8bitsrule

And for pathetic AI outcomes like this, in many regions electricity rates are climbing like there's no tomorrow?

Too many people drank the Koolaid. However will we escape this finger-trap?

More on the topic:

Review of 2005 book "When Computers Were Human" 424pp. ISBN: 0-691-09157-9

https://web.archive.org/web/20060821120909/http://www.pupres...

When I thought I recalled 'computer' used to be a job title, I found this on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)

which says that "(the first known written reference dates from 1613)... often women from the late nineteenth century onwards, were used to undertake long and often tedious calculations; the work was divided so that this could be done in parallel."

Some parts are ... amusing to read. For example the article on stars [0]...

"anything approaching a uniform distribution of the stars cannot extend Limits of the Universe. indefinitely. It can be shown that, if the density of distribution of the stars through infinite space is nowhere less than a certain limit (which may be as small as we please), the total amount of light received from them (assuming that there is no absorption of light in space) would be infinitely great, so that the background of the sky would shine with a. dazzling brilliancy ...."

[0] https://britannica11.org/article/25-0806-star/star#section-1...

Standard quotation applies.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it! — Upton Sinclair

I ran into this one just today ....

"Let the logician and the Godman show

The foolishness, but let the word be spoken.

Tim embraced Tom, embarking for Heathrow.

Smiling, Christmas-elated, somewhat sad too,

Blessing the filthy world. Somebody had to."

— Anthony Burgess, Byrne

Impossible to recommend without knowing what works for you. For a one-stop-shop, try SOMA.FM (https://somafm.com/) for a great variety of well-vetted choons in multople genres.

After that, one can build up a list of hundreds of net radio stations in VLC and find one that works for you -today-.

Any business that won't accept cash payments is too dumb to patronize.

This problem threatens more than just business as usual. In the past, intense geomagnetic storms have caused big transformers to explode. Without a backup transformer supply, entire regions may face long-term power outages.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12303307/

I was surprised to -not- see The_Transactor, which was full of details on how to get your C64 to boldly go where no BASIC type-ins had gone before.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120519135652/http://www.bombja...

I'm reminded of my surprise when my Mac's 'super' (their name) floppy drive quit working because the CPU fan was pulling air through it all day. Post 90-day warranty, the replacement cost at the time was 1/5 of what the machine cost.

IMO, Apple hardware was never the company's strong point. And they refused to supply individual replacement parts.

Same here. And when you encourage students to ask good questions, that goes double ... you're forcedd to see how important their new perspectives are, and to create your own!

Always good to learn more about the timeline of techniques lost in the mists of time. Some of the finest works of art were 'coded' in fibers, much more durable that most other media!

> This was the same before, if you had a novel idea and make a product out of it others follow.

March 20, 1926: Hungarian physicist, electrical engineer Kalman Tihanyi applies for his first patent for a fully electronic television system. Tihanyi's ideas are so essential that, in 1934, RCA is required to buy his patents.

Kalman who ?

Looks like we're heading toward some resolution to the old problem 'ignorance of the law is no excuse'. Born in a world with plenty of laws, the jeopardy that goes with them, and no easy and reliable resources, that would certainly be welcome.

I don't think for a minute that this stuff is anything new ... to the contrary. I think what is new is that, every time they step in it, the whole world now quickly knows.

The way to happiness is to stop chasing it.

Never mind all the ads ... It isn't 'out there somewhere'.

I'm reminded of how adults struggle to keep up with urban-dictionary-speak. I doubt they'll keep-up wif teen-speak-on-steroids. 6-7.

The major flaw in Panspermia is that it all had to start somewhere without Panspermia. If it did that there, why not here?

It was incredibly well-done TV (my fave) and we have Brett's dedication to the character and ITV's Granada (not BBC) (and PBS here in the US) to thank for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITV_Granada

Who was a memorable show! The first broadcasted show I saw was already in the Baker era, and that was because I was living near the Canadian border. After I moved, I greatly missed it for decades until world demand brought it back.

No doubt there will sho as hail cum too pas lingo wot am un-clanker-lock. Betcha bottum dolah.

>stop doing our useless jobs and go back to the real world

LOL ... that's almost an exact quote of words once spoken by an exasperated, major university philosophy professor at a departmental meeting

Like being a medieval monastery copyist, it beats ditch-digging.

Anyway ... thank whatever gods may be for universal basic income!

>The envelope is sealed and signed by the citizen.

Alas, the signature must reasonably match one on file (from somewhere ... presumably a state ID) or the ballot may be rejected. Since human signatures can vary wildly for reasons, this non-deterministic feature requires a human guess for -each- ballot. No mechanism to dispute that decision.

You may not have learned much about them, or thought through the potential costs of a pipeline being built through your property. Some of those 'eco-warrior types' are not protesting a pipeline, they are protesting the potential irreversable damages to their communities if a neglected or mismanaged pipeline springs a leak (and many, many have), or catches fire, or explodes. Many of them have already seen more than one result of cavalier energy company facilities that have ruined community water and food supplies. What will happen to their community if the pipeline doesn't go in? NOTHING.

Gotta say, good luck with that effort. Lenat started Cyc 42 years ago, and after a while it seemed to disappear. 'Understanding' the 'physical world' is something that a few -may- start to approach intuitively after a decade or five of experience. (Einstein, Maxwell, et.al.) But the idea of feeding a machine facts and equations ... and dependence on human observations ... seems unlikely to lead to 'mastering the physical world'. Let alone for $1Billon.

Back in the day, for people who spent many hours each day in front of a 'display':

1. People using TTY's used black ink on very-light-yellow roll paper, or

2. Those lucky enough to have ADM-3 VDT's often chose light green or light orange on black.

Just sayin.

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT220#/media/File:DEC_VT220_te...

Damn ... I'll be so glad when all this trendy shit goes away.

Interesting. The IIs and early Macs were great hardware. Still, I always liked the software the best ... until they stopped supporting it (e.g. Hypercard).

But the hardware? The very first Mac I actually owned, a iiSi, was designed to suck the air for the fan through the slot for the $400 3.5" floppy. Wonder why it died? (The iivx quietly fixed that with a $1 piece of plastic.) ($400 was worth more 30 years ago... it could buy a dozen non-Apple floppies. When the mouse died I called them to get a replacement switch. 'We don't sell parts,' the support guy told me. 'Besides, it's only an $80 mouse.')

Later on I had heavily invested in external music hardware that worked with the serial port ... then that port just went away, no warning. I switched to a Power clone ... no failures for 7 years. Then I took a chance on an iMac. First the hard drive kept forgetting its partitions. Then, less than a year later, the screen started developing vertical color streaks; when hundreds of other users complained about the same problem on their forum, they shut down the forum. No options, out of warranty. Fool me twice ...

> the water is boiling.

Not necessarily. It might refer to heating water to bring it to a boil.

Q. What are you doing over there?

A. Oh, just boiling water.

IME, in prose writing, arguing with LLM can help a newer writer to gather 'the facts' (to help with research) and 'the objections to the facts' (same result) to anticipate an initial approach to the material. This can save a lot of organizational time. After which, newer writer can more confidently approach topics in their own voice.