Yes, but probably illadvised. A drone is a LOT less stealthier than a squad of dudes crawling between bushes. That said, for getting restocked logistics to the front line, it could definitely be a winner idea. If you have a group behind enemy lines running low on ammo and food, then a drone dropping a bunch of ammo and ration packs to a dead drop is probably a lot safer than sending in Oleg the 18yo runner (who has knowledge of where those guys needing the re-up are and would fold under 5 minutes of car batteries attached to the nipples).

When I was a kid, my dad had a friend who was used as a runner in the vietnam war for sending intel back and forth from the front line. He had a nearly photographic memory but was completely illiterate. They liked sending him because they knew he'd never write the information down, and because he was a complete hard case they trusted not to fold under torture. The dude was completely mental though, lots of PTSD but was hilariously illiterate. They ran a chicken farm and would often put up signs advertising "mandurah $5Kg". Mandurah was the town we lived in, we all presumed he was selling mannure.

So they should prefer the Google Monopoly instead of the Microsoft monopoly? WTF?

No. They should prefer to have a choice. They don't because microsoft actively makes it diffiicult for non technical people to have that choice.

Also, I'm tired of hearing about poor old grandma and grandpa and their computer problems.

I don't understand how this is an argument. We aren't discussing your preferences.

Or better yet, fight with a pen instead of a sword.

Unless your proposing they get a guy in close enough to jam a ballpoint between Putin's ribs, I'm not sure angry words are going to be sufficient defence when an enemy is trying to murder your entire country.

From what i gather about the ideological leanings of anthropics founders, I do believe them that they want to do good. The problem is their definition of good is hopelessly entwined with the "Effective Altruism" movement that seems to be more Sam Bankman Fried than mother teresa.

less "Lets donate a billion dollars to distribute aids medicine to central afraica" and more "Lets donate a billion dollars to prevent Rokkos Basilisk" (if you dont know what that is, pour yourself a beer and google it and be prepared for a very funny read)

This, by the way, as an australian, is why I think the teenage social media ban, while poorly implemented, had its heart in the right place. Social media is doing *terrible* things to boys sense of moral judgement and girls sense of self esteem. At least back in the fashion mag days, the teen girl magazines used to at least have articles on why girls should resist the hormonal advances of teenage boys and why they shouldnt judge themselves on unrealistic fashion standards (the slogan was usually some variation of "there are only 10 women in the world that look like supermodels". Theres not a lot on instagram telling them that now.

I'm not really in favor of locking up children forever, so I think this probably warrants a more nuanced rehabilitation effort than you're suggesting.

When I worked in the courts, the judges never threw teenagers on the sex offenders registry, but would happily give them a few weeks in juvie to understand the world that awaits them if they keep that shit up. That seemed reasonable to me. Give them a good scare, but keep their name off the registry (Also, in australia the press cant name teenage offenders unless its serious enough a judge authorizes it).

But from what I observed, teenage victims of teenagers where just as messed up by it as teenage victims of adults.

Still, your right, rehabilitation ought be the first priority until their brains developed enough that adult sentencing makes sense.

The problem is, Microsoft addresses the Edge concerns by saying "But Edge isn't in a monopoly position. Chrome is still more popular". But when it does that it wants you to ignore what got in trouble the first time around.

Back in the 90s/early 2000s , Microsoft didn't get so badly busted that it almost got split apart by the regulators because IE was a monopoly. Microsoft got in trouble because it abused its windows monopoly to illegally obtain its browser monopoly at the expense of Netscape.

Its doing the *exact* same thing again. I am seeing countless, mostly elderly, folks using Edge because they dont know how to convince windows to let them use chrome by default. Its actually harder to find those defaults than it was back in the 90s/early 2000s.

Its just they are brazen about it now, becuase they know the current admin wont go after them, for the same reason George Bush ordered the justice department to stop going after microsoft back in the day.

Which won't make a lick of difference to the EU, if it decides it wants to impose silly-money fines again. But the EU can only regulate EU business, so microsoft is playing different rules.

So we should ask ourselves, why do europeans get a choice and not us.

My bio on linked in for a while had the words "IF YOU MESSAGE ME ABOUT A JOB I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN , SKIN YOU AND EAT YOU". It made absolute zero difference to my job (until the boss told me a client looked me up and was upset lol).

And it defintiely didnt stop all the bots messageing me offering me shitty jobs.

Oh I understood the power of linear algebra as a kid when my uncle showed me various ways of using them and matrix maths to solve various problems and my little brain exploded at the possibilities.

And I am *very* certain we are in a bubble. Wall street is has been doing pretty frigging insane things for the last 4-5 years, with absolutely irrational valuations of various key stocks, and the thing with markets, is the *always* correct eventually. And sometimes those corrections involve entire markets catching on fire and stock brokers running around in circles shitting everywhere in terror.

Yeah the cops need to take this one seriously. Sexually harrassing children, and lets be clear, legally and morally a teenager is a kid, can never be tolerated, even if its via a frigging robot. I hope she's OK. Cops need to throw the book at these motherfuckers to set a harsh lesson that this shit wont go unanswered, and that there WILL be life altering consequences.

Sexual abuse of kids and teens can leave them in miserable crazytown for very prolonged periods of time without significant psychological and sometimes psychiatric intervention, preferably early before it develops in personality disorders that are much harder to treat and is highly correlated with self harm, eating disorders, treatment resistent depression and PTSD.

One thing thats shitting me off is my Superannuation retirement fund has far more AI exposure than I'm comfortable with. I've opted for the "conservative" plan (safer investments, lower returns) until I'm comfortable that this AI bubble is over, but even that has far too much AI shit in it, and well, my $100K (I didnt do a lot of saving in my younger life) probably isn't close to enough to get me an appointment with the fund manager. Unfortunately labor australian laws (Here theres a compulsary requirement for employers to pay in a certain percentage of wages into super) dont let me self manage that specific retirement fund, has to be in a licensed super fund.

A (reasonably wealthy lawyer) friend of mine brought on of the 512gb M4 studios a couple of years ago, largely as a tax writeoff, but also to screw around with AI. He's realised he could probably triple his money selling the damn thing now. Not that he will, he's got half his office running off the damn thing now, and a capital gains on resellling it would cost him more on taxes. But its odd to note. That said, I just had a look and the price here in australia on the 256GB is around $17,449 AUD, which is about $12,000 USD. Not sure how those tariffs play into the cost though. Normally that equasion works the other way with us copping what aussies nickname the "Australia tax" (the net effect of GST, import duties, and profiteering from importers) but uh... nothing quite wrecks a pricepoint like a tarif does so... good luck with that shit?

I'm currently reviewing my CEO's vibe-coded slop courtesy of Claude as we speak.
Don't get me wrong- it's cool. I like what he built. But fuck me is the code bad.

Went through this recently with our CEOs new vibe coded "financial agent" ...thing.... It was a neat enough, although highly ceo-brained kind of app. But holy fuck was the code bad.

It took me all of 2 minutes to locate an exploit where you could get full access to any other customers bank account. I paid myself $10 finder fee with his bank account to show him that shit shit actually matters.

In the end I was too annoyed to progress further so handed it to one of the juniors to audit the rest and yeah, he found endless bugs and vunerabilities in it too.

This was all done with claudes highest end model too. I was honestly surprised it was as big a mess as it was.

The beauty of growing the chemistry with bugs is the limit to your production is really just the size of your bioreactor, and thats a very much known and solved problem

Chernobyl hit criticality. Fukushima did not. There is a *vast* difference.