So does this mean that the amount of theorized dark matter is smaller? I thought dark matter was basically theorized because there are all kinds of observable effects in the universe that indicate there should be more matter than we observe.
And I have the expectation that my OS not take constant screenshots of what I’m doing (Microsoft Recall), which is what this Signal feature is trying to prevent. You’re welcome to turn the feature off so that Microsoft can store screenshots of your Signal chats.
Yes and surely someone somewhere though can be explicit and show they used AI in these cases? It would be nice to curate a list where it has been successful.
It’s an interesting thought but I think there are better ways to do this than having some external disk. You could download all of WikiPedia, medical articles, etc to a laptop to the same effect. A survivalist book is probably even better since it won’t rely on power.
The product offering of an AI chatbot for when the power goes out made me laugh out loud.
An AI chatbot trained on massive amounts of knowledge about survival, farming, animal husbandry, small scale community management, home building, clothes making, etc would be immensely valuable.
“I have chickens and one has stopped laying eggs and become lethargic. What could be the cause?”
These things are great lookup tools, much better than web search, and being “jpegs for knowledge” you can pack a lot of knowledge into a small device. You have to check the results but having some old fashioned books on hand would help with that, as would some common sense.
I agree about a separate device. A durable laptop and a solar panel to charge it would be best.
A lot of special purpose devices are sold as a way to sell software since people won’t buy software. Sell a software and data bundle containing curated data and apps and such and nobody will buy it, but pair it with some e-waste and they will.
Same goes for a lot of digital assistants and other gadgets. They could just be apps but people don’t buy apps so they have to come bundled with e-waste.
> The product offering of an AI chatbot for when the power goes out made me laugh out loud.
To be fair, the current iteration of this is of course bullshit but imagine this in 10 years when raspberry pi sized devices can easily host AIs that outperform or at least match current best models and has been specifically trained to be an emergency assistant.
Kinda reminds me of the public access defibrillators that talk you through an emergency [0]. I can see an AI Assistant be useful during emergencies.
Stuff like this makes me think about the benefits which developing countries currently have. They have access to such a vast amount of information, like Wikipedia, any book on AA or torrents, YouTube tutorials, free AI chatbots and what not. Yet the social problems like the ones caused through corruption, localized conflicts and wars are so big, that none of this information is of any value. Who's to blame?
It is of value though. Asian farmers were able to use cell phones to check weather and market prices to be able to grow more and sell for a better price [1]. Mobile banking apps have allowed poor Kenyans access to formal financial services, improving financial stability for those most vulnerable [2]. Being able to send money to disparate family members safely and securely protects them from corrupt local informal networks. Access to modern technology developed in first world countries enable poor counties to skip over expensive intermediate steps, like going from no phones to cell towers without building out a land line network. The #saveourgirls social media campaign in response to the Boco Haram kidnappings was started locally, after frustration with lack of action by the inept/corrupt local government, and brought international pressure, support, and aid.
> “…benefits which developing countries currently have.”
The story of mobile phone use in African continent, where there are only the worst roads and no land lines, is an astonishing story of leaping forward through technology.
But don't a lot of developing countries have similar access? And especially torrenting is much more common in less developed countries where there's no copyright enforcement.
I wonder if such a device could be a good counterpoint to cloud services in a business environment. Just as a reaction to the difficulty and cost of compliance when data is online.
Hallucinated nonsense is easily prevented by restricting output to verbatim content from a pre-vetted knowledge base. Think fuzzy search for people who prefer to ask questions instead of listing keywords.
I doubt this is what they've done here, but not all AI chatbots have to be thin wrappers around a large language model.
I wouldn’t be that hysterical Dan. It could be used to point the user in a direction that is helpful, in the same way as they are used now. Its well known that chatbots hallucinate, yet many people use them, by choice, because they find them helpful.
One of the reasons the State promoted vaccinations is because it keeps healthcare costs lower. It should be obvious that preventing a disease is cheaper than treating a disease.
Here’s a quote from the press release: [1]
> Every business owner knows that to promote one thing, you must choose not to promote something else. We saw many examples of this over the past four years, in which people missed routine screenings and cancers went undiagnosed. Treatment for substance abuse was put on the back burner as deaths from opioid overdoses skyrocketed. Mental health disorders were left unattended, spilling over into crises of homelessness and crime. In Louisiana, maternal and infant mortality remain near the worst in the nation. All the while, chronic disease rates continue creeping up to crisis levels. These are the post-pandemic priorities of the Louisiana Department of Health.
