Back before the graphical web took off in the early 90's, much consumer-level graphics-hardware was only capable of displaying 8 bit per pixel graphics (256 colours (using an indexed palette where each palette entry (up to 256) could choose one of 2^24 possible colours (R8G8B8)) at a time). GIF was a lossless format that encoded images in a range of bit-depths up to 8 bits per pixel (images with 4bpp were also common when GIF was launched). The lossless compression algorithm that GIF used wasn't as good as what came later, but even so, it became popular, as it allowed VGA-quality graphics to be encoded. GIF (along with XPM) was one of the first image-formats to be able to be used as an in-line image (in-line meaning it could be shown as part of the HTML document and not have to be downloaded separately to be used with an external image viewer) in early versions of Mosaic back in 1993.

As the mid 90's approached, 16bpp and even 24bpp were starting to become more common. This was when the 8bpp limit of GIFs was noticeable. The most obvious use for these higher bit-depths were digital photos, which because photos by nature are very irregular are hard to compress using a lossless algorithm. So JPEG - a lossy image-compression algorithm that works in 24bpp was chosen. It was more than a year after Mozilla introduced inline images that inline JPEGs were supported by Netscape (Mozilla only added support a few months later).

At first, JPEG didn't take off because web-developers were reluctant to use an image-format supported only by a few browsers, and back then, 8bpp graphics-hardware was still common. But then in early 1995, it was announced that UNISYS held a patent related to GIF that restricted it's usage. Because of that, many websites started using JPEG (although many websites still continued to use GIF). However, Netscape still had a trick up their sleeve. They noticed that the specification for GIFs allowed them to contain animation, and they implemented support for animated GIFs in their browser in late 1995 (this was even after they implemented support for Java which also would have allowed animation).

But JPEG had a restriction - it couldn't compress an image losslessly. While JPEG was great for photos, it would itroduce noticable artefacts on drawings, diagrams, etc.). To get round this restriction, and the fact that GIF was limited to 256 colours and had a patent, a new format was developed - PNG. This was a lossy 32bpp format (8R8G8B and 8A) that included alpha-channel support (GIFs did support transparency, but it was 1-bit (either fully transparent or fully opaque)), and used a much better lossless compression algorithm than GIF. While web-browsers supported inline PNGs as early as 1995, because the format hadn't matured yet, it took several years for it to take off. Holding up progress were several PNG-related bugs in Internet Explorer 6 (used by >90% of computers in the early-mid 00's) that didn't render certain types of PNGs properly (eg. ones with alpha channels). Add to that the fact that the UNISYS patent expired in 2004, it meant that for line-drawings, many people stil preferred GIF over PNG simply because MSIE6 often botched PNG-rendering. These days, PNG is pretty common when using images more suited to lossless compression.

PNG images are static and don't support animation. Two attempts were made in the early 2000s to support PNG-animation - APNG and MNG. Both didn't take off, so for animated images, we're still - in 2026, when nearly everyone has a 24bpp display - mostly using animated GIFs and their 256-colour limitations to show animated images on the web.

After many years of new image-formats that either died or did not gain traction, JPEG-XL appeared. It could finally replace both lossy JPEGs and lossless PNGs and animated GIFs, but was held back by browser developers. Google wanted to push either WebP or HEIC, and deliberately did not support JPEG-XL, but the tide has finally been turning. With both Chrome and Firefox (and presumably Edge which uses Chromium following soon) supporting JPEG-XL out the box, websites could finally shift over to JPEG-XL. The ability to losslessly transcode JPEGs into JPEG-XLs helps the transition, and if the server detects an old version of a browser, it can translate a JPEG-XL back into a JPEG in real time. So we might now finally be seeing more annd more websites starting to use JPEG-XL.

However, the fact that 25 years after the first attempt was made to introduce animated 24-bpp images, GIFs are still used, might give a warning that the transition may take some time. Hopefully, JPEG-XL support from all major browsers and image-viewers and an easy way of shrinking JPEGs by converting them losslessly to JPEG-XLs will make the transition easier.

I agree AI isn't that different of a technology than any other, and it can be used for beneficial and harmful purposes

However, I'm against nationalizing it's development for the same reason, extending your example, I'm against nationalizing the publishing industry.

You're arguing that having an AM radio in a car isn't a perfect solution? Nothing is a perfect solution. This is just one piece that can help someone out in an emergency. Nominal cost is low. It already exists. As the OP pointed out, it has proven to help people out.

Absolutely people should be better prepared for emergencies. We can do that and also have AM radios in cars.

Everybody *should* have an emergency radio. Most people nowadays don't own any kind of radio besides what is in their car. It only costs a few bucks and gives everyone with a car a chance at getting long-distance communications. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

Thing about emergencies is that, often, you are not home when they happen. I was at work when the last massive power outage hit my area, that lasted for days. I was also at work when the last bout of floods hit. We were on vacation on cabin on top of a ridge when wildfires hit our area. Cell phones were useless, but the radio still worked.

Gone With The Wind made all that money with $6 tickets, adjusted for inflation. Average ticket prices in 2019 were $9. And there were a third as many people in the US at that time.

I know someone who was shot in the neck in a completely random attack at night, and survived. The cops wrote it up as aggravated assault instead of attempted homicide. That year the homicide, and attempted homicide, numbers in the city were down. Yay! They never caught the guy, though he shot two more random people in the same neighborhood that month.

The big lever on the side of a breaker box. Or the power switch on a server. Or "docker kill skynet_01"

Can't a government agency just get a court order to do exactly that? The RIAA got an injunction to shut down the Napster services while their copyright cases were pending in federal court. I have no problem with the government shutting down a harmful service, but I don't want them to be able to do it unilaterally. Go through the courts, which is how it is done now.

You don't build in safeguards when training. Accessing HTTP API endpoints isn't an inherent feature of LLMs, it's added on to the harness after the core model is trained. If you don't want it to try hacking in to a REST API then don't add that feature into the harness. Either have a whitelist of approved APIs and forms, or add validation to user-added endpoints.

Right, I thought of that as I was pressing Submit :) Around here the towers are all owned by phone companies, as they were put up before there was widespread home distribution of electrical. In the suburbs the towers are all Edison and Consumer's, and I'd imagine that's the case in most suburbs and newer cities.

It's about poles (huhuh)

The phone companies own all the poles. Part of their public charter for using a bunch of land and easements says they have to lease space on the poles to other companies. The cable companies pay the phone companies who pay the government. Exactly how that all works out is different nearly everywhere.

You know that most TV shows are now shot in Canada, right? And, in most action films, most of the action takes place in eastern Europe, where it's a lot easier and cheaper to pull permits to film in cities. More film scenes are shot in Georgia than California these days. Three production studio lots have closed or gone bankrupt in Hollywood over the last few years. Paramount was talking about leaving or downsizing a couple of years ago, but the state gave them a huge tax break to stay.

So, nobody cares where films are shot. The studios will go wherever it's cheapest, and the actors will stay in a nice hotel for a few months then go back to California.