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And diminishing cost of returns. If it just gets 60% of human performance the industry will use them, and push to advance the technology to the point of no human interaction.

Molitor5901on Driverless Semi Trucks Are Here, with Little Regulation and Big Promises

It is only a matter of time before the bulk of truck transport is autonomous. Some can say it won't happen, or it won't happen anytime soon, but that is to be extraordinarily short sighted into what is the goal of the shippers: to remove the human. Truck driving is not an industry I would recommend anyone getting into, but truck maintenance, yes.

Molitor5901on The truth about soft plastic recycling points at supermarkets

Around 2015 China stopped buying much of the worlds' plastic refuse which caused most municipal waste recycling programs in America to shut down. Since then it's sort of just been thrown away because plastic is really hard to recycle into something equally useful, in a way that does not just add more pollution. Even LEGO won't use recycled plastic.

The solution is to move away as much as possible from disposable, and most forms of consumer and retail plastic. It has invaluable uses, but there is simply too much and it's polluting faster than we can clean it.

Molitor5901on They Paid $3,500 for Apple's Vision Pro. A Year Later, It Still Hurts

I can't imagine the dystopian nightmare it will all bring, however. Knowing each human that I interact with is a possibility that I am being recorded in real time, analyzed, etc. It would change human behavior forever.

Molitor5901on After months of coding with LLMs, I'm going back to using my brain

I love using LLMs with my debugging but also helping me to get started. Grok has been helpful in giving it a rubric and having it come up with the framework and headers, which saves some time. Unfortunately in my humble and limited experience, asking it to then improve upon that code is where it runs into mistakes. If you give it a perfect rubric of what you want, I think an LLM can give you some very good code, but it can't think ..beyond that like a human can.

Something I do very much love about LLMs is that I can feed it my server logs and get back an analysis of the latest intrusion attempts, etc. That has taught me so much on its own.

Molitor5901on They Paid $3,500 for Apple's Vision Pro. A Year Later, It Still Hurts

I don't think we will get wider adoption of augmented wearables until we get something more like Deamon glasses - as light and wearable as a pair of glasses, but also discreet.

Molitor5901on US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

Representative Joe Morelle (D-NY), wrote the termination was “…surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”

Interesting, but everyone is mining copyrighted works to train AI models.

Molitor5901on Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College

I disagree. I had a number of tenured professors who absolutely did not give AF. They were openly hostile and put in the barest minimum to teaching, because as they told us, they would rather be doing research. I attended a research university, and that's cool and all, but the job of a professor should be to teach, and research should be second. In my humble opinion, that has been turned around. So we do have a lot of tenured professors, essentially immune from their core responsibility, slowly phoning it in as they prioritize research over lecture.

Molitor5901on Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College

My university had rampant cheating. Students attending for others was a big one, especially for the exams in rooms with 90 students. Finding someone to write papers for you was super easy, but CS cheating was cut throat. Guard your code because people will steal it, will break into the professors office after hours, and will try to hack your computer, just to name some incidents that happened. Granted I'm now 10 years out of uni but even back then, students felt more entitled to the degree, and were willing to color outside the lines if that is what it took to get it.

Molitor5901on Ghost students are creating problems for California colleges

I agree, I think it's dancing around the issue of identification, possibly undocumented persons, international students and cultural sensitivity. To push for greater identity verification could be interpreted by some as leaning in towards the mandatory ID political issue. Basically, schools don't want to be seen supporting mandatory ID because it makes them look aligned with the conservatives/Trump.

Molitor5901on Real ID now required in US after nearly 20 years of delays

So is this a step towards everyone having an ID? I asked at my DMV when I was getting my Real ID what would happen if I could not afford it. There is an indigent program that pays for it. So at least in my state - everyone gets an ID.

Molitor5901on The Tragic Story Behind the Infamous '4 Children for Sale' Photograph (2023)

When I saw the video of people in New York City in 1910(1), then colorized, I was floored. But then I found an article(2) where someone managed to find out who the family was, and it really hit me how close we are to the birth of technology that today are so common place that we lose perception of our collective timeline.

(1)https://youtu.be/68rZ2RNndSA?si=7xOsDi2Vaa74Dusp&t=25

(2)https://www.brownstonedetectives.com/who-are-these-people-19...

Molitor5901on The Tragic Story Behind the Infamous '4 Children for Sale' Photograph (2023)

This hits home for me because my great grandfather was given away at 11 years old, and his brother who was 12 also, because the family could no longer afford to keep them. They were given to a family with a farm in a nearby county. Unfortunately due to illiteracy and lack of official records, no one knows to this day who my grandfathers actual parents were. All I know is that he and his brother were dropped off with a new family and worked on the farm until they left for the military at 18.

This kind of article reminds me of just how good we have it in America today, despite all its faults.

Molitor5901on Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes

I lament the trucking industry because I think it is only a matter of time before it becomes largely autonomous.

Molitor5901on Judge rules Apple executive lied under oath, makes criminal contempt referral

and the 9th Circuit is almost certain to overturn this. Apple is a major employer, donor, etc. that I can't see this going all the way. I hope, but I am so jaded on the courts doing anything to actually hold companies and their executives responsible that I can't help but be pessimistic.

Molitor5901on Judge Rules Apple Executive Lied Under Oath, Makes Criminal Contempt Referral

Al Gore is still on the board.

Molitor5901on Judge rules Apple executive lied under oath, makes criminal contempt referral

I think Apple has needed a change of leadership since day one of the Cook era. He may have been brilliant at logistics and putting products on shelves, but I think Apple innovation has flatlined under Cooke and if anything, the holier than thou arrogance of Apple in general has grown exponentially. Maybe it's time to breakup Apple - separate the computer and phone divisions.

