Sure. There are however probably also plenty of examples where the opposite is true (people being hesitant to use newer better technologies) like not everyone wanting to use computers early on ("the old lady in accounting" etc), people not trusting new medications, people being slow in adopting tractors, people being afraid of electricity (yes!) etc. Change is hard, and people generally don't really want to change. Makes it even harder if you fear (which ~25% of people do, depending on where you are in the world) that AI can take your job (or a large part of it) in the future
I use AI and it makes me a lot more productive. I have coworkers who don’t use AI, and are still productive and valued. I also have coworkers who use AI and are useless. Using AI use as a criteria to do layoffs seems dumb, unless you have no other way to measure productivity
AI helps most for low-value tasks as well. The real valuable problems are the ones that can’t be solved easily, and AI is usually much less help with those problems (e.g., system design, kernel optimisation, making business decisions). I’ve seen many people say how AI helps them complete more low-value tasks in less time, which is great but not as meaningful as other work that AI is not that good at yet.
You have to get quite sophisticated to use AI for most higher-value tasks, and the ROI is much less clear than for just helping you write boilerplate. For example, using AI to help optimise GPU kernels by having it try lots of options autonomously is interesting to me, but not trivial to actually implement. Copilot is not gonna cut it.
If something is really clearly better, people come around. Some people never will but their children and apprentices adopt the new ways. A whole community of practice experimenting is very powerful. Everyone does not move at once, but people on this site know how often the cool new thing turns out to be a time bomb.
What is NOT their angle; ads, UGC, entertainment experience (algo etc), Metaverse and gaming, communication (WhatsApp, insta etc) and I’m sure they’ll take advantage anything that’s close to their core areas of interest or anything else big. AI is definitely the tide that lifts all boats but if you’re one of the top 5 tech companies in the world then the prize is incredibly large and not yet known.
The investors don't seem to agree, it seems to be sinking rn... Ads? They already sell ads, is their "AI" algorithm better than the current one developed over years by some of the smartest phds on the planet? I very much doubt that.
I would say do not run it (I only skimmed it), but if you 'wget' the script or grab it in your browser and just read it it's quite funny :) hats off to the developer.
ah yes of course - how silly of me haha :P I guess I couldn't keep myself from seeing what was behind the URL! I half-thought it might have been something more Rick Roll'y
This was incredible! Couldn't stop scrolling and reading. For a kid of a certain age and curiosity it'll blow their mind! I'm so grateful the creator made this, shame that his "buy me a coffee" isn't a simple PayPal or Apple Pay but you have to put in credit card or bank details!!
PayPal and Apple pay take a significant cut of the transaction. CC is a lot less and bank is mostly free of TX fees.
Most users don't know/don't care, so given the option, they will likely take it and funnel their donations to conglomerates.
PayPal doesn't cost significantly more than what a small online place can get from other payment processors. It's something like 3% + $0.50. That's also not much more than what a small business can usually get for in person credit cards.
This site does use buymeacoffee.com, which appears to be a dedicated payment platform. Its transaction fee is apparently 5%, which is steeper, but better for these small donations because of the lack of a fixed fee.
Maybe you'd like one of the banks that provides you with limited-use or one-time credit cards? I've been using one called Envelope Budgeting for the last few months after my previous one shut down. It's $40/year, but that's waived if you spend more than $5,000 USD in card purchases. I put the Neal.fun on my "Misc" card that I keep at $0 balance and transfer money to when I buy something.
I believe there are other services that will also give you virtual cards, I'm not familiar with them off hand.
I'm not understanding this sentiment at all. You'd rather input your CC details into a site whose main business isn't dealing safely with credit cards - rather than inputting it into Stripe (which is what his site uses), whose entire raison d'etre is doing so?
But xx% of some amount is still better than 100% of $0. And the pure convenience of using PayPal, Apple Pay or things like Ko-Fi will probably result in more net donations.
How do you pay with PayPal if not putting in your credit card or bank details? link is a pretty well-known online wallet and much simpler to use than PayPal.
I've never heard of link, so it's the difference between a random website and a well established brand. Not that hard to understand why someone might be hesitant to put in their cc details.
