●Stories
●Firehose
●All
●Popular
●Polls
●Software
●Thought Leadership
Submit
●
Login
●or
●
Sign up
●Topics:
●Devices
●Build
●Entertainment
●Technology
●Open Source
●Science
●YRO
●Follow us:
●RSS
●Facebook
●LinkedIn
●Twitter
●
Youtube
●
Mastodon
●Bluesky
Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!
Forgot your password?
Close
wnewsdaystalestupid
sightfulinterestingmaybe
cflamebaittrollredundantoverrated
vefunnyunderrated
podupeerror
×
180687728
comment
byjbeaupre
2026 @11:49AM
(#65956850)
Attached to: Kernel Community Drafts a Plan For Replacing Linus Torvalds
Years ago I founded a company and was raising capital. The bus scenario would always come up and we would describe our well thought out plan for replacing me. The response was unenthusiastic.
One day I flippantly replied "I won't care about your money, because I'll be dead." Then would go on to describe the plan. That bit of frank honesty combined with a thoughtful plan made raising money much easier.
180491891
comment
byjbeaupre
31, 2025 @09:33AM
(#65892601)
Attached to: New York's MetroCard Era Ends After 31 Years
All well and good, but I was thinking about field trips from schools outside NYC. But as other posts note, it's possible to buy an Oyster card in London. I assume NYC will have a similar scheme.
180487979
comment
byjbeaupre
2025 @02:36PM
(#65890853)
Attached to: New York's MetroCard Era Ends After 31 Years
I took my son to London and had a great time using the Underground and the bus system. Paying with contactless credit card was very convenient. And the payment cap per day was nice. But I was left wondering about one potential issue.
What do you do if one of you doesn't have a credit card or smart device/phone with payment system? Fortunately, I had two credit cards (we didn't have a data plan in London). So no real problem for us. It still left me wondering what would people do if they a payment method for each person? i.e what if you are riding more than a few times and hit the payment cap due to swiping multiple times per ride. Seems like either a chance to be accused of fraud. Or actual fraud.
What would happen to, say, a class field trip visiting NYC? I'm genuinely curious what people do in those edge cases.
179589446
comment
byjbeaupre
2025 @12:54PM
(#65690734)
Attached to: New Claude Model Runs 30-Hour Marathon To Create 11,000-Line Slack Clone
Keep in mind that non-human generated code may not have copyright. Not open source, which does have a copyright. But no copyright at all.
There's an argument that if it is modified by a human, it can be copyrighted. But that could be line by line.
178203930
comment
byjbeaupre
5 @10:22AM
(#65480060)
Attached to: New IQ Research Shows Why Smarter People Make Better Decisions
You do realize the incident you point to happened 170 miles away, right? And wasn't Haitian? When people say "nobody is eating cats" in the context of the time, they meant Haitians in Springfield. They weren't ignoring half the facts. They were ignoring irrelevant facts.
178203892
comment
byjbeaupre
5 @10:16AM
(#65480044)
Attached to: 36% of Chinese Undergraduates Choose Engineering, Compared To 5% in US and UK
I worked for 10 years in China with engineers. I'm one myself. This is what I learned:
Most go into it because they don't want to work with their hands. i.e. get dirty. It's not because they have any particular interest. It's for the money and social status. As such, ~80% of the ones I worked with were unimpressive. They do what they are told, nothing more, nothing less. Minimal problem solving skills. No curiosity. Your average US high school student would definitely know less engineering, but could do a better job without being micromanaged.
This isn't to say they were bad people. Some were friends. The system in China just tend to create a lot of these people. And if you are brute forcing a project and able to micromanage, it's a powerful resource.
The other ~10 percent were more typical of Western engineers. Loved technology, hands on, tinkered with stuff, curious, smart. And yeah, a bit nerdy. That said, the work culture still ties their hands. You're to stay in your lane. Don't question superiors. Do exactly as you are told. We had several meetings where it was explained that it is their job to call bullshit on me.
They liked that, but it didn't come naturally. There was one guy that was an absolute master at it. He was incredibly polite about it. So much so that when he started acting a certain way, I knew I'd effed up and just had to wait for him to politely tell me he must be wrong and could I please help him learn where he made a mistake. To this day, I still feel he was being sincere. Dude should teach classes in how to tell your boss he is wrong.
Anyway, just comparing engineering numbers in China and the US misses a lot of nuance.
176876141
comment
byjbeaupre
25 @04:00PM
(#65272655)
Attached to: ChatGPT 'Added One Million Users In the Last Hour'
How many of those million users are AI training programs?
176771009
comment
byjbeaupre
2025 @09:09AM
(#65244793)
Attached to: The Effect of Application Fees on Entry into Patenting
Filing a patent does not require a lawyer. I am not a lawyer or patent agent and have written patents for my own inventions. But I'm not a typical inventor. I've worked with lawyers to review thousands of patents and have worked with them to write dozens, including doing the drawings and drafting claims.
