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OpenAI discontinues its AI writing detector due to “low rate of accuracy”
  • Usually you check this sort of thing before releasing it...

  • Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible
  • We waste intelligent minds on this rubbish when we are facing an existential crisis in climate change.

  • FCC chair: Speed standard of 25Mbps down, 3Mbps up isn’t good enough anymore
  • That's the same here too. My first apartment only had ADSL. In 2015.

    I couldn't even watch Netflix without it stopping to buffer.

    I really wish they would put internet speeds on apartment offers etc.

  • Thoughts?
  • The biggest risks I see with AI are making misinfomation, scams etc. a lot easier.

    I remember as a kid you knew that people could just make stuff up, but a photograph was fairly reliable. Then along came Photoshop and it was trivial to make convincing fake photographs.

    AI is able to do this with audio, soon with full video (perhaps already?) - so then it becomes much harder to trust anything.

  • Social Media Has Run Out of Fresh Ideas
  • Yeah, that is true. I haven't tried VR yet but I remember the world before Google Maps and that was a dark time.

  • EU passes law to blanket highways with fast EV chargers by 2025
  • I lived in Germany for some months in University.

    The trains there are amazing, it really feels like you can get just about anywhere by train. In Spain, we have good connections between major cities but you can't really use them to go on day-trips to places like the castles or the salt mines or whatever.

  • FCC chair: Speed standard of 25Mbps down, 3Mbps up isn’t good enough anymore
  • Wow, that's pretty good for a town of that size. I live in a city of 1.6 Million. I think I might be able to get 1 gbps if I shop around, but I don't think much more than that is available to normal consumers at least.

  • Social Media Has Run Out of Fresh Ideas
  • Yeah, those are examples of actually innovative private enterprise.

    I don't have a problem with it being the private sector. But the problem is making a Twitter clone or a slightly better version of MySpace is barely innovating and certainly isn't going to significantly improve the world.

  • Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
  • Why does it say this post was made 3 years ago?

  • FCC chair: Speed standard of 25Mbps down, 3Mbps up isn’t good enough anymore
  • I have 500Mbps in Spain. Is it that bad in the American cities or is it only like rural Montana that has these speeds?

  • Removed
    indonesia apparently has blocked x com after its rebranding
  • They are on the side of the aliens.

  • EU passes law to blanket highways with fast EV chargers by 2025
  • I guess it will be great in the wealthier countries. Here in Spain the reason EV's are incredibly rare is simply the cost.

    And rather than making them more affordable the Government just makes ICE vehicles more expensive to use, which is almost a regressive tax on those too poor to afford an EV. Especially given in many areas it's not really optional given public transport may be unreliable or non-existent.

  • EU passes law to blanket highways with fast EV chargers by 2025
  • I don't have anything against trains, but our rail network is really limited.

    If I want to go from Barcelona to Madrid, it's easy and actually more convenient than flying albeit more expensive.

    But if I want to take my kids to go and see the cool medieval castle in the mountains? There's no train going anywhere near there.

  • Social Media Has Run Out of Fresh Ideas
  • I find it slightly sad that when our leaders talk of Technology and Innovation - they often mean these 'tech' companies that essentially work out how to better sell advertising and occasionally provide a useful service alongside this.

    Where is the Bell Labs? The Skunk Works?

    We have incredible problems facing us such as Climate Change and decarbonisation seems like it will be a very difficult challenge. And yet we focus on banal "innovation" in frivolous things.

  • ‘Put learners first’: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools
  • I agree completely.

    We are already in an age where much menial work can be automated and AI seems to be well on the way to automating a lot of menial information work too. We need to focus on creating a growth mindset and a sense of wonder and curiosity that will serve the children whatever the future may hold - not just creating a holding pen so their parents can go to work.

  • The Santiago Boys
  • It's okay, but I would have preferred more of a focus on the actual technical aspects about how Cybernetics worked and helped run the country rather than a focus on the people.

    Maybe it becomes like that later, I am up to the third episode.

  • Spotify now has 220 million paying subscribers
  • It's revenue share based on how many streams you get. Big record labels can probably negotiate a better share, but if you sign to one there's no guarantee you will actually see that extra money.

    Record labels ripping off music artists was incredibly common in the time before streaming, so I imagine it still is today.

  • Spotify now has 220 million paying subscribers
  • It's revenue share with the record labels. If those labels don't pay the artists well that's a different issue.

  • Google owes $338.7 mln in Chromecast patent case, US jury says
  • Fundamental science is mostly publicly funded though and has little immediate practical application. The lack of funding in much of science also shows the problems this approach has.

  • Google owes $338.7 mln in Chromecast patent case, US jury says
  • Yeah, I guess it depends if the copyright is broad enough to offer protection while not becoming too broad and stopping innovation.

  • What books are you reading at the moment?

    I'm currently reading the Wool omnibus by Hugh Howey. It's pretty decent I've been making very rapid progress as it's been too hot to sleep here recently now the summer has arrived.

    I haven't seen the Apple show, but maybe I'll watch it in the future when I've finished all the books (I had Shift and Dust as well).

    55
    Immersive games?

    What are the most immersive games you have played?

    I think mine are:

    • The Elder Scrolls
    • RDR2
    • Deus Ex (all of them)
    • Kingdom Come: Deliverance
    • Fallout 3, New Vegas, 4
    • GTA V (to a certain extent)
    • The Witcher 3

    What recommendations do you have?

    1
    Books @lemmy.world FantasticFox @lemmy.world
    Favourite non-fiction reads?

    I'm currently reading The Case for Space by Robert Zubrin and it's really good. You can tell the guy dedicated his career and life to really thinking about how humans might live in Space, whether that be on the Moon, Mars or in the Asteroid Belt.

    I recently read Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoğlu and that was also very good, it explained the shortcomings of other theories such as the geographic determinism espoused by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel although I think Why Nations Fail was a bit repetitive at times.

    1
    "A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam." - which books do you think best manage to do this?

    I posted this on Reddit a while ago and it sparked some really good discussion and recommendations.

    I really like The Expanse - as it doesn't just discuss the attempted terraforming of Mars and the colonisation of the Main Asteroid Belt but also

    spoiler

    the way that these communities decline when abundant habitable planets are discovered, where life is much easier.

    So yeah, what are your best examples?

    16
    Can I block entire instances?

    Is it possible to block entire instances? I see I can block by user or community, but not by instance.

    This would be useful as there are some instances based around politics etc. that I don't care about.

    4
    FantasticFox FantasticFox @lemmy.world
    Posts 7
    Comments 48