Posts by JDX

Re: Questions...

Why would they make an adapter when they think nobody wants wired headphones?

To be honest it would be far easier to just get a BT headphone set, you seem to be cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I deliberately got the 6 not the 6T to retain 3.5mm as long as possible, but ended up not using it. No wire is so wonderful.

Re: Covid Mobiles

I assume you are quite old @Sampler, because people don't use those things even when at home... they'll sit in front of their 60" TV using their 6" phone for email, social media, web browsing, shopping and gaming, and typically its their only music device too.

People stuck at home might even be using the phones more?

Re: Oh surely not...

16k columns should be enough for anyone.

Re: Hmm. 65 000 000 people. 1 000 000 col limit*

Unless everyone gets tested on the same day this is probably not an issue.

Re: an atmosphere containing oxygen

The question raised is I think whether oxygen-emitting life-forms are the only known mechanism to sustain an oxygen-rich atmosphere.

Anyone?

Re: Hold For Me?

One assumes that since Google developers are not idiots, and they test their products, this blindingly obvious use case has been considered.

How it works I have no idea... it could detect the words being spoken, it could match the message against a databank of known messages, maybe recorded messages have different audio profiles... if a human can realise within 1-2s I would bet software can.

Re: Curtains

Shoot the door, send in the drone.

Re: Doors

Under the Disability act all doors have to be large enough for 3 wheelchair users to enter abreast, so as long as it's a modern building...

But if we're talking warehouses or industrial buildings it's a lesser issue. Although how it copes with internal doors... I assume troops follow it in maybe?

Re: ReCoilLess

I think if they were anywhere near the Queen they'd be considered enemies... bunch of idiots.

They broadly let people like you decide the CV response in the US. 200,000 people dead and no particular signs of slowing down.

Re: Timing will be critical

Maybe they let it do a backflip each shot, a bit like how Arnie reloads his shotgun in Terminator one-handed.

Recoil-less guns are hardly new though.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

You might want to avoid damaging the building.

You might have multiple targets.

You might want to confirm the hit.

You might just think it's really bad-ass.

You might think that pepper-spray or taser or "really really loud siren" might be more appropriate as drone-based weapons though. You could surely bodge that onto a consumer drone quite easily... an upgrade for the Amazon drones maybe?

Re: Living in the box

Yeah, thieves never target the affluent.

I would wager Amazon's servers have better security than your traditional security system's servers. Tricky if you want home surveillance for security reasons, since it means you have to let someone see into your house.

Re: understatement of the new decade

Unless they backtracked, Pencil works on the regular iPad these days too.

Fair point on weight savings for prolonged in-hand use.

Re: understatement of the new decade

>>the ipad is for the children, the air for mum & dad

It's the kids who want to play games so they should get the higher-spec one. Mummy doesn't need extra CPU for mumsnet and Netflix.

The bog standard iPad remains so bloody good that I cannot see any point.

Re: Obsolescence?

Same as if MS shut down their services like Skype for business... you go elsewhere.

Re: W95 was a pinacle

W98 was pretty good, it ironed out a lot of issues. ME on the other hand - what an absolute nightmare.

I am trying to remember if W2000 was ever a consumer OS - wasn't that where 95 first met NT - or was reserved for corporate/servers? I seem to recall liking it.

Re: It is all about AI

Comments like "AI doesn't exist" routinely get popular reactions. The thing you decide AI should mean - artifical life basically - doesn't exist. But that is not what AI means at an academic level, by the people who actually work on it.

AI is anything which seeks to emulate or simulate genuine intelligent behaviour. That can include rules-based systems, it can also include NNs and genetic algorithms and ML. Many of these systems meet the criteria "without being specifically programmed to look for a pattern or try to interpret certain result" - this is fundamentally the way NNs operate in fact. They are not taught to 'make decisions'. They are not 'looking for a pattern'. Humans cannot generally tell how a NN does what it does, there is no algorithm you can find and tweak.

As someone who has actually worked in this field, it's pretty sad that the IT community is not just ignorant and dismissive about AI, but positively boastful about it. It's like hearing dumb 'mericans boasting about how they don't know science when dismissing evolution, they see it as a plus.

AI might not be what you want it to be. It's not what films make it out to be and it's certainly not what the marketing people say, but to say it "doesn't exist" shows rather a lack of intelligence of the non-artifical kind.

Re: It is all about AI

No, AI isn't just a set of rules. Or at least, the rules are not high-order rules as you're thinking, but self-training algorithms leading to emergent (not programmed) behaviour.

Without seeing the input data it uses I'm not sure, but it's quite possible a human would make similar errors if they didn't know the area in question.

Now if they could incorporate data such as StreetView and so on, these things might be automatically fixable?

Of course if you're using the program properly, you do not get close enough to see these details. It's flight simulator, not terrorist-mission simulator.

Re: These idiots are truly trying to re-write history to make it politically correct.

Um, no. They are not trying to rewrite history, they simply think any perceived glorification of people now deemed bad should be erased.

They want this stuff taught more in schools, not less - children need to be educated that everyone born before about 1990 was an irredeemable bigot.

There is a valid point that celebrating someone we no longer think should be celebrated is a bit odd. It could be handled far less clumsily but to suggest anyone who holds a view you disagree with is "an idiot" is hardly putting you on the side of light and truth. If people want to rename a building, that's hardly an affront to history.

Re: What's next?

If you "despise" someone because they're different from you, that's not going to improve the world.

Re: Human Nature

If you don't think there is a link between language and culture, you're not well-informed. One informs the other.