drweevil

This is the right idea. But this is not a problem amenable to le startupism and the VC culture, which are susceptible to jumping up a local maxima faster than a flea jumps. There is likely not a “core algorithm”. Unlocking how the brain works will require sustained, patient research work with committed long-term funding. Something China is capable of doing.

"Among readers who quote Player of Games and Consider Phlebas, Surface Detail tends to be the Banks novel they haven’t quite gotten around to. They’ve not noticed who it is about."

Exactly.

Those very rates are a big turn off. We’ve heard of the expensive tickets, and mass transit rates have skyrocketed. Even locals will be priced out. FIFA has forgotten what this is all about. 48 teams, 3 host countries, premium pricing, it’s all a bit much.

You can argue whether a billionaire owner of big media is a “MAGA billionaire”. But you cannot argue whether they’re billionaires. Most of the Post’s readers understand which of those descriptors is truly relevant.

It’s not theft if it’s done at scale, I guess.

“Safeguarding”. How very, um, Orwellian.

Then don't take the contract that was offered to Anthropic.

I sounds naive to assert that the jurisdiction of city government doesn't extend beyond just "whatever is funded by taxpayers."

Also, if someone were to destroy one of these things, the damage caused, by a similar logic, is $0, right? /s

AM is a good modulation choice for low signal environments. It is used in the airbands for this reason.

Trump administrators meet with traitors. And there's oil involved. Wow, what a surprise. Also, "three in 10 would vote for it..." that means 7 in 10 wouldn't.

A Timex ad went viral this year: “Know the time without seeing you have 1,249 unanswered emails.”

Sometime last year I got tired of using my phone as a clock. I dug out a 2-decade old watch from a drawer, put in a new battery, and eventually realized I really missed its simplicity. It has calendar functions, and a mechanical rotating dial I can use as a timer. Its interface never changes. I never lose it. What's not to like?

I used to have a cassette storage device for my Atari 800. This is totally geeky and awesome!

The subject may sound silly, but we evolved this way. For the greatest part of human existence we were part of small social groups. We each took part in every activity. Our 'work' was for the group, and for ourselves. Those we worked with, we lived with, so in order to maintain group cohesion (and to not get stabbed in our sleep) we learned to get along. Current work practices violate a lot of those deeply set social mores. I'd love to see a study that looks into this hypothesis. Could explain a lot of the misery and depression in our modern life.

Venezuelans in the capital have voiced mixed reactions to the US’s operation, with some celebrating the “positive change” and others saying Maduro’s capture creates “an even worse conflict.”

A claim backed up by...a link to itself? What? (as of now, the link is in the phrase "voiced mixed reactions".) Our media is showing us how much rot actually prevails within the large news orgs. How did they arrive at a framing like "some do, some don't"? Did they have reporters on the ground?. Or is this an unfalsifiable phrase designed to sow doubt? (fwiw, the only ones I can think of who would approve are members of the old ruling class, who form a small minority of the country's population.)

This is a result of legitimate elections, right? /s

It is. It is very reminiscent of the 2009 ACORN hatchet job by Breitbart et. al. Same features: undercover, video, practices that are not up to journalistic standards, etc. It feels like deja vu all over again.

Wikipedia on the ACORN takedown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACORN_2009_undercover_videos_c...

Minn. Public Radio on Shirley: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/12/29/youtuber-nick-shirl...

Anymore? Photos have always been imperfect approximations of the truth that should be considered with appropriate skepticism. Photographers choose when, where, and what/who their subjects are, when they frame their image and release the shutter. Editors choose which ones to include in a story. AI may be doing us a favor by making this more obvious.

As with other media the solution has been and still is corroboration. Are there several, independent photographs of the same event? Great! Otherwise, treat with due skepticism. This is good news, as it doesn't require all the tech ("fingerprints and cryptographic signing of images from the cameras that took them") that Mosseri proposes.

...when our Fourth Amendment rights are eroded, there is no evidence or piece of plastic that will suffice to overcome an officer's "reasonable suspicion" once the government decides you're a target.

This is the real issue here. The government is choosing to act in bad faith, and no legislated law can prevent this if the courts fail to enforce the law.

This. Every time I catch myself thinking "depends on its purpose..." I have to remind myself of this. The negative social and environmental costs of AI overwhelm any supposed benefit.

Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.

And yet, tetraethyl lead is a deadly poison. Surely that is a factor worth considering?

I lost some DSP code I was working on (DOS, ca. '95). I wanted to recompile it, so I did something like 'del *.obj'. Or meant to. I typed 'del * obj' instead. Lost a day’s worth of work. (DOS even asked me if I was sure. “Of course I’m sure”, I thought as I mashed the Enter key.)

Result? I learned how to use make. (Borland had a nice one). I also started using my first VCS tool, sourcesafe (pre-Microsoft).

My own experience is that they've been solid throughout. Certainly better than many other options, at a time when the technical press has been generally disappointing.

Cynics might point out that any old farmer could distill ethyl alcohol from grain. It couldn't be patented, or its distribution profitably controlled. Tetraethyl lead could.

Were they cynics, though? As the article itself points out, the dangers of tetraethyl lead were already well know. And then there is this:

And, as Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner point out, "For the next four decades, all studies of the use of tetraethyl lead were conducted by laboratories and scientists funded by the Ethyl Corporation and General Motors".

It doesn't take a cynic to see what was going on here.

The most interesting feeding behavior of wasps, occurring only in the social species, is called trophallaxis. Since the larva need protein to grow, the adults hunt caterpillars, bugs, etc. They chew them up for the larva and feed them. In return, the larva provide the adults droplets of a fluid rich in nutrients and sugars. Feed your babies protein, eat the sugary excrement. Yum.

Of course it was; but it's also a valid observation that the capitalist aspect has jumped the shark. Qatar was my shark, but I was also dismayed by the South Africa finals, when the organizers banned private street food vendors near the venues, because they supposedly competed with Official World Cup Sponsors. Those vendors had always done business in those locations. More to the point of this story, tickets to live events in general have become exclusionary to anyone who is not wealthy, and now those live events also have become difficult to find on the air.

I agree. I use passwords with TOTP whenever possible. Passwords in a locally stored database (such as KeePassXC) can be easily shared. TOTP using Google Authenticator can also be easily shared, not just with my partner, but also among my own devices. Right now I see this as a much better, simpler, and much easier to understand option. BTW, the "easier to understand" is a big feature. Passkeys seem to be complex; just look at all the arguments about them in these comments. And where there is complexity there is vulnerability.

Well, we all swim in this capitalist ocean. Look out for that shark!

I’m not sure where there is. But I’m happy to let China or other countries arrive at that unhappy destination while I wait behind and watch.

This. I am utterly fed up with this "AI race" BS. No one who makes this argument explains exactly why it's so damned important to "win the AI race with China". Whatever that reason may be be, I am morally certain that it won't be good for the vast majority of Americans.

It's the Talon-A2 that reaches mach 5. The Roc is its launch vehicle. Roc is very cool nonetheless.