Eh.

Robots capable of melee combat are pretty much pointless. Melee is what you resort to when someone gets too close and you can’t point your gun at them because your reflexes are too slow or you are not strong enough to overpower them pushing it out of the way. Robots will always have faster reflex times, can physically attach the gun to their bodies, and are going to be stronger than a human trying to push their arm out of the way.

This is just the cultural dance aspects of martial arts. It shows that the robot has dexterity and coordination and is capable of elaborate choreography.

This kind of robot is genuinely a good invention for the purposes of elder care (something China is going to have massive problems with because of their one child policy fundamentally breaking multiple generations). For the purpose of slaughtering those pesky non-Hans?

https://terminator.fandom.com/wiki/T-1 is a MUCH more effective design. Guns on a heavily armored weapons platform.

And legit creditors just need your SSN, address, and maybe an old address. They run a credit check (hence why you freeze that shit) and then you are driving away in your 4k a month pickup truck.

And less legit creditors… don’t ask too many questions other than where you live and where your loved ones love.

But hey. Feel free to throw a hissy fit rather than think through why that plastic card actually doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as you thought it did. I mean, it would be nicer if you could actually sit and think and learn. But this is the 2020s. Ain’t nobody doing introspection.

Huh?

If you go to a bar with an ID you cut out of printer paper, they are going to throw your ass out Jazzy Jeff style. The actual ID isn’t useful without a LOT of additional resources… at which point your photo means almost nothing.

As for stuff like addresses? Again, that is basically EVERYWHERE because just about EVERY org has a data breach at least once a year. You might as well be saying people need your long form birth certificate to know what your name is.

Like… I’mma be blunt with you. A lot of the “your photo ID is the most important secure thing ever” nonsense comes from republican chuds trying to disenfranchise voters who live in cities. It is the idea that your photo ID is some magical artifact that protects you when the reality is that it is basically just a way to tie your name to your face. All the pertinent information is everywhere else.

Like… photo IDs tend to be one of those weird cases where we are ACTUALLY using biometrics (in this case, appearance) as a login rather than a password. Anything of value will just use that to cross reference you with an entry that is already in a system.

And in terms of the actual avenues for fraud? That ID doesn’t mean shit.

Your “government photo ID” really isn’t all that useful unless people are skilled enough to make fakes (which is a whole different mess). What matters is your SSN, your credit card number, your address, etc.

And those are basically everywhere.

As for the DMV thing: You sweet summer child.

And there are so many of those these days that a new one genuinely doesn’t matter.

If you haven’t been offered a free year of identity theft insurance recently? Some company/org is plugging their ears.

SSNs are a fundamentally broken system (look it up). Photo IDs? I will guarantee you that if you go to ANY city there is someone at the DMV who will look up whatever you want for fifty bucks. The ONLY reason credit card fraud is less massive than it is (and it is MASSIVE) is because the CC companies put in the effort to monitor that and lock it down.

EVERYONE should have their credit records locked unless they are actively applying for something.

No. the issue with these is that we live in an increasingly christofacist society where even looking at porn makes you Unclean. And if you look at the wrong porn? Off to the reeducation camps with you!

Ironically? If we were a less prudish society this genuinely wouldn’t matter.

“Oh no! Sarah likes threesome porn. Uhm… okay?”

At best you can argue that Valve will not protect you. Hence, not your friend.

It varies.

There are definitely cases where the latest update outright breaks the game and that is bad QC.

But what people generally refer to here are games with a modding scene. A vocal part of the userbase rely heavily on mods and/or custom DLLs. So when the game updates, all of those break until the modders and tool writers are able to catch up.

There are a lot of implications to this for games with (meaningful) online components. But for predominantly SP games? It is a fun time when you sit down to play a game in the evening and see it was updated and know you can’t go back to that save/game for at least a few days. And there very much SHOULD be a way to opt out or freeze a version for those.

Yeah. GoG and Humble (as well as many MUCH smaller stores) have very much criticized the de facto Valve monopoly over the years (… decades?). As have many devs who have criticized just how much of a percentage Valve takes (and how they reduce that for the big games). They just generally are smart enough to say it VERY obliquely because they know they don’t want to antagonize a rabid userbase.

Epic… Epic increasingly are poised to “not need” PC gamers as it were. Fortnite is its own platform and Unreal Engine is increasingly used by film and industry. So they are much more willing to criticize Valve (and only occasionally remember EGS is sort of a thing…) which… tends to highlight why nobody else does.

Valve also gutted their LGBTQIA+ content a few months back. And they have had a MASSIVE nazi infestation basically since they set up message boards because Gabe Newell is infamously libertarian.

So… chill a bit with the glazing. They are better in a lot of ways but they are not our friends.

A LOT of people complained when Thinkpad transferred from IBM to Lenovo. Like almost all things, it was progress conflated with racism.

