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Open source software is not bug free. I’d argue there are more vulnerabilities caused by human error than there are caused by malicious actors. More often than not, malicious actors are just exploiting the errors/gaps left by completely legit designers.
Running those open source apps in a separate computer, isolating infotainment from the actual important software, would be an even stronger safety layer, imho.
Running it through the same computer is a bad practice, imho. Remember the Jeep Hack where researchers were able to dig into the integrated infotainment system and control the brakes?
I wouldn’t want to have critical car functions (or emissions control, regulatory software, ADAS, telematics, etc) depend on the same device that someone might be using to connect to the internet and/or run Android Auto apps. Regardless of whether it’s integrated or not.
I guess it might be ok to share energy and some non-critical capabilities with the infotainment system… but you can do that through a USB-C connection without requiring it be integrated directly in the vehicle. Imho they should be isolated, and what best way of isolating it than being completely different computers?
Most people already carry infotainment devices in their pockets that can be attached to holders and charging ports in the car. Even better if you connect a hub with some SSD storage to keep movies/music.
I feel infotainment systems bundled in cars are mostly redundant and explicitly made to be non-modular so that they can get you into their walled garden.
you shouldn’t be adjusting it while driving but, my response is why have it in the first place.
Exactly. If you shouldn’t be adjusting it, then why is the touchscreen even accepting adjustments in the first place? … it should be rejecting all touches whenever the engine is running to prevent people from even trying, which completely defeats the point of having a touchscreen in the first place anyway…
It makes no sense to have an input that explicitly requires you to take your eyes away from the road in order to operate it.
It’s meant in the sense of “underwhelming” (as shown by the follow-up comment the article references). It’s not incompatible to be surprised at how capable AI is (ie. being “impressed”) and at the same time be also unwilling to pay the costs / repercussions and want to ban / regulate it.
In this context, being deeply unimpressed with something is equivalent to calling that something “irrelevant” / “incapable”. If AI was no more impressive than it was before the LLM boom then there wouldn’t have been such a reaction against it to begin with. If anything, people being now opposed to modern AI is proof of how impactful AI has become.
Yea, but he’s (intentionally?) misrepresenting things… people are not “unimpressed” by AI, what they are is not interested in MS “agentic OS”, these are not the same things.
It’s irresponsible to hand in control of your machine to an AI integrated that deeply into the OS, particularly when it’s designed to be tethered to the network and it’s privately owned and managed by human entrepreneurs that do have the company’s interests as first and main priority.
I’m afraid of the price… this looks much more capable and powerful than the Index, which was quite expensive, I suspect it might end up in a similar price range, if not higher. But let’s hope.
Interestingly, it seems to be using a snapdragon ARM-based unit. Which means it requires another layer of emulation/translation for running Steam games standalone. It’s said it uses FEX (https://fex-emu.com/), probably combined/integrated with Proton.
According to LTT, the section containing the computer just weights under 190 grams (that’s about the weight of an average medium-sized apple).
The battery is the counterweight… which is actually a good thing to have… I have a fist generation Quest and the main problem with that one was the weight distribution. Adding weight to the back actually made it more bearable. Just by looking at how thin the front part of this one is, I can tell this is gonna be so much more comfortable.
Is the database publicly accessible somewhere? is it limited to an extension or can we simply browse it?
This looks like it could work better if developed in the open / collaboratively. Though from their FAQ it looks like they are still working in some open source platform:
Our wonderful devs are currently working on an open-source website to replace and improve our current and temporary platform.
In the meantime, we will continue to add and verify European brands to the database.
The thing is that Apple is even worse when it comes to its walled garden practices and locked-in bundled software. For example, in Android you can at least choose amongst alternative apps for SMS, etc. And some are even open source, and available in the official store. But in Apple devices you can’t compete with iMessage, by policy. It’s simply not allowed. Even from a technical standpoint it’s not possible either, since they don’t even offer an API for a third party iOS app to handle SMS/MMS/RCS. And that’s just 1 example.
So you are jumping from the pan to the fire if you go from Android to iOS. Even if you are ok giving up the “sideloading” aspect, you are still worse off with Apple anyway.
Yes! I mean, blame those who post AI-generated translations as if they were their own, or blame the AI scrappers that use those poorly generated pages for training, but it makes no sense to blame Wikipedia when the only thing they have done is just exist there and offer a platform for knowledge sharing.
In fact, this problem is hardly exclusive to Wikipedia, every platform with crowdsourced content is in some level susceptible to AI poisoning which ultimately ends up feeding other AIs, the loop exists in all platforms. Though I understand wanting to highlight particularly the risk of endangered languages being more vulnerable to this, since they have less content available to them so the AI models have a smaller dataset which makes them worse and more sensible to bad data.
This was long overdue! …and it’s not just a meaningless fine, since a solution needs to be proposed within 2 months:
In addition to the fine, Google was ordered to end these self-preferencing practices. It has 60 days to propose a solution, after which the Commission will asses the proposal and either accept Google’s remedy or impose its own.
