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Comment Reliability seems more important? (Score 2) 126

With all this rushing to improve AI engines and whatnot? It's the uptime/reliability that's concerning me as much as anything else.
I've seen ChatGPT Work have multiple outages just in the short time our office started using it. And even when they claim systems are running normally? You can easily get timeouts trying to complete relatively simple requests in systems like Co-Pilot, at least using the free edition.

If I ask my co-worker to complete a task, I have a pretty reasonable assumption he's going to do that. If he fails to complete requests several times in a short time-frame? Then it's likely he'll get in trouble for that, even potentially resulting in his termination. AI should be held to an even higher standard since it's a machine.

What happens when everyone is counting on AI to do necessary parts of daily workflows and then it has an extended outage? That's like your whole workforce going on strike.

Comment Trying to look at all angles here... (Score 2) 170

...and I know from years of experience in I.T. that any time you give people the ability to do a database search, you'll get people putting nonsense in fields for testing purposes. So at least SOME of the "button mashing" and entries like "dickhead" sound to me like officers trying out the system for the first time, or experimenting because they weren't trying to conduct a REAL license plate search.

That doesn't disturb me as much as the overall problem of allowing these searches without a warrant or at least a judicial review. Even if it's decided that a license plate search doesn't rise to the level of requiring a warrant to conduct it? There should absolutely be someone reviewing the searches being done. (EG. The officer who is too lazy to properly document why he/she is doing them and consistently leaving fields empty needs to be punished.)

Comment Re:So what (Score -1, Troll) 16

Some place between sometimes and often - I'm not here to argue that - researchers are the first to discover.

But it's also almost meaningless to just go, "I'm such an amazing realist, the worst case happens every time."

That's not really being realist. That's just you not knowing actual things, and having an emotion.

Comment Re: We actually looked at it (Score 1) 57

Exactly. On Linux you can automatize system administration very well with FOSS. Yes, you have to use different tools, but, for example, SSH-ing into a box with certificate-based authentication when it is up is trivial. Scripting that way is trivial. Even a doing a full installation (on top of a minimal one) this way is trivial. Doing updates this way is trivial. All with the security mind-set that UNIX was designed with from the start.

We were successfully managing 1,500 Windows and Mac desktops with exactlyone Windows Admin and exactly one Mac Admin, along with a DBA/Report generator person to help admin staff get the reports/data they needed.

We had absolutely zero interest in SSHing into individual desktops to run scripts - managing the desktops with Group Policy was a simple, well-known mechanism. I don't mean this as a disparaging judgement, but your comments are really about today, 15 years after the fact - I'm talking about the state of the systems in 2010, not 2025, and your comments make me think you've never seen how a well-run windows shop is administered.

You missed his whole point. You don't need third party software to administer an unlimited number of Linux boxes, you can script it with built in tools that can connect and manage the box. For Windows admins who want to manage Linux there is also GUI tools.

I'm not even going to mention that you can migrate the OS and all the installed software onto newer hardware remotely and have it run for 30 years by multiple migrations and regular software upgrades.

Windows is PITA to manage but I guess it's what you are used to.

Comment Re: We actually looked at it (Score 4, Informative) 57

You are right in your statement but you don't manage 1,500 Linux/Unix stations like Windows that's why it was so expensive. There are tools for free to even manage a greater number of stations.

When you lock yourself in a proprietary system and tools then you are right that they don't work on other systems. It's not Linux that is restricting your use.

My kids grew up using systems no employer used. They grew up computer literate and today they have no issues using any computer even the ones employers use.

Comment Re: Apple has an advertising ecosystem? (Score 1) 24

The better the tracking data, the more targeted the impression, the higher the clickthru rate. Crafting tracking consent dialogs in a way that favors one app or the other is going to increase the efficiency of campaign placements that target users of that app, rather than campaigns run by app developers who experience a lower percent of users consenting to track.

Comment Another vote of YES to this decision (Score 1) 71

This should be the standard for all grade schools, really. When you're in grade school, you're being taught fundamentals. You're literally learning how to use and write the language that you'd eventually use to form queries for AIs.

There's just no good that will come of introducing kids to using AI in a school setting at this age. What you'd get instead are kids who learn how to leverage it to cheat and avoid the work they're asked to do so they learn and memorize the materials in class, and kids who don't grasp the fact the AI isn't something you can treat just like a human friend.

Comment Sonos may finally be correct here? (Score 0) 60

Like many other people, I dumped the Sonos ecosystem when they started killing support for their hardware I owned and still actively used. Even with their "trade in offers" to upgrade? It made no sense, when the new speaker or interface wasn't going to sound any better than the one I already owned.

I felt like the brand was nearly irrelevant in today's world where practically every audio device supports Bluetooth connections and everything has mobile apps.

But Sonos is right about this idea/realization: They're really not a "speaker company" (at least, not one of any consequence). What they really have to offer really is an "audio operating system". How well that works out for them depends on how well they design it. But at least there's some potential buy-in for me here.

If you can make it co-exist on top of everything else i use, like streaming audio from a Mac's Music library via AirPlay or my wife wanting to send music from her phone or tablet to either the soundbar on our living room TV or alternately to her little Sony bluetooth speaker? It starts to make some sense. It's great if it makes any and all Sonos branded hardware super easy to configure and use, but should also allow managing everything else under the same roof.

Comment Re:Project, much? (Score 1) 229

And they're welcome, as a business to swallow those aquisition expenditures, or fund their own Canadian content, or not do business here.

The list of developed countries that don't have domestic cultural protection policies is low. The US doesn't have one because of its size (or I'll throw you a bone - HOW AWESOME THEY ARE) - it simply doesn't need one.

Kind of hilarious in light of how pro-protectionist things have swung there. If the US audience started consuming predominantly anime TV, movies, books, etc overnight (purely just because of how good they are, right?) you'd bet your ass US would do the exact same thing.

Comment Re:Don't push Canada content, and no to the french (Score 1) 229

What you don't get is that French is useful for many people - it just wasn't useful for you - and you project that because to you, personal experience is reality. Calling Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic more useful languages for living, identifying with other citizens, and employment in Canada is fucking bananas - and I'm married to a Taiwanese woman and speak some Mandarin!! Nothing you've said has changed my mind. Your points are noted, but still remarkably dumb.

so why aren't they given force adoption

I feel like we need a "take Murdoch5 to a real job" day or something. I'd literally pay to sit you down some time and explain how the real world works.

Comment I'll reserve judgement (Score 0) 108

Lots of posts here bashing this product while I bet exactly none of them have tried using one yet.

No argument Dyson makes a lot of high-dollar products that just attempt to be a little better/different than the norm -- and won't impress people who are always looking only for the lowest cost solution.

But I have yet to really use anything Dyson branded I thought was a bad/dysfunctional product. I owned the orange Dyson ball vacuum cleaner, many years ago, when it had only existed for a short time. It was 4x-5x more expensive than a typical Hoover or Eureka upright vacuum from a discount or department store. But I got a good 12-13 years or so of use out of it, before selling it to someone else. I remember when I first got it, thinking it felt "too plastic-y" with plastic hoses and attachments and levers. Wasn't confident it wouldn't just crack/break on me. But it never did, and my only real complaint with it was the ball design prevented getting the vacuum under the coffee table. (Obviously, switching to one of the suction attachments let you get around that.)

I feel like at $500, I don't want to be the first guy trying one of these out. But if early adopters decide it really works, and isn't too slow at sensing where gaps are between your teeth while brushing with it - I would consider buying one on sale and giving it a shot.

Comment Re:Personal accountability.... (Score 2) 76

Right! That's exactly it. I was part of "Gen X" myself, and while I had friends who lived the whole "latchkey kid" lifestyle to the max? It really wasn't the norm to just be unsupervised all day or night.

I remember my folks both worked, but my mom went to working only part-time, early in the morning until around the lunch hour, when we were younger. She hired an older lady as a part-time nanny for us while she was gone. When we got older, mom was always home by the time school let out - so we barely knew she was ever gone.

And also true that even for the teens I knew who had a house to themselves after school each day until bedtime? Their parent(s) weren't just buying them electric motorcycles or any of that like you see going on today. Obviously, the Internet wasn't anything like it is today. Even as a hard-core computer geek though? I called and ran my own computer bulletin board system where it was just really a local niche community of like-minded people dialing in with modems. Most heated arguments that came up on a BBS got squashed when the BBS operator decided he had enough and banned all of them. It just wasn't *anything* like what goes on now where people get video-recorded against their will in high resolution just so someone can get famous on TikTok, or ?

Comment Citation needed? (Score 3, Insightful) 106

Rei: Do you actually work for Amazon in a capacity where you're informed on how they're obtaining these books?

I'm asking for a couple reasons.

1. We all know Amazon has plenty of money to be able to afford to buy rare, out-of-print books that are difficult to obtain. I'd be surprised if they refrained from doing so if that meant their AI risked not having some of that knowledge/information while a competitor's did. I'm not saying the guy tasked with being manager over the disposable labor doing the book scanning is authorized to make direct choices about what books to buy. I'm saying someone in Amazon corporate, in charge of the AI project itself, was probably given the funding to buy what he/she felt was needed.

2. The original article's anonymous interview with the low-level worker sounded very accurate with such statements as the details/orders changing daily and everything feeling disorganized. I can speak with some authority that that's exactly how it feels when you work for them in a non-management capacity. Multiple layers of management are dictating new processes or policies in a constant stream, and then often? The entire thing is up-ended when top level management makes a company-wide decree or mandate. Your team lead/manager is even liable to change on short notice. Their push to constantly "reinvent" causes a whole lot of reinventing of the same wheel another department or team already invented, and it's kind of a zoo. That's why I'd also take their comments as legit when they express concerns some of the books appeared to be obscure titles, etc.

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