bigDinosaur
Re:The AI cost of JavaScript frameworks
on Monday November 02, 2026 @01:42AM (#50333787)
In a couple of years the publication of that book will be closer to the invention of the web than the today.
Re:Spain train crash: What we know after two trains crashed with dozen...
on Thursday October 29, 2026 @06:38AM (#50286967)
To have had this many incidents compared to other HSR networks around the world gives all the signs of a classic case of normalisation of deviance.
Sadly we'll probably watch a lot of individuals being blamed/scapegoated for systemic issues, but hopefully even Spanish politics can organise a proper investigation after this many deaths in a single year.
Re:How to grow a cacao tree at home
on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @07:00AM (#50257264)
80% alike is to my mind dramatically different and would not be a substitute at all. I also don't think 95% cocoa chocolate is a substitute for 80% cocoa chocolate etc. as even the small difference results in a dramatically different product and that's the simplest variation possible for chocolate.
Re:The Fall of Scientific American
on Monday October 26, 2026 @01:12AM (#50239426)
Lowest denominator politics like this is what dominates social media and none of it improves anything. Choosing to focus on publishing objectively rigorous science is inherently speaking truth to power and does far more good than almost anything else. Of course, anyone can see the value science has as a way of providing objective understanding and wants to use it to justify their issue du jour.
Re:We are all living inside of an obscure sci-fi film from 1970
on Friday October 23, 2026 @07:54PM (#50216969)
Scandinavian countries are the most capitalistic of Europe - and socialists don't like social democrats. The Scandinavian countries are the latter, not the former.
Re:Woman faces six years in prison over Cash App account she never opened
on Thursday October 22, 2026 @09:09PM (#50203278)
You aren't taking into account that transport agencies can raise a lot of funding based on yearly revenue so multiplying fares out in terms of the debt that can be serviced yearly can easily reach billions which can be used for capital investment.
Re:Woman faces six years in prison over Cash App account she never opened
on Thursday October 22, 2026 @09:07PM (#50203257)
It's nice to have an opinion but free public transport causes many issues and isn't great policy, it actually means transport agencies have less money to invest and take out debt on as system use increases which is a very bad position financially. The same issues actually apply to roads as well and are a reason things like congestion taxes are a good idea.
Re:What shall I teach my son?
on Wednesday October 21, 2026 @03:32AM (#50177255)
Many adults have mutually incompatible ideas of what would make the world better. Many adults are willing to use violence to make their version of the world become a thing. It's not really as simple as saying it doesn't have to be this way.
Re:Why is every rationalist blog post way too long?
on Thursday October 15, 2026 @05:30AM (#50101264)
It's pretty remarkable to see 'I don't like them, therefore their arguments are all terrible' in action, but it's so rampant in this comments section it's genuinely sad. Every single argument against rationalists can be leveraged at academic philosophers too.
Re:Anthropic reported diary entry to police, woman faces felony charge
on Tuesday October 06, 2026 @03:04AM (#49975178)
I'd expect someone's BFF to call the police if their friend is making credible talk about shooting up a school or whatever. I sometimes feel like privacy talk online can be seriously divorced from how human relationships actually work.
Re:Microsoft Abandons Personal AI Chatbot Race with Copilot Reboot
on Friday September 25, 2026 @11:01PM (#49852790)
It didn't 'learn' anything in any shape or form at all, it performed an echo <input>.
Re:Microsoft Abandons Personal AI Chatbot Race with Copilot Reboot
on Friday September 25, 2026 @10:59PM (#49852781)
Siri is highly useful for setting timers and is a solid 9/10 at doing so reliably.
Re:Back and shoulder surgery is often worse than useless
on Thursday September 24, 2026 @10:38PM (#49839586)
That's not what single payer actually means, since Australia has both a single payer public system and a separate private system. The part that allows these to both exist is that the public system has vast resources (i.e. an entire national/set of state governments) that can act as one for immense negotiating power. This does not preclude a private system from existing.
Re:US interest rates raised for first time in three years
on Thursday September 17, 2026 @05:47AM (#49738443)
Iran is the source for the Islamic justification for suicide bombing (suicide is forbidden in the Quran and thus 'innovation' was needed to justify it). That alone puts immense amounts of blood on their hands. They invented this justification for their own religious and geopolitical aims (getting the US out of the ME). They are interventionists who want to be the spiritual centre of Islam, they are the opposite of passive actors in their region.
The bigger question is whether the other Gulf states (that we ally with or support) are any better and whether or not they deserve sanctions too. The West is clearly not in a place within the ME to preach morals, but that doesn't mean countries like Iran don't deserve sanctions.