As I understand it, it’s not limited locally. Africa’s Continental Internet Exchange (CIX) connects Africa internally first, but it still links globally. It’s about sovereignty, not isolation.
In terms of networking, this is not different from Europe and other regions with many local IXPs that allow regional traffic within the continent… the thing is that in the past, Africa has not had an infrastructure that allowed connecting to another African country without it being routed through international networks outside the continent.
And what search engines do you enable/disable in SearXNG?
SearXNG is one of those “alternatives that pull from google or similar”, which is what @[email protected] wanted to avoid.
But I don’t understand why don’t they go after the abusers, instead of imposing a fine to the platform. This looks like a criminal case, it’s not just a matter that should be left in the hands of the platform to begin with… so why focus on blaming the platform?
Someone got bullied so hard they died, and the response is to simply ban them and then punish the platform? It sounds like an approach designed by lawyers who just want to make money, instead of actually an attempt to fix/correct the problem.
It’s like blaming the email provider for allowing the exchange of messages and video files in a mailing group that was organizing crime… instead of actually investigating the people who committed the crime and enacting laws / setting precedent that could act as deterrent, independently of which channel was used while committing the crime. Then punish the platform if they are not collaborating or if they are found to be complicit (while investigating the criminals).
Probably it just means the configuration defaults that set the search engine have been changed. Honestly, I haven’t found a compelling Firefox fork that makes it worth it to put in risk the future of the Mozilla engine they are all based on. I almost feel that using one of the open source WebKit-based browsers out there instead might make more sense at that point. It’s been 10+ years since Google moved over to Blink, after all.
About the English thing… I have no idea, but you are right.
Yes, what makes it a genocide is the intent to target the civilian population belonging to that nation. It does not necessarily have to be about race or religion, it can still be genocide if it targets the nation. Russia doesn’t have a problem with the kids race, religion or ancestry, but with them being raised under Ukranian society and values.
Yeah, I think the confusion is assuming that it’s only a genocide when it targets specific subgroups inside a population. It also applies in terms of national groups (whole or in part). This means any attack that intents to kill civilians of a country (or that at least intents to not make any distinction between civilian or not) is a genocide.
For example, that list also includes genocide of Ukrainians by Russia.
In case someone somehow didn’t know yet: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
I feel we are gonna need to reach at least that 1.4M with all the companies being against it and actively lobbying. I bet they they are gonna be extremely nitpicky with the signatures to invalidate as many as possible.
It’s ironic how WebP lossless mode is actually better at compressing the image than the lossy mode.
I bet most people would use the default thinking that they are making a compromise and that increasing the quality would make the compression worse. They wouldn’t know unless they tested making the images themselves, because it’s not easy for users to differentiate lossy webp from lossless webp.
This imho is why lossless should be in its own format, instead of trying to make a single container format do everything, like WebP was trying. A new compression level for PNG would be most welcome.
There are many philosophers of the mind that agree that intelligence and consciousness are separate things.
Some examples are Daniel Dennett and John Searle.
There are also currents of thought in philosophy of the mind that disagree that even things like “slime mold” are mindless. Both from the materialist direction (like panpsychysm) and from the idealist direction (Bernardo Kastrup’s idealism).
Most philosophers of the mind would disagree that the reason for their field to exist really has anything to do with any specific terminology / position. I’d say it has more to do with curiosity and the interest for seeking truth. Like most fields of philosophy do.
Your definition of intelligence, which is what the AI companies use, has made people more confused than ever about “intelligence” and only serves the interests of the companies for generating hype and attracting investor cash.
I’d argue it’s your definition, which includes consciousness, what makes AI an attractive term for investors. Precisely because you say intelligence include awareness and it can lead to people to misinterpret AI as self-aware.
Promoting your definition helps the interests of the companies who want to generate hype, and causes just as much confusion as you attribute to mine in that regard.
At least mine is simpler and makes it easier to invalidate the hype, since if intelligence isn’t awareness then AI isn’t awareness. Many philosophers have agreed with that, for years, before LLMs were a thing. John Searle for example is famous for the Chinese room experiment.
Playnite
Interesting. Does it support gamepad input? I wonder how does it compare with things like Heroic Games launcher?
I don’t know, I feel it’s actually the opposite. Awareness is something you can only experience subjectively, it’s “qualia”, a quality that you cannot measure outside of yourself or detect externally. There’s a reason IQ (“intelligence” quotient) tests use puzzles/problems and don’t test conscious awareness. Most of the time in science intelligence is defined as problem solving and capacity to adapt/extrapolate because that definition makes it observable and more scientifically useful.
If it were to include awareness then we can’t in good faith answer the question: “is it intelligent?” …we can only say we don’t know. This is the main struggle of philosophy of the mind, what is often called “the hard problem of consciousness”. Empirical analysis would not show if something is having (or not) the conscious experience of being aware.
