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51Cards

5,970 karma · joined April 16, 2010

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51Cards··on Are ChatGPT and co harming human intelligence?
I'm going to re-post something that I commented in another thread awhile ago:

I tend to think it will. Tools replaced our ancestor's ability to make things by hand. Transportation / elevators reduced the average fitness level to walk long distances or climb stairs. Pocket calculators made the general population less able to do complex math. Spelling/grammar checks have reduced knowing how to spell or form complete proper sentences. Keyboards and email are making handwriting a passing skill. Video is reducing our need / desire to read or absorb long form content.

The highest percentage of humans will take the easiest path provided. And while most of the above we just consider improvements to daily life, efficiencies, it has also fundamentally changed on average what we are capable of and what skills we learn (especially during formative years). If I dropped most of us here into a pre-technology wilderness we'd be dead in short order.

However, most of the above, it can be argued, are just tools that don't impact our actual thought processes; thinking remained our skill. Now the tools are starting to "think", or at least appear like they do on a level indistinguishable to the average person. If the box in my hand can tell me what 4367 x 2231 is and the capital of Guam, why then wouldn't I rely on it when it starts writing up full content for me? Because the average human adapts to the lowest required skill set I do worry that providing a device in our hands that "thinks" is going to reduce our learned ability to rationally process and check what it puts out, just like I've lost the ability to check if my calculator is lying to me. And not to get all dystopian here... but what if then, what that tool is telling me is true, is, for whatever reason, not.

(and yes, I ran this through a spell checker because I'm a part of the problem above... and it found words I thought I could still spell, and I'm 55)

51Cards··on I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
My W530 is 13-ish years old and it's still my daily driver. It doesn't travel anymore (now wired into my desk) but still works great running Win 10. I code on this thing all day and so far have only had to replace a fan and give it an SSD upgrade.
51Cards··on US Ends Support For Ukrainian F-16s
The US has burned trust well past 4 years. This has shown how the US political system enables this. Every 4 years they elect someone who has the power to just toss out everything the previous administration did or committed to. Every 4 years... and the US is so politically divided that it only takes a few percent of opinion change at each election to swing to the other party with polar opposite views. As a result, why would any other country now trust the US in any agreement? (not to mention the large number of agreements they have signed then just abandoned later) Four years is nothing time wise.. barely enough time to get an agreement fully implimented before the US can just say "Nah..." There will be significantly less trust for the US even beyond the Trump era.
51Cards··on Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink cartridges
We have a large inventory of Brother printers we use onsite at events. We use Samsung for 12+ years until they pulled out of the printer business. We chose Brother mainly because they weren't HP with their toner practices. Now looks like it may not make much of a difference.
51Cards··on The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking [pdf]
On your last point I tend to think it will. Tools replaced our ancestor's ability to make things by hand. Transportation / elevators reduced the average fitness level to walk long distances or climb stairs. Pocket calculators made the general population less able to do complex math. Spelling/grammar checks have reduced knowing how to spell or form complete proper sentences. Keyboards and email are making handwriting a passing skill. Video is reducing our need / desire to read or absorb long form content.

The highest percentage of humans will take the easiest path provided. And while most of the above we just consider improvements to daily life, efficiencies, it has also fundamentally changed on average what we are capable of and what skills we learn (especially during formative years). If I dropped most of us here into a pre-technology wilderness we'd be dead in short order.

However, most of the above, it can be argued, are just tools that don't impact our actual thought processes; thinking remained our skill. Now the tools are starting to "think", or at least appear like they do on a level indistinguishable to the average person. If the box in my hand can tell me what 4367 x 2231 is and the capital of Guam, why then wouldn't I rely on it when it starts writing up full content for me? Because the average human adapts to the lowest required skill set I do worry that providing a device in our hands that "thinks" is going to reduce our learned ability to rationally process and check what it puts out, just like I've lost the ability to check if my calculator is lying to me. And not to get all dystopian here... but what if then, what that tool is telling me is true, is, for whatever reason, not.

(and yes, I ran this through a spell checker because I'm a part of the problem above... and it found words I thought I could still spell, and I'm 55)

51Cards··on The subtle art of designing physical controls for cars
Agreed to rotating the knob on the second point... but it looks like a touch screen to change modes? Or is it a physical push button under the knob? I may have been unclear on how the knob functions.
51Cards··on The subtle art of designing physical controls for cars
Kudos for to the author for the work put into this and the intelligence functions are interesting. I do have a couple concerns though.

