nyan

Problem is, we've never found a better system. They all suck, in various ways, many of them far worse than representative democracy. And that's even if no one's messing with the details of the setup to keep a certain group in power.

If we actually had superintelligent AI, I might be concerned. But what we have instead is stochastic parrots with no innate volition. In and of themselves, they aren't dangerous at all—it's the humans backing them that we have to be wary of.

Because AIs don't understand physics. Or anatomy, given that Tux has three flippers here. (Nor do the upper swooshes make visual sense.)

Someone too lazy to update their listings to reflect a rising sticker price (or not wishing to do so for other reasons) isn't too good to be true. If they're an established business selling new-in-box items at more than the wholesale price they would have paid (around 50% of the lowest sticker price the good's ever been sold at isn't a bad estimate), then you may have found a genuinely good deal.

It's when someone starts selling at below their cost (unless it's obviously to clear out old inventory or the like) that things get suspicious.

You only need one piece of (timeless) advice regarding what to look for, really: if it looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Caveat emptor.

Seriously, ending up with nothing is always a risk you run when buying something advertised as non-functional in the hope of fixing it or recovering any undamaged parts. The fact that the components on this card weren't original is almost irrelevant, because the result would have been the same if they were authentic but damaged beyond recovery.

I suspect they're making an unwarranted assumption that the experimental patient ended up with high cholesterol due to excessive consumption of animal products (rather than, say, a genetic defect that would cause them to overproduce it regardless of diet) and applying some typical vegan arguments regarding livestock farming. No need to listen to them.

There are still a few brands of dumb consumer TVs on the market, although they're becoming harder to find. Ars Technica did a roundup in December.

Even their older, simpler fridges are crappy. We bought one because our previous fridge conked out in mid-pandemic when the selection of new appliances was low. It lasted about three years before developing an issue that would have cost us more to fix than just replacing the damned thing. So we replaced it with some cheaper probably-Chinese brand I'd never heard of before and will never buy another Samsung appliance again if we can help it. AI will just add expensive, useless functions on top of their already poor design and dubious manufacturing.

In other words, if these become the only fridges in existence, I may just try to find out where I can purchase an old-fashioned icebox.

According to records obtained by the group, “it’s often impossible to tell which parts of a police report were generated by AI and which parts were written by an officer.”

This does not give me a great impression of the literacy level of American police officers. Another good reason to stay out of that country.

If you have no internet but want your music as a file, that's how you go about it.

They picked the wrong history, in my not so humble opinion. The AI situation looks more like the dot-com bubble, recycled.

Lacking government regulation in the largest markets, proper separation will never be enforced, because it isn't to the manufacturers' benefits. And that probably isn't going to happen until hacked infotainment systems kill enough people to draw attention, unfortunately.