DeepMind wants to ... prevent Google from being able to control its AI research
Wait. So you let them buy you... and they spend "hundreds of millions of dollars" on you... and you don't understand why you're under their control?
5740 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2007
Windows 10 pulled that "extract colors from wallpaper" on me recently. I put up a background of a B-1 bomber taking off into an overcast sky, and wondered why my monitor turned black and white. It pulled the steel color of the plane & clouds and used that exclusively for everything.
At least it was an option listed in the settings. Android better have that as an option as well and not required.
Someone recently said something along the lines of "I'd prefer a public failure in a space mission to a secretive success".
I guess he doesn't remember when Soviet launches were mentioned-in-passing by the CIA 3 or 4 years after they happened. Now I watch them live on YouTube and it's still somewhat of a surprise.
Arianespace acknowledged that “post-flight analyses conducted on two recent Ariane 5 launches have indicated the occurrence of a less than fully nominal separation of the fairing, however with no adverse impact on the Ariane 5 flights in question.”
https://spacenews.com/ariane-5-issue-could-delay-jwst/
Wasn't there some OS (BeOS??) where the filesystem was actually a database, so the "oh shit" button was the equivalent of a transaction rollback?
I'm getting too old to keep track of all the cool shit that was completely abandoned. I believe it was because it was too slow and they didn't have the CPU horsepower to throw at it.
> .. one reason why many devs reluctant to jump onboard MS "latest & greatest" new shiny thing as they often end up discarded (SilverLight, windows mobile development (& huge incompatibility between versions) anyone?)
Hell, how many things has Google abandoned? It's so bad, there's whole websites tracking it.
You know the UNIX TZ database and how it has a complex set of rules determining what was the time in a particular date at a particular place tracking all the legal changes and stuff?
Turns out that was maintained by ONE bloke, Arthur David Olson for decades. He got sued because some company got stuffy about him using their maps, and decided to retire and nobody else wanted to take it over, so IANA had a shitfit because it was so important and everybody figured there was this big group somewhere doing it because all this work couldn't POSSIBLY be done by one person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database
I remember this because there was a big furor on Slashdot (remember them?)
FREE SPEECH FOR THE DONALD!
(happy now? - I made the mistake of voting for him the 1st time, but I didn't get fooled again)
It's really scary in my part of small-town America with all the people on my block alone with "don't tread on me" flags, "Biden is not my president" signs, and other crap displayed in the yard.
I did love how one guy made a smartass remark about my "Made in China" electric bike, only for me to shut him down about how it was designed and manufactured in Santa Cruz, California, with the exception of the forks, which are Japanese-made just like Harleys.
Christ... if America did this, and MEANT it (i.e. no loopholes for big corporations) then I might have a heart attack.
If America did it in TEN DAYS then I'd know for sure someone's pulling my leg. Congress couldn't do something in 10 days if their collective lives depended on it.
Double kudos to China.
Bill at least kept his lunch down!
> The previous president would have made Elon Musk NASA's new administrator.
Hm. I'm so very torn on if this is an actual good idea or not. However I think Elon would look at the politics he'd have to deal with and say "fuck that for a lark"
Because
1) Few people have lathes and other metalworking tools. 3D printers are a lot cheaper too. I got my 3D printer for US$1000. I can't even get ahold of a lathe to even buy one, even if I could afford it,
2) it's far, far easier to 3D print something than machine it. I can easily draw something in OpenSCAD and have a printed thing a couple hours later. I can operate a drill press. I might be able to do simple stuff on a lathe. That's about the limit of my machining. I can't weld anything.
They bought Chinese for the same reason we all do: 1) it's cheap and 2) it's available
I get people that bitch about my Harbor Freight tools, and I have to counter by saying you CAN'T BUY this tool at Sears/Lowe's/Ace/Northern Tool/etc because they just don't sell it at any price.
Big difference is that I don't expect my motorcycle lift table to snoop on my brake pad changing techniques.
Remember the days when open standards/open source was subversive Commie talk?