Not an American but there’s only very limited circumstances you can travel across the border home to the USA with foreign prescription drugs, right? And this scenario wouldn’t cover it. Unless you just meant they won’t get caught or maybe not fined or confiscated in practice? :)
That's mainly for visitors. If you're a US resident, you can't just buy medicines abroad, unless of course we are talking about the "they won’t get caught" scenario.
US residents can buy medicines abroad the FDA link says personal importation is allowed as long as the medicines are FDA approved and are not being imported for commercial purposes. Now in the context of the original post maybe generic versions of Ozempic won't technically be FDA approved yet if the company that produces it has to wait for the US patent to expire.
Of course you can buy medicine abroad and legally bring 90 day doses.
More over, you can order and ship medicine, including ozempic and zepbound, using American prescription from Canadian online pharmacies. For some drugs it’s quite cheaper than paying American prices.
"OK, Timmy. Here's what to do: Tell them there is a mysterious supernatural being watching their every move from a very tall building in New York, helped by legions of minions. If they behave nicely to you, they will be rewarded with a higher credit score."
Yeah it’s a complicated picture and of course nobody knows, but it would be helpful to split “benefits” into things like;
- net benefits to the average person (considering drawbacks)
- overall relative benefits compared to income groups
- benefits in certain areas of society and topics
I think there’ll be some “benefits for all” in terms of things like medical advances and health technology. There will also be broader benefits to all in general areas but as a parent poster said it’ll benefit equity holders most and there might be some bad tradeoffs (like we’ll have access to much better information and entertainment but it may also affect the overall employment rate). It’s a very nuanced picture and it’s probably disingenuous of some tech leaders to say “we’ll all benefit) but some do believe that will be the future.
Drone defence (detection and neutralisation) has to move fast because it’s quite asymmetric warfare (i.e drone worth $4K and take out a tank worth $30m) - over the last week for many nights Denmark’s airports and military installations has had drones disrupt air traffic and cause a lot of angst in the population and they were completely not prepared, haven’t wanted to shoot them down, and they don’t know where they’re coming from or where they’re going - scary that they’re caught so much on the back foot
They aren't on the back-foot, it's just that there's no way to minimize civilian casualties when Russia sends weapons of war into neutral civilian zones by definition. The answer becomes deny and don't engage.
Shooting at flying things in densely populated areas is generally a bad idea because when you miss, whatever ammunition you used falls on somebody on the ground. And if you hit, the debris falls on someone on the ground.
If you fly the drone 100m up in the air it will block commercial flying due to risk of collision but birdshot can’t reach it.
Even if you manage to hit it at that range there just isn’t enough kinetic power left to really do any damage.
For example here is a Finnish journalist being shot at 70m with birdshot. https://youtu.be/WJgzzrcSmNM?t=124 note that the shot did hit them but none managed to go trough the cardboard and normal civilian clothes were enough protection for other parts of the body.
Basically outside of drones that are trying to hit you (suicide fpv drones) birdshot is kinda useless as there isn't really any reason to fly them so close that they would be in effective range.
Lest anyone misinterpret your statement, shotguns are still dangerous at long range:
No. 7 1/2 shot carries, and is dangerous to humans, for 125
yards; No. 6 shot is dangerous for 250 yards; 3 and 4 shot are dangerous
for 300 yards and BB shot is dangerous for 450 yards.
The heavy shot used for geese is dangerous for 1,400 yards --
almost a mile.
The spread will mean you likely won't hit what you are aiming at, but it is still dangerous.
This poses a fun dilemma: the belief that Russia deliberately targets civilians (which is likely correct) almost requires us to also believe that the Russian army fields precision weaponry allowing deliberately targeting things (of which the evidence is scarce).
That's easy. Russia deliberately targets civilians, but being totally inept, misses and hits different civilians.
>of which the evidence is scarce
Is it?
