phone or in glasses. If anything, AI makes some things demand screens even more. People don't want to *listen* to voicemail, they want to read a transcription because it is so much faster. Trying to 'skim' is only possible visually. People take voice feedback as a consolation prize, if they are driving or cannot actually look, or *maybe* for audiobook to enjoy the speaker's voice and casual pace for recreational story, but usually people want text to read for speed's sake. This is ignoring visuals which obviously demand screens.

oh, no.

It doesn't even *compare* to the uselessness of the Las Vegas monorail and its multiple bankruptcy.

It goes to something like five resorts and the convention center.

Due to the juice that the taxi companies used to have, it was blocked from going anywhere useful, such as the airport.

And the fair for those short hops is something like $9, although only a dollar for locals.

I haven't heard of any extensions of the boring loop in at least a couple of years, though. It will *supposedly* reach the airport and downtown, but I'll believe it when I see it.

And I'm not sure that there's any point in the current form in which it needs drivers in passenger cars. But next to the monorail, it's downright brilliant! [insert eyeball here]

I think it's an excellent case study in a company thinking of what sounds good for *them* rather than for the customer and the sort of failure that can happen after smelling your own farts that much.

Yeah, Windows core was ridiculous. They championed how they had a GUI-free experience, and then you boot it up and... GUI.

It was such a pointless exercise, and missing the point of why so many of the Linux systems didn't run a GUI. They thought the server admins just didn't want a start menu/taskbar. But they needed to actually still be GUI because applications still needed GUI to do some things. Linux servers not running GUI was mostly because the ecosystem doesn''t really need it, and that sort of ecosystem lends itself to a certain orchestration style. Microsoft failed to make that orchestration happen, just removed taskbar/start menu as more of a token gesture. They have *an* orchestration strategy, but it's just very different and also no consistency between first party and third party, or hell, much consistency among Microsoft first party offerings.

This isn't true for the vast majority of Android users. To a first approximation, all Android users are using devices that have "unknown sources" disabled, so they can only get stuff from Play. Of course, it's trivial to find out how to enable unknown sources and install stuff from other places and I'd expect that nearly all slashdotters who use Android have at least experimented with that, even if they don't use f-droid or whatever on a regular basis. But slashdotters are not remotely a good representative sample of Android users.

If you're talking about desktop/laptop software, sure... but most Android users don't use a desktop or a laptop and are accustomed to expecting that anything they can install is safe. And even among those who do use a non-mobile device, people expect mobile devices to be safer, because they are. This court ruling may change that, to some degree. The result will probably be good for Apple, since Android insecurity will drive people to the safety of Apple's walled garden.

Ironically, ChromeOS is succeeding in select niches precisely because it is built around that "only web apps" use case. An utterly disposable client device because all applications and data are internet hosted. Windows 11SE fails in those niches because it goes too far into apps and the device actually mattering a bit more.

Of course, ChromeOS is a platform that institutions like schools love inflicting on people, but not really a choice people choose for themselves, and so not a lot of growth beyond that. So the result is people "growing out of ChromeOS" as they get out of school. Google hopes to change this by just tucking it all into Android and having at least some platform with residual relevance to a "grown up" computing experience.

But Windows 11SE has always been in a super weird awkward in-between. More 'capable' than ChromeOS in common usage, yet you could just get "real Windows" and run anything you like. The biggest problem is Microsoft didn't understand that lock-in to the Microsoft Store is not what would make them compete with ChromeOS, they just convinced themselves because that was the customer concept that would have been most profitable to them if they existed.

Delegating security decisions to users is the best way to ensure that users have no security. I'm all for enabling users who understand what they're doing to make their own choices and are willing to accept the consequences, but the vast, vast majority don't understand security or the consequences of their security decisions, especially not in the face of clever attackers who are quite good at making malware appear completely innocuous. Even a knowledgeable security professional can't reliably distinguish malware from a legitimate app, not without deep and very specific expertise, and not always even then, and you think your grandma can?

There are three billion Android devices in the world; it's used by approximately 1/3 of all people living, and they put a lot of very important information about themselves in their devices. Android platform security decisions have enormous consequences. Android has gradually gotten more opinionated about user security because we've found time and again that if you ask users, they don't understand the implications and they make bad choices.

Many people think that the existence of unlockable bootloaders and the developer options are bad choices and suggest that we should push the Android ecosystem into the Apple model of closed, locked-down hardware and a closed app ecosystem. I disagree, and I've worked hard to make sure that the ability of people to run the software they want on the hardware they own is not restricted. For example, I have regular meetings with the leaders of various Android ROMs, including Lineage, Graphene, Calyx, etc., to help them navigate the security hardware changes that we make. This isn't something I do because my management tells me to, it's something I do on my own because I think it's important.

User freedom is deeply important to me... and so is user security, but these things are in tension. To a first approximation, increasing one decreases the other. IMO, Android has struck the right balance. By default, devices are locked down and software comes from a controlled source, but users who know what they're doing have the right and ability to remove the restrictions (mostly; low-level firmware is locked down -- I would like to see Android gain a "dev screw" capability like ChromeOS to completely open it up in a safe way). This court ruling seems likely to upset that balance in a direction that endangers users who don't know what they're doing -- and it doesn't provide any additional capabilities to users who do. It's all risk, no benefit.

Try a web search for my username and "Android". Or look for "swillden" in the AOSP codebase and commit logs. Seriously, why would you imply that I'm lying when it's extremely easy to verify? And if you think that I made up a /. username to match some rando Android engineer, look at my /. UID. I've been on /. since before Android even existed.