Yes, that’s what I meant 2 comments above by “fungus” (though to be fair, whether slime molds are fungi depends on your definition, they used to be classified as one, before “protist kingdom” was made up to mix protozoa, algae & molds, but I keep preferring the traditional autotroph / absorptive heterotroph / digestive heterotroph division).
I also mentioned ants who can find the optimal path by simply following scents left by other ants without understanding how this helps with that.
You can be intelligent without being aware of your intelligence, or you can be stupid without being aware of your stupidity… like how humans are actually creating problems for themselves in many cases.
Intelligence != awareness
Yes there there as many types of intelligence as there are types of problems. Emotional intelligence deals with emotional problems, social intelligence deals with social problems. This doesn’t conflict with my definition, it’s still problem solving.
Just because a being is intelligent does not mean it can solve all the problems of all kinds, it would require general intelligence, and even a generally intelligent being needs the right training… if you are trained wrong or trained for a different kind of problem that does not fit the current one then your current experience might actually get in the way, as you point out.
They’re no more intelligent than an AC/DC converter
The problem is in the definition of intelligence.
To me, intelligence is simply problem-solving ability. It does not necessarily imply consciousness, having self-awareness or anything like that. A simple calculator is already displaying intelligence, even if limited to a very narrow situational set of problems, in the sense that it can resolve mathematical questions.
That doesn’t mean the calculator is self aware… it just means it can resolve problems. Biological systems can also resolve problems without necessarily being aware of what they are doing… does the fungus actually knows it’s solving a maze the scientists prepared for it when it just expands following what is preprogrammed by its biological instincts determined by natural selection? Do the ants really know what they are doing when they find the shortest path just by instinctively following a scent of pheromones left by other ants?
Knowing exactly what causes consciousness is an entirely different problem… and it’s one that has not been resolved by any scientist or philosopher in a satisfactory manner. So we simply do not know that.
HDR and EXIF are great changes… APNG, if already being used for some apps/services, seems a logic choice. Maybe it’ll finally mean the end of gifs once and for all?
What I’m more excited for though, is the improvements in compression that the article hints that are being worked on. Specially if it can beat other more modern formats that have added lossless compression like jpegxl. I feel it’s best to have separate formats for lossless and lossy, to prevent the off-chance of lossyness getting through.
I mean… isn’t the point of decentralization that you can build your own service with the same protocol and still communicate with the other services?
There are ongoing initiatives for alternative stacks speaking the AT protocol, like Northsky, or Indiesky.
There’s also community-run labelers and blocklists for moderation. You can make the moderation stronger, what you might not be able to do is make it weaker if the PDS takes an account down fully, or the indexer/relay refuses to use it.
Ok, there are no numbers from 2024 yet in the source.
I think the solar capacity in 2023 for China was 525GW.
So a 277 GW increase in solar means it increased by (277 / 525) 52.76% (that’s great!)
That same percentage increase over the current value in terms of production would not make it rise past Australia per capita yet, but nobody can deny that’s an impressive pace.
Also, considering that the trend in population numbers for China is slowly inverting, that could also contribute to an increase in the per capita numbers in the future.
Doesn’t that table show Australia has double the consumption? also that consumption number is in total primary energy, regardless if the energy comes from solar or not.
I believe that to see how much of the TPES for each country comes from solar we would need to divide the solar production per capita by the total consumption per capita:
- Australia: 1774 kWh / 63257 kWh = 2.80%
- China: 410 kWh / 33267 kWh = 1.23%
Sources: the 2023 numbers from his link, and the 2023 numbers from the source in your wikipedia link.
Yes, I understand that more mining could be done, but what I was saying is that I don’t think it could be sustained to the level of silicon. Bismuth is a rare mineral, and 100 times more expensive than silicon.
China is the world’s largest market for semiconductors (50% of the chips in the world are traded there), if they want to use locally produced bismuth chips they would only be able to tackle a very small fraction of that. Either they are only used in special applications (like some particular specialized hardware at smaller scale) or it would be impossible, the Earth does not have enough resources to produce bismuth chips at the same scale as silicon. So I’m not sure if it could work as serious competition to silicon.
But we’ll see, maybe I’m wrong.
Silicon is like $3/kg (and that’s the higher price, it’s actually cheaper than that outside USA). I’m not sure if we could sustain the same level of manufacturing using bismuth without side effects. One of the best things about silicon is that it’s the second most abundant element in Earth’s lithosphere (the first being oxygen)… I don’t think the “line must go up” attitude around pushing for Moore’s law is a worthy effort. I’d rather we pushed for software to be more efficient, I don’t feel my PC is significantly faster than it was 10 years ago, despite its Hz having doubled.
I could understand using this for specialized applications, but I’m not convinced it should be something that should be made as widespread as silicon tech, so I don’t think this should really be seen as a replacement for it.
I agree, which is why I think running those open source apps in a separate computer, isolating infotainment from the more critical software, would be a stronger safety layer.
Them being separated should, imho, be a precondition, so that it can minimize accidents and exploits in cars that might be running software that is not immediately up to date as a result from publicly and well known vulnerabilities being discovered as the code evolves.