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Send not to know for whom the bell tolls (but in this case.......)

That article covers a lot about political parties having a fire drill, but ignores the simple answer: write ins.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 3:32 PM on May 5, 2024

Trump is not used to being required to do anything. This trial will wear him down in a way he hasn't experienced in his life. It's his first criminal trial, which comes with requirements. Civil trials, he could blow off attending because different rules. And he's had a ton of those across the decades. But this is a criminal trial, and he's not prepared.

I'm figuring that it's likely the only consequences he'll suffer from all of this, but at least it's something.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 4:38 PM on May 5, 2024

I suppose it makes sense, but it's still interesting to me that neither side has taken "A vote for Biden is a vote for Harris" as a slogan. I mean, Biden could easily live well past the length of his presidency, but how cool would it be if he resigned immediately after inauguration and handed the whole thing over as the first term of President Kamala Harris?
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 4:50 PM on May 5, 2024

The trouble with that is that Kamala is consistently less popular than Biden.

That's why you only do it after the election. Then she's got 4 years as an incumbent going into the next election.

It would be nice to see the Democrats play hardball for a change.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 4:59 PM on May 5, 2024

Democrats HATE Harris.

And Republicans, particularly the ones in DC, really HATE Trump. So? An incumbent president is as incumbent president, no matter how you personally feel about them.

A 2028 election between an 82 year old Trump and 64 year old Harris would be a beautiful thing.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 5:39 PM on May 5, 2024

Big ships in even bigger waves.

Not to oversell the point, but this needs a “barf“ tag.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 8:40 PM on May 4, 2024

These made me homesick for life at sea.

Oddly, they made me remember getting home sick.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 8:05 AM on May 5, 2024

10 PRINT "HELLO METAFILTER"; 20 GOTO 10

I can't wait to GOSUB a POKE.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 9:49 AM on May 3, 2024

(But "syntactic whitespace"? Who thought THAT was a good idea. And before you ask, spaces forever, not tabs.)

I think syntactic white space is a brilliant idea. But yeah, whoever thought it should go beyond spaces was not thinking clearly.

And then of course there was this.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 10:13 AM on May 3, 2024

And yet setjmp() and longjmp() remain.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 2:30 PM on May 3, 2024

Awww look at the wikkle murder machines!

remember the Terminator movies were not about ai driven robots treating people like trash,

You remember the first Terminator movie very differently than I do.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 6:23 AM on May 2, 2024

Nothing like a cop you can light on fire with a clean conscience.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 6:33 AM on May 2, 2024

Let’s say you were a normal unarmed human civilian person. How would you stop one of these?

At the moment? Quite easily. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.

In the long run, there’s probably no reason to use these as a police force. You’d want something with four legs at a minimum. At the moment, these are quite top-heavy and will go right over with some sustained force to the upper… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 7:09 AM on May 2, 2024

the idea of canid killbots doing hyperpop fortnite dances over my corpse

[runs off to patent truck-nuts for robots]
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 7:54 AM on May 2, 2024

a lot of money has been pumped into this R&D and I can tell you, it's not coming from Big Search & Rescue

Hard to say. Hyundai's current military offerings are mostly about big guns, but militaries have a large need for Search & Rescue.

Of course, right now mobile ground robots are being used for scouting buildings and sowing chaos with smoke and tear gas canisters. So if Hyundai is really going into the ground robot business that'll probably be their first use.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 8:47 AM on May 2, 2024

As far as I know, there is 0 market globally for search and rescue. Nobody is paying for it on a recurring basis.

My sister-in-law and quite a few other people have made entire careers out of doing search and rescue for the military.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 8:48 AM on May 2, 2024

This is one of the uses the military currently has in mind. Of course, arming the drones and dogs is probably the next step.

MCOE Experimental Company, 1st Battalion, 29th Infantry Regiment, 316th conducted an urban assault. But instead of human soldiers rushing across open areas and bursting into buildings, robots took the lead.