So they are saying promoting vaccines means they didn’t get to promote cancer screenings of mental health? I am doubtful this change will move the needle on those other issues.
> In Louisiana, maternal and infant mortality remain near the worst in the nation.
If they stop mass vaccination, they seem likely to experience infant mortality due to measles (which is currently not much of an issue due to mass vaccination, as infants are too young to receive the vaccine themselves). And pertussis (quite dangerous to infants, and expectant mothers and caregivers are frequently advised to get extra vaccine doses to minimize risk to the infants).
Oh, and while hemolytic disease of the newborn isn’t managed by a vaccine per se, the same group of people seem to dislike the mitigation. Treating it is surely far more expensive than preventing it.
My understanding is that the problems of NYC -> Boston high speed rail are purely political, and basically come down to CT resistance to change
The current track alignment is not conducive to high speed travel, and CT as a state has no interest in supporting a new alignment that is conducive because they would likely get _negative_ value out of it: as it stands, Acela trains pretty much all stop in New Haven and Stamford: why wouldn't they?
If you go with a high speed link that aims to speed up Boston <> New York travel, it's more likely that you have trains that skip those stops, because additional stops are much more expensive for HSR from a speeding up and slowing down perspective, from a percentage of time added to trip perspective, and for an inefficient alignment perspective.
In my view this is kind of a microcosm of the political problems of the geographically small states of the north east: states like CT/RI/DE especially have very narrow and niche concerns but because of their geographical position have effective veto power over regionally important things like "how expensive are the tolls to drive between New York and DC?" and "can you have HSR between new york and boston?"
It's not about skipping stops, it's about the amount of eminent domain you'd have to do to eliminate curves thru Connecticut's oldest and richest suburbs.
Which is why proposals to route it via Long Island and building a 16-mile tunnel under Long Island Sound get consideration.
Yeah that's true, even in the Netherlands our high-speed line between Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp was a nightmare. It cost billions, way more than budgeted, many of the bridges turned out to have construction faults (despite all the cost overruns) so the trains aren't able to actually go fast, and the high-speed trains were bought on a budget and had so many flaws that the Belgians refused to allow them. Now we're stuck with a non-highspeed train on the track that was supposed to be highspeed and cost a fortune to build.
In other countries like Germany, France and Spain the high-speed network works like a dream though. Though the good stuff is all nationally focused.
I'm not surprised, building a new high-speed line between the largest cities in the Netherlands must be a nightmare, that's connecting and going through some of the most densely populated areas in Europe.
The German railway network (including the high-speed part of it) has loads of
issues, and it's hardly working like a dream. That said, the interconnect between large cities is pretty great when it works. For these intermediate distances (around 500 km) it's about as fast as flying would be once you factor in getting to/from the airport (vs the more central train station), being there early etc; and much faster than driving by car.
> I'm not surprised, building a new high-speed line between the largest cities in the Netherlands must be a nightmare, that's connecting and going through some of the most densely populated areas in Europe.
Well, yes and no. Most of it goes through the 'green heart' of the most populated area. There's mostly farms there. The route also goes mostly along existing highways and train tracks so it was just a matter of widening the infrastructure zones that were already there. Holland is very planified so usually these things are already taken into consideration. We don't build housing right besides infrastructure anymore.
However, the environmental red tape is pretty heavy these days. The whole country is at a standstill (house building, traffic, farming) due to limits of nitrogen deposits being exceeded.
So I think it was more that than actual infringements on people's living space. Some tunnels and overpasses were made, yes. Those are the ones that are falling apart already after 10 years :')
>The site in Grand Traverse Bay is best described as a long line of stones which is over a mile in length.... Dr. John O’Shea from University of Michigan has been working on a broadly similar structure over in Lake Huron... [He] thinks that it may be a prehistoric drive line for herding caribou.... It is highly possible that the site in Grand Traverse Bay may have served a similar function to the one found in Lake Huron.
So not like Stonehenge but seems interesting to me.
The "Stonehenge" reference is likely utilized as an imagery anchor that most people will recognize. Whereas the implication is that it is suspected that the possible structure under discussion and Stonehenge are similar because they both may be intentionally built megalithic structures (generally from the Neolithic). Of which there are a lot of worldwide examples that are in straight lines, as well as other configurations.
reply