bradley13

You have to ask: Why is Google pushing the AI results? You would think that this would impact their ad revenue. Since Google is fundamentally an ad company, this deserves a closer look.

My suspicion - for which I have no proof - is this: With search results, Google marks the ads. The marking has gotten ever more subtle over the years, but it's there. If you want to avoid clicking on ads, you can. With AI, Google wants to integrate ads seamlessly into the results. If you search for widgets, and Acme Corp. has paid Google enough, the AI summary will praise the virtues of Acme's widgets. And the user will have no idea that this is paid placement, instead of a summary of product reviews, etc..

Sadly, the Internet is not a high trust society.

Honestly, it sounds exhausting. Different strokes for different folks, I guess...

This. Google wants to sell advertising. If they can embed advertising into AI and make more money, they will.

You ask AI for a product recommendation. It says "Buy X from Acme". Is that paid product placement? Who knows?

This is the point. You could file criminal charges. You could win in civil court.

Some of these are wild. You expect to see something systematic, but they have little gaps between oddly placed squares in the center.

I hear you. On the other hand, not having to mess with something is good. I just make extensive notes in a README somewhere - usually in KeePass right next to the system info.

I'm glad Mistral is doing well, but...

I am so tired of M&A. Buy instead of competing or - heaven forfend - cooperating.

> "What does that really mean though — ten more years of data centers exploiting local communities for their resources"

That is purest hyperbole. Data centers use a lot of electricity, but they are hardly looting local communities. The water issue is wildly exaggerated, unless a data center is located in a desert, because most water is recirculated.

And why do you think no one will allow an AI to certify someone on certain topics. Their knowledge at the moment is roughly the average of people in the field. Is an average person in your field not able to certify others? In any case, AIs are improving very rapidly, so what is not possible today will be possible tomorrow.

As an example, let me point out the Tesla FSD. On a per-mile basis, self-driving Teslas have a massively lower accident rate (less than 20%) than human-driven vehicles. That is a very physical activity being handled by an AI.

As someone who uses AI daily (not in agent mode, just user-interactive), I have definitely noticed major quality improvements over the past few months. And that's surprising, because when you use something daily, you tend to overlook the big jumps.

I haven't looked into any sort of "agent" mode, just because I don't yet quite trust the AI not to do something dumb. Also, I don't use M365, where Copilot is integrated, so I suppose I would have to set it up myself.

I've been a teacher (most of the time a college professor) for...a long time. Nowadays, when preparing a new course, I definitely work with AI: "Here's what I want, and who my audience is - give me a course outline".

That gives me a starting point. Of course, I modify it. Maybe I bounce back and forth to the AI for further refinements and suggestions, but ultimately I have to be happy with the result.

When prepping the individual lessons, the biggest time saver is coming up with examples to illustrate particular points. I could do this alone, but sometimes that involves staring at a blank screen for a while. It is faster to ask the AI for suggestions, pick the one I like, and refine it further myself.

AI is a tool. Use it appropriately.

I think you are too cynical. His app works. It needs no maintenance, unless the underlying OS changes something fundamental. It doesn't use AWS or any other cloud service.

Look, as an IT professional, I build dry stone walls. Could a professional do it better? Probably. So what? I have the satisfaction of having built them myself, exactly how I want.

AI had enabled something new, and us only going to get better.

Yes, sure, a fancy CRUD app. Still, enabling a non-programmer to do this is... interesting, and ultimately may be game changing.

He didn't spend a fortune. This wasn't "agentic", eating zillions of tokens. It was the standard stuff anyone could do with a personal subscription ($20/month or so) to a couple of AI services.

My comment about Trump was meant to be sarcastic. Sorry, if that was not obvious...

They ate getting relatively little sympathy. Why? Because they are pissing everyone off who might have sympathized.

Seriously dumb. And now this mafia-esque blackmail?

Nice ship you have there. Be a shame if something...happened to it.

Iran could easily have garnered a lot of international sympathy and support. Instead, they attacked their neighbors, impacted the world economy, and now are basically asking for blackmail money: "nice ship you have there...".

Maybe Trump should bomb them some more?

It's fine for developers to provide a plan, even if it gets rejected. The problem comes when every script kiddie figures AI has made them into a developer.

