> Society is racing to the bottom. We're being drowned in content that is based on averages and statistics
Problem is that many people are quite happy with that sort of content. They're looking for entertainment, not for art.
145 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Mar 2014
15 year old ThinkPad W500 here, with the hard disk swapped out for an SSD. It's my every-day machine and it does everything that I need it to do. It even survived an accidental coffee spill a couple of years ago. (Almost an entire cup, poured directly on the keyboard. I gave it two weeks to dry out, then it booted as though nothing had happened.)
I'm certain there are others here with even older machines.
For this to work, the battery capacity has to be larger than what the tower really needs for backup purposes, so the operator can afford to sell excess power back to the grid or to run from the batteries down when power is expensive. If I was the tower operator, I might be wondering why I was sold such an oversized battery in the first place. I might prefer to pay less for a smaller battery that can simply act as a traditional backup.
Those "tight planning regulations" have an effect too. Standards are higher than they used to be, and that costs money. I couldn't legally rebuild the house I live in now -- it's a fine house but was built 50 years ago, and it would violate numerous aspects of the building code if re-built as-is. Same with other things -- it would not be possible to manufacture the truck that I owned 20 years ago, because it wouldn't meet current safety standards. A 20-year-old phone would be laughably inadequate now. And so on -- we're paying more for many things, but we're getting more too.
Computers though... wow. Orders of magnitude performance increases, at lower prices. (Although I am typing this on a 15-year-old Lenovo W500.)
That's probably true; the system is working as intended. Boeing screwed up, so the company is now under increased scrutiny from customers, regulators, the media, and shareholders. The extra scrutiny will continue until the Boeing re-earns the trust that has been lost. And deservedly so, as you said.
>>"can we really afford to do all these things that go on for 10 – 20 years? [...]"
> Can we afford not to?
Yes, we can afford not to. I admire the Voyager project, but let's be honest: the economic return on investment is likely to be negative. It's still worth doing in my opinion, but asking about ROI for this kind of thing is like asking about ROI for an arts project. ROI is not why we do these things.
> Tech companies might spend their time pushing the latest and greatest, however, the job posting is a reminder that not everyone is on the express train to modernization.
I have to wonder: in what way would Windows 11 be an improvement over Windows 3.11 for this use case? Other than "Windows 11 is still supported, and 3.11 is not"?
"Several states... have passed laws forbidding politicians from using deepfakes in election campaigns. The rules, however, are fuzzier when it comes to individuals using AI to create and distribute disinformation."
So it's illegal for Biden to use an AI avatar of himself as part of his campaign, but it's OK for someone else to use one as part of an anti-Biden disinformation campaign?
Depends on where you live. I'm in the northeastern U.S. Where I live, the sun has been (partially) visible on only two days in the last two weeks. And at the moment, my roof is covered in snow. Solar would be completely pointless here between from November through February, and it isn't that great in late fall or early spring either.
I remember my thesis advisor talking about this possibility decades ago. He said that weaponization was a real concern: if you can beam a huge amount of energy from space to a ground station via microwaves, then you could probably also re-target that beam to other locations outside of your borders; leading to an arms race as soon as any one nation started work on such a system.
There are fining agents (substances that a brewer can add to beer in order to help clarify it) that are basically powdered plastic. The idea is that the plastic drops out (flocculates) and doesn't make it into the finished product, but it attracts some other kinds of particles on the way down, so they are removed as well.
The Bill of Rights (first ten amendments to the Constitution) are exclusively concerned with limiting the government's power. Nothing in the Bill of Rights restricts citizens (including employers); it's simply a list of limitations on what the government can do. One of those limitations is that the government cannot restrict your freedom of speech. The First Amendment simply does not apply to individuals -- it says so right there on the box -- "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
What you said. Freedom of speech in the U.S. derives from the First Amendment, which says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. It does *not* say that you can't be fired for calling your boss an asshole. There may be other laws that protect you in such a case, but it's not a freedom of speech issue.
Seriously, if you had $100 billion, why not drop a few hundred million on something like this -- just in case? You'd hardly notice the expense, and you'll never really need all of that money -- unless of course you're dumb enough to do something like buy a microblogging site at an inflated price, and then drive it into the ground...
How do they know that this isn't just the last in a string of different configurations? I understand that this arrangement could persist indefinitely, but isn't it possible that there were other planets and / or that these six had different orbits in the past, before they settled into this particular resonant configuration?
