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Comment Re:CLEAN-ENERGY cables??? (Score 1) 46

There are lots of different kinds of cables for different application. What you say is true, but it doesn't necessarily trivially apply in all circumstances. For example the undersea cables have limits. The person being interviewed in the article specialized in undersea cables, from what I can tell. I don't think you can simply just jack up the voltage and magically get more capacity through an existing undersea line.

As others stated, traditional overhead wires also have their limits. and are designed for specific voltages and currents before you run into problems with insulators, discharges, etc.

Comment Context Matters a Lot (Score 1) 32

Does not matter. If the machine claims it is a licensed therapist, this either has to stop or the machine has to be turned off.

Yes it does matter. If you watch a film and an actor in it says they are a medical doctor does that mean the actor deserves a lengthy prison sentence for claiming they are a doctor when they are not? Your approach would pretty much make the acting profession illegal. The difference between an actor and a scam artist is purely context: in a film or play we know that not everything we see is true so there is no intent to defraud, only to entertain.

Labelling AI chatbots in a way that makes it clear that their output is not always going to be true is all that is needed. It is then up to the user to decide whether that means they are still useful or not.

Comment didn't we JUST switch file systems recently? (Score 1) 19

so now we're going to go through that again? I know, change can be good, but sometimes Apple just seems to want to change things "just because they can".

I just don't think APFS has had enough time to "stew" in the field to get a proper large list of changes and enhancements to make for it yet. They need to sit on this a few more years before making us all reformat our drives again. I want more "bang for the buck" when it comes to inconveniencing me.

Also totally OT, slashdot scrolling my window up and down while I'm typing a reply (because it wants to load a new ad) is SUPER obnoxious behavior. We spend less than 1% of our time on the Reply Composition screen - you don't HAVE to display an ad there, nobody's going to click it.

Comment Label, not Prevent (Score 1) 32

You regulate that by punishing the chatbot owners if they do not prevent it.

You can't prevent it: current "AI" technology does not understand what it is saying so not only can it lie/hallucinate it has no idea that it even has lied. The correct response is to correctly label it i.e. make sure that all users know that AI output cannot be trusted as being correct. This would not only solve this therapist issue but would also solve all the other problems related to people trusting AI output, like lawyers submitting AI written court documents with fabricated references.

Essentially treat AI output like a work of fiction. It may sound plausible and it may even contain real facts but, just like some "fact" you read in a fiction book you should not rely on anything it says to be true.

Comment Re:What laws? (Score 1) 100

I do not see anything in any of those ammendments about not purchasing data. There was no search or seizure, the airlines voluntarily sold their data and as for the 5th ammendment the only part that seems to apply here is "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." and since the data were sold clearly there was "just compensation" and arguably the property was not "taken" but offered for sale.

Unless you can show that the airlines were somehow compelled to hand over the data I don't see how anything in those ammendments applies. Your government bought the data from companies who were more interested in making extra money than in protecting their customer's privacy. It's shitty behaviour and in most places with data protection laws it would be illegal for the company to sell private data like that but it's the company at fault here, not the government...although I'll grant you that it raises definite questions about what your government is planning to do with all that data.

Comment Re: I can't wait for the brouhaha that arises (Score 1) 60

I'm not sure you understand what jailbreaking means in the context of AIs. It means prompts. E.g. asking it things and trying to get it to make inappropriate responses. Trying doesn't require any special skills, just an ability to communicate. Yes, I very much DO think most parents will try and see if they can get the doll to say inappropriate things before giving it to their children, to make sure it's not going to be harmful.

(Now, if Mattel has done their job right, *succeeding* will be difficult)

Comment Re:is this new? (Score 2) 78

It's almost like elections have consequences, and America has elected that it and its businesses are going to be treated like the plague. Well, even more than that, even visiting the US is dropping, and now with US Marines on city streets in a major US city, well, fuck that banana republic. I will never enter the US again.

Comment Re:How do people get stuck with Teams? (Score 1) 78

I've had rendering nightmares in Word, including docx files. There are most certainly version and rendering issues in Word just like any other word processor. It gets really horrendous with tables and frames, particularly when they are used as some sort of typesetting system, at which point try to open up on a different version of Word than the documented was created on, and it can turn into a mess.

Comment Re:Can't Repair in Peace time? (Score 1) 118

I suspect that finding out the hard way would suck; but I'd honestly be a little curious what the breakdown would be between "it's been decades since we sold this stuff with the expectation of more than toy use; it's bad for margins to have more than bare minimum service techs and spares" where you'd basically be screwed; and "we jerk you around because we can; but if you just conscripted our contractors and Defense Production Act-ed our production priorities it would actually work fine".

If the problem is basically just 'because we can' contract fuckery a real war would probably sort it out; because the DoD can also 'because we can' in a pinch. It's if the system looks rotten because, deep down, it's been at least two generations of people selling cool toys that we all know are just going to be used against pitifully inferior non-state or pariah-state actors to people buying cool toys who know how to talk about 'peer adversaries' but can't forget that their entire career has been more or less discretionary and recreational uses of force that we barely bother to call wars.

There are definitely upsides to not having spent prolonged periods of time in hot wars with existential threats recently; but I suspect that it's hard to keep deep cynicism from creeping into the supply chain when it's so hard to pretend that you aren't just going through the motions.

Comment Re:To everyone out there... (Score 1) 127

It's not like the writing in the original Star Wars film was all that great. Guiness's dialogue was cheesy enough that he begged Lucas to kill his character off (and Lucas, to his credit, found a way to get Guiness into two more films).

But if I were making fun of the third trilogy at this point, it wouldn't be so much about the bad writing (though in general it's bloody awful), but the almost complete lack of any kind of plotting.

Comment Re: I'm not so sure (Score 4, Insightful) 127

The Producers? Young Frankenstein? Blazing Saddles? High Anxiety?

I'm not sure there's a funnier scene in any movie ever made in history than Springtime For Hitler (the reaction shots in that scene are the best I've ever seen in a movie), with the possible exception of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster doing a song and dance number to Putting On The Ritz.

For me, at least, Mel Brooks is probably the pinnacle of comedy filmmaking.

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