Rainey said 20 soldiers with four robotic vehicles were able to cross the open terrain to reach the building. But… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 8:58 AM on May 2, 2024

A lot of these messier repetitive jobs are all lined up for AI. It won’t surprise me if some of the LLM techniques turn out to be useful in learning the Language of Towels.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 11:50 AM on May 2, 2024

they're not going to replace cops, they'll be driven around by cops, so they can main and kill people without the cops being on site. that is the cop wet dream. lethal force projection with zero personal risk.

That ship sailed a while ago.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 2:58 PM on May 2, 2024

Re-light my fire

We used to use hair mousse for the same effect, leading to evenings where we exhaustively searched the mousse brands in the supermarket for the highest alcohol content.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 8:55 AM on April 30, 2024

(the mousse version)
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 9:00 AM on April 30, 2024

Kiwi takes a nap in Far North woman's chicken coop

Heh. Given that “Kiwi” is often used as a slang term for New Zealander the headline evoked a very different image for me than what it was.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 6:40 AM on April 30, 2024

Strippers' bill of rights bill signed into law in Washington state

Excellent!
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 9:01 PM on April 28, 2024

In California topless bars (as opposed to full frontal) are allowed to serve alcohol. They make a good place to take customers for business lunches. Basically during the day they are “Hooters” without the T-shirts.

I’m told that as the day goes on things get closer to being a “regular” strip club. That part is unclear to me, I’d be fascinated to know the truth of it.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 5:50 AM on April 29, 2024

>They make a good place to take customers for business lunches.

In what industries is this still an acceptable thing to do??

I retired 7 years ago but at that time it was still a thing in the Networking Equipment business. I would be very surprised if companies who regularly make deals in the tens of millions don't still turn a blind eye to whatever the sales guys do.

To be cynical about it you… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 7:47 PM on April 29, 2024

That's the main reason I assumed it was mostly gone as a formal thing - Raytheon may not *care*, but presumably they're still subject to hostile workplace suits and the like? It seems like having those charges on a company card would be pretty hard to defend and still argue that you're an equal employer...

I strongly suspect you’re right. However, given the sort of commissions sales guys see on these deals, I’m guessing they see it as a very small… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 5:48 AM on April 30, 2024

The most energetic & misunderstood figure in all of speculative fiction

He reveled in being an asshole

Great writer, but his legendary reputation for challenging the status quo is greatly oversold. The guy was just an asshole, and his antics hewed far closer to the WWE than social activism.

He did pioneer a few things in his writing, but they’ve been explored much more deeply and thoroughly since then. If you’re interested in the development of science fiction I highly recommend him, but he didn’t “slip through the cracks”; he slipped into history.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 6:03 AM on April 28, 2024

edgelord

That is an excellent description of something he pioneered, that was greatly imitated in the fan community, and has spread virulently over the years. It is as distinctively his legacy as much as anything he wrote.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 7:23 AM on April 28, 2024

"hold up, you know there are a lot of people out there who can create great art and who aren't assholes" and/or "why do we have to accept the asshole along with the art?"

Or as I sometimes put it: "How can get the slime off this book?"
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 8:15 AM on April 28, 2024

The best people can make the worst art. The worst people can make the best art. Ignore the artist; pay attention to the art.

Just remember to scrub the slime off of yourself afterwards.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 9:10 PM on April 28, 2024

Also, i don't think you ever have to "scrub the slime off of yourself" when you're reading work by someone who's safely dead

A point on which, I think, reasonable people can disagree.

I’ve found that learning new things about an artist can significantly change the way I interpret their work; OSC’s depiction of soaped up young boys wrestling in hot steamy showers in particular has taken on a new meaning over time.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 6:13 AM on April 29, 2024

i would, i guess, reserve that for having become complicit in someone's misbehavior (even if only to the extent of contributing 30¢ in royalties to some shithead by way of buying their books)

For me that's a separate issue, and honestly not one I think reasonable people can disagree on.

Reading and valuing works by dead problematic authors doesn't leave me feeling morally compromised, just vaguely icky -- reading stories from… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 12:25 PM on April 29, 2024

"One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea"

Or you can say that "just" is a four letter word.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 7:54 AM on April 25, 2024

I've mentioned it before: a law professor once told our class that the answer to any question beginning "why don't they" is usually "money."