Imagine you want to get a doctor's opinion, or maybe a couple of opinions. But a zillion AI-amateurs have registered themselves as doctors. How do you separate wheat from the chaff?

Exactly this. I have an acquaintence who is a wine connoisseur and collector. He has done technical project management, but does not program himself. Over the course of several months, he has produced an app that manages a database of the wines he has.

It's a lot more that just a CRUD-app. In addition to maintaining the obvious data (name, year, winery, notes, etc.), it can take a photo of the label, parse it, and fill in most of the information automatically. It can generate all sorts of reports and summaries. Finally, it looks incredibly professional.

This took him somewhere around 6 months of fiddling with a couple of different AIs in his spare time. He has no plans to commercialize the app - that's not the point. The point is: on his phone, he has an app that he wants, and the satisfaction of having created it himself.

Yep, that's exactly what we did with our new house in Switzerland (a few years back).

Many small solar installations are exactly that. Hang a solar panel over your balcony railing, and plug it into the socket.

Larger installations, of course, will never work that way, simply because they generate too much current for your standard wall plug to handle.

When we recently build our house, the south side of the roof became mostly solar panels - just a few shingles near top. Solar panels make a perfectly fine roof surface. Underneath the panels is an air gap, with ventilation at the bottom and top. Under the air gap is a plastic underlayment that ensures the roof remains waterproof.

Sure, it was more expensive than a shingled roof, but less expensive than a shingled roof with solar on top. Add to that, it looks better.

It's actually been a couple of years since I ran across a game that didn't work well on Linux. At most, I have had to bump the default Proton version.

As others have mentioned: being fresh to a field, you are more likely to bring fresh insights. Once you are established, you create your own mental ruts.

Perhaps more important is simple mental capability. This peaks around the age 25-35. I look back at some of the research I did around age 30, and - wow. Now, at age 60+, there is absolutely no chance that I could duplicate that level of sheer concentration and achievement.

This. The privacy threats are somewhat different, but they still stem from government. The EU has tried to attack end-to-end encryption more than once, and they will try again. They are now requiring logging of IP addresses, and ever more tracking of use activities. The legislation requiring age verification is the camel's nose in the tent - expect them to require full ID soon. Etc.

All Western governments have clearly decided to restrict individual rights to privacy, political advocacy, and free speech in general. The way this is happening simultaneously in so many countries seems a clear indication of a coordinated effort.

Why does everything have to be 100% accessible?

I'm a prof. When I have a student with special needs in my class, the administration tells me ahead of time. I make the necessary allowances - and those differ from case to case, anyway: whether it's extra time in exams, or someone who is deaf, or someone who is blind, or whatever.

When it happens, I make the necessary allowances. When I don't, then...I don't.

The obsession that everything has to be 100% accessible, for every kind of disability, all of the time? That's just nuts, not to mention a complete waste of resources.

I'm in Europe, and we don't use Canvas (at least, I've never heard of it). However, we have similar diseases. In my particular school, it's a massive SharePoint site plus ever more stuff in Teams. Plus Moodle, plus other services.

The MS services have not improved teaching at all. What they do, is fragment communications, and add ever more places people have to look, in hopes of finding things.

But the administration loves them. "The bureaucracy is expanding, to meet the expanding needs of the bureaucracy."

This. Yes, the mass internet is curated, created and censored. Usenet is a distant memory. But some changes are positive.

I recently retired. I've programmed for 50 years, both for work and for fun. My son asked: so what's your project? I had to think about it, and I've decided to learn GPU programming - something completely new to me.

With AI as a tutor, this will be massively easier than at any time in the past. In some ways, the state of AI now is reminiscent of the state of the internet 25 years ago.

It's much more than parents' groups. This is coming "top down". For example, here in Switzerland the government decided E-IDs would be a great idea. The population killed the proposal the first time, with a referendum. So the government tried again, and we failed to kill it the second time.

This is happening simultaneously in many Western countries. It is clearly somehow coordinated. You don't need a tinfoil hat to see the conspiracy.

Equally clearly, this is a first step to requiring identity, and ultimately government approval for your activities in the internet.

Somehow, we really must reign in the political class, before we truly land in a dystopia.