A. Trying to design down to two knobs makes each knob multi-modal. This removes a lot of muscle memory benefits requiring a glance at a screen, a small screen that is now partially covered by your hand while operating the knob. Haptic feedback might be able to help you know what mode you're in without looking but now you have a lot more to memorize to use it while keeping your eyes on the road which may begin to defeat the simplicity benefits.

B. Haptic feedback... will this work with gloves on? (will you feel it, will it sense your touch)

A lot of manual systems now have 3 knobs, not much more than the 2 presented here, which will always do the same thing each time you reach for them. My concern would be how long it would take the user to be familar with the interface without looking. One quick thought, I would be inclined to think that feedback through a large screen not covered by your fingers might have advantages.

It's a great study on UI consistancy however, esp around how to program the detents, etc.

51Cards··on We're bringing Pebble back
I have worn my Pebbles (yes, I have several) every day since I bought the first one at initial launch. Right now I have 3 Pebble Time's going (2 black, one gold). All I want is the Pebble Time 2 that they were so close to launching. It had the very few upgrades I wanted (larger screen, healty monitoring). That's ALL I need and I will be a very very happy man. I'll even buy several just to support the cause.
51Cards··on Lenovo has removed its iconic TrackPoint nub from new ThinkPad laptops
See I'm the opposite, despite using primarily IBM / Lenovo laptops since it was first introduced (yes, am old) I never found it quicker or more accurate than a trackpad or mouse. The last few laptops I have had I now disable it and pull the rubber cap off.

That said the choice was always nice for people who liked it so I'm sure they will be disappointed by this decision. I wonder if Lenovo had some metrics behind this decision.

51Cards··on Tell HN: John Friel my father, internet pioneer and creator of QModem, has died
This brings back so many memories. QModem was my go-to for online life back in my BBS days. Your father had an immeasurable impact in enabling the online world, which in turn fostered countless people like me who went on to careers in development / IT.
51Cards··on Jimmy Carter has died
I hadn't heard about this and thought "swamp rabbit" was some catch term for alligator. Nope! It was actually a rabbit! Thanks for sharing this.
51Cards··on A Tongue-in-Cheek Look Back at Broderbund's 'The Print Shop' (2021)
At the time the computer store I worked for sold countless copies of Print Shop. We also had a service at our store where we would lay out and print banners for people. I think it was one of the first tools that got people to consider their PC could be used for more than word processing... that practical graphics were in reach of the average home user.
51Cards··on Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store
An outlook like that will really limit who you work with in the future. I don't know anyone, corp or otherwise, that doesn't mess up from time to time. What matters is the acknowledgement of the mistake and taking steps to rectify it.

IMO, as much as I highly respect his products, the dev pulled a hissy fit over a mistake.

51Cards··on Apple Watch Series 10
A personal habit thing perhaps? My Pebble Time is still going strong but I religiously charge it every couple days (around 60%)... as you mentioned, while I showered. Before the most recent battery change I was down to about 48 hours on a charge. I do love taking weekend camping trips and not needing to take a charger.

I have tried a couple other smart watches but I keep going back to my Pebble as it does all I care about. Until they can get to a solid 4-5 days of life (or Rebble stops working) I don't know that I'll be too tempted to replace it permanently. The Garmin line is interesting though.