Have a look at this one, where Russia hit Ukrainian MLRSes in a night strike.[0] Western media reported that as inhuman and savage Russians destroying a shopping mall.[1] The mall indeed suffered but only because the Ukrainians parked MLRSes next to it. Ironically the Ukraine itself provided the evidence of that by distributing video where they talk about the mall but incidentally show destroyed MLRS (the other one got evaporated).[2]
Re: Russia deliberately targets civilians, but being totally inept, misses and hits different civilians. -- Yep, absolutely, but this is unfalsifiable I guess. I mean, maybe they're targeting hostile aliens from space, but being inept, [...]
Re: Why do you think that? -- I extrapolate from Putin's allies really. Hamas specifically (and very vocally / proudly) targets civilians, Hezbollah targets civilians, Iran and Houthis routinely fire ballistic missiles at residential areas. (I'm only listing things I've actually witnessed, as a noncombatant.)
So intuitively they're all in the same bucket. I'll be happy to be completely wrong about Russia in this regard.
Here is one of the top Ukrainian propagandists posting in his personal channel a video from Belgorod (Russia) that shows wounded Russian women screaming and thrashing in agony (the text reads "Happy New Year, bitches") after Ukrainian MLRS strike at the city: https://t.me/dmytrogordon_official/39688
Here is the Ukraine targeting the same high-rise apartment building in Kazan with multiple drones: https://t.me/readovkanews/91042
I'd say it's a fine example of whataboutism in an argument. The fact that other people in history have committed atrocities does not mean it's hunky dory to Russia to murder people.
The discussion was on whether Russia targets civilians or not. That is not really a function of whether Ukraine does.
If you want to drag Russia vs Ukraine in, obviously Russia is hugely worse as the aggressor with their rapes and torture chambers and the like. I'm not Ukrainian or Russian and I don't think I've seen a clearer good vs evil war in my lifetime.
>That is not really a function of whether Ukraine does
It's a function of what you call what the Ukraine does. If you use a report of an isolated episode to justify the claim that "Russia deliberately targets civilians" accompanying all Western reporting on Russian strikes, than you surely must accept the statement that "Ukrainian soldiers have swastika tatoos"[0]. Do you?
>with their rapes and torture chambers and the like
You forgot the infants raped with teaspoons and Viagra kits distributed to Russian soldiers, all according to Ukrainian sources and Western politicians and media. Having said that, I'm sure war crimes happen just like in any war.
>I don't think I've seen a clearer good vs evil war in my lifetime
That's exactly what Western media wants you to think. Russian state media wants Russians think the same.
>I extrapolate from Putin's allies really. ... they're all in the same bucket
Hamas, Hezbolla or Houthis are hardly Russian allies. Iran isn't fighting on the Russian side like North Korea did, but I guess you can call them an ally of sorts.
Here is a bit about Israel, which supports the Ukraine:
Two of the sources told the outlets that in the first few weeks of the war, the IDF allowed up to 15 or 20 civilian deaths for every low-ranking Hamas militant assassinated.
That number could increase to up to more than 100 civilians if the IDF were targeting a single senior Hamas official, the sources said.
"There was a completely permissive policy regarding the casualties of operations," one source said, according to the report. "A policy so permissive that in my opinion it had an element of revenge." [0]
Assuming that's true, should we extrapolate that too?
Iran, well, we agree: they're very much aligned politically, seem to have shared weapon programs (rumor has it, Iran's Shahed drone == RF's Geran' drone).
Having said all that, I now realize that I must've misused the word ally to mean political sympathizer, my bad. I meant "closely aligned" more than anything, like when the Russian media says "Anglo-saxons" to describe the political bloc.
Re: Assuming that's true, should we extrapolate that too? -- Honestly, maybe? I don't have an opinion, much less an educated one.
The article says it didn't happen, just that maybe some people disembarked.
>The meeting where Putin says they have longstanding ties with Hamas
That's not exactly what he said: "Russia’s stable, long-term relationships with the Palestinian people, their representatives and various organizations". If you deal with Palestine you have to deal with Hamas. Russia has stable, long-term relationship with Israel too.
>I meant "closely aligned" more than anything
To some degree, what degree is that is debatable. It's more like the enemy of my enemy (the US) thing if you ask my opinion.
