Said another way: Each cable is given the minimum copper and shielding that cable needs for the length it is made.

As soon as you plug two together, you’re operating at greater resistance than either one was made for, and relying on the margin of error.

So ten concepts per second? Ten ideas per second? This sounds a little more reasonable. I guess you have to read the word “bit” like you’re British, and it just means “part.” Of course this is still miserably badly defined.

Right? They do nothing to expand upon what this plainly wrong claim is supposed to actually mean. Goddamn scientists need a marketing department of their own, because the media sphere in general sells their goods however the fuck they feel like packaging them.

You don’t have to read it meticulously to see the contrast he’s taking about.

But few actually read it at all. They say they do, but their reading consists of looking up verse numbers they saw on bumper stickers, leafing through the first pages of Genesis, and occasionally reading a random page only to say to themselves, so silently that they are not actually conscious of it: “hm well I don’t know what all that old timey language means but I’m going to go see what’s in the fridge now.”

This will address extreme and obvious falsehoods but I still encounter clickbait of the more pedestrian kind everywhere I go. “You’re using your table saw WRONG” or “the 1 table saw trick 99% of people don’t know” etc.

I consider this clickbait: it creates a false sense of urgency and doesn’t convey any information in itself. What is this one trick? Oh I already knew that one, but I had to watch the video to realize that.

It wastes a lot of time and makes things harder to search for. And often these clickbait headlines are not in the video headline where YT can easily scan them, but in the thumbnail graphic in huge letters, where it’s probably harder to automate any moderation for.

I pay for YT premium but this aspect of the experience still feels ad-like and cheap.

I guess most people don’t have much knowledge about affiliate link URLs and how easily they can be rewritten to shift where the commission goes. I implemented SkimLinks on a hunch of websites so I’ve seen it before. Forum owners used to get upset about anyone posting product links in their comments because they night include an affiliate code. SkimLinks adds JavaScript to every page that rewrites those codes to the forum owner’s personal account. It will even insert an affiliate code into basic Amazon links that don’t have one. Once this came out, forums went a lot easier on Amazon links.

After seeing all this, the second I spot a browser extension that wants to get between me and Amazon, I immediately assume they will rewrite all the links for their own benefit. Otherwise what’s in it for them? This news isn’t much of a surprise.

Indeed! Sugar is a chemical!

Your post is unsanitary then because it is making me stupider and that is bad for my mental health, and mental health is health just like dental health is health.

This post is all over the place, conflating plastic leeching with sanitary concerns, throwing out vague concerns and then panicking that there must be NO standards. To really answer it would require giving someone a comprehensive education in food safe materials science, likely fighting though many dearly-held misconceptions along the way. Anyone who thinks that plastic touching food is a health risk must have all their meals brought to them on a plate, and have no idea how food is delivered to stores or packaged for sale.

I think there are diplomatic ways for you to express your preference. You could say: “I don’t mean to be rude, but I prefer to really stay focused at work and socializing can drain my battery or distract me for a while afterward. Is it all right with you if I keep to myself for the most part?”

He’s obviously taking your behavior as a sign that he’s done something wrong, and not just your preference for how you like to be at work. He’s probably trying to fix it or improve relations with you, and this is making it worse. The standoffish behavior you’re showing him is feeding his sense that there’s a problem he needs to address with you, so take a different tack.

Given that state taxes heavily support higher education, it’s not the craziest idea in the world to give lower tuition to those who’ve been paying those taxes their whole lives.

Error correction is also intrinsic to all of computing and telecommunications, though. That’s a loose comparison but I hope we can make progress on this and get it to a manageable state, even if zero is impossible in principle. A lot of things in life only asymptotically approach zero and yet we live.

Gee I wish they had just left Facebook as a way to share photos and updates with friends and family, instead of turning it into a viral content clusterfuck to capture the youth audience. It didn’t even work.

Unfortunately, AI is moving at such a pace that this IS the usual Apple delayed-follow. They had to feed the public hype for something like 9 months. And it doesn’t seem like a true fix for hallucination is coming, so they made their choice to move ahead. Frankly I blame Wall Street because at this point they will eviscerate anyone who doesn’t have a demonstrated AI plan and shipped products around it. If anyone is at the core of this craze, it’s investors, because they are still in the “we don’t know how big this thing is going to get” phase with AI. We’re all dealing with the consequences.

Interestingly though, I’m reminded of the early days of the Internet. People did raise the flag that the Internet wouldn’t have the same reliability as traditional media, because anyone could post anything. And that’s remained true. We have mass disinformation campaigns galore, and also specific incidents of false viral stories like “the Pope has died” which are much like this case, just driven by malicious humans instead of hallucinating software.

It makes me wonder if the problems with AI will never be truly solved but we will just digest AI and learn to live with it as we have with the internet in general. There is also a comparison in my mind between AI and self-driving cars, because every time one of those has a big fuck up we all shout and point and cry that the tech will never be trustable, meanwhile human drivers are out there killing by the hundreds of thousands annually and we don’t even blink at that anymore.

I’ve now lived long enough to actually meet a couple of Canadian assholes. They exist.

Aside from the fact that you just offered a stereotype as an argument, you didn’t even get the stereotype right. Canadians don’t love everyone. Canadians are nice. That’s the stereotype.

Europeans are famously derisive of the American healthcare system though, so for whatever reason they seem to care specifically about his impact on that. I think in general America looms large around the world, economically, militarily, culturally. And certainly online. Having something to feel superior about seems to provide a channel for pent up frustration or resentment. Because believe me there’s no other reason for Europeans to care as much as they do about how much my healthcare costs.

It’s almost like the class divide is shining through the liberal/conservative rancor that’s been designed to hide it.

Ouch. This reminds me of a coworker of mine: they were born in one country, grew up in another, and then moved to the US. Despite only being here 5-ish years they speak perfect American English with no accent. However they are missing the last 20-30 years of American culture. They’re extremely smart but every now and then a conversation will trip up and we’ll have to explain something like “these guys are as bad as beavis and butthead.”

Now Achilles is a little better known than beavis & butthead but I don’t know how much Greek mythology they read in different countries. Especially the ones pumping out STEM geniuses like my coworker. WoF is all about catchphrases and references so I could easily see how an otherwise extremely intelligent guy could totally bomb like that dude did.

I once watched an episode of Wheel of Fortune where the puzzle was completely solved: “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

But the woman giving the solution, who happened to be black, didn’t pronounce the “s” is bedbugs audibly enough. It sounded more like “don let de bedbug bite” which I think was just an accent thing.

But they didn’t give it to her. Maybe she did think it was “the bedbug” as if there’s one big bad boogeyman bug out there. I dunno. But it was pretty sad. The guy next to her was given a chance and walked away with the win.