Google says that patent expired in September of 2025, as it was filed in 2005. Yes, we are getting old.

Personally, I prefer the old rectangular Thinkpad charging connectors.

I don't think people looking for entertainment are going to pay to watch a propaganda hit piece.

I own a Stratego board and play it regularly with my son. We also play it with close family from time to time. It's one of my favorite games. It allows for the right balance of strategy, skill, and adaptation, with just the right amount of luck mixed in. Additionally, even as one may be on the verge of losing, there still exist opportunities to win the game. And because arrangement of pieces can be different every game, and because your pieces are largely unknown to the other player until an attack is made, the element of surprise allows for every game to feel unique and special.

If you haven't played it, I'd encourage you to try it again sometime.

"There use to be news, with editors that would filter out the wrongthink"
FTFY

Wading through the garbage, one does find a few gems from time to time. Not unfounded rumours, but verified stories with links to sources that the regular newspapers do not print for some reason, or discussions and opinions outside of your own bubble. And it becomes clear how much of a bubble mainstream publications have become. Or maybe they always were...

How about governments using AI to process intelligence and making strategic decisions based on the AI's "insights".

Now I can look up at the night sky with a telescope, find 1981 EC26, say out loud to myself, "That's Weird", and be at peace with my factually accurate statement.

If I call tech support or the bank or whatever, I don't want, need nor expect to see the other person's face. In general, video calling isn't widely used except in multi-person meetings, or when calling a loved one overseas. The avatar is not needed.

Also, give your AI agent a phone number where I can reach it, or give it its dedicated app or whatever, but default to "handset mode" like a regular phone call. Let me put it on speaker if and when I want to. Turning the interaction into a regular phone call will go a long way towards making the conversation feel more natural. Interacting with Siri and Alexa feels unnatural; adding an animated avatar to a disembodied voice won't help, even if the conversation itself flows naturally. I know, a phone call isn't suitable for every interaction, especially when collaborating or co-creating with someone, but it covers most cases.

But I guess a simple audio call is harder to monetize.

I just wanted to let you know that you have successfully driven me off of /., after some 25 years.

Not just you, obviously, the site has been in steep decline for a long time, but you were such a huge asshole that you managed to be the last straw. So, congrats for that. I won't be back.

"I'll america you in your americaing america!" – Smurf Intelligence

Exactly. "like if startup school Y Combinator and Peter Thiel's build-a-company-instead of-college Fellowship Program had a baby" sounds like pure nightmare fuel. Like learning to swim in a shark tank.

Actually, Ayn Rand proposed something exactly like this...

I see plenty of people around me living a life without work, or doing only a little work on their own terms, who are not in jail or dead, and often seem pretty happy. You have options. But no one is going to hand them to you on a platter. Capitalist societies have created an utterly unprecedented standard of living, not for the ultra wealthy, but for the masses. And social democracies have taken the edge off capitalism by ensuring a minimum standard of living that is still pretty good, to those who cannot provide for themselves. But screw you if you demand others to provide you with a living, instead of working for it yourself.

With that said, things did get out of control. Regulatory oversight is a joke, and so is antitrust regulation (or the enforcement of it). Companies becoming too large for our own good, and private wealth growing so large that they can simply buy politicians, legislators and governments. That's nothing new, but one would hope that we learned from past mistakes, and taken measures against that.

Though in all of this, the machines are merely tools, none of this happened because of the machines. Social media and AI made control easier, but before that people were controlled by other means. In my own country, there is not much variety of opinion on television, and almost all of the national and regional newspapers (as well as a TV channel) have fallen in the hands of 2 wealthy families, and it shows: variety in opinion has given way to a sameness, across publications that used to span the spectrum from left to right. And it's not just the ultra rich pulling the strings; here in Europe, politicians seem to be withdrawing within a class of their own, with their own agenda. People increasingly voting for radical right parties is not because people have become more right wing, or because they have been unduly influenced by AI or social media, but because they have become disillusioned with the mainstream politicians.

It makes sense to teach them about AI, what it is good for and what not to use it for. Just like how we learned how to use a calculator in primary school, after we learned manual multiplication and long division. A lesson for AI could be to ask students to write an essay, and teach them how to use AI to do research, let it help to give structure to their text, how to check sources and accuracy, and so on. It would be used as a tool a few times, to teach them about the tool, after they learn how to go about such things without using AI.

And coding can be a very good teaching tool for that. That should be the goal of teaching coding in schools, that and trying to spark an interest in the subject in children. Not preparing them for a career in software engineering.

As for AI, it's not going away, and kids will be using it. So teach them the stuff about it they are less likely to pick up on their own. Such as the dangers and pitfalls.

If you're vain enough to want to stand out with exclusive emojis or animated whatevers, then spending money on a Nitro subscription makes rational sense.