There's a general impression that clergy's main activities are writing and delivering sermons, and leading weekly worship services. I know a few members of that profession, and they all seem to spend much more time on other things that AI probably can't (yet) do well. For example, weekly visits to elderly shut-ins and others who can't physically make it to church on Sunday; visits to members who are in hospital; general counseling; officiating at weddings and funerals; and church property management (calling the plumber when a pipe leaks, arranging for the lawn to be mowed and the parking lot snow to be plowed, etc).
"There is a significant probability that they're less safe"
To be fair, there are people who take worse care of their data than the average cloud provider does. For those people, cloud storage may be beneficial -- not because it's perfectly safe (it isn't) but because it's better than what they're willing and able to do on their own.
Indeed. I remember reading a few years ago that GMAC (General Motors Acceptance Corp, now re-branded as Ally) was responsible for essentially all of GM's profits over a multi-year timeframe. They broke even on the cars and trucks, and made their money from the loans. From a financial perspective, the only reason they built cars and trucks at all was to generate loans.
So what's next? OSHA decides to regulate cybersecurity for electric utilities, the Department of Transportation decides to regulate drug companies, and the Post Office regulates natural gas suppliers?
I completely agree that critical infrastructure needs to be protected and should be subject to cybersecurity regulations. But those regulations should be drawn up by an agency that actually has expertise in that area, under the authority of proper Congressional legislation. The issue here isn't "backward states reject obviously necessary regulations," but "Congress fails to enact necessary legislation."
"This includes high-resolution simulations capable of accurately representing large convective circulations and other vital atmospheric events, honing in on certain levels of accuracy missing in existing big climate models."
I wonder how they validated the accuracy of this model? Does anyone know? The article talks about improved performance, but I didn't notice anything about validation of its results.
Unless of course they already have a suitable technique for capturing these kinds of things, and are trying to bait rivals into sending more balloons sooner rather than later... i.e. this announcement could be a ploy to convince rivals that no such capability currently exists.
Schools may not have unlimited funds, but they generally have insurance. A couple of years ago there was a ransomware attack against a school district near where I live (in the US). The district's insurance company paid over $50,000 "to settle the matter." Local news said the school district had to pay a deductible (something like $20,000) and the insurance company paid the rest.
No word in local media as to how much the district's insurance premium increased the following year...
Additional battery capacity is a software switch too, isn't it? So if you don't pay for that switch, then you have a bunch of battery cells sitting there unused -- adding weight to the vehicle and wasting the (somewhat scarce) resources that were used to manufacture the unused batteries.
There's a short story by Edgar Allan Poe called "X-ing a Paragrab." The crucial "paragrab" is this:
Sx hx, Jxhn! hxw nxw? Txld yxu sx, yxu knxw. Dxn’t crxw, anxther time, befxre yxu’re xut xf the wxxds! Dxes yxur mxther knxw yxu’re xut? Xh, nx, nx! sx gx hxme at xnce, nxw, Jxhn, tx yxur xdixus xld wxxds xf Cxncxrd! Gx hxme tx yxur wxxds, xld xwl, — gx! Yxu wxnt? Xh, pxh, pxh, Jxhn, dxn’t dx sx! Yxu’ve gxt tx gx, yxu knxw! sx gx at xnce, and dxn’t gx slxw; fxr nxbxdy xwns yxu here, yxu knxw. Xh, Jxhn, Jxhn, if yxu dxn’t gx yxu’re nx hxmx — nx! Yxu’re xnly a fxwl, an xwl; a cxw, a sxw; a dxll, a pxll; a pxxr xld gxxd-fxr-nxthing-tx-nxbxdy lxg, dxg, hxg, xr frxg, cxme xut xf a Cxncxrd bxg. Cxxl, nxw — cxxl! Dx be cxxl, yxu fxxl! Nxne xf yxur crxwing, xld cxck! Dxn’t frxwn sx — dxn’t! Dxn’t hxllx, nxr hxwl, nxr grxwl, nxr bxw-wxw-wxw! Gxxd Lxrd, Jxhn, hxw yxu dx lxxk! Txld yxu sx, yxu knxw, but stxp rxlling yxur gxxse xf an xld pxll abxut sx, and gx and drxwn yxur sxrrxws in a bxwl!
Dude was ahead of this time.