But with that said, it's incredibly difficult and time consuming, so usually wise to use a lawyer. Which costs anywhere from $5000 to $20,000. So saving a couple hundred dollars in filing fees doesn't mean much.
Especially if you start dealing with responses, international filings, maintenance fees, etc. Then you better budget $10,000 to $250,000 or more.
176770973
comment
byjbeaupre
2025 @09:00AM
(#65244779)
Attached to: The Effect of Application Fees on Entry into Patenting
As someone who has filed with large corporations, small, and micro, it's kinda hard to miss. It's a box you can check on the payment options.
176770965
comment
byjbeaupre
2025 @08:58AM
(#65244775)
Attached to: The Effect of Application Fees on Entry into Patenting
You don't have to defend a patent against infringement to keep it. That may be sorta true for trademark, but is not true for patents. "Defend against infringement" isn't even a thing. A patent holder can chose to enforce or not enforce their rights as the patent holder as they see fit, They can enforce absolutely, selectively, or not at all. Immediately, or delayed.
176187487
comment
byjbeaupre
2025 @05:28PM
(#65160315)
Attached to: AI Can Now Replicate Itself
https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/11/0137223/ai-can-now-replicate-itself
176034931
comment
byjbeaupre
2025 @02:16PM
(#65115847)
Attached to: Electric Cars in UK Last as Long as Petrol and Diesel Vehicles, Study Finds
That's where Weibull distributions come into play. It doesn't require a normal distribution in the data set. Like all statistics, it can benefit from more data. But it does a remarkable job of estimating failure rates from partial data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
175774241
comment
byjbeaupre
2024 @09:05AM
(#65042653)
Attached to: 'The Paper Passport Is Dying'
When I travel internationally for work, immigration checks are just one of the many times I have to get out my passport. Depending on the country:
Hotel check in
Train tickets
Airline tickets
Museum entrance
Security checkpoints
Credit card verification
Car rental
Dealing with police
ID at hospitals
ID at companies I visit
And so on
By law, I have to carry it with me at all times in some countries.
172008881
comment
byjbeaupre
2023 @05:12AM
(#63922221)
Attached to: Who Runs the Best US Schools? It May Be the Defense Department
Not all states fund schools with property taxes. It differs by state. NM for example is state funding with some federal dollars sprinkled in.
https://www.nmlegis.gov/entity...
It's a poor state, so the schools still struggle. And there are good schools and bad schools, which often mirror parental expectations. But there isn't a huge disparity between schools you might see in other states.
171850622
comment
byjbeaupre
2023 @03:07PM
(#63858518)
Attached to: 'In Most Industries, Regulation Tends To Prevent Competition'
Coincidentally, I'm taking a break from drafting compliance plans for a medical device and decided to peruse Slashdot.
Having worked at several medical companies, I can say that the bigger the company, the less they think safety and efficacy testing is a waste of time. Pharmaceutical companies are just fine with the testing. They don't actually complain because gives them cover for charging a lot and creates immense barriers to entry.
I worked for a while at a Chinese device manufacturer to implement regulatory compliance for US and EU. Some managers fought it as a waste of time. They were let go. Eventually we grew to the largest in our market segment despite being more expensive. Our stuff was good and surgeons trusted it. Good regulations help everyone.
But the project I am working on at the moment is a great example of being over regulated. It measures the time for a patient to press a button. That's it. But it's lumped into the same category as electric bone saws. Everything must be documented, tested, validated, purchased, tracked, etc to the same degree. That's down to the individual screws, resistors, etc. The FDA requirements have some flexibility. If something is not applicable, they will listen. The EU MDR is ridiculous. I can reduce 3/4 of my compliance work out by ditching the EU as a market. One of dozens of examples: Why is cytotoxicity testing required on a button? The panel? Because ISO 10993 doesn't differentiate between something you strap to a patient's face for 24 hours and a button they press with a finger. Same with too many standards.
Yeah, I'm complaining, so you won't trust me. But the expense is real and is getting passed on.
« Newer
Older »
Slashdot Top Deals
●(email not shown publicly)
●
Member of the 10100 Digit (binary) UID Club
●
Years Read
●
Got a Score:5 Comment
●
Re:Corporate governance 101
●
Re:One potential issue (curious about solution)
●
One potential issue (curious about solution)
(Score:2)
●
No copyright
●
Re:Duh
(Score:4, Informative)
●
rocket (submissions)
●
armadillo (submissions)
●
space (submissions)
●
slashdot (submissions)
●
entropy (submissions)
●
Armadillo's in Space
●
Clever desalinization
●
Computer voodoo
Slashdot
●
Submit Story
BYTE editors are people who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then
carefully print the chaff.
●FAQ
●Story Archive
●Hall of Fame
●Advertising
●Terms
●Privacy Statement
●About
●Feedback
●Mobile View
●Blog
Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
Copyright © 2026 Slashdot Media. All Rights Reserved.
×
Close
Working...
Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
Copyright © 2026 Slashdot Media. All Rights Reserved.
×
Close
Working...