Molitor5901on After 53 years, a failed Soviet Venus spacecraft is crashing back to Earth

This reminded me of space junk and what the heck are we going to do with it?? There's not enough money behind cleaning it up to make it even feasible. There are some interesting magnetic ideas, but overall it seems like the concept of space junk is just here to stay.

Molitor5901on Mark Zuckerberg Says Social Media Is Over

The last thing I want to see is what random people I don't know are posting. Maybe there's a stream where I can see that, but not in MY news feed. I want to only see what my friends are doing, and maybe what is going on in a group that I belong to. Nothing else. No AI prompts or responses, no suggested friends, videos, groups, etc. To make Facebook even tangentially useful to me I have to use FBuster or other extensions to remove all of that junk.

Molitor5901on '60 Minutes' chief resigns, saying show's independence was compromised

Yeah, I think you're right. Fragmentation essentially. The greater number of voices means greater cross scrutiny, but it also mean a harder fight for the same audiences. Still... Some people make a living on just a few thousand subscribers.

Molitor5901on '60 Minutes' chief resigns, saying show's independence was compromised

Certainly. TV shows can edit interviews, but there are limits to how much, especially when the editing could be considered defamatory, deceptive, or intentionally misleading in a way that harms someone’s reputation.

What Trump is alleging is a bit thin. He is saying that 60 Minutes edited the episode so much so that it favored her during the presidential campaign. The lawsuit claims that CBS's actions amounted to election interference.

I think that's really thin but I also don't think he intends to win this lawsuit. I mean seriously, $10bn? That's ludicrous. What the strategy may be is to draw out the attention and belief among his supporters that the media is biased, and to use the discovery process to prove it. Either way, it's embarrassing for 60 Minutes, embarrassing for their journalists, and could reveal things they did not want revealed. Who knows.

IANAL but I do work on public policy for over 12 years: This is building cases and decisions around the media and election interference. It is painting and building a long view case that the mainstream media is bias, and when they engage in perceived bias, that is election interference.

One more thing.. This also connects with the "Equal Time Rule" (also known as the Equal Opportunities Rule) which is part of Section 315 of the Communications Act of 1934. It requires that if a broadcast station (TV or radio) gives airtime to one legally qualified candidate for public office, it must offer equal opportunities to all other candidates for the same office.

In Trumps case, 60 Minutes offered and engaged in airtime for Harris, but his claim might be that they deceptively then edited that video to favor her deprived him of his equal time, and created election interference.

We could get into the Fairness Doctrine but this is getting quite long; a Truman initiative, rescinded by Reagan.

Molitor5901on '60 Minutes' chief resigns, saying show's independence was compromised

I believe the media deserves criticism for its tendency to avoid uncomfortable stories; regardless of which political party they involve. News organizations often reflect a bias, and that bias tends to extend to the journalists they hire. It's difficult to trust the industry when I can’t tell whether a story is being reported because it's true, or because it aligns with someone's personal beliefs.

With so much of the media landscape controlled by large corporations I don’t trust, I find it nearly impossible to confidently assess the accuracy or intent behind what I’m being told. That leaves me with few options beyond relying on my instincts—which, admittedly, aren't always fully informed.

In my opinion, mainstream outlets should have scrutinized President Biden’s son and the president’s cognitive health more aggressively. While there are certainly outstanding journalists, it seems that many pursue stories that support their own political leanings rather than challenge them. I can only guess this is happening because journalism no longer attracts the best talent; declining financial incentives?

I wish I knew how to fix this.

Molitor5901on Marijuana hospital visits linked to dementia diagnosis within 5 years – a study

I don't think marijuana is addictive either, but it can build a dependency. There's withdrawal to stopping cannabis after prolonged use, there's discomfort with wanting to recapture that good feeling, but it's nothing like an addiction to nicotine, heroin, etc. Yet it feels so damn good, which makes it easy to become dependent on it.

Molitor5901on Marijuana hospital visits linked to dementia diagnosis within 5 years – a study

Nicotine is far worse than marijuana imo. At least with marijuana you know there's not some chemist adding addictive chemicals deliberately trying to make it more addicting and impossible to quit.

Molitor5901on Student loans in default to be referred to debt collection, Dept of Ed says

It's like charging prison inmates money for each day they are in prison, which they have to pay when they get out or.. go back to prison.

Molitor5901on Student loans in default to be referred to debt collection, Dept of Ed says

The easiest and most expedient way to resolve this issue is to a) freeze interest payments on student loans, so long as b) borrowers make timely, reasonable payments. You can't squeeze blood from a rock and you'll only hurt someone in the process.

Molitor5901on US Government threatens Harvard with foreign student ban

Well, I'll be darned—that's... quite something. I can understand why the university felt it had to take that step—perhaps even a wise move, all things considered - but I must say, it certainly doesn't look good.

Molitor5901on Potatoes in the Mail

I will send a potato in the mail. I feel like I must do this as a rite of passage.

Molitor5901on As 'Bot' Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond

That might not always work. There is a huge issue of Lyft and Uber drivers showing up the first day, passing all the background checks, etc. then selling their account to someone else to take their place. Maybe better is to show up first day, and to do random ID checks throughout the semester. It feels.. unfriendly and accusatory to do that but I'm not sure of the alternative...

.. but if we wanted to be a little Orwellian.. put cameras and facial recognition in the classrooms to take automatic attendance and to identify students who should not be there, or who may be missing for prolonged absences. That'll go over really well....