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Comment Re:Why the need? (Score 1) 20

Why, what's the hurry?

Probably worried about competition from Tesla's Robotaxis.

The quote was from the Bavarian government guy, so it seems unlikely that he's concerned about Waymo's competitive worries.

Also, German regulators are very cautious, so I expect Tesla's camera-only and less-mature robotaxi service will have a harder time getting approved.

Comment Re:Why the need? (Score 1) 20

Now we need to move quickly from testing to real-world deployment.

Really? That is a need? Why, what's the hurry?

You know another company that moved really quickly from testing to real-world deployment? OceanGate.

Well, given that Waymo has been testing for nearly 20 years and been operating commercially for six years, currently operating nearly 4000 vehicles in 11 cities doing 500k rides per week... there's not a lot of risk.

Roads in Munich aren't terribly different from roads in US cities. Stoplights work a little differently. Munich does get a little snow, but rarely very much and it almost never lasts long. If Waymo's vehicles can't deal with it they may just suspend service... though I expect they'll probably handle it fine. They're supposed to go live in Detroit and Minneapolis this year, and if they can handle the weather there (where just shutting down for snow is not an option), Munich will be no problem at all.

So, not much like OceanGate.

Comment Re:Project, much? (Score 1) 107

Serious question - How does the Online Streaming Act work in practice for content on demand? When a Canadian tries to binge the latest season of Stranger Things, is NetFlix required to say "nope, go watch this Celine Dion concert first to get our CanCon ratio up"?

I get how it could apply to randomized content like streaming radio, but the very concept seems incompatible with "choice".

Comment Re:I bet he does it for 2 reasons (Score 1) 120

That execution is the recording engineer's job. Dre is mostly a producer now, and that does require considerable talent and creativity. Depending on the situation, they may do everything except write and sing the lyrics.

The recording engineer only records (and maybe mixes) the audio that is generated, which is part of what I meant by "mechanical process", along with generating the audio. Dre could use AI to transform his ideas into digital audio tracks, obviating the recording engineer and the performers, and to then select and mold the results. This would still require talent and creativity, which was my point.

Comment Re:I'm not convinced QCs will ever work (Score 1) 45

Is 98 greater than 56? Yes? Okay then. It's still going up. So much vitriol from someone posting nothing but bare assertion - Cite please, beyond your fee-fees?

Let me 'splain it to you in simple language. The number of qubits doesn't need to scale exponentially on the short term for quantum computing to pose a very real threat; it only needs to hit the mid hundreds. As I mentioned, Grover's algorithm is O(n) - Meaning once we hit 256 qubits (plus some change for overhead), SHA256 is substantially weakened. Is that a full crack of AES, which you'll kindly notice I didn't previously claim, Mr. Goalposts? No. No it isn't - But it's arguably worse - SHA is almost ubiquitous and affects far more than encryption itself. You don't need to crack a tank's armor if you can convince its driver to piss in the fuel tank.

I also happen to think - and to be clear, what follows is my opinion, not psychic knowledge about the future - you're completely wrong on the bigger picture; and once QC hits its stride Gordon Moore will again be relevant. But critically, that's not necessary for it to cause some serious damage in the near future.

Comment Re:TSG (The SCO Group), not SCO (Score 1) 92

They were not in any way the same company

This is, of course, capitalism-worshiping nonsense. Corporations are legal fictions. Having bought one, you have become the owner of the entire fiction, including the name. They are SCO now in every sense that matters, and I say that as someone who used to run SCO software and who knows several former SCO employees. That SCO is dead, hopefully this SCO can also die soon, but they are legally the same SCO.

Caldera didn't buy SCO.

Comment Re:No.... (Score 1) 71

It doesn't NEED to know any of these things. My browser knows the window (not screen) size and if your CSS is well-formed, it'll manage or maybe your page looks shit if you build it shit. It needs to know my OS only if I want a download link, not on every page I ever visit. It doesn't need graphics capabilities unless it wants to bypass the browser rendering engine, in which case it should ask for permission or fuck off.