I've found that is often a good first order approximation. However, even in that case the question of "Why don't they want to pay?" is important.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 8:32 AM on April 25, 2024

EPIC indeed

From the Earth we only get to see the full frontal view.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 1:55 PM on April 24, 2024

"so many tech demos end up hiding an ugly truth deep down"

They observe every instance of shoplifting and identify shoplifters, although they generally don't ban or arrest people until the amount of an individual's theft exceeds a certain dollar amount.

I don't know what that threshhold is […]

For most chains it’s whatever the local jurisdiction classifies as Grand Theft, usually $1000 or so. Petit theft isn’t worth pursuing so they let people dig a deep enough hole and then act.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 10:36 AM on April 18, 2024

On the news this morning, it was reported that Amazon may be leaving its own automat shopping stores, but it is now packaging the system to sell to other shopping providers. So… it was all just a beta test before shipping the product.

That makes a lot of sense, a beta test for both the technology and the marketing strategy.

For the technology it particularly makes sense to have someone double checking every action before you try to sell the system as a standalone.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 10:42 AM on April 18, 2024

My engineering team went out to lunch together for years and the bill always totaled correctly with tip. The only time we ever came up short was when we had invited a guy from marketing. We’ll say it was bad math.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 9:59 AM on April 19, 2024

Sheep are much cannier than we give them credit for

To my great disappointment no one has ever gotten video of a sheep doing a commando roll over a cattle guard. Unfortunately, in the modern world that is a sign of an urban legend. :-(
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 8:06 AM on April 15, 2024

Apparently, Meta deems climate change too controversial for discussion

It's like a partial converse of Einstein's line in response to '100 authors against Einstein': If I were wrong, then one would have been enough.

Oddly, I quote that every time people tell me I should believe in anthropogenic climate change because millions of scientists do.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 6:58 PM on April 13, 2024

But actual science works by someone suggesting an idea and enough people deciding that idea is true

The difference I think between science and a popularity contest is the criteria people are expected use for deciding on the winner. For me the phrase "popularity contest" evokes a sense of the winner being determined by emotional appeal.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 7:14 PM on April 13, 2024

I think I see what you're saying hippybear. The process of doing science can sometimes be a popularity contest. The actual results, not so much.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 7:42 PM on April 13, 2024

The US may be largely responsible for the climate crisis

The U.S. flatters itself.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 9:33 PM on April 13, 2024

…sort of both right

Fair enough.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 10:31 PM on April 13, 2024

Levine mostly finds this amusing

Right, and if they weren’t already aware ($5 says they were, but not $25) it’s a simple fix that will be patched immediately for this case and detecting it in the future will become a priority for the ingest team

Ah, but that's where real knowledge and experience gaps come into play. Someone who is naively fixing the situation might just take two minutes to put those websites on a blacklist. After all it would be a pain to fix the algorithm and the… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 9:22 AM on April 12, 2024

…the extremely obvious solution of pairing a typical exclusion filter (blacklist is problematic) with a classifier trained on the excluded data for systemic filtering in the future. Like, c’mon, this isn’t hard.

Not if it's something you're familiar with. However, as your company isn't in the business of web-scraping you (the director of data acquisition) just bought a third party solution and the fresh grad AI scientist you had devote 50% of his time… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 9:43 AM on April 12, 2024

They’re not domain names. They are host names.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 12:21 PM on April 12, 2024

You don't. You have 6,859,000,000 subdomains


What adamrice describes with subdomains is entirely doable, but for the record www.web.sp.am is just using hostnames. I'm not sure why it's stated differently in the article.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 12:44 PM on April 12, 2024

stop defending the industry so loudly when we gripe about it?

Stemming Metafilter's tendency to histrionically condemn entire branches of human endeavor is always a good thing. Some people are known to paint with too broad a brush -- a lot of people here don't seem to own anything short of a paint sprayer.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 12:50 PM on April 12, 2024

they'll take you emperor-franz-josef.web.sp.am or whatever (and that's actually a sub-subdomain!).

I don't think that's the case...? emperor-franz-josef.web.sp.am resolves to a host record.


$ host -a emperor-franz-josef.web.sp.am
Trying "emperor-franz-josef.web.sp.am"
;; -HEADER- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 58097
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1,… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 4:45 PM on April 13, 2024