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180716926
comment
bySteveWoz
2026 @04:11PM
(#65962954)
Attached to: When 20-Year-Old Bill Gates Fought the World's First Software Pirates
I, Steve Wozniak, did not participate in the theft of the BASIC. It was funny to me to see others enjoying doing this. I had never used BASIC myself, at that time, only the more-scientific languages like Fortran, Algol, and PL-1, and several assembly languages. I sniffed the air and sensed that you needed BASIC to sell computers into homes, because of the book 101 Games in BASIC. I loved games and saw games as the key. It was the [MS] BASIC that inspired me to write a BASIC interpreter for my 6502 processor, in order to have a more useful computer.
180715496
comment
bygurps_npc
2026 @10:33AM
(#65962470)
Attached to: China Executes 11 Members of Myanmar Scam Mafia
You gave the worst possible argument. That kind of argument convinces people you are not worth listening to. Here is a more effective argument against the death penalty.
There are three basic kinds of crime: Passion, Greed, Casual.
Passionate crimes are made in the heat of the moment without logical thought. When you realize your wife was sleeping with the boss that made you work late so he would have time with her, and then fired you rather than promoting you, you are not thinking logically about what the legal system is going to do to you. You shoot them both, emptying the gun. It is not a deterrent here.
The greedy criminal is sure they won't get caught. They have done this thing or something similar to it before, they think they know how the world works and people like them don't get caught.
The casual criminal always thinks this is not a big deal. it's just graffiti, or whatever. The worst I'll get is a slap on the wrist. Until they realize in Singapore kills you for importing marijuana.
180711390
comment
bygurps_npc
1, 2026 @07:09PM
(#65961760)
Attached to: Electric Flying Cars Now for Sale by California Company Pivotal
1) 1907, by Paul Cornu. He called it a helicopter. Did not go commercial until Sikorsky in 1939. You can keep it in your back yard, go straight up, needs no runway, fly anywhere, that's a personal flying vehicle, how is it different than a flying car?
2) 1930 if you demand a road ready vehicle for under $10,000 in 2026 dollars. Barry Bushmeyer created the first Powered Parachute. This is a wheeled vehicle with a pusher fan to push it forward. Get up to 25 miles per hour, release a parachute and up up away you go. You can get up to 10,000 feet in the air, with a max speed of 35 mph.
Helicopters are super expensive and hard to fly. PPCs are cheap, easy and fun to use - but are s.l.o.w. Faster, cheaper, safer, easier is what we have been working on it.
But we have definitely had commercially available flying cars for almost a century.
180709208
comment
bygurps_npc
1, 2026 @10:48AM
(#65960892)
Attached to: The Bill Gates-Epstein Bombshell - and What Most People Get Wrong
Finding a non-sent email in someone's draft folder, addressed to the author is not evidence.
I went into this story fully expecting to hate Bill Gates. Instead I find I agree with his statement. This looks like slander by a dead pedophile, not reality.
180709202
comment
bygurps_npc
1, 2026 @10:46AM
(#65960888)
Attached to: Was Waymo Robotaxi Speeding Before It 'Made Contact with a Young Pedestrian'?
A) 17 mph in a 15 mph zone is not worth talking about.
B) 6 mph is slower than a running person.
Vehicle worked within reasonable tolerances.
Could it do better? Yes. But this does not deserve a national story.
180709192
comment
bygurps_npc
1, 2026 @10:43AM
(#65960882)
Attached to: UK's First Rapid-Charging Battery Train Ready For Boarding
Rail of any kind is ideal for live wire. You already have a rail, just add one more and electrify. Either on the ground for cheap, or in the air for a minor additional cost.
Batteries are heavy. They cost power to move. You need one for every train. They have life spans less than the rail.
180702660
comment
bygurps_npc
2026 @02:37PM
(#65959658)
Attached to: Is research into recursive self-improvement becoming a safety hazard?
There are two ways to improve something - evolutionary changes and revolutionary changes.
Evolutionary changes is how the shape of a matchlock gun system to improve the speed and probability of firing.
Revolution is the change to a flint lock system involving a spark instead of a lit match. Evolution then perfects the flint lock system, only to be replaced by a revolutionary percussion cap system. Which then is perfected by evolution until it is replaced by a revolutionary cartridge with a primer system.
Recursive iterative work is evolution, not revolution. It will never beat human evolutionary thinking. And the graph of computer's growth demonstrates this. Recursive iteration is a slow improvement progress, not a revolutionary fast one.