Re:LG Says We're Fake News [video]
on Saturday September 12, 2026 @09:36PM (#49679052)
If someone is supposedly concerned about being recorded, having their privacy invaded etc. but they're too lazy to change the wifi password and deal with the trivial inconvenience of changing it on other household devices then in this case the revealed preference really is that they don't really care.
Re:All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it
on Thursday September 10, 2026 @08:51AM (#49642927)
As a parent you should absolutely think about what kind of expectations and behaviours you're setting up for the future if 'if they enjoy it then it's worth the money' is teaching kids. Sure it's not perfectly clear cut but not thinking about value at all does not end well.
Re:Switzerland's Federal Government Is Replacing Microsoft on 3k Compu...
on Monday September 07, 2026 @07:16AM (#49596925)
The US has been by far the largest funder of medical and other scientific research since WW2 which has benefited billions immensely.
Re:GPT-6 Astra
on Thursday September 03, 2026 @11:27PM (#49560181)
The marginal return on education spending decreases fairly quickly, but obviously becomes zero at the point by which there are not enough hours in the day/year/decade to cover every single topic that humans know about - no matter the talent or resources available to the student.
Re:How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?
on Wednesday September 02, 2026 @03:55AM (#49533177)
You can define any word to be whatever you want and thus have linguistically correct predictions that are functionally useless.
Re:Oceans hit highest temperature on record
on Tuesday August 25, 2026 @08:53AM (#49433194)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#History
"1954 – The first practical photovoltaic cell was publicly demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.[27] The inventors were Calvin Souther Fuller, Daryl Chapin and Gerald Pearson.[28]"
The references are on Wikipedia. Maybe do the most basic thing in Wikipedia and click on some links to the related pages before asking for sources. One can still quibble that 'first practical' is indeed different from 'first' but the practical part is the part that actually matters in this argument anyway (i.e. solar rollout).
(also, of course it was Bell Labs.)
Re:Paul Graham on X: if I were 17. I'd learn how to build LLMs from sc...
on Monday August 24, 2026 @08:04AM (#49418527)
If there's a single unifying fault to the unsuccessful people I know (for any definition of unsuccesful, including my own failures) is that they're precisely bad at working out why they failed - if they even think to ask the question. The successful people are generally much clearer that it was studying hard or networking or natural talent that contributed to their success. The latter group may have people who don't realise luck played a part, but they massively increased their chances of good luck by the aforementioned behaviours.
Re:So How Is AI Drug Discovery Doing, Really?
on Saturday August 15, 2026 @09:12PM (#49315897)
It's a very confusing comment since Derek Lowe is a chemist working in pharma but is being referred to only as a science communicator which I suspect most people would consider to be an implicit insult.
Re:Going Dark, and the era of law enforcement hacking
on Friday August 14, 2026 @07:49PM (#49305992)
This is untrue when private citizens are in conflict (legal or physical or whatever) and the dispute needs to be mediated or resolved. The 'root cause' may well be she said/he said and the legal system may well have need to resolve this by looking at private communications.
Strong emphasis on the legal system part, but you've completely dismissed that private communications frequently are required to address causes of issues and the word subpoena makes it rather clear that refusing to comply comes with penalty.
Re:The Water Footprint of AI
on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @08:01AM (#49271064)
This is not even an argument. 100 years? So you're admitting that almonds in California are clearly a sustainable industry that can exist in the long term.
Re:The Water Footprint of AI
on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @08:00AM (#49271046)
Two completely unrelated things can indeed share some similarities at a very superficial level.
Re:The Water Footprint of AI
on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @06:37AM (#49256029)
That's because the Californian almond industry is exclusively located in California, unlike the global data centre industry.
Re:Taste Is All That's Left
on Friday August 07, 2026 @07:56AM (#49209055)
I'm not really convinced Metro was better than anything Apple at the time, even though it was refreshing and interesting. Was it actually easier to use? I didn't really find that nor see it with others.
Re:Almost no skill required to cook a steak
on Thursday August 06, 2026 @11:06PM (#49205496)
I honestly fail to understand the relevance of "some people can't tell the difference or just don't care". Good (or not) for them?
Re:The most official water costs $120k a gallon
on Saturday August 01, 2026 @01:48AM (#49131427)
I can't express just how profoundly culturally biased this is. There is absolutely nothing about Fahrenheit that 'just makes sense' to someone who grew up with Celsius instead.
Your comment about granularity is also nonsensical. I can adjust my heating by more granularity than 1C. That has literally nothing to do with the units being used.
Re:US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
on Monday July 27, 2026 @07:34AM (#49068060)
The biggest economy in the world and the richest country to have ever existed is not a developing country, although it is quite unequal. What you've stated is political rhetoric that you want others to accept as fact.