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Comment Re:Yeah yeah... (Score 2) 31

I don't know anything about comics, but according to Wikipedia (IDW):

It was founded in 1999 as the publishing division of Idea and Design Works, LLC (IDW) and is recognized as the fifth-largest comic book publisher in the United States, behind Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and Image Comics

Wikipedia also links to IDW Publishing States They Will Definitely Be Around For Another Year

So, it doesn't seem that rosy?

Submission + - Surfshark launches worlds first 100Gbps VPN servers (nerds.xyz)

BrianFagioli writes: Surfshark has rolled out the worldâ(TM)s first 100Gbps VPN servers, starting in Amsterdam. The company says the move is designed to prevent VPN services from becoming a bottleneck as internet speeds continue to rise and more devices demand higher capacity for streaming, gaming, and software updates. Surfshark CTO Donatas Budvytis noted that âoewith 10 times the headroom of 10Gbps, we can reduce congestion and maintain consistent speeds, even during high traffic spikes,â adding that the upgrade is also about preparing for future tech like AR glasses and VR headsets.

By choosing Amsterdam, Surfshark is tapping into AMS-IX, one of the worldâ(TM)s largest internet exchanges, handling more than 14 trillion bits per second. The company says the new servers enable faster encryption on modern CPUs, better load distribution, and reduced need for throttling, which should give customers more consistent performance closer to their ISPâ(TM)s maximum speeds. Surfshark users wonâ(TM)t need to pay extra for the upgrade, with the new infrastructure coming online as part of the standard subscription.

Submission + - Zuckerberg Humiliated on Stage After AI-Powered Smart Glasses Keep Glitching (dnyuz.com)

fjo3 writes: Tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg was humiliated onstage not once, but twice, as his attempts to showcase the brilliance of Meta’s new AI-powered glasses were met with dismal failure.

Speaking at the company’s annual Meta Connect conference, Zuckerberg introduced the company’s second-generation smart Ray-Bans and a new neural wristband, as part of his vision for an AI that serves people in real-time.

Business Insider reported the vision unraveled when the AI glitched moments after the request, ignoring basic instructions and insisting that the employee had “already combined these ingredients.”

Comment Re:For those getting pitchforks ready (Score 1) 153

If you have induction, how do you feel about the sound of the range? I still have an ancient gas burner (though I did install a good ventilation fan), but when I've cooked on an induction stove elsewhere, it both made an annoying high-pitched squeal (think old CRTs but louder) and had fan noises kicking on and off. It annoyed the crap out of me.

I don't want to get another gas burner, and technologically induction does seem like the clear winner, but the noise thing is really throwing me off. What's your experience?

Submission + - Burger King Uses Copyright Law to Nix Security Research (bankinfosecurity.com)

schwit1 writes: Self-described ethical hacker "BobDaHacker" posted Saturday a blog post disclosing authentication bypass and other vulnerabilities in the "Assistant" system used by Toronto-based Restaurant Brands International, parent company to the hamburger chain as well as Tim Hortons, Popeyes and Firehouse Subs.

The "Assistant" system is deployed across RBI brands, BobDaHacker said in the now-deleted report, which remains archived online.

The blog post, titled "We Hacked Burger King," was up for less than 48 hours, until the researcher said they received a copyright infringement notice transmitted by threat intel firm Cyble. "Their complaint specifically states that our use of the 'Burger King' trademark was unauthorized and creates 'a high degree of confusion among the public that the website is in some way endorsed by/or linked with our client,'" BobDaHacker said in a statement posted to the URL where their research previously was live.

Here it is on the wayback machine

Comment Re:Locked in (Score 2) 80

I think that's a total misread of the situation.

Tesco has a contract with VMware. According to Tesco, VMware/Broadcom is now breaking this contract. The point of litigation is to determine which said prevails in this dispute. Of course, during litigation, Tesco will make many claims to show how important they are, and how insidious VMware/Broadom's actions are, all in support of their position. It doesn't mean that they Tesco could go offline at any second (though that is of course possible).

You later said "Tesco sell groceries, like potatoes. Do you think they only have a single potato supplier?"

That's a good point, but the more direct analogy would be it Tesco signed a purchasing agreement with a particular potato vendor where they paid £1m for a certain amount of potatoes over three years. Now let's say that after the first year this particular vendor fails to supply the agreed upon potatoes and won't refund any money. Tesco would undoubtedly sue that one vendor (even though they have multiple potato vendors). I have no doubt that Tesco would likewise claim that "This vendor's refusal to supply us with potatoes is endangering the food supply for Britain and Ireland!"

You wouldn't say that Tesco was "negligent" for trying to enforce a paid contract with that potato vendor, would you?