The big “meaningful” complaint is that Lenovo used more plastics than aluminum. On the one hand, I get it: my T41 was a god damned beast that felt like it could stop a bullet (an important consideration in the US). It also apparently weighted 2.22 kg and I 100% noticed that on trips and even walking around town/campus.

And Lenovo bought the brand around the time that a LOT of people were noticing the weight of their laptops and there was a huge push for “ultrabook” form factors and the realization that it makes more sense to protect your device with a sleeve and a padded compartment rather than “military grade” construction. And… Asian factories were (and still are) much more agile and able to pivot. Whereas US factories still tend to take years (or decades…) to catch up to the rest of the world.

So we got the same xenophobic nonsense we’ve had in every other industry. These thin and light laptops with plastic shells ARE CHEAP PIECES OF SHIT THAT NOBODY CAN EVER REPAIR AND ARE ALL A SCAM SO BUY AMERICAN!!! Even though the shell has almost nothing to do with it and those still had screw based constructions. The real problem was the rapid shift towards soldering/gluing hardware in place. Some of that was to support ultrabook designs and some are just pure bullshit to prevent upgrades.

These days? Aluminum is king again because it “feels premium” but those shells are so ridiculously thin that they are arguably worse than polymer (still feels great though). I blame Apple.

But build quality wise? Lenovo straight up bought IBM’s laptop (and consumer PC?) divisions. It was the exact same factories and designers and capabilities.

All that said: Lenovo is also a REALLY Chinese company. For a personal device? I have zero qualms and literally bought a new laptop for the first time in like 9 years and it is a Thinkpad. From a professional standpoint? A competent IT department can vet devices. I… think I worked with a competent IT department once in my life. But, more importantly, if we are trying to do business with a government org or a high value company/target? They are fundamentally concerned about Supply Chain Hardening (and for good reason) and that just reeks of “We, personally, don’t care about that”. Which generally won’t outright kill a deal but it does put you on a back footing.

Framework Corp is massively frustrating because their secret sauce tech makes absolutely no sense for individuals (seriously, run the actual numbers. It is almost always cheaper to just buy two laptops AND you have less ewaste because there is no box of spare parts) but is PERFECT for enterprise/fleet deployments.

But Framework Corp has no interest in fulfilling that role. To my knowledge, there are no bulk ordering programs and their software/OEM support is fairly mediocre.

As far as enterprise laptops go? There is a full industry around macs for obvious reasons. On the PC side? The only vendors I really “trust” are Dell and Lenovo with MAYBE HP if the middleman org is confident. And… I LOVE a Thinkpad for my personal use (the nub is love. the nub is life) but there are very serious supply chain concerns for professional purposes.

But if Framework could cut the bullshit and either branch out or work with a middleman? Rapid repairs for keyboards and drives as well as tricking people into using USB C dongles would go a long way for many (most?) midsize companies.

Exactly.

If you are describing hitler’s role in WW2? Yes, he was The German Fuhrer.

I would say that, honestly, I prefer the second version as it is more accurate to what he was. But any time you change something you have to ask “what does it mean that we are changing things?”

And since musk is, at best, someone who wishes he was as cool as the losers on LUE back in the day? This is very much intentional.

The ISS (and most engines) also kind of need to be field/garage maintainable. Having to transport a maneuvering thruster back to JPL every few years is obviously a no go.

But also? O-rings (and many kinds of press fits and gaskets) ARE more “single use” than not. That… almost never happens.

Its similar to those wax rings for toilets. Anyone who has ever had to remove/replace a toilet will tell you: Get the actual wax rings because ANY kind of leakage is just hell. But… anyone who has ever actually had to install/replace a toilet will tell you to spend like 5x as much (so… 20 bucks instead of 4) for one of those rubber+wax rings. Technically that is ALSO single use/attempt only but… you actually get a few tries before you need to replace it and find a new helper. You’re going to regret it in 5-10 years when you realize the seal wasn’t great and that smell that wouldn’t go away is a slow leak of piss and shit gas but… it took you five minutes instead of fifty as you kept having to lift the toilet back up to replace the ring.

I feels like all these is really non-issue for dailly user, you’re not gonna open the stuff up every week, most likely you’re gonna need to do it once in a year or two to change some part. If you have any skill repairing stuff, cleaning it up is just a matter of having a toothbrush and some toothpick to clean up the gunk before doing the work, and you will already own a set of driver.

My issue is that it just doesn’t make any sense from an engineering perspective.

Yes, the vast majority of owners will never open their watches up. Hell, they will buy a new smartwatch LONG before they would need to. Like most “right to repair” style topics, we are really talking a very small subset of power users and repair shops.

