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Comment Re:Computers don't "feel" anything (Score 1) 32

It's different from humans in that human opinions, expertise and intelligence are rooted in their experience. Good or bad, and inconsistent as it is, it is far, far more stable than AI. If you've ever tried to work at a long running task with generative AI, the crash in performance as the context rots is very, very noticeable, and it's intrinsic to the technology. Work with a human long enough, and you will see the faults in his reasoning, sure, but it's just as good or bad as it was at the beginning.

Comment Re:Computers don't "feel" anything (Score 2) 32

Correct. This is why I don't like the term "hallucinate". AIs don't experience hallucinations, because they don't experience anything. The problem they have would more correctly be called, in psychology terms "confabulation" -- they patch up holes in their knowledge by making up plausible sounding facts.

I have experimented with AI assistance for certain tasks, and find that generative AI absolutely passes the Turing test for short sessions -- if anything it's too good; too fast; too well-informed. But the longer the session goes, the more the illusion of intelligence evaporates.

This is because under the hood, what AI is doing is a bunch of linear algebra. The "model" is a set of matrices, and the "context" is a set of vectors representing your session up to the current point, augmented during each prompt response by results from Internet searches. The problem is, the "context" takes up lots of expensive high performance video RAM, and every user only gets so much of that. When you run out of space for your context, the older stuff drops out of the context. This is why credibility drops the longer a session runs. You start with a nice empty context, and you bring in some internet search results and run them through the model and it all makes sense. When you start throwing out parts of the context, the context turns into inconsistent mush.

Submission + - NASA Is Tracking a Vast Anomaly Growing in Earth's Magnetic Field (sciencealert.com)

alternative_right writes: For years, NASA has monitored a strange anomaly in Earth's magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.

This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for decades, and perhaps none more so than NASA researchers.

The space agency's satellites and spacecraft are particularly vulnerable to the weakened magnetic field within the anomaly, and the resulting exposure to charged particles from the Sun.

Submission + - Children With Autism, ADHD, And Anorexia Share a Common Microbe Imbalance (sciencealert.com)

alternative_right writes: A new, small study suggests children with autism, ADHD, and anorexia

share similarly disrupted gut microbiomes, which, by some measures, have more in common with each other than with their healthy, neurotypical peers.

Led by researchers from Comenius University in Slovakia, the study used stool samples to assess the gut microbiomes of 117 children.

The exploratory study included 30 boys with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 21 girls with anorexia nervosa, and 14 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The remaining samples were from age- and sex-matched healthy and neurotypical children, providing a control group.

Submission + - AI-induced psychosis: The danger of humans and machines hallucinating together (phys.org)

alternative_right writes: These may be extreme cases, but clinicians are increasingly treating patients whose delusions appear amplified or co-created through prolonged chatbot interactions. Little wonder, when a recent report from ChatGPT-creator OpenAI revealed that many of us are turning to chatbots to think through problems, discuss our lives, plan futures and explore beliefs and feelings.

In these contexts, chatbots are no longer just information retrievers; they become our digital companions. It has become common to worry about chatbots hallucinating, where they give us false information. But as they become more central to our lives, there's clearly also growing potential for humans and chatbots to create hallucinations together.

Submission + - Owning a Cat Could Double Your Risk of Schizophrenia, Research Suggests (sciencealert.com) 1

schwit1 writes: Having a cat as a pet could potentially double a person's risk of schizophrenia-related conditions, according to an analysis of 17 studies.

Psychiatrist John McGrath and colleagues at the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research in Australia looked at papers published over the last 44 years in 11 countries, including the US and the UK.

Their 2023 review found "a significant positive association between broadly defined cat ownership and an increased risk of schizophrenia-related disorders."

T. gondii is a mostly harmless parasite that can be transmitted through undercooked meat or contaminated water. It can also be transmitted through an infected cat's feces.

Estimates suggest that T. gondii infects about 40 million people in the US, typically without any symptoms. Meanwhile, researchers keep finding more strange effects that infections may have.

Once inside our bodies, T. gondii can infiltrate the central nervous system and influence neurotransmitters. The parasite has been linked to personality changes, the emergence of psychotic symptoms, and some neurological disorders, including schizophrenia.

Submission + - Physicists reveal a new quantum state where electrons run wild (sciencedaily.com)

alternative_right writes: Electrons can freeze into strange geometric crystals and then melt back into liquid-like motion under the right quantum conditions. Researchers identified how to tune these transitions and even discovered a bizarre “pinball” state where some electrons stay locked in place while others dart around freely. Their simulations help explain how these phases form and how they might be harnessed for advanced quantum technologies.

Submission + - Germany caps power prices to save industry

argStyopa writes: From https://www.zerohedge.com/ener...
"Germany has agreed to subsidize electricity for its heavy industries, capping prices at about €0.05 per kilowatt-hour from 2026 through 2028—a major policy move aimed at keeping its industrial base from eroding under the weight of Europe’s soaring energy costs."

As the vanguard of industrial states embracing green power, is this a tacit admission that "sustainable" was never actually a synonym for "green"?