Comment Re:Falling birthrate (Score 1) 162

The problem with the K-12 system is that it's just _bad_. There is no drive for excellence, so students that don't have engaged parents are just coasting. In some places (Seattle) you could graduate with a passing score without even attending the classes and randomly filling out the tests. Then there are busybodies that try to cancel math and magnet schools because they're racist (see: California).

There's a lot of variability here. The Seattle and California models are baffling to me. Totally agree that the US system is largely focused on irrelevant (or immutable) things. I have a kid in highschool now. His peer group is very, very impressive. Multiple perfect scores on the ACT every year. ~55% of the highschool is English-language learners and 60%+ is free lunch eligible (meaning poverty level or close). There's an engineering magnet program that does really, really cool stuff. The school was on lockdown 3 times last year for gang fights.

It's a tough environment, comparatively.

This is really apparent when you look at college admission tests. In the US you have SAT tests that are trivially easy to pass with perfect scores (more than 2% of people get them!), and ACT with a bit more reasonable 0.22% of perfect scores. In China you have Gaokao where _nobody_ ever got the perfect score, in Korea you have CSAT with something like 5 people a year getting perfect scores, etc.

I have a different take! What's the point of a test that nobody ever gets a perfect score? I guarantee you that I can design a test that nobody ever aces, but it also wouldn't be worth anything. I think there needs to be a middle ground between overtesting, teaching to the test, and tests being the be all and end all of education, and the loosey goosey approach one often encounters in the US (most commonly among leftists) that thinks all testing is bad and racist and invalid and hurts kids.

Another thing to look at is the competitions. You can likely remember your high school's football team name, but you probably have never heard about your school's math olympiad teams. Schools in the US spend a lot of money on stadiums and gyms, but hardly any on academic competitions. It's the opposite in China and Russia. Nobody cares about the athletic performance, but schools actively compete academically with each other.

You are probably assuming the wrong things given the demographics of Slashdot and those few of us who have hung on for decades at this point! I was not on the math team, but I had friends who were. I participated in both Latin and Computer Science competitions (and marching band). Our football team sucked (I know this from marching band). But yeah, I'm sure a huge amount of money was spent on the gym and fields and athletics, far beyond what was spent on supporting the best academic achievers.

You will get NO argument from me that America's obsession with sports, from the cradle to the grave, is hugely detrimental to our society and culture.

I hope that the current mess with NIL, paying college athletes (I will NOT call them "student athletes" -- what a joke) forces some or many schools to back off on their sports expenditures and focuses, but I'm not holding my breath.

Comment Re:Falling birthrate (Score 1) 162

It's mostly an artifact of the way the Science proficiency is tested, the questions are mostly the logic-type deduction questions and require little if any specific knowledge. If you look at physics in particular, the US is far behind China.

Hey, I asked you your metric, I wasn't planning on nitpicking it!

China is not a member of the OECD, but they did unofficial scoring for the Beijing-Shanghai area, and they came out in the top 3 countries.

Sure, just like micro-regions, individual demographic groups in the US, etc., score higher.

IMHO, US public education is amongst the very best in the world at the high end and pretty bad at the low end. The real confounding factor is that demographics are hard to escape.

Comment Re:Falling birthrate (Score 1) 162

I agree PISA is a reasonable standard.

So, in the context of STEM that you raised, the US scored 14 points above average, #16 in Science placement. That seems strong to me.

Math is slightly below average (-4 points), number 34. Weak.

Reading, US placed #9, seems strong again.

You mentioned immigrants being the majority of STEM students. I don't know if that is true, but, using the metric you picked of PISA scores, some of the countries that send the most immigrants to the US in STEM .... have no data available. Nothing for China, India, Pakistan, etc. India seems to have scored exceedingly poorly the last time they participated.

The chart at the bottom of the Wikipedia page that includes 2015 US State results and racial breakdowns for the Mathematics portion for the US over multiple years is fascinating, and I think, should make an impact on your thinking.

(For instance, in the 2018 math results, Asian students in the US scored 539, whites scored 503, and the US average was 478. That puts US Asian students between Hong Kong and Taiwan in position #5 and white students in between Seden and Finland at #20. Black students in the US scored 419, the level of Thailand and Uruguay, around the upper 50s in rank. Kind of changes things a bit?)

Comment Anecdote rather than data... (Score 1) 98

Both of my grandarents died from lung ailments.

One of my grandfathers worked in factories his entire life, smoked for about 20 years of his youth, and and was generally of the socioeconomic level that wasn't able to live an extremely healthy lifestyle. He developed emphysema and associated conditions, and died in his low 70s. He had been on oxygen for years at that point.

My other grandfather never smoked a day in his life, never drank, worked in academia, swam daily until sometime in his 80s, and died right around age 90--from lung cancer! One of the doctors asked him if he had any career asbestos exposure and he answered "Well I did go down into an asbestos mine in 1934..."

You never know what will get you, but dying at age 90 and being in good physical and mental shape is pretty good by me!

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