brendoelfrendo

Well, they are, but if a surveillance state exists, then one thing that will save the ordinary citizen from its gaze is that humans have a limited amount of attention. A massive intelligence complex full of analysts can only process a fraction of the intelligence that a fleet of AI agents can handle. So now you have the worst of both worlds: the massive capabilities of modern AI at the behest of humans who have shown they can't be responsible with that capability.

I'm lost... are you trying to argue that it would be ok for naturalized citizens of a country to be forcibly removed from the country where they hold citizenship if that country decides that they're the "wrong" race? On what planet is that ok?

The Shapeland reveal made me jump out of my chair.

Ha, that is a fair critique. Now, I do consider electronic music to be art; in that case, I consider the computer or synthesizer to be an instrument, and thus the creative output of a DAW is still the artist's creative output. There is definitely some sloppiness in how I defined my terms; unfortunately, I'm just not going to commit my afternoon to an iron-clad definition of art for an internet comment.

We are not uncomfortable with what the art is saying but with what the meta-narrative around the art is saying, and I think that's an important distinction. Sometimes context is an important part of artistic interpretation and expression, but this time around I think the discomfort is that human intention is being replaced by a machine.

> If not, where do we draw the line?

I don't find this question uncomfortable at all: art is art if and only if it was made by humans, end to end. Human thought informing human action resulting in a human-created work. If you involved an AI, it is not art; it is a facsimile of art. If you agree that conveying emotion and meaning is an important part of art, and I think you do since you highlighted that art can and sometimes should be uncomfortable, then I posit that AI "art" cannot be art because there is no feeling, emotion, or creativity involved in its creation. An AI can only attempt to mimic human expression based on its training while the AI itself is incapable of these things.

The NSF's focus areas do include research on people and society, as well as development of new training and education initiatives (https://www.nsf.gov/focus-areas/education) and fostering a robust STEM workforce (https://www.nsf.gov/focus-areas/workforce). Not every grant issued by the NSF needs to be geared towards fundamental scientific research; the NSF's mission is broad, and intentionally so.

Said companies to you: sounds like what you want is to get booted from our service.

Yeah, but why would you trust the answers from a sponsored agent? Why would you assume it is giving you real, accurate, and complete information rather than selectively giving you what it thinks is most likely to make you click the "buy" button?

Nintendo seems to be the outlier in the video games industry in that they are very much willing to foster talent over a long term. People who started doing sprite work 35 years ago are still there today and directing games. It's almost like the secret to long-term success is developing a roster of highly-skilled professionals, rather than treating your staff as disposable.

> The "non-greed" case for mergers is often that while it may result in a dominant position in a narrowly-defined market ('supermarkets'), they are sometimes needed to preserve the existence of that category as an alternative to another giant that has expanded into a new market, in that case mainly Walmart and to some extent, Amazon, both of which can afford to subsidize something like Ritz Crackers with the profits from selling tires, lawn furniture, or AWS.

Ah, but then is the argument that we should allow a merger among smaller players because it prevents a narrowly-defined market from being entirely consumed by larger, broader businesses; or should we argue that the larger, broader businesses that can exert influence over large swaths of the market prevent the existence of a competitive marketplace?

This would be rad.

It's funny, because on the scale of things that are annoying an uncool, I find someone saying the word "retarded" as a pejorative in the year 2026 to be far, far more annoying and uncool than a harmless anime-inspired mascot for an open source project.

They said "opt in to training on prompts by default," which is coherent English and perfectly fine. The phrases "opt in" and "opt out" will always be contextual based on what is being opted, so it really falls to the reader to pay attention to that context. Please don't give English language advice as though you are an authority; there is not a rule of the English language that would make their usage unacceptable.

Because not everyone has the infrastructure to run that with better performance? Anyway, Mistral serves GLM 5.2 through their global and European endpoints, so if you wanted to leverage their services and use a more powerful open model, that seems to be an option.

It's a pretty reliable career for hundreds if not thousands of mid-list authors who generally stick to genre fiction. It's entirely possible that AI could core out the middle of the pack as well as the bottom, which would threaten not just jobs but a wealth of institutional knowledge that those authors share among their peers and especially new up-and-comers.

Oh thank goodness. I was honestly shaken just thinking about how horrifying it would be to be a college-aged student who managed to expose themselves to dimethylmercury. Even if they were doing something stupid and reckless, that's a horrible way to go.