180702584
comment
bygurps_npc
2026 @02:31PM
(#65959642)
Attached to: One-Third of US Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years, GDC Study Reveals
That is what I would do if I and 5 of my coworkers were fired from a high tech buiness.
180702566
comment
bygurps_npc
2026 @02:29PM
(#65959636)
Attached to: 'Call Screening is Aggravating the Rich and Powerful'
They use servants to get their laundry. But when they want to meet a new vendor to discuss buying 10,000 specialized computer chips, they call them up directly.
180702552
comment
bygurps_npc
2026 @02:26PM
(#65959630)
Attached to: DuckDuckGo Users Vote Overwhelmingly Against AI Features
The main issue I have with LLMs (they are not artificial intelligences, they are large language models, only the naturally stupid think they are intelligent), is them being forced on everything.
LLMs are very good at doing Intern jobs. Sell/get me coffee because you know I do not drink anything else while at work, collate these pages, draw a logo for this project, show me inspiration based on what other people do when doing this kind of project.
They suck at doing anything more complex. Do I have this disease? Is this legal? What causes autism? Do my taxes. Find me a cheap flight to Paris. Is the Earth flat?
If you use AI for this kind of thing, then you have the rare disease, it is definitely legal to steal property, the use of non-AI browsers causes Autism, the US government owes you 50 million rubles, here is a cheap flight to Paris, Kansas, and the Earth is shaped like a pyramid.
180701778
submission
Submitted
by
Gazelle Bay
ay January 30, 2026 @01:27PM
Gazelle Bay writes: One of the earliest speculations about machine intelligence was that, because it would be made of much simpler components than biological intelligence, like source code instead of cellular tissues, the machine would have a much easier time modifying itself. In principal, it would also have a much easier time improving itself, and therefore improving its ability to improve itself, thereby potentially leading to an exponential growth in cognitive performance—or an 'intelligence explosion,' as envisioned in 1965 by the mathematician Irving John Good.
Recently, this historically envisioned objective, called recursive self-improvement (RSI), has started to be publicly pursued by scientists and openly discussed by AI corporations' senior leadership. Perhaps the most visible signature of this trend is that a group of academic and corporate researchers will be hosting, in April, a first formal workshop explicitly focused on the subject, located at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), a premier conference for AI research. In their workshop proposal, organizers state they expect over 500 in attendance.
However, prior to recent discussions of the subject, RSI was often—but not always—seen as posing serious concerns about AI systems that executed it. These concerns were typically less focused on RSI, itself, and more focused on the consequences of RSI, like the intelligence explosion it might (hypothetically) generate. Were such an explosion not carefully controlled, or perhaps even if it were, various researchers argued that it might not secure the values or ethics of the system, even while bringing about exponential improvements to its problem solving capabilities—thereby making the system unpredictable or dangerous.
Recent developments have therefore raised questions about whether the topic is being treated with a sufficient safety focus. David Scott Krueger of the University of Montreal and Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, is critical of the research. "I think it's completely wild and crazy that this is happening, it's unconscionable," said Krueger to Foom in an interview. "It's being treated as if researchers are just trying to solve some random, arcane math problem ... it shows you how unserious the field is about the social impact of what it's doing."
180701674
comment
bygurps_npc
2026 @01:07PM
(#65959436)
Attached to: Do Markets Make Us Moral?
When you do not have a free market, you have scum bags ripping people off left and right.
This makes people wary and untrustworthy.
It is not that markets make us moral, instead they put scumbags out of business.
180701204
comment
bygurps_npc
2026 @11:50AM
(#65959214)
Attached to: 'Call Screening is Aggravating the Rich and Powerful'
What I take away from this article is the journalist is a moron that either thinks call screening is not annoying to everyone else, or somehow thinks the rich and powerful are different than anyone else (besides being rich and powerful).
We put up with it because the spam callers are far more annoying.
180701050
comment
bygurps_npc
2026 @11:16AM
(#65959112)
Attached to: Backseat Software
That is already done. anyone can write software.
The real problem with this idiot is thinking we are in late stage capitalism, rather than recognizing that the United States is in early state plutocracy.
We have allowed people claiming to be capitalists to negate the free market and instead put multiple anti-capitalist features into the economy, including, but not limited to:
1) Tariffs. (I still can't believe we are doing this old, weak crap)
2) Anti-ownership rules put into contracts (no repair, right to brick, etc.)
3) Monopolies
180686294
comment
bygurps_npc
9, 2026 @10:19AM
(#65956590)
Attached to: Amazon is Ending Its Palm ID System for Retail, Amazon One, as It Closes Physical Stores
My doctor's office uses it. I wonder will they end the use there too?
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