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drweevil

I was a beekeeper for 10 years, loved it. I learned a lot about life and living, and how other creatures do it. (I also learned a lot about agricultural chemicals, unfortunately). The bee yard was a great place for meditation. I would sit near the hives for hours, watching them go about their business, lulled into peace by the background drone of activity. There is also scope for using woodworking skills, for those who like that.
Re:Inverse Zitron: An Investment Strategy on Saturday October 31, 2026 @08:43PM (#50321706)
>"The Soviets also spent seventy years predicting that capitalism would collapse any day now."

If anything has the chops to prove both Zitron AND the Soviets right, it's AI.

Re:How a simple UTI turns into a $1,756 bill on Friday October 30, 2026 @10:34AM (#50304515)
"Intuitive Health,the private equity-backed company..."

Well there's your problem.

Yup. Look at Palantir. What government wouldn't want an All Seeing Eye of Sauron? Their client list is telling.
While I like the idea behind GrapheneOS, I'd rather not place myself in jeopardy of some ridiculous charge like this one. I prefer to travel with a travel device, some inexpensive phone and/or laptop that contains nothing interesting. If they then wish to take it from me because I won't unlock it, then have at it! That said, the situation with respect to our Bill of Rights at the border has gotten ridiculous.
Re:ASK HN: Why has technology become so unreliable? on Sunday July 26, 2026 @09:41AM (#49058157)
> Forget the ridiculous AI hype, forget about the lack of ethics and a moral compass;

I’m afraid these things are related. Time-to-market and short-term profitability are paramount, trumping good customer relations.

My sister has an old Macbook Pro. I asked her to save it for me when she’s done with it, it’s such a solid machine. I still don’t have it. So, do you build something excellent that your customers love, that lasts a decade or more? Or do you build something that breaks in 3 years and allows you to sell a replacement? This is where the ethics and moral compass come in.

In 2004 I visited my family in Valencia, Spain. There was a local construction boom. There were family owned shops everywhere. Bakeries, fruit stands, etc. When I went back in 2014, it seems everything had changed. The shops were gone. The construction had slacked off. Instead there were now giant supermarkets and superstores. They were on the Euro now. My cousins blamed the EU for this. I'm assuming something similar happened in Italy, tho it is not mentioned in the article, which instead tends to blame the victims. When you replace the local food supply chain with prepared branded foods (Nutella, etc.), you get this. The EU has been great for European capitalists, but a detriment to the people in Europe.

PS This was one of the major complaints of the long forgotten yellow-vests protests in France.

> “The application enables anonymous communication without mandatory user registration, phone number verification, or centralised logging of communications.“

Those are features, not bugs ;) Seriously tho, the I4C is describing face-to-face communication. Is that illegal too? Perhaps the problem here is not the protesters, but an overreaching government.

> “When our teams are aligned and working in a connected way, we can build on our strengths, reach people wherever they are, and deepen their relationship with Disney.”

God I hate these people. The irony is that any half-decent AI can say stuff like that.

This is a death-spiral. If a company instead adopts a sustainable, customer-centered business strategy they will be punished in the stock market for "stagnant growth," the CEO gets replaced and or a hostile takeover occurs, and there we go again.
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.
Re:On reading Iain M. Banks on Monday May 18, 2026 @11:32AM (#48181232)
>"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.

Re:Hotels are slashing World Cup rates as FIFA cancels rooms on Saturday April 25, 2026 @08:57AM (#47901153)
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.
Re:Why the Washington Post Lost in Virginia on Saturday April 25, 2026 @08:20AM (#47900859)
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.
Re:Theft Is Now Progressive Chic on Thursday April 23, 2026 @10:42PM (#47884855)
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.
Re:Tech Is Fun Again: The Tech Monoculture Is Finally Breaking on Saturday January 24, 2026 @02:20PM (#46746636)
> 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?

Re:Booting a PC from a Vinyl Record on Saturday January 24, 2026 @01:40PM (#46746251)
I used to have a cassette storage device for my Atari 800. This is totally geeky and awesome!
Re:When employees feel slighted, they work less on Saturday January 24, 2026 @01:33PM (#46746177)
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
Re:Nationwide Tax Strike on Thursday January 01, 2026 @03:07PM (#46457542)
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.

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