51Cards··on 1M Users
We have several legacy products still running on CF, all running rock solid, but also all ported to Lucee these days. I still like CF but I'm an old fogey that started with it in the late 90's Allaire days. I often wonder if it had been open source from its inception if it would have grown faster than PHP. It really was a 'swiss army knife' of web development. It's still around here and there but mostly in larger corps that don't blink at Adobe's crazy licensing fees. Most everyone else in the communities I talk to has jumped to Lucee.
51Cards··on Complete Visual Guide to Sony CLIÉ (2000-2004)
I still have my NX80V tucked away... LOVED that device. Went everywhere with me. I still think the folding design with the flip around screen and rotating camera was one of the most flexible devices that I've ever owned. If I recall I had a WiFi card for it too that used the back expansion slot. Even the charge stand they had for it was well thought out and made the device usable while sitting on your desk. I should hunt down a replacement battery for that thing sometime and fire it up. I stopped carrying it when I got my first "modern" Windows Mobile touch screen cell phone.
51Cards··on STS-93: We don’t need any more of those (2014)
Throwing this into the chain for those who would like more specific weight information as the shuttle program progessed. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/61842/what-outdate...
51Cards··on STS-93: We don’t need any more of those (2014)
If we really want to get particular there was OV-098, Pathfinder, though being made of wood it obviously was never meant for more than fitment testing. Oddly though it did get the OV designation, not the STA designation.
51Cards··on STS-93: We don’t need any more of those (2014)
True! Enterprise was intended to be retrofitted into a flight capable airframe but changes in the design made it unfeasable. Thanks for the catch!
51Cards··on STS-93: We don’t need any more of those (2014)
Columbia had slightly more space in the payload bay due to her airlock being internal and not taking up cargo bay space. Other shuttles had to have an external airlock fitted in the payload bay as needed which made them unable to fit AXAF. IIRC the airlock requirement was as a back-up in case there were deployment issues.

Again, if my memory serves, Columbia's internal airlock however is what made it unable to dock with the ISS. It was the only shuttle that retained that configuration. It's also part of the reason it was heavier, along with it being the initial airframe and built heavier than the subsequent ones.

51Cards··on Oracle's Java pricing brews bitter taste, subscribers spill over to OpenJDK
In similar fashion we have some large legacy systems on Coldfusion. Last time we needed to upgrade Adobe had gone crazy with their pricing based on CPU core count. Migrated everything to Lucee and OpenJDK and it's been running beautifully since.
51Cards··on CrowdStrike global outage to cost US Fortune 500 companies $5.4B
I am wondering if the update passed the test farm just fine, but when the file was moved to the update distribution system that's when the issue happened. The file copied as all nulls and there was no validation check that the file posted ok. Compounded by no validation check on the file after downloading by the end system. Compounded by not having a staged roll-out process for updates.
51Cards··on CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops
Except further up this thread another poster mentions that CrowdStrike took down their Debian servers back in April as well. As soon as you're injecting third party software into your critical path with self-triggered updates you're vulnerable to the quality (or lack of) that software despite platform.

Honestly your comment highlights one of the few defenses... don't sit all on one platform.

51Cards··on ICQ will stop working from June 26
2174769 I still have my UIN memorized what... 25 years later? Sad to see it go even though I left the platform ages ago.
51Cards··on Study finds that 52% of ChatGPT answers to programming questions are wrong
The real problem is that it's not marketed that way. WE may understand that but most people, heck even in my experience a large percentage of tech people, don't. They think there is some kind of true intelligence (it's literally in the name) behind it. Just like I also understand that the top results on Google are not always the best.. but my parents don't.
51Cards··on Study finds that 52% of ChatGPT answers to programming questions are wrong
Because on Stack Overflow you also see feedback from hopefully a cross section of the developer community, several methods of solving the problem, voting feedback on those solutions, and can sus out a proper solution vs. just having one answer fed back to you.
51Cards··on Novel attack against virtually all VPN apps neuters their entire purpose
Sadly, I've read similar comments for 10+ years now and yet, here we still are.
51Cards··on Apple's risky bet on CarPlay
Thanks for the clarification!
51Cards··on Apple's risky bet on CarPlay
>Continuing with the above example, let's imagine I just downloaded a new podcast app on my phone (one that is also available in the automotive Play Store). The next day I have to go on a long drive and I want to listen to a podcast episode I downloaded on my phone. When I enter my car, I have to go to the Play Store, find the app, download it, log in, and then download the episode. When I use CarPlay, I only have to connect my phone.

Does the author have no experience with Android Auto? The same happens there, if the app is on my phone and it supports Android Auto then it will automatically be available in the car, along with all media on my phone. This isn't a CarPlay only functionalitiy, it's just how phone mirroring works on both platforms. Author seems to think there is an extra step involved on Android. Perhaps by "Play Store" they mean the car manufacturer's own app store?

Source: I use Android Auto constantly in my own vehicle and in the 15+ rental cars I have every year.

51Cards··on Man creatively sneaks onto Delta flight, but gets caught
But but... everytime I fly I have to show photo ID that matches the name on the ticket?
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