Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. Netflix Introduces a New Kind of Subtitles For the Non-Hearing Impaired
  2. Apple TV+ Is ‘Worst Marketer In the Universe,’ Says Producer
  3. World’s Biggest Zipper Maker Is Developing a Self-Propelled Zipper
  4. Devs Sound Alarm After Microsoft Subtracts C/C++ Extension From VS Code Forks
  5. Comcast President Bemoans Broadband Customer Losses: ‘We Are Not Winning’
  6. DoorDash Makes $3.6 Billion Offer For Deliveroo
  7. Google Is Killing Software Support For Early Nest Thermostats
  8. Government Censorship Comes To Bluesky
  9. Top Colleges Are Too Costly Even for Parents Making $300,000
  10. Microsoft Launches Windows Recall After Year-Long Delay
  11. Intel’s AI PC Chips Aren’t Selling Well
  12. How Democrats and Republicans Cite Science
  13. Swiss National Bank Chairman Rebuffs Bitcoin as Reserve Asset
  14. Microsoft’s Big AI Hire Can’t Match OpenAI
  15. Microsoft To Kill Windows Maps App in July

Alterslash picks up to the best 5 comments from each of the day’s Slashdot stories, and presents them on a single page for easy reading.

Netflix Introduces a New Kind of Subtitles For the Non-Hearing Impaired

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:
Multiple studies and investigations have found that about half of American households watch TV and movies with subtitles on, but only a relatively small portion of those include someone with a hearing disability. That’s because of the trouble many people have understanding dialogue in modern viewing situations, and Netflix has now introduced a subtitles option to help.

The closed captioning we’ve all been using for years includes not only the words the people on-screen are saying, but additional information needed by the hard of hearing, including character names, music cues (“dramatic music intensifies”) and sound effects (“loud explosion”). For those who just wanted to make sure they didn’t miss a word here and there, the frequent descriptions of sound effects and music could be distracting. This new format omits those extras, just including the spoken words and nothing else — even in the same language as the spoken dialogue. The feature will be available in new Netflix original programming, starting with the new season of You in multiple languages. Netflix says it’s looking at bringing the option to older titles in the library (including those not produced by Netflix) in the future.

Traditional closed captions are still available, of course. Those are labeled “English CC” whereas this new option is simply labeled “English” (or whatever your preferred language is).

“New kind”?

By Mr. Dollar Ton • Score: 3 Thread

The subtitles have traditionally shown only the spoken words.

The SDH kind was “new” at some point, but that was so long ago that there was no Netflix back then.

Just stop with this promotion of dumb.

Fix the actual problem!

By Going_Digital • Score: 3 Thread
The fact that this is an issue, shows that there is a fundamental problem with the audio quality. Given that Netflix produces their own content, they can start by having proper audio quality standards on those productions, and complaining to suppliers of content about the poor audio quality. It is time the producers started creating content fit for purpose, not hiding behind creative license to produce substandard audio.

Apple TV+ Is ‘Worst Marketer In the Universe,’ Says Producer

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
TV producer Alex Berger criticized Apple TV+ as "the worst marketer in the universe" for failing to promote his French-language show La Maison, despite its success in Europe. Berger said he initially partnered with Apple out of hope, but ultimately felt they undermined their own content by not supporting it properly. 9to5Mac reports:
Rafa Sales Ross at Variety recently interviewed TV producer Alex Berger, who made La Maison for Apple TV+. That partnership is apparently not one he intends to repeat: “Marketing makes a show,” he emphasized. “Apple, for example, is probably the worst marketer in the universe — the best for iPhones, the worst for television. They don’t do marketing, and it was an issue for us with ‘La Maison.’ We did a great show that had an amazing success in France and other places in Europe, but they never promoted it. It drove me crazy.”

Asked why, while believing Apple TV+ to lack in marketing efforts, did he decide to take “La Maison” to the streamer, Berger said simply: “Hope. We had hope.” “Apple TV+ had never done a show in France and never really done a show in Europe,” adds the producer. "‘Slow Horses’ started [things] in the U.K., but it was with the U.S.. I was hoping I would change them. We got very frustrated and just thought at one point that they were shooting themselves in the foot, and why?
“La Maison faced the additional challenge of being a French-language series, at the time one of the only non-English shows on the streamer,” notes 9to5Mac’s Ryan Christoffel. “So it had an uphill battle already, making Apple’s marketing struggles even more of a problem.”