>rumor has it, Iran's Shahed drone == RF's Geran' drone
Russia used to import Shahed drones, than organized their production domestically with Iranian help, improved the design, greatly scaled the production, created a decoy version and a jet-powered version.
>Honestly, maybe? I don't have an opinion, much less an educated one.
Bullets are spin-stabilized: if you shoot at something in the air and miss, the bullet will generally still be lethal when it eventually returns to the ground. That’s a no-no in densely populated areas.
Sure, and for those reasons of probability of a successful hit, hunters don't tend to shoot birds on the wing with rifles either. I mean it's doable, but it's a very hard shot to land with a MK-1 Eyeball.
But we've seen infantry effectively using shotguns in Ukraine as a defensive weapon against drones for the same reason hunters use shotguns to shoot birds on the wing, within your weapon's range the odds of a disabling hit are pretty high if you're trained.
So not sure why it has to be either a rifle bullet _or_ a massively overengineered defense contractor's very expensive super-duper-shotgun round.
Haha, wait, it's flak guns again, just redone for the 21st century. Ah bless.
If the choice is restricted by stand-off range, that is a different kettle of fish, maybe do bring back the, once considered entirely obsoleted by high altitude aircraft and missiles flak.
But in the here and now, regular shotguns are being used defensively, with a certain level of success, by infantry against drones in Ukraine.
Based on random videos I have seen, it seems pretty difficult to shot down a drone with a shotgun. Sure, better than nothing, probably your best bet at that point.
Clay pigeon / skeet shooting is hard too, it's a competitive sport for a reason, but then, so is shooting a target with a rifle at 400 yards, but the armed forces train you up on that. So designated drone marksman might become an interesting new speciality in the modern army.
Can't some kind of shot shell get used that just throws pellets in the direction? Shorter effective range but way better chance of hitting the drone. Also, comparatively cheap.
What you linked seems like it would only be needed for an armored drone?
I'm fairly certain clay pigeon shooting type ammunition and aiming skills stand reasonable chances of hitting even small drones and doing sufficient damage to knock then out of the sky, but only at maybe 50m or so range. A typical attack drone like the types used in Ukraine right now are probably capable doing well over 30m/s on final approach, so it'd be a tough interception still, only about a one second window to get your shot off before it's likely to deliver it's payload ballistically even if you have scored a direct hit.
I suspect the same sort of skills displayed in Ukraine building home made Ardupilot based drones with optical final stage guidance could also be turned to building multi barrel "Phalanx-style" shotgun setups on manual plus computer-optical assisted aiming, in a form factor compact enough to be installed in the back of a Hilux. And that'd be very much the sort of mostly Commercial Off The Shelf approach that seems to do so well tipping the asymmetric warfare in Ukraine's favour in this war.
This system has a range up to 5 km. Shotguns shells are sometimes effective, often not. There are enough videos of, mostly Russians, trying to shoot them down with a shotgun.
This AHDEA ammunition, while expensive, will bring down not only a drone, airplane or chopper, but also artillery grenades.
No, the range is far too short. Hitting a moving target with normal bullets is not particularly difficult but you have to consider where those bullets land. Hence why many guns designed for this purpose use larger ammo capable of self-destructing if they don’t hit the target.
You're right– spin-stabilized bullets would have significantly less drag, thus would travel much higher, and thus come down with way more lethality. Honestly though, unless someone's trying to shoot the drone with a musket, all bullets are going to be stabilized somehow.
Nope. Maybe the idea was that an unstabilized slug will tumble and lose velocity quickly, after which it's just some junk falling from above, mostly harmless.
“Multi-day” battery life sounds wild! That’s probably the biggest thing for users. It would be good for Apple to get some competition because their M-chips seemed so far away from everything else.
Still, even if someone uses it for two hours a day and then just closes it being able to run for multiple days without charging the way Macs can is fantastic.
I agree it seems incredibly unlikely that you’re doing multiple days of eight hours of work without charging.
Longer is always better, so if it’s true at all great for them.
Any battery life claim needs to be aligned with the consumer-class operating system and application layer (iOS, Android, etc). Multi-day battery life on a non-Google-Pixel Android device with typical usage would be interesting.
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