I work in localization. Technical writing is often easier for machine-translation systems, because the writing is (ideally) deliberately clear, concise, and structured.

The terminology issue you mention can be addressed at least partially by feeding any such machine-translation system a list of words and phrases to keep as-is in the target text.

Fiction, meanwhile, often involves complicated and subtle wordplay, which no AI system is going to handle very well.

Already thrilled to learn what erotic literature..

.. will read like, after it has been dragged through the automatic translation process. Even the automatically translated descriptions of sex toys on Aliexpress are hilarious, and those are really short and not sophisticated.

I can see it now:

"I put on my robe and wizard hat..."

How about giving the choice for an analog control and taking the wasted extra money spent on computer chips + design + digital display and making the motor last longer?

I would love it if some manufacturer would produce tried-and-true analog designs without all the extra add-on, planned-obsolescence, enshittified bullshit. I suspect this approach would do quite well in the market, at least in certain product categories -- blenders, ovens, washing machines, etc.

Actually, this reminds me to take a look at Lehman's catalog, see what they're getting up to these days. I bumped into them quite by accident ages ago when a relative was living in Amish country. Poking around their website just now, I see things like ovens and hand-cranked mixers. A bit pricey, but no "ET phone home" rubbish and solid workmanship.

• https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lehmans.com%2F

(Crikey, slashcode still doesn't render bulleted lists correctly. How stupidly embarrassing.)

That's going to be expensive as hell.

I thought that was the entire point of consumer IoT goods? Rent-seeking by manufacturers?

(Serious question, not just snark.)

PhbGPT

Oo, oo, I know, I know! "What is Bill the Cat?" :D

the phones are NOT selling for $5,000

iPhones can go for around ¥5,000 (US$700)

Oofda, that was some brainfart-induced whiplash. I'm used to seeing ¥ used for Japanese yen, not Chinese yuan / Renminbi, and at first I was gobsmacked at what had happened to the exchange rate. Then in my foggy morning brain, I rediscovered this thing called "Context" and realized I was tuned into the wrong channel.

JPY ¥5,000 ~ USD $32.91, at ¥1 ~ $0.0066 (two-thirds of a penny)

RMB ¥5,000 ~ USD $702.02, at ¥1 ~ $0.14

... I should go get some coffee.

Hey, what's that watermelon doing there?

... this has lead to a search for a new type of Dark Matter particles, axions, which arise in theories that explain why there is no CP violation in strong interactions.

Does this imply that theorizing and philosophizing, by producing more axions, may in fact hasten the end of the universe??

The end is nigh! Oh dear, now it is nigher! And nigher yet again! AAAAAAAGH!

You know when you are a 100X'er because at that level you just feel the vibes.

So, what is this, just sitting around on a sybian all day?

Actually, that sounds about on-point for some of this AI blather...

Given the goals of Project 2025 and the expressed intent of effectively gutting any service provided by the federal government to the population at large, this scrapping of FCC policy goals meant to aid the public by constraining corporations from offering the bare minimum of service for the maximum of money, without regard for any other goals whatsoever, falls firmly into the "No shit, Sherlock" category of disappointing but unsurprising news.

Really not sure where your anger is coming from? You're the one who claimed that the Spanish came over "in sailing ships the size of small Inca cities", I'm just pointing out the historical inaccuracy of this. Machu Picchu was just an estate, as you note not even able to feed itself except as part of the overall Incan economy, and that estate was already larger than the crew sizes of the larger Spanish vessels.

Not sure what your point is about carracks? Those were the predecessors to and usually smaller still than galleons -- the Santa Maria was classed as a carrack, and that had a crew complement of only 40. The largest carrack built as of 1502 was the Portuguese Frol de la Mar with a complement of 500, but it looks like most carracks were substantially smaller. Bearing in mind the context we were talking about of when European diseases were brought over, that historical timing makes galleons irrelevant anyway, since they don't really become a thing until the late 1500s. I used that ship size as a quick-and-easy estimator, as I had tried to make clear in the wording of my earlier post.

About settlement size, "city" in general parlance, even in modern contexts, refers to the larger size of community. If you intended something smaller, even smaller than the 40-person crew of the carrack Santa Maria, then yes, you should have used a different word. I would never consider a community of a few tens of people to be a "city", more of a "hamlet"; a few hundreds on up I might consider a "village", a "town" would be up to a few thousands, whereas "city" even in antiquity calls to mind populations of several thousands. The ancient city of Uruk, for instance, regarded by some as the first known real city, had a population of some 40K.

About “As for "you're not sure you can agree"? Are you serious?” — that's an example of being politely indirect.

Spanish galleons were bigger than the earlier conquistador exploratory ships. Apparently they had crews of up to around 400 people on a single ship. Let's use that higher number, for sake of argument. That's close enough to the entire size of Cortés's expedition force when he set out to conquer the Aztecs, about 500 men, albeit spread across 11 ships.

The Incan outpost of Machu Picchu was only ever a small settlement, in its early days basically a royal estate. Even then the town had about 750 people, larger than the crew of a galleon. The proper city of Chan Chan in the neighboring Chimor empire had a population estimated at some 40-60K, yet again a wee bit more than could fit on a galleon. The Chimor empire was conquered by the Incas around 1470. By comparison, the population of London in 1377 was estimated at some 40K, growing to an estimated 50K by 1500.

Just in terms of the numbers of people, your math ain't mathing.

If we pay attention to recent developments in lidar and surveys of now-overgrown areas in Amazonia, archaeologists are finding more and more long-forgotten settlements, showing that what we now think of as remote and largely unpopulated jungle regions were actually home to extensive human settlements in the past.

I'm not sure I can agree with cusco's claim of Incan advancement, but their death-toll estimate might not be far off. It is increasingly clear from mounting archaeological evidence that the advent of European diseases in the Americas caused a rapid and enormous depopulation.

Any details you could post for those interested in reading more? Case name, date, which district, etc.?

As dense as this stuff is made out as, I wonder how workable it would be?

Would a contractor be able to just drive a nail into it, using a regular hammer and a normal swing? Or would the nail simply refuse to go in, and you're wasting time, energy, and possibly getting injured, just trying to figure out how to fasten the damn stuff?

Likewise for screws: will this need special drivers? Or special drill bits? Etc., etc.

Interesting, thank you for the reply, this prompted me to look deeper into things. It looks like Japanese law regarding educational positions has changed some since I last had much exposure to the educational system over there, with a bit of a revamp in 2007. Upon further inspection, I think you're right that the jun kyouju position might be equivalent to a tenured position in the west, although "tenure" works differently in Japan, and might better be expressed as simply an open-ended contract. That said, from reading around just now, it also looks like only Japanese nationals are eligible for this form of tenure, with foreign nationals offered explicitly temporary contracts.

Even assuming that Lockley has (the rough equivalent of) tenure, that would be for his position as a professor of English. This qualification as an English professor seems orthogonal to any judgment on his publications about history.