World’s Biggest Zipper Maker Is Developing a Self-Propelled Zipper

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
YKK, the world’s largest zipper maker, has unveiled a prototype self-propelled zipper that uses a motorized worm gear to zip itself closed at the push of a button. It currently relies on a wired remote and external power, and can zip spans up to 16 feet in under a minute. The Verge reports:
Although some recent zipper innovations, such as Under Armour’s one-handed MagZip upgrade, are designed to improve accessibility and make zippers easier to use for those with limited mobility, YKK envisions more industrial use cases for its prototype. As demonstrated in a video recently shared on the company’s YouTube channel, the self-propelled zipper is seen connecting a pair of 16-foot-tall membranes in about 40 seconds. Zipping them together manually would require the use of a ladder or other machinery.

In another video, the prototype is used to quickly connect a pair of 13-foot-wide temporary shelters standing over eight feet tall, taking about 50 seconds to progress from one side to the other. […] In addition to miniaturizing the tech and adding a battery, YKK would also need to develop some safety mechanisms before its self-propelled zipper could ever reach consumers’ clothing, ensuring there’s nothing that might get stuck.

Self Propelled Zipper . . .

By Local ID10T • Score: 5, Funny Thread

What could possibly go wrong? (ouch)

As someone who has deployed portable stuff…

By ctilsie242 • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

As someone who has deployed portable stuff, this could be immensely useful, provided the zipper doesn’t get fouled on dirt or grime, especially for larger stuff like beer tents. If it is remotely controlled, it could even be used to open/close vents in the top which can be useful if the weather turns from hot to rainy.

Overall, it is a simple thing, but there are a lot of niche applications for this where it can come in handy.

Devs Sound Alarm After Microsoft Subtracts C/C++ Extension From VS Code Forks

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Some developers are “crying foul” after Microsoft’s C/C++ extension for Visual Studio Code stopped working with VS Code derivatives like VS Codium and Cursor, reports The Register. The move has prompted Cursor to transition to open-source alternatives, while some developers are calling for a regulatory investigation into Microsoft’s alleged anti-competitive behavior. From the report:
In early April, programmers using VS Codium, an open-source fork of Microsoft’s MIT-licensed VS Code, and Cursor, a commercial AI code assistant built from the VS Code codebase, noticed that the C/C++ extension stopped working. The extension adds C/C++ language support, such as Intellisense code completion and debugging, to VS Code. The removal of these capabilities from competing tools breaks developer workflows, hobbles the editor, and arguably hinders competition. The breaking change appears to have occurred with the release of v1.24.5 on April 3, 2025.

Following the April update, attempts to install the C/C++ extension outside of VS Code generate this error message: “The C/C++ extension may be used only with Microsoft Visual Studio, Visual Studio for Mac, Visual Studio Code, Azure DevOps, Team Foundation Server, and successor Microsoft products and services to develop and test your applications.” Microsoft has forbidden the use of its extensions outside of its own software products since at least September 2020, when the current licensing terms were published. But it hasn’t enforced those terms in its C/C++ extension with an environment check in its binaries until now. […]

Developers discussing the issue in Cursor’s GitHub repo have noted that Microsoft recently rolled out a competing AI software agent capability, dubbed Agent Mode, within its Copilot software. One such developer who contacted us anonymously told The Register they sent a letter about the situation to the US Federal Trade Commission, asking them to probe Microsoft for unfair competition — alleging self-preferencing, bundling Copilot without a removal option, and blocking rivals like Cursor to lock users into its AI ecosystem.

I use vim and I don’t have any problem

By Rosco P. Coltrane • Score: 3 Thread

https://medium.com/techiepedia…

OK

By drinkypoo • Score: 3 Thread

In early April, programmers using VS Codium, an open-source fork of Microsoft’s MIT-licensed VS Code, and Cursor, a commercial AI code assistant built from the VS Code codebase, noticed that the C/C++ extension stopped working.

If it’s an open-source fork, and it stopped working, fork it again from when it did work and maintain it yourselves. They’re still publishing all the information you need for that, right?

Oh no!

By OrangeTide • Score: 3 Thread

The proprietary freeware IDE with free toolchain has restrictions placed on it by its owner. Almost like it’s a commercial product demo rather than an open source project.

Stick with GNU ladies and gentlemen. Or be at the mercy of your vendor.

Frustrating but,,,

By Going_Digital • Score: 3 Thread
Microsoft is under no obligation to provide a version of their proprietary extension that will work with any particular editor. In fact extension authors are under no obligation to provide their extensions for VS Code, they are at liberty to restrict their extensions to work only on a non-Microsoft fork if they desire.

