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Comment Made more than Eisenhower, Bradley, or Nimitz (Score 1) 53

According to the 1942-1946 pay chart, a general officer with over 30 years of service made an annual salary of $8000. This would include all the famous American Generals in WW2 who led major operations such as the D-Day landing. The lowest private in WW2 made $50 per month, or $600 per year, and he was often the one taking the greatest risk. This is only base pay, so they probably made slightly more on top for hazardous duty, flight pay, etc. But WW2 salaries were low across the board, because we had just exited The Great Depression, and the military was on a war-time footing.

Submission + - Skipping Over-The-Air Car Updates Could Be Costly (autoblog.com)

Mr_Blank writes: Once a new OTA update becomes available, owners of GM vehicles have 45 days to install the update. After this date, the company will not cover any damages or issues that are caused by ignoring the update. “Damage resulting from failure to install over-the-air software updates is not covered,” states the warranty booklet for 2025 and 2026 models. This same rule applies to all GM’s brands in the USA: Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, and GMC. However, if the software update itself causes any component damage, that will be covered by the warranty. Owners coming from older GM vehicles will have to adapt as the company continues to implement its Global B electronic architecture on newer models, which relies heavily on OTA updates. Similar policies appear in the owner's manual for Tesla. Software-defined vehicles are here to stay, even if some of them have far more tech glitches than they should—just ask Volvo.

Comment This is why we need public health insurance (Score 3, Interesting) 110

This is just yet another example of why we (USA) really do need a public, non-profit, health insurance system. Too many people cannot access proper medical treatment for life-threatening conditions, and in their desperation fall victim to quacks and other grifters and con-artists. But unfortunately our for-profit healthcare industry has brainwashed the American people into thinking that considering any alternatives to our corporate healthcare system is borderline treasonous, even though we only need to look north of the border to see a better alternative.

Comment We Called It (Score 5, Interesting) 57

When this change was made many Slashdotters said it was ridiculous.

Cayenne8 said: "Yeah, my first thought was WTF would they ditch the very popular and VERY well known company name "HBO" for just Max? Seems like the latest round of marketing folks coming to businesses these days haven't a clue about the job they are trying to do, and how it all works."

Then we piled on from there...

An American dream for the very privileged: Getting paid generational wealth despite messing up so badly.

Comment The Difference? (Score 0) 14

Will the typical person be able to tell the difference between a human and AI voice reading the stories?

Certainly the best-sellers will retain humans, even famous humans, to read their books. But for the rest, AI could save them a lot of time and money.

Hopefully this technology will spread fast and then every book will be available with narration on many platforms. That would lead to price competition and competition for quality. Let the free market decide if this is a good idea or not.

Comment One ID to rule them all (Score 1) 21

What prevents one or a handful of IDs from being used by millions of people?

An obvious solution for that problem would be for every ID verification to be cross-checked against governmental registries.

This is also very convenient for the government to 'protect the children' and 'fight terrorists' by knowing every 'sensitive' thing that your ID has been registered to have had accessed. Your personal liberty will certainly be secured by this enlightened system, and no dragnet will ever ruin your reputation and good standing.

Oh, and if things you have already accessed are later deemed to be 'sensitive' then could that blemish be added to your permanent record after the fact - long after you had a chance to decided to click the link?

Bring a sled! This slope looks slippery.

Submission + - Tesla Sued for Algorithmic Odometer Manipulation (jalopnik.com)

Mr_Blank writes: A multiple-Tesla owner in Northern California is suing the automaker, claiming the odometers incorrectly measures mileage using a faulty algorithm which ups the supposed miles driven from 15% to 117%. The lawsuit alleges Tesla does this to close out warranties early on their products. The lawsuit, however, stands on a filed patent which may or may not be in use in Tesla vehicles.In the instance of their Model Y,Hinton says they drove 6,086 miles but the Tesla recorded 13,228 miles. The lawsuit is based on a patent that Tesla filed for a seemingly tricky form of recording mileage. The patent calls for a "miles-to-electrical energy conversion factor" that would take in factors like charging behavior and road conditions into the calculation of miles traveled instead of a direct recording of miles traveled.The lawsuit alleges Tesla is using this technology instead of mechanical or electrical systems that faithfully record miles traveled, in order to shorten warranties based on miles-driven in the cars.

Submission + - A chilling AI warning (axios.com)

Mr_Blank writes: Jake Sullivan — with three days left as White House national security adviser, with wide access to the world's secrets — delivered a chilling, "catastrophic" warning for America and the incoming administration: The next few years will determine whether artificial intelligence leads to catastrophe — and whether China or America prevails in the AI arms race.

America must quickly perfect a technology that many believe will be smarter and more capable than humans. We need to do this without decimating U.S. jobs, and inadvertently unleashing something with capabilities we didn't anticipate or prepare for. We need to both beat China on the technology and in shaping and setting global usage and monitoring of it, so bad actors don't use it catastrophically. Oh, and it can only be done with unprecedented government-private sector collaboration — and probably difficult, but vital, cooperation with China.

This is beyond uncharted waters. It's an unexplored galaxy — "a new frontier," in his words. And one, he warns, where progress routinely exceeds projections in advancement. Progress is now pulsing in months, not years.

There won't be one winner in this AI race. Both China and the U.S. are going to have very advanced AI. There'll be tons of open-source AI that many other nations will build on, too. Once one country has made a huge advance, others will match it soon after. What they can't get from their own research or work, they'll get from hacking and spying. (It didn't take long for Russia to match the A-bomb and then the H-bomb.)

Steve Bannon and other MAGA originals believe AI is evil at scale — a job-killer for the very people who elected Trump. But for now, Bannon is a fairly lonely voice shouting against AI velocity. Trump and the AI gods hold the stage.

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Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data encryption standard and they came up with ... Student: EBCDIC!"

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