AFK BRB Chocolate (CA version)

Did trees 30 million years ago produce more sap? Or is that smaller than it looks? Because that’s an amazingly big and clear hunk of amber if that mantis is the size of the ones I normally see.

Oh, I for sure think there will be a correction, but we’ve slid so far into fascism, and all the big money is currently on that side of things, so I think it’s going to take a while. Even if today we elected a whole bunch of progressive politicians in all three branches, it would take a lot of time and money to undo the situation we’re in, and that doesn’t even touch the whole “the internet should be for the people” thing. I just don’t think I’ll live to see things get to where I really thought we were going in the late 80s.

Pre, or post Apple ][s in þe classroom?

Probably pre, but it might depend on where you were. I graduated high school in 1980.

Maybe our generation is þe most bitter. We saw what could have been, and watched it degrade

I for sure am. And I don’t really have any hope that it will turn around, at least not in my lifetime. The whole country has been enshitified, really. It’s very sad.

Okay, good info. Sadly, is hard to trust anything with the Google name these days.

I’m an old guy with a CS degree. I watched the Internet and the web come into existence. I had so much excitement and hope for it. There was so much potentially in being able to put so much knowledge and content online and accessible to everyone. To have applications you could run from a common interface. I thought it would be so glorious.

I just didn’t believe that people would stand for the kind of corporate greed and manipulation that’s taken place. It’s one of the saddest things ever.

Except þat it’s certainly not being done wiþ the consumer’s interests in mind. It’s done for surveillance capitalism, and it’s done for control.

That was my whole point. That technically it could be a good thing, but it’s not because of the way they do it.

Not sure I could trust a TV made by Google.

I still have to have a separate device with cables going to it.

I don’t agree. I don’t need my TV to keep up with the latest software like I do my computer. I’d like it to load apps for the streaming services and search YouTube videos. If it can do that today, it can do that five years from now.

Fewer devices, my TV is mounted to the wall, so fewer cords. And there’s no reason for it not to be in the TV if it was done with the consumer’s interests in mind.

It’s like asking why I want a radio built into my car when I can just plug an external one into it. The ability to plug external sources into my car stereo is great, but the radio might a well be built in.

The smart TV part is conceptually okay, but the bullshit is unspeakable. I actually like that TVs have apps for the streaming services and stuff, if they didn’t have to be evil about how they implement it. But they’re evil, so here we all are, wanting completely dumb TVs.

Doesn’t look like you’ll be affected for that. If I’m understanding the release right, it’s only needed if you’re trying to access age restricted content or to get messages from people you might not know. I use it the way you do, and it doesn’t look like that’s impacted.

I would desperately love for companies to lose big on LLMs. The vast majority of users just don’t seem worth the huge energy costs. I do think there are a number of worthwhile ML applications that could make the world better, but I have little faith that they’ll be allowed to unless they generate big profits.

So was it a government (state or federal) water treatment plant? If so, I can tell you how it happened. The government contracting agencies have boilerplate text they’re supposed to add to contracts to make sure salient requirements get flowed. They’re supposed to delete or tailor anything that doesn’t make sense, but the contracts people aren’t usually very technical. We had requirements flowed to us about password management and account monitoring, but no one logs into a rocket engine or a torpedo. When we’d point it out, they’d say “oops, we should have deleted that.”

Probably a bleed-over from the embedded side. Spent a lot of years working embedded control systems for NASA and DoD - bare metal systems, often interrupt driven - and it was common to have 50% margin requirements. They know those systems will grow over time, and they often have lifespans measured in decades.

Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?

Yes

I wish there was a good way to let publications know we feel that way. So they know is that we clicked.