The thing is that we give up too easily and the major browser manufacturers (one of which is an ad company themselves) are complicit.

I want "fuck the ad industry" mode, where the browser generates random but plausible values for every non-essential information a website requests. Different ones every 5 minutes.

Comment Re:Uhoh (Score 1) 126

Can't wait to see the comments on this one!

H-1B abuse is Huge in the tech sector and traditionally lamented here. But on the other hand, Trump is the one doing the fixing.

Should be interesting to see how those displaced by H1B workers in the past try to justify more cheap H1B workers

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.... You think Trump is fixing this?

Nope, as per usual this will be ignored if you make a generous tithe... erm... donation... erm... gratuity in advance to the Trumpublican party.

It's a law that won't ever be enforced... unless you're a company the tangerine thundercunt doesn't like.

The end game is not to protect US workers, but strip what few rights they have down so that they're as cheap as the Indian workers.

Comment Re:I bet he does it for 2 reasons (Score 2) 120

This is all moot because it's false that if you use AI you cannot gain copyright on the work. I literally hold a copyright registered with the US copyright office (I registered with them, despite not being a US citizen, because they're precedent-setting), fully disclosing the use of AI in the process, and directly speaking about the matter with a copyright examiner.

What the standard is is that raw, unfiltered outputs are not copyrightable (and even then, there's wiggle room; the argument put forward by the copyright office was "based on their current understanding" (as of several years ago) and presumed very minimal control by the user over the outputs (which was actually already obsolete by the time they put it out, but that's nitpicking)). But the human creative action you take with those outputs can cause the resultant product to be copyrightable. This can be things like sample mixing, mastering, adding vocals, etc, but can also even just be the selection process itself. Yes, assemblage, selection, curation, etc are all potentially copyrightable acts.

In my case, while the samples were (overwhelmingly) AI, the whole project was weeks of work, involving hundreds of generations, track splitting and reassembling, things down to the level of editing individual phonemes (or for example in one part, stripping the vocals and instruments from a sample down to just the residual "other" channel, throwing it into reverse, and then piling on progressively more reverb and volume up to a sudden cutoff to create a tension-point transition). No issues whatoever registering the copyright on it. I'm sure you could do far less and still have a copyrightable work.

Comment Re:I bet he does it for 2 reasons (Score 1) 120

I think people need to keep in mind that marketability (aka enjoyability), talent, and effort are three independent axes. You can be talented at one or more aspects of music production, a genuine skill (play a guitar, sing, etc), but put forth either high or low effort, and make good or terrible music, all independently. You can put forth a lot of effort, but you may or may not be talented, and it may or may not be good. You may make a great enjoyable marketable track, but may or may not have notable talents, and may or may not have put in a lot of effort.

In general: I judge how much I want to listen to it by its enjoyability; I attribute how much the author deserves credit / how much it's "art" by how much non-rote effort they put in; and I value the artist's skill based on their demonstrable talent. All of this independent of what specific tools were used. That said, knowledge of certain facts may colour one's enjoyability of a track. If you hate AI and know / suspect it's AI, that'll strongly colour your enjoyability of it. Or if you know the artist is a bad person or whatnot, that again can colour your enjoyability of a track that you'd otherwise enjoy in a vacuum.

Comment Re:Not a pop yet (Score 1) 60

One thing I've been thinking recently is being in the AI trade but only with high seniority, not common stock. So if there is a "pop", but the underlying business remains sustainable, the high seniority investors end up with the assets and make a mint when the market returns to balance, whereas the stockholders are the ones who suffer. This could mean a mix of convertible bonds / convertible ETFs, preferred shares, senior corporate debt, physical infrastructure (power suppliers, REITs, etc), BDCs and private credit vehicles, etc. Or possibly even common stock in some of the diversified giants (Google, Microsoft, etc), who - while they'd take quite a temporary hit in a crash - would survive and then buy up all the distressed players.

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