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Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 2) 68

Permanent ST is more closely aligned with circadian biology, although earlier dusk may limit some evening activities

You know what's aligned even more with circadian biology?

Keep the current system, get up off your ass, and change your clocks twice per year without whinging like a precious snowflake.

That way you you don't have to deal either with the sun beating down on you while you try to sleep at 4am or with your poor children getting run over in the dark on their way to school.

Sure, a couple of codgers might keel over in march, but they were probably gonna die soon anyway. It's much harder to measure the statistics of all the other people who would die steadily throughout the year due to the aforementioned issues, as well as similar problems caused by a static clock that doesn't adjust at all to when the sun actually rises. However, I would bet good money that it would add up to far more casualties overall.

For some reason, I seem to be in a small minority on this issue, though. It's probably because everybody would rather believe in a solution to the problems of living on a tilted axis that's clear, simple, and wrong.

Comment Re: IANAL, but... (Score 1) 87

Right⦠because EVERYBODY fully reads and understands the TOCs of every service they useâ¦

People don't read a lot of things that they agree to, especially if it's 20,000 words in a postage stamp-sized text box on the new toy they just turned on. However, anybody who's not an idiot realizes that most everything in an agreement that they haven't read is against their interests, and plans accordingly. I personally always look for binding arbitration agreements and make sure to opt out of those whenever possible.

Oddly enough, the Anthropic TOS and privacy policy actually aren't all that obtuse and can be skimmed in a few minutes. They make it clear that they'll be looking for problems with what you upload and what kinds of problems those might be. Like I said, you can easily avoid all that by using a paper notebook for your diary.

Comment Re:IANAL, but... (Score 1, Insightful) 87

There is a clause in the statute: "in any manner in which it may be viewed by another person". I would argue that it's her diary and not meant to be viewed by anyone. I don't disagree that turning her in was the right thing to do but I doubt she'll be convicted.

If you look at Anthropic's terms of service and privacy policy, it clearly states that they can look at your content in order to enforce their usage policy. You have to agree to this when you set up an account or use their service. Given that this is an AI company, you can bet your content will be screened for violations more efficiently than if humans were involved at every step.

If she really didn't mean for anyone else to view it, she would have scribbled it down in a notebook instead of uploading into a cloud owned and policed by strangers and their robots.

Comment Anonymous tip (Score 1) 124

If the cops receive an anonymous tip that CowboyNeal is an insensitive clod, and then decide to arrest him without checking out any of the evidence, I blame the cops. There's plenty to bitch about with Flock but "the cops don't care about doing their job" isn't one of them. That's a cop problem.

Don't treat any stupid robots as somehow "better" than an anonymous tip called in from a payphone. It's just, like, something's opinion, man.

Comment Re:sounds like bad accounting... (Score 2) 50

Starship is going to need at least 10 successful orbital launches before it is considered only marginally higher risk than Falcon from a customer perspective. It you get it for half the cost then maybe it is worth it, but it depends on how easily replaceable the cargo is.

Comment Re:Correct. And oh, no. (Score 1) 54

We now live in a fully connected world where most users are connected through web browsers and are the intended victims.

This particular story is an exception to that. Remote software, accessed through a web browser, normally does not have read/write access to your local filesystem. But people are granting local filesystem access to proprietary AI services.

I think that granting such access is .. wow. I wouldn't do it, though I can see how if you use a specialized account for it, and if you're confident that your OS has no local user priv escalation bugs, it might be ok. In your sandbox you trust.

But GP's comment is about whose decision that is. If you use Linux, then it's your decision. If you use iOS, then it's Apple's decision. And MacOS is becoming less Linuxy and more iOSy every year. I think it makes plenty of sense for stories like this to result in people dumping MacOS for Linux. (But daaamn, their values surprise me. You wanna make your computer less secure instead of more? Oh well, like Rumsfeld said, freedom is untidy!)

Comment Re:Elections are cheap (Score 1) 38

No, if the state were renamed, it would be to Old America. NM might not be the true original, but if you look at it through the eyes of European colonization and continuous governance, then New Mexico has the best claim of the fifty. (Though if you take a less racist view, then I guess Alaska had the real OGs.)

Comment Excessive fine under 8A? (Score 3, Insightful) 38

Randi McGinn, a lawyer for New Mexico, said applying the full $5,000 penalty to the number of violations would create too large of a penalty under the US Constitution's protections on due process.

I ass/u/me this refers to the Eighth Amendment, but I don't remember seeing any monetary constants encoded within that text.

Google's telling me Meta is worth about $1.8 trillion so how would a mere $40B be "excessive?" It's only about 2% of their worth! Civil penalties in excess of 2% of someone's worth are routinely accepted as constitutional, aren't they? If this case were about me driving drunk and killing a whole family, I bet no one would flinch at the 8A implications of taking 2% (!?!) of my assets, and everyone would laugh at my lawyer if he brought up 8A for such an insignificant fine.

I understand why we have 8A, and everyone deserves mercy, but I don't see why Meta deserves exceptional mercy as a singular special case that we would be horrified to see applied anywhere else. Bringing up 8A for such a tiny fine would be giving Meta a very unique carve-out that we normally would not apply.

It may be that $5k is too much to charge criminals per act, in that each crime didn't really cause that much loss, but bringing up due process concerns seems like bullshit when the fine is already so small. NM and Meta had been trying to negotiate the cost of illegal business for years before negotiations failed and it went to trial. Meta decided to let a jury decide, and the jury's come up with a fairly tiny fraction of their assets.

If Meta thinks the price of illegal business is still too high, then they can lower the number of willful violations they commit per year, to optimize the advantage they gain from illegal actions at an affordable rate.

Geez, Zuck, just do less of it. If $40B seems like a lot, then maybe try only $10B worth of crime next time. What's the big deal? Live and learn. After this little fine you still have 98% of the company left to go on and incur the next wave of liabilities.

Comment Re:No surprises (Score 1) 70

burn down institutions that actually work; they are too stupid to understand how they work.

Khrushchev would love that our government is full of people who disagree with the principle of Chesterton's Fence. It's appalling that "conservatives" have become so far to the left of "The Left."

Vote conservative: vote Democrat.

Comment Re:I've literally seen it done (Score 2) 80

Our walmart installed these price-as-you-go tags a while ago and I have literally seen them change as I walk up to them, and then change again as I walk away. The trick to get them not to change is to be holding your phone at them - the store's AI won't change the tags if it thinks you're filming them.

My Walmart is worse than that. They didn't have any price tags at all. Just video screens with AI avatars of a guy in baggy pants sitting cross-legged on a rug.

When I walk by, he says "Look at my cotton swabs! I offer you the best cotton swabs in the land!"

I say: "Well, how much to they cost?"

He squints at me, looks me up and down for a long while, then says: "For you........ I give to you seven hundred and fifty swabs for two pieces of silver only. Believe me when I say you will search this entire kingdom and not find a better deal!"

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