Unlike Imperial Storm Troopers, they sometimes hit their target.

Judging by Musk’s previous styling choices, may I offer this?

I’m sure it won’t have any of the defects of the cyberdumpster.

Yet another reason I’m glad I use youtube-dl.

Shouldn’t we all be reimbursed for what trump did to the economy?

As opposed to “give money to my campaign and I’ll remove all restrictions on the oil industry”.

What about treadmill-based walking? It’s too freaking hot out during the summer.

Under-shaved, brown-robed and jovial, Benanti is adept at explaining how technology can change the world, “with humans ceding the power of choice to an algorithm that knows us too well. Some people treat AIs like idols, like oracles, like demigods. The risk is that they delegate critical thinking and decisional power to these machines.”

AI is about choices. He points out: “Already a few tens of thousands of years ago, the club could have been a very useful tool or a weapon to destroy others …”

The Italians, not pioneers in the technology, warn that AI prefigures a world in which progress does not optimise human capabilities, but replaces them.

While I certainly do not side with the Catholic Church and their moralistic dogma, it is valuable to pay attention to a group that has made it their mission to think about how humanity is affected by various things. Never mind that they have their own bias in how humanity should be conducting itself. If instead, you treat them as a think tank with a relatively narrow focus, then we can make use of their work in this area.

I’m relieved to see at least one world leader though listening to an expert on technology. The US Congress had a department just for interpreting and researching various high technology concepts, but in their infinite wisdom they decided they knew better and disbanded the department.

One may disagree with the Catholic churches interpretation of their explanations of how AI technology can affect humans, but we would be fools to completely disregard their reports and findings.

Ok, first, it only applies to Type 2 diabetes.

In a remarkable medical breakthrough, Chinese scientists have successfully cured a patient of type 2 diabetes through an innovative cell therapy approach.

Second, it was done on a case-by-case basis. Each person has their own therapy tailored for them. This does not appear to be a mass-solution.

The groundbreaking treatment involved transplanting lab-grown replicas of the patient’s own insulin-producing islet cells into their body. This ingenious approach effectively restored the patient’s pancreatic islet function, enabling the body to regulate blood sugar levels naturally without external intervention.

From the linked article:

According to a South China Morning Post report, the patient underwent the cell transplant in July 2021.

…

The new therapy involves programming the patient’s peripheral blood mononuclear cells, transforming them into “seed cells” to recreate pancreatic islet tissue in an artificial environment. This approach leverages the body’s regenerative capabilities, an emerging field known as regenerative medicine.

WINNING! /s

I was just rewatching Midsomer Murders and there’s a Russian Blue cat - KillMouski.

You give your top talent what they want. The problem is that they hired a consultant to find out what that was. The consultant, knowing on which side his bread was buttered, told the board what they wanted to hear, which is, after all, why they hired a consultant instead of just asking.

But if he ordered a member of the military to do it, they are required to refuse illegal orders

But the argument is that if the President orders it, it’s not illegal. Nixon tried that and got shot down.

Wearing a hoodie with the words “We use Math” on the front, Google search boss Prabhakar Raghavan had an important message for employees at an all-hands meeting last month. But he first wanted them to settle in and get comfortable.

…

Raghavan said Google’s digital ad business had become “the envy of the world.” He noted that over the last three years, annual revenue has grown by more than $100 billion, exceeding Starbucks, Mazda and TikTok combined.

Does this mean you’ll be using math to pay them more for producing more? (have to add /s)

That’s just it. You have to understand the output; otherwise you get very authoritative looking garbage.

I wrote some rudimentary Python code to do a job by brute force. On a whim, I asked ChatGPT to optimize the code. It did a pretty good job, but I still had to tweak it for my purpose.

I found ChatGPT to be indispensable in dealing with a nonsense homework assignment. I had to write a paper on a subject I knew about, but had to write it from a specific viewpoint and in far less time than would normally be allowed. I wrote up an outline, checked my sources, etc. Told ChatGPT to flesh it out. Read through the output, made some adjustments, and reprocessed. When I was happy with the result, I had it write a closing paragraph. Once again, read through the output, made adjustments, and reprocessed. Same with the opening paragraph.

Lastly, to remove all traces of AI, ran it all through QuillBot and had the input made more academic in some places, more casual in others.

Lesson: know your subject before attempting this. ChatGPT can be a time saver, but only if you already understand the output. Think of it as you would an advanced spelling and grammar checker. It’s just another tool/ After all, if your boss told you to write something, and you could do it in a quarter of the expected time and still produce acceptable output, would they be upset?

You could run Kodi, Emby, or Plex and get local access through DLNA access.

I have a QNAP RAID set up that Emby catalogs and handles access for. An Emby app on my LG TV, and a Roku on other TVs. Some RAID systems will just plug into your network and allow you to install apps on them directly.

Another option is to use MediaMonkey to catalog and provide access. They even have an Android app.

Lastly, regular external HDD are meant for occasional access, not continuous work. Most have a duty cycle of about 25%, meaning they should only be run about that amount of time before dying. This is why I went with NAS HDDs. If you have the money, go with an expandable RAID. Once you start using that capacity, you’ll find you want more.

There was a discussion a couple of years ago around gasoline taxes and how they are supposed to pay for roadway maintenance. The question came up about EVs. There were discussions about how to include EVs in the taxation system so they would pay for their fair share of the road. One of the options was to impose a tax attached to your vehicle registration based upon the weight of the vehicle. The greater the weight, the more wear and tear it produces on the road surface. This might be one solution to the barrier problem, namely moving the extra cost to the reason for the extra cost.

Time to find a replacement, I guess.

Oh, I know it’s impossible to do something like that. There’s a reason that whenever I upload a photo I always crop it. That way, if there’s ever a question about copyright, I can simply reveal a portion that was cropped. Likewise, someone taking such a photo should keep the untouched, uncropped original in a safe place. You know spicy photos will be used in a questionable way, so this will make it easier for the original owner to refute any modifications.

watermarks and metadata

It’s a start at least. Now make them impossible to remove.