falcrist

You've probably seen it, but you'd definitely love the movie "Hidden Figures".

They do seem to get the adding machines more or less correct.

One of the interesting things about the movie was how well they conveyed the mood and atmosphere on subs.

I don't know exactly how to describe it, but the sub force just has a different temperament than the surface fleet.

Of course, all of that went out the window when people in the movie started yelling at each other. From that point on it's a fictional scenario contrived to create a dramatic story.

Same with Apollo 13. Everything I see and hear about NASA personnel indicates that these people are consummate professionals who stay cool under extreme circumstances... but that wouldn't make for a good movie.

I should probably note that this is coming from the perspective of someone who grew up with a father who was an career enlisted man (CPO/EM-N) stationed mostly on boomers.

It reads a bit like a verse from the song Time by Pink Floyd, which perfectly encapsulates the sense of existential dread that so many of us feel more and more often as we get older.

I don't think it's overly philosophical to point out that these are large language models, not truth engines or AGI or knowledge directories. They're not using logic to reason their way to an answer. They're just predicting the next word that would sound like part of a human answer.

If you define being a kid as "the ability to express emotions and enjoy playing", then yes.

I feel like that's a terrible definition, though.

There aren't many Microsoft products that seem to be genuinely good without many complications or drawbacks.

Most of those products have the words "Visual" and "Studio" in the name.

Atmel Studio can come too.

Being intelligent might correlate with a more liberal outlook, but I know a few highly intelligent people who are big fans of trump.

My father was a nuclear reactor operator and electrician for a big chunk of his 22 years in the Navy (EM-N, E-8, worked mostly on fast attack subs). He was a manager at multiple nuclear powerplants on the East Coast before leaving that industry. He's honestly highly intelligent and curious.

He's definitely a trump fan. He thinks Biden is going to destroy the US. Dude's politics are unhinged.

One of my siblings is disabled, bi, and trans, yet both of my parents supported trump openly in 2016.

C'est la vie. It goes to show you never can tell.

It can't stop him from running because prison doesn't disqualify a presidential candidate.

IIRC, Eugene V. Debs ran from prison in 1920, and he got something like 5% of the vote... As a third party candidate. He was with the socialists.

It also may be worth simply providing an outlet for people to make a comment so it doesn't intrude on usual business.

But not DRM content. The system will recognize and avoid screenshotting that.

Banking details? Fine.

Passwords? A-OK!

Copyrighted content? STOP, YOU FOOLS, BEFORE YOU ANGER THE MOUSE!

This whole thing is dystopian, but making it a priority to avoid DRM controlled content is wild to me. The screenshots are ostensibly a cache, which is part of how video is displayed anyway. Is avoiding caching a 6 frame per minute cache really a higher priority than all of the privacy this undermines?

I could see the US pulling back on Israel if it starts to cost them soft power elsewhere, but you're fundamentally correct. Israel is the primary instrument of US hegemony in the middle east, and they aren't going to risk losing that.

There may be a potential for more localized grids that are interconnected by HVDC transmission lines. I'm not sure what the impetus for that would be, however. I agree that it would be unlikely.

Interestingly, HVDC actually becomes a more efficient method of transmission over longer distances. Perhaps it's feasible to generate electricity half a continent away. Maybe tile the Sahara with solar panels and power all of Africa with it.

I specifically said that because I DON'T want to discuss whether it's a good company or not.

I'll have to take your word on recent Lenovo laptops. It's been well over a decade since I got my Yoga 11. The hinge on that laptop was quite good. The keyboard sucked though.

Perhaps they retained enough of the original employees that workflow and procedures remained similar, which resulted in similar products for a long time.

Certainly the tooling wouldn't have changed immediately.

IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo in 2005, so your timeframe correlates with the laptop division no longer being part of IBM.

Not that Lenovo is a bad company persay, but IBM was historically a company that focused on corporate sales and Lenovo is a company that seems to target the consumer market. As far as I can see, individual consumers are much more price sensitive than corporations. That would explain the steady decline in quality.

I'm certainly not an expert, so there are probably other valid explanations. Unicomp bought IBM's keyboard manufacturing division (or at least the equipment used to build model M keyboards), and experienced a decline in quality simply due to (allegedly) not updating the old tooling until fairly recently.