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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • It is an interesting article, even if it’s conclusions are entirely too rosy. The “storefront” was a single vending machine, and the bot was instructed to interact with Anthropic employees (with an hourly cost attached) to do all physical interactions. While the bot did a decent job managing the stock most of the time, it made a lot of bad decisions based on trying to be too helpful to it’s customers. It also frequently hallucinated, with some hilarious results I wont spoil here. But as anyone who owns a small business knows, one bad decision could put it under, so saying that an AI can manage a vending machine well “most of the time” is equivalent to saying it cant do the job at all.

    Their conclusion is that with a bit more work, Claude might be able to perform as a middle-manager. To me, that says more about how useless middle-management is than how capable their AI is.





  • I’ll save you all a click

    Disney is planning to introduce “virtual storefronts” to its popular streaming services, including Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN. These storefronts will allow viewers to order snacks or pick out products they’ve seen in their favorite shows, all while continuing to stream their movie or show. Disney+ subscribers will see interactive ads pop up as well.

    So, basically, stuffing more ads into the premium service you paid for (presumably to avoid ads). These people don’t get it, do they?


  • I tend to agree (and also an EE). Airplane mode isn’t a total panacea, though. It just disables the cellular radio. While it also disables the Wifi and Bluetooth, those can always be turned back on, even while Airplane Mode is active. A motivated state actor can absolutely track via Wifi or Bluetooth. (Possibly even NFC, but the range on that is so low that I think it would impossible to do without seeing what is tracking you).

    Turning the phone off is the best solution if you want to keep rhe phone on your person. Guaranteed that all possible avenues for tracking is off, and also has the advantage that even if the phone is seized, the latest phone OSes require the passcode before doing anything at all when they first power up. Even the Police are limited in the data they can get off a phone that has just powered up and is asking for the passcode.



  • My biggest issue is with how AI is being marketed, particularly by Apple. Every single Apple Intelligence commercial is about a mediocre person who is not up to the task in front of them, but asks their iPhone for help and ends up skating by. Their families are happy, their co-workers are impressed, and they learn nothing about how to handle the task on their own the next time except that their phone bailed their lame ass out.

    It seems to be a reflection of our current political climate, though, where expertise is ignored, competence is scorned, and everyone is out for themselves.



  • It is likely the car USB port is looking through directories for MP3 files, and thats not now those iPods present themselves when hooked up via USB. You might be able to find an audio-to-bluetooth adapter, but it is likely you will not be able to control the device through the car’s interface, so you would have to press play manually.

    (Side note: older cars with USB might have a very low-level relationship with the USB sticks, where they read files in the order they were written to the device, without regard to what folders you put them in. There are utilities that can reorder the files’ physical position on the stick so that albums play in order)









  • I think these guys are overstating things a bit. The whole reason technical standards exist is to facilitate interoperability, and in most cases this interoperability leads to increased trade. It’s no accident that the first standards were developed during the industrial revolution, where we first started using machines to make parts, and they needed to fit together (like screws and nuts). Then, when the railroads came along, we needed new standards for things like track gague, because without it one countries’ trains couldn’t use the next countries’ track, making cross-border commerce more expensive. It’s also when we started to standardize time (because before the railroads, “noon” was whenever the sun was directly overhead, so varied by region).

    These standards weren’t developed altruistically, they were developed to generate more trade. There is a cost to developing them, and companies spend that money in the hopes of making more later. In theory, anyone can access the standards that the ITU or IEEE create, but to participate you need to show up at their meetings, and there is a cost to that. Large companies can afford to send key smart people to those meetings, out of the profit from the products they sell. What is more capitalistic than that?

    The standards process is anti-monopolist, though. The reason why they are as “open” as they are is to prevent a single entity from patenting key parts of the standard and gate-keeping access. There have been patented things in standards, but the SDO mandates that the parent-holder disclose it up front, and will not let it in the standard unless certain terms are met (which vary by SDO). It is not anti-capitalist, though, but rather it is a cabal of companies agreeing they won’t let any one of them gatekeep the rest.