Is it bad faith on Microsoft’s part, of course, but this is expected behaviour from Microsoft who are at their core a proprietary software company that doesn’t truly embrace the open software ideals. We should be grateful that VS Code was put in the open by Microsoft, as that in itself is very unusual for them.

Comcast President Bemoans Broadband Customer Losses: ‘We Are Not Winning’

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:
Comcast executives apparently realized something that customers have known and complained about for years: The Internet provider’s prices aren’t transparent enough and rise too frequently. This might not have mattered much to cable executives as long as the total number of subscribers met their targets. But after reporting a net loss of 183,000 residential broadband customers in Q1 2025, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh said the company isn’t “winning in the marketplace" during an earnings call today. The Q1 2025 customer loss was over three times larger than the net loss in Q1 2024.

While customers often have few viable options for broadband and the availability of alternatives varies widely by location, Comcast faces competition from fiber and fixed wireless ISPs. “In this intensely competitive environment, we are not winning in the marketplace in a way that is commensurate with the strength of the network and connectivity products that I just described,” Cavanagh said. "[Cable division CEO] Dave [Watson] and his team have worked hard to understand the reasons for this disconnect and have identified two primary causes. One is price transparency and predictability and the other is the level of ease of doing business with us. The good news is that both are fixable and we are already underway with execution plans to address these challenges.” […]

Cavanagh said that Comcast plans to make changes in marketing and operations “with the highest urgency.” This means that “we are simplifying our pricing construct to make our price-to-value proposition clearer to consumers across all broadband segments,” he said. Comcast last week announced a five-year price guarantee for broadband customers who sign up for a new package. Comcast said customers will get a “simple monthly price starting as low as $55 per month,” without having to enter a contract, giving them “freedom and flexibility to cancel at any time without penalty.” The five-year guarantee also comes with one year of Xfinity Mobile at no charge, Comcast said. […] Additional offers are in the works, Cavanagh said. “We are not done. Providing more value to our customers with less complexity and friction is a top priority and you will see our go-to-market approach continue to evolve over the coming months,” he said. Comcast investors shouldn’t expect an immediate turnaround, though. “We anticipate that it will take several quarters for our new approach to gain traction and impact the business in a meaningful way,” Cavanagh said.

Stop being shitty.

By MachineShedFred • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Quit playing games with your customers, specifically “Pricing Roulette” with your new customer deals that current customers aren’t eligible for. Nobody likes to be the wallet getting soaked while you try to bilk other people into the same game with a better deal. Make your price be your price, and if you can’t compete on that price then maybe that should tell you something about your operation.

Quit screwing around with offering OMG MEGA DOWNLOAD SPEED that nobody can actually achieve on their wireless devices that are predominantly used, while limiting upload bandwidth to what was awesome 20 years ago and causing video conferencing to take a crap if you dare have two or more users on the connection.

Quit being a shitty provider that people only use at last resort because there’s no competition. It should inform you where you stand if one of your markets gets a new competitor and everyone with a clue runs away from you as fast as possible - I know I would if any of the fiber operators in my city would string some fiber up into my neighborhood.

Fuck Comcast.

Americans are getting screwed big time

By PoopMelon • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
Why is it so that it costs whooping 55 usd while in europe the connection costs 10-20 bucks, no matter wherher it’s optic fibers or dsl, or even mobile

Light bulb or dim bulb? Or dark (money) bulb?

By NoOnesMessiah • Score: 3 Thread

Comcast executives also apparently didn’t want to realize all of the dark money they’ve poured into anti-municipal-broadband bills they’ve been sponsoring all over the country because competition is, apparently, hard. Comcast President Mike Cavanagh would rather legislate or litigate competition out of the way rather than give everyone in the country access to affordable, usable, decent broadband. So there’s that too. I would highly recommend against giving Comcast any of your money unless you have no other connectivity alternatives. But then there appear to be lots of big companies using that same playbook. My heart doesn’t exactly weep for them.

Fuck Comcast!

By The Grim Reefer • Score: 3 Thread

I had Adelphia before they fell apart and were bought by Comcast. Anytime I called Adelphia about an outage I got a credit. Once Comcast bought them the reliability got much shittier and I didn’t get any credit for downtime. Then the price increases started. After that, they started taking away things like Usenet. Then the ever increasing prices. Oh, and that awesome customer service. I likened their