But what does this get you over the industry/artisan standard? You need one less tool… except now you need a toothpick/brush to properly clean those screw heads. Arguably you always needed one since you SHOULD be deep cleaning your watch before any maintenance, but you technically don’t need one to remove a backplate. And while you probably COULD unscrew without cleaning, you are drastically increasing the likelihood of deforming the screw head and/or outright stripping it.

At best it is a sidegrade. But just look at some of the more… reddit-y responses to this. It is marketing influenced design. People think “screws? I can fix that!” and want to Believe in it.

And, generally speaking, I REALLY dislike stuff like this because it inevitably leads to “enshittification” where things get worse for everyone.

I love my Casio for exercising and hiking and the like.

Casios are, by and large, disposable items. They are not meant to be serviced. They are meant to be replaced. And there are countless stories of Casio putting a LOT of threadlock on those screws for that reason. For some you can get aroudn that to swap a battery or replace a lug but the “preferred” method is to send it to Casio and, if it is under warranty, they basically just send you a new one instead.

And the higher end Casios have twisting backplates that ARE meant to be repaired/maintained have the same twisting backplates as the rest.

Go look at how watches are actually disassembled.

You basically need something to twist it off (magnet, friction, a dedicated tool, or honestly just two properly sized prybars) and then you are set.

This is just yet another case of a tech company “disrupting” because they can’t be bothered to look at what the actual state of the art is and realize there is no point.

Those gonna get jam packed FULL of dead skin and gunk within days.

Watches, generally speaking, have a twist off back plate for that exact reason. And smart watches tend to add glue because it is more reliable than rubber gaskets for water resistance (and because it means you need to contact Apple for replacement parts…).

Its similar to the issue with screws in general. EVERYONE hates flat head screws. People who don’t know that they come in different sizes hates phillips. Everyone LOVES torx…

Until you have something that is exposed to dirt and debris on the regular. And suddenly you are digging the gunk out of those fancy heads by hand while they are still installed. Versus a quick scraping and using the god awful flathead.

A lot of people don’t understand how AI training and AI inference work, they are two completely separate processes.

Yes, they are. Not sure why you are bringing that up.

For those wondering what the actual difference is (possibly because they don’t seem to know):

At a high level, training is when you ingest data to create a model based on characteristics of that data. Inference is when you then apply a model to (preferably new) data. So think of training as “teaching” a model what a cat is, and inference as having that model scan through images for cats.

And a huge part of making a good model is providing good data. That is, generally speaking, done by labeling things ahead of time. Back in the day it was paying people to take an amazon survey where they said “hot dog or no hot dog”. These days… it is “anti-bot” technology that gets that for free (think about WHY every single website cares what is a fire hydrant or a bicycle…)

But that is ALSO just simple metrics like “Did the user use what we suggested”. Instead of saying “not hot dog” it is “good reply” or “no reply” or “still read email” or “ignored email” and so forth.

And once you know what your pain points are with TOTALLY anonymized user data, you can then “reproduce” said user data to add to your training set. Which is the kind of bullshit facebook, allegedly, has done for years where they’ll GLADLY delete your data if you request it… but not that picture of you at the McDonald’s down the street because that belongs to Ronjon Buck who worked there one summer. But they’ll gladly anonymize your user data so the picture of you actually just corresponds to “User 25156161616” that happens to be the sibling of your sister and so forth…

in fact a lot of research is being done right now trying to make it possible to do both because it would be really handy to be able to do them together and it can’t really be done like that yet.

That is literally just a feedback loop and is core to pretty much any “agentic” network/graph.

Go ahead and do so, they will have separate sections specifically about the use of data for training. Data privacy is regulated by a lot of laws, even in the United States, and corporate users are extremely picky about that sort of stuff.

There also tend to be laws about opting in and forced EULA agreements. It is almost like the megacorps have acknowledged that they’ll just do whatever and MAYBE pay a fee after they have made so much more money already.

Understand that basically ANYTHING that “uses AI” is using you for training data.

At its simplest, it is the old fashioned A/B testing where you are used as part of a reinforcement/labeling pipeline. Sometimes it gets considerably more bullshit as your very queries and what would make you make them are used to “give you a better experience” and so forth.

And if you read any of the EULAs (for the stuff that google opted users into…) you’ll see verbiage along those lines.

Of course, the reality is that google is going to train off our data regardless. But that is why it is a good idea to decouple your life from google as much as possible. It takes a long ass time but… no better time than today.

As it stands? Cloudflare is still incredibly effective at protecting customers from those DDOS attacks. Which, depending on your hosting solution, can mean very noticeable monetary savings because YOUR hardware/connection didn’t spike. And, regardless, can mean noticeable monetary savings as your engineers didn’t need to recover a crashed system because your setup was just sitting there idle.

That said: If you truly need high availability? You need to do what downdetector did and have alternatives ready in the event that Cloudflare falls over. Same as with your ISP… which should be ISPs plural.