There's definitely something to this idea. Our toddler absolutely loves her Yoto player, which is kind of like a tiny Walkman with cards instead of tapes. It's new but has that same old-tech feeling, IMO. She loves to pick out her favorite "albums" (some of which are stories) and listen to them. We have them all where she can easily grab them and swap them out. Have definitely lost a few cards but they're cheap enough and they usually turn up again eventually, plus it helps teach her to keep her things organized (if you lose it... it's gone!).
We also got an old VCR for free, and pulled out all the VHS tapes from the parents' attics. Another great system for the kiddo. We have an assortment of tapes that she can choose from, and we let her pick the tape and insert it herself. I think the tactile feeling of selecting and starting it up is very satisfying.
Somewhere along the way we forgot the importance of touch in interfacing with technology. We are definitely starved for that sensation in the modern world.
The concept is super cute, and it'd be nice if there were content actually on the cards. But it's 2026 and the rightsholders would never actually allow that. As soon as Yoto's servers go dark, there goes any content not already cached on your machine. (And maybe the stuff that is, due to licensing arrangements.) Fuck that shit so hard.
If I had kids, they're getting a cassette player. Bonus: it'll double as data storage for the C64 I'd buy them.
I wonder if minidisc can be used as a tape drive on a c64... ATRAC doesn't mess with audio fidelity much at all, and c64 tape bitrate has to be real low, right?
Even if you test a batch once, do people who get testing done do testing on all batches?
The synthesis of peptides uses some NASTY chemicals. I would be worried about lax manufacturer policies leading to contamination, even if one batch passes. The costs of FDA certification are the effect of that protection.
But whatever, this is the same attitude that people have against owning insurance. It is hard to recognize the cost of risk.
Clinical trials are not looking for fundamental mechanisms, they are there to ensure an effect is strong enough to say a product should be sold for that purpose. Otherwise you end up with snake oil salesmen. Because how can you be sure you are even injecting the thing the sellers claim it is?
I would encourage everyone interested in peptides to read about the state of medical science before the establishment of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
Causality was not the point. The point was to refute the seeding hypothesis, and because they found those molecules, the effort to falsify the hypothesis failed. Now we can move on to the next attempt to refute, which, as you say, might be to study whether molecules can survive conditions of reentry.
Experiments do not tell us that something IS a certain way; only the ways it is not.
The ideal situation for an expert is to prove causality!
It’s nearly impossible, but it is the holy grail!
This experiment was to try to falsify one theory, yes, but as you note that is a very long way from the actual goal - or the level of certainty that the article is trying to imply.
These articles are written due to funding needs, which is why the articles are the way they are - and why the scientists themselves are likely cringing too when they read these articles. At least until the checks (hopefully) arrive.
LLMs talk like people; there is nothing wrong with this. It's perfectly fine to be nice to something even if it isn't human. It's why we don't go around kicking dogs for fun.
I understand why people don't act polite to LLMs, but honestly I think not thanking them will make people act more dickish to other humans.
I like to think we can perceive a difference between a machine and a living being. I don't thank my bicycle for transporting me or thank my spell-checker for finding typos. I get that we are prone to anthropomorphize but was just something I found a bit surprising.
>I don't thank my bicycle for transporting me or thank my spell-checker for finding typos.
Neither your bicycle nor your spell-checker hold conversations and answer questions, neither of them is being used as therapist or virtual girl/boy friend, and neither's whole shtick is being trained on a ginormous human corpus to convincingly respond like a person.
I like to think we can perceive a difference between a bicycle and an something specifically developed and trained to pass for intelligence...
"I'm curious - do you have ANY idea what it costs to have humans write 100,000 lines of code???"
which any reasonable reading would take to mean "paid-by-line", which we all know doesn't happen. Otherwise, I could type out 30,000 lines of gibberish and take my fat paycheck.
It is not possible to "dox" a public employee because that information is legally public information. Don't become a public employee if you want your job to be private.
Fully agree. Forums predate social media and are some of the oldest parts of the internet. And it's not quite socializing... it's more like, are you broadcasting and consuming content? Or discussing it?
reply