I don't think we can be that reductive. Plenty of the US technology industry is concentrated in blue states like California, Washington, and New York. Likewise, I don't think all blue states can be considered equally resistant to the excesses of the federal government. I'm not going to go so far as to say "never buy American," but I am going to say that as with any boycott it takes research and diligence to decide who does and doesn't align with your values.

Ok, but the president's executive order does not officially change the name of a place or feature. In the US, that function is overseen by the Board on Geographic Names. While they did enact a change for the Gulf of Mexico (now the Gulf of America in US documentation), it doesn't happen immediately. While I imagine the BGN will update Lake Ontario eventually as well, Google tips their hand as being eager to please the admin by updating their maps before there is a corresponding change from the appropriate governing authority.

We can't even accuse Google of consistency, because they show Türkiye as Türkiye, for example, even though (as far as I can tell) the US Gov still uses Turkey.

What does "western" values mean?

If you're in the USA, you can see for yourself by looking out the window. It's not great!

This is the first time I've heard someone argue that unionizing is a self-interested pursuit. It's called "collective bargaining" for a reason; workers who cooperate in negotiations with their employers have more leverage than those who negotiate individually. The entire point is to work together for the betterment of the group!

It's also an issue with an obvious visual signal. My phone company is scanning messages? Oh, all the phone companies are scanning messages? Using some opaque approvals process that the government intentionally hides from the public? Not a lot anyone can do about that from the outside.

Cameras on our streets? Well, those were put there by local law enforcement and city councils, who are much more accessible (even though I'm sure they wish they weren't). If the camera is still there, it's still a problem. And if all other options fail, well, someone is probably willing to take the risk to cut that camera down.

What a weird non-sequitur.

P.S. batteries are the answer, hope this helps

He's the head of Android ecosystem; who else is accountable?

I think there's also a problem that some people -- even on here -- seem to think that there is no fundamental difference between how a human engages in conversation vs an LLM, and thus talking to humans doesn't provide much value. "How it feels" is starting to bleed into how some of us think about our interactions with each other.

Yeah, I think a few of the widgets here are neat and useful. It's not a Bloomberg replacement, but it might be a good replacement for a few tabs? You could get the info elsewhere, but I like this presentation more.

Edit: Ah, they're offering a pro subscription. While I appreciate that cloud services aren't free, I'm not sure that I'm willing to pay to replace a few browser tabs. Not for me, but maybe for someone!

I'm going to copy-paste one of the comments from ryukoposting higher up in the thread because I think it's relevant here:

> 2) Bloomberg's chat is important because, as a hedge fund or investment bank, the chat is how you buy and sell bonds. You agree to the trade in the chat, then tell the back office folks to execute the trade. Direct quote: "I'd wager 90% of the ~400 trillion in annual bond trading value happens over Bloomberg DM"

You may discuss trades via SMS or Slack; maybe you're important enough that you have a broker, and you send them your idea. But the broker at the investment bank is probably handling those trades via Blomberg terminal. That's the network effect: all the bankers are in Bloomberg chat, and it is therefore the easiest place to find who owns an asset and negotiate a trade.

It did not, at least not for me. But that wasn't the question: the question was whether or not it was something I thought about as a freshman. It was, though I obviously can't prove one way or another if my concern for the future made a difference in my earnings out of school. I can only provide my own anecdata on the matter.

Well, not really; people have long ignored overly corporate or low-effort news releases because. The presence of certain language or stock images is a signal (and I would argue a valid one) that the rest of the content is equally low-effort and not worthy of attention. AI images are just the newest version of that signal. I think it behooves the writers of these blog posts/news releases/community updates/etc. to reflect on why they continue to include these signals that their content is low-effort or low-value if they actually want their audience to read it.

Unless the idea is that, in 2026, you assume your audience is an LLM that is ingesting and summarizing your content for the end user and that no human will actually read what you wrote so you don't actually need to care about signals of quality or trustworthiness. The AI generated illustration seems kind of superfluous if that's the case, though.

These AI illustrations are the nee "corporate Memphis." Images of flat, minimalist people in bold colors used to be the sign that whatever text accompanied them was low-value drivel. Nowadays, I associate the same with AI generated imagery. I'm not sure why the folks doing the writing (if, indeed, any of the writing was done by a human) don't seem to clock this when the audience seems to be able to catch on almost immediately.