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Comment Re: Roblox is a gaming platform, like Fortnite (Score 1) 47

The bad stuff could be unevenly distributed, but it's certainly not something I'd want a kid playing in their bedroom with the door closed.

Is Roblox really more of a risk than other online games in that regard? I don't think I'd feel more comfortable letting my (hypothetical) young kids play unsupervised on open Minecraft servers, for example.

Comment Re:Ihre Papiere (Score 1) 269

What's so different about the airport security experience in the USA vs. the rest of the world? I've flown fairly extensively and the experience seems about the same everywhere: Put your bags on the belt, go through the body scanner, get patted down if the scanner flags something.

I will say that it seems like the setup where multiple people can unpack their bags at the same time and then push the tray onto the belt seems more common in Europe. That's much appreciated, but as a matter of convenience/efficiency rather than about privacy.

Comment Re:I'll Believe It When It Happens (Score 1) 24

So Labour are banning crypto donations because it will hurt their political opponents.

That's a plausible, if cynical, take on the situation.

On the flipside, who exactly would donate to Reform with crypto but not through a simple bank transfer? I'm trying to imagine a non-shady scenario where a donor wants to give cash to a political party but is unable to do so because crypto isn't an option.

Comment Re:One silly law causes problems (Score 1) 64

For example, I would argue that no one and no computer should be driving in the bulk of situations we are currently driving in, because cars are a terrible mode of transportation in the cities where most people live.

I don't agree with it, but that's a valid opinion. My response was written in response to the position that many commenters take (though perhaps not you) that self-driving cars need to be infallible before they're allowed on the roads, while ignoring the fallible human drivers that most don't seem to have a problem with.

Comment Re:One silly law causes problems (Score 2) 64

Liability insurance is required in the US. Uninsured drivers still exist. I'm sure they do in Canada, too. Insurance also behaves the same fundamental way. If you have a history of at-fault claims you'll quickly find yourself uninsurable.

3 gender benders within 10 years and you are uninsurable.

I don't know if that's an official policy, but I imagine if the anti-woke wing of the current government has their way it might become the case ;-)

Comment Re:One silly law causes problems (Score 1) 64

Having an individual to sue or put in prison doesn't change the fact that you've been injured/killed. The question is what we need to do to prevent pedestrians being run over by a reversing vehicle. Punishment after the fact is a separate matter.

Even setting that aside, it's not clear to me that you'd be better off trying to recover some sort of compensation from an individual with an unknown level of insurance than from the deep pockets of Waymo.

Comment Re: One silly law causes problems (Score 2) 64

This suggestion solves the problem, at the tradeoff of costing 10-100x more. Parking decks (let alone underground parking) are massively expensive compared to a surface lot. And that's before installing a stacking robot.

I think the simplest solution is for Waymo to find a way to safely disable their reverse beeps in depots. Failing that, make every charging stall a pull-through so there's no need to reverse.

Comment Re:Sigh. (Score 1) 92

Trying to convert that would introduce new mistakes, you'd likely lose data, etc.

But surely the accountants will be totally understanding when the developers (probably from a consulting firm, or at best another department) will inform them that the mistakes are because the specification they were provided wasn't sufficiently clear! All that's needed to clear them up is a costly change order.

Comment Re:Google? wtf (Score 1) 92

But 20 million cells? That seems ridiculous. Why aren't they using a database for something that huge?

I'm agnostic as to whether it should be a proper database implementation without knowing more about the use case.

But, is 2e7 cells really that many? If I spent 5 minutes brainstorming I could probably think of 20 pieces of metadata you'd want in columns of a spreadsheet tracking financial transactions. You'd generate more than a million rows (and so 20+ million cells) in less than a year of tracking just paychecks for their 150,000+ employees.

I'm mostly surprised that Google Sheets chokes on what feels like a fairly small amount of data. My best guess is that it's some insane formulas that it struggles with more than the number of cells.

Comment Re:D'oh - is this "LLMs are LLMs"-week on slashdot (Score 1) 120

Same if you ask it about the next full moon - or really anything temporal subject about the present or future where there's a lot of training data from the past - as is to be expected.

I just asked Chat GPT "When is the next full moon?" and it did a web search to give me the correct answer for my location.

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