Comment What's old is new again/using wasted space (Score 2) 90

When I demoted my single Pentium 4 rig to workshop use
it noticeably raised winter temperature inside my
sealed 40ft High Cube shipping container machine shop.

It's not difficult to rack or shelve many computers near the ceiling or hang them off walls. I hang a 1U server off the wall of my office as one would a painting (and could cover it with a painting if I cared). Total cost is a couple of small lag hooks costing less than a dollar.

I don't do mini/tiny PCs for space reasons because there is more than enough unused space in most rooms to make that unnecessary, and for access a computer on the wall is hard to beat. Needing no desk my server doesn't clutter mine.

If I wanted mining rigs I could line walls with them high enough not to interfere with anything else with heating as a bonus.

Comment Re:Separate grid, please. (Score 2) 71

It probably makes more sense given their scale for them to have their own power generation -- solar, wind, and battery storage, maybe gas turbines for extended periods of low renewable availability.

In fact, you could take it further. You could designate town-sized areas for multiple companies' data centers, served by an electricity source (possibly nuclear) and water reclamation and recycling centers providing zero carbon emissions and minimal environmental impact. It would be served by a compact, robust, and completely sepate electrical grid of its own, reducing costs for the data centers and isolating residential customers from the impact of their elecrical use. It would also economically concentrate data centers for businesses providing services they need,reducing costs and increasing profits all around.

Submission + - Five people plead quilty to helping North Koreans infiltrate US companies (techcrunch.com)

smooth wombat writes: Within the past year, stories have been posted on Slashdot about people helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs at U.S. corporations, companies knowingly helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs, how not to hire a North Korean for a remote IT job, and how a simple question tripped up a North Korean applying for a remote IT job. The FBI is even warning companies that North Koreans working remotely can steal source code and extort money from the company, money which goes to fund the North Korean government. Now, five more people have plead guilty to knowingly helping North Koreans infiltrate U.S. companies as remote IT workers.

The five people are accused of working as “facilitators” who helped North Koreans get jobs by providing their own real identities, or false and stolen identities of more than a dozen U.S. nationals. The facilitators also hosted company-provided laptops in their homes across the U.S. to make it look like the North Korean workers lived locally, according to the DOJ press release.

These actions affected 136 U.S. companies and netted Kim Jong Un’s regime $2.2 million in revenue, said the DOJ.

Three of the people — U.S. nationals Audricus Phagnasay, Jason Salazar, and Alexander Paul Travis — each pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy.

Prosecutors accused the three of helping North Koreans posing as legitimate IT workers, whom they knew worked outside of the United States, to use their own identities to obtain employment, helped them remotely access their company-issued laptops set up in their homes, and also helped the North Koreans pass vetting procedures, such as drug tests.

The fourth U.S. national who pleaded guilty is Erick Ntekereze Prince, who ran a company called Taggcar, which supplied to U.S. companies allegedly “certified” IT workers but whom he knew worked outside of the country and were using stolen or fake identities. Prince also hosted laptops with remote access software at several residences in Florida, and earned more than $89,000 for his work, the DOJ said.

Another participant in the scheme who pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy and another count of aggravated identity theft is Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, who prosecutors accuse of stealing U.S. citizens’ identities and selling them to North Koreans so they could get jobs at more than 40 U.S. companies.

Submission + - It's Official: Scientists Confirmed What Is Inside Our Moon (sciencealert.com) 1

alternative_right writes: A thorough investigation published in May 2023 found that the inner core of the Moon is, in fact, a solid ball with a density similar to that of iron.

To figure it out once and for all, Briaud and his colleagues collected data from space missions and lunar laser-ranging experiments to compile a profile of various lunar characteristics. These include the degree of its deformation by its gravitational interaction with Earth, the variation in its distance from Earth, and its density.

Comment Passengers and cargo vary considerably. (Score 1) 181

What SPECIFICALLY do you haul that you presume to speak for all users who "haul things"?

Four door vehicles including Suburbans (whose "bed" is internal) are popular with businesses for many good reasons. They haul a three-person crew plus their personal items, have room for cargo (which a short bed crew cab equivalent does with extra clearance for outsize items) and make excellent towing vehicles.

There are many ways to roll one's own work truck besides single cab long beds. (I've one of those, too.) Short beds do not exclude long cargo else I'd not use mine for that (I've multiple trucks in various flavors). Accessories like lift gates work well on either (and on vans and box trucks) and in the case of liftgates extend the bed when travelling with the gate down.

Is it so terribly difficult to understand buyers who already have those choices buy what we do?

Comment Re:Maybe try making trucks people want? (Score 1) 181

BEV proponents don't care about people who use trucks as trucks or why that used market requires ICE.

They don't use liftgates (I find it odd more truck buyers don't install them but attribute that to ignorance of how very useful they are) so hauling the weight of same plus cargo and often towed loads is not their concern. I quite like mine which is a major back saver.

Their sole agenda is forcing you to obey them. That's typical and a major reason people who would not otherwise vote right wing consider they've no other way to defend themselves.

Selling new trucks requires sufficient demand from the USED market to make new trucks a wise economic choice.

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