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Comment "Shopify Must Face" (Score 1) 42

Can someone explain to a non-native speaker what "must face" means in this context?

I mean, obviously if a lawsuit is filed against them they have to DEAL with it, or REACT to it, but ... "must face" somehow implies to me that there is an option of not having to "face" it, which means they can... ignore it? Somehow?

Or does "face" mean something different here?

Comment Re:"slimy deception" (Score 5, Insightful) 83

I agree. I do not understand why the use of AI in this way would create such a backlash.

Also, there are so many American movies in which the foreign accents are TERRIBLE and in some cases even in the entirely wrong language that's claimed (I remember "The Thomas Crown Affair", where the person spoke Swiss German and it was claimed to be Hungarian). So they get massive points for trying to do it properly, with or without AI.

Comment Re:more BS "insight" for profit (Score 1) 133

> "my proof"?

Threw me as well. I mean he's a professor, shouldn't he have SOME training in the scientific method? The actual paper is behind a paywall, but even if he was to map the AI reasoning in math and prove that, it's still an interpretation. Working with absolutes like "proof" is exactly what makes people turn away from "scientific results". He might even be aware of that, because he says "my proof SUGGESTS"... the proof only "suggests"?

Shame, really. I think Philosophy can and in fact does make really interesting contributions to the AI debate, and it should, since this is the first potential "alien" intelligence available.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Take the joy out of programming: Use Copilot and ChatGPT

DaPhil writes: I taught myself to code at 12yo in the 90s and I've always liked the back-and-forth with the runtime to achieve the right result. I recently got back from other roles to code again, and when starting a new project last year, I decided to give the new "AI assistants" a go.

My initial surprise at the quality and the speed you can achieve when using ChatGPT and/or Copilot when coding turned sour over the months, as I realized that all the joy I felt about trying to get the result I want, slowly improving my code by (slowly) thinking, checking the results against the runtime, and finally achieving success is, well, gone. What I do now is typing English sentences in increasingly desparate attempts to get ChatGPT to output what I want (or providing snippets to Copilot to get the right autocompletion), which — as they are pretty much black boxes — is frustrating and non-linear: It either "just works", or it doesn't. There is no measure of progress. In a way, having Copilot in the IDE is even worse, since it actually disrupts my thinking when suggesting completions.

I've now disabled Copilot. Interestingly, I myself now feel somehow "disabled" without it in the IDE — however, the abstention has given me back the ability to sit back and think, and through that, the joy of programming. Still, it feels like I'm now somehow an ex-drug addict always on the verge of a relapse. I was wondering if any of you felt the same, or if I'm just... old.

Comment Obvious solution: Download it? (Score 2) 110

This being slashdot, I'm surprised that no-one mentions downloads/rips and keeping the media on a NAS or equivalent. Seems like the obvious technical solution. If you keep upgrading discs every couple years, you can keep you stuff indefinitely.

Having said that, I believe I bought Star Wars about 5 times now for the full price (Cinema, VHS, DVD, BluRay, Streaming). Once for the IP and then a minor fee for each copy would be preferable. Same goes for books, by the way - a Kindle version and the paper copy each contain the IP costs. Why?

Comment Re:Who wrote this tripe? Were they a teenager in ' (Score 3, Insightful) 69

There is nothing "weird" about this. From your post it sounds like you were very well off and able to afford, and been able to buy, the latest stuff. Nothing wrong with that, but many of us didn't have any money and had to beg their parents for purchases, who went for used stuff. So we got stuff late.

Comment Re:As if they knew how their hw compared (Score 1) 69

I just remembered that I actually got caught in French class (I was based in Germany at that time) writing code. This must have been early 1990s.

The teacher was pissed, I can tell you. How dare I write "stuff for your computer" in class. Well, she was right.

I'm 44 now and still write code, so it did not hurt.

Comment As if they knew how their hw compared (Score 1) 69

This article makes it sound like they knew, at the time, the challenges of coding on an Appple IIgs. Spoiler: They did not.

Jeez. There were thousands of us at the time trying to code stuff on any of the availabe PCs at the time. I did a vertical scroller at that age for an 8088. Others had Ataris or even Commodore hardware. We had no clue about what else was out there. We just used what was available to us.

I get the pain, I really do. But don't try to sell this up as "I got handed an Apple IIgs at that time... booooooo... I was so bad off!".

Comment Re:Programmable Applications (Score 1) 19

The general idea, i.e. that applications be programmable, is laudable. I'd wish there was some way of making this happen "in principle", I really do. There is actually sci-fi which makes this a reality - a common programming model - but this is not, currently, reality.

Unfortunately, software being what it is as of now, achieving a general solution to this is impossible. ATLAST is no exception to this, being a component targeted at a specific language and system. There are hundreds of such implementations - I did some myself - but each one is just the n+1 implementation of said concept.

Comment Re:Training (Score 1) 189

I somehow doubt that an AI would be able to fashion boys' and girls' genitalia - including completely missing breasts in girls, and inability to retract foreskin in boys - from adult men/women and clothed children. But this "I somehow doubt" is precisely the issue here, since very few of us have seen any of the outputs - and noone at all sees any of the inputs.

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