…of bird like material which can be represented by a mass average of bone and flesh. This can be used in bird strike simulations for studying aircraft windshield performance as compared to thawed penguins shot out of a pneumatic canon. (I actually went to a talk that discussed exactly this except you replace “penguin” with “bird” in general).

No argument there.

Gotcha, so no actual discourse then.

Incidentally, I do enjoy Marvel “slop” and quite honestly one of my favorite YouTube channels is Abandoned Films https://youtu.be/mPQgim0CuuI

This is super creative and would never be able to be made without AI.

I also enjoy reading books like Psalm for the Wild Built. It’s almost like there’s space for both things…

Lots of assumptions there. In case you actually care, I don’t think any one company should be allowed to own the base system that allows AI to function, especially if it’s trained off of public content or content owned by other groups, but that’s kind of immaterial here. It seems insane to villainize a technology because of who might make money off of it. These are two separate arguments (and frankly, they historically have the opposite benefactors from what you would expect).

Prior to the industrial revolution, weaving was done by hand, making all cloth expensive or the result of sweatshops (and it was still comparatively expensive as opposed to today). Case in point, you can find many pieces of historical worker clothing that was specifically made using every piece of a rectangular piece of fabric because you did not want to waste any little bit (today it’s common for people to throw any scraps away because they don’t like the section of pattern).

With the advent of automated looms several things happened:

• the skilled workers who could operate the looms quickly were put out of a job because the machine could do things much faster, although it required a few specialized operators to set up and repair the equipment.
• the owners of the fabric mills that couldn’t afford to upgrade either died out or specialized in fabrics that could not be made by the machines (which set up an arms race of sorts where the machine builders kept improving things)
• the quality of fabric went down: when it was previously possible to have different structures of fabric with just a simple order to the worker, it took a while for machines to do something other than a simple weave (actually it took the work of Ada Lovelace, and see above mentioned arms race), and looms even today require a different range of threads than what can be hand woven, but…
• the cost went down so much that the accessibility went through the roof. Suddenly the average pauper COULD afford to clothe their entire family with a weeks worth of clothes. New industries cropped up. Health and economic mobility soared.

This is a huge oversimplification, but history is well known to repeat itself due to human nature. Follow the bullets above with today’s arguments against AI and you will see an often ignored end result: humanity can grow to have more time and resources to improve the health and wellness of our population IF we use the tools. You can choose to complain that the contract worker isn’t going to get paid his equivalent of $5/hr for spending 2 weeks arguing back and forth about a dog logo for a new pet store, but I am going to celebrate the person who realizes they can automate a system to find new business filings and approach every new business in their area with a package of 20 logos each that were AI generated using unique prompts from their experience in logo design all while reducing their workload and making more money.

Have you talked to any programmers about this? I know several who, in the past 6 months alone, have completely changed their view on exactly how effective AI is in automating parts of their coding. Not only are they using it, they are paying to use it because it gives them a personal return on investment…but you know, you can keep using that push lawnmower, just don’t complain when the kids next door run circles around you at a quarter the cost.

Seems like this is a good argument for specialization. Have AI make bad but fast code, pay specialty people to improve and make it secure when needed. My 2026 Furby with no connection to the outside world doesn’t need secure code, it just needs to make kids smile.

The industrial revolution called, they want their argument against the use of automated looms back.

I also am glad you got the support. I’m constantly reminded of a friend in college who was going through an electrical engineering undergrad with me. She got all the material so easily and literally dragged me through the classes. I wouldn’t have passed some key topics without her help. Fast forward a few years and I’m getting my PhD and I decide to see what she is up to: she ended up quitting her PhD program because of the insane abuse and misogyny she experienced in the department and instead changed to a masters in music. This was a woman who could easily have made field changing discoveries but was shut down because of close minded individuals. It still makes me rage and is the reason I work so much harder now to ensure my female colleagues and employees have an equal voice at the table.

Unfortunately I’ve seen men tend to dominate the conversation in women dominated fields as well, but only if they are misogynistic. I work a lot in the fiber arts industry and more often than not it is assumed I don’t know anything because I am a man and humble, but I quickly prove my worth with my 20 years experience and it’s wonderfully collaborative. Then I see so many men come in and say, “Look I knit a sweater! This is easy! Give me praise!” and weirdly enough there are enough people out there that just feed those egos. I completely blame the men in this case, but this problem wouldn’t be so prevalent if everyone was just willing to shut these idiots down.

This is nowhere near as good as the Open Dyslexic font. It looks weird, and I’m not dyslexic, but damn it makes me able to read so much faster!

https://opendyslexic.org/

So every “farm” in my region is actually a community plot you can rent space in or a non profit outreach…no farms to purchase from.

Actually I gave them two ways to eliminate the parasitic drain: replace with a working spy unit or disconnect the non working spy unit (the status quo would leave them with continuously dying batteries).

Plus, let’s be real: the chances that anyone cares about any one person’s location is slim to none (barring political figures, billionaires, and celebrities). If you are worried about the mass collection of people’s locations, dropping one person off the Subaru map will have zero impact. Taking away a Subaru data point does not do anything about cell phone GPS, cell tower triangulation, EZ-Pass tracking, traffic cameras, or licence plate tracking (and those are just the car based tracking systems off the top of my head).

Well sure…they won’t replace it unless you want them to…it’s your car. But what I mean to say is that they can replace it under warranty now and if you don’t replace it you will keep losing batteries. That’s what happened with my 2018 Outback (I went through a battery every 3-6 months for 3 years).

They will now replace the Starlink module free of charge under a recall. Your battery will keep dying unless you either replace the module or remove the fuse that activated the thing.

Tarken would have hated that. Remember the fact that the storm troopers missed so much is BECAUSE TARKEN ORDERED THE STORM TROOPERS TO MISS TO LET THE HEROS GET AWAY SO TARKIN COULD FIND THE LOCATION OF THE REBEL BASE! Leia even says so.

Yes thank you! Edited my comment to correct it.

This sort of thing is already being done with many commercial devices. See www.powercastco.com for one of the companies.

I manage a team of 5 people. I told them all not to come in so they could go see the eclipse. I told them not to take vacation and just bill it as normal hours. Three listened to me. One took a half day. One just went and worked…

Ok, so, everyone kept saying “don’t stare at the sun without your NASA approved glasses,” so I used my NASA approved glasses…you know what they should have said? “Remember to wear sunscreen on your face when you stare at the sun using NASA approved glasses”… My face hurts…

Sooo I don’t get your point. They do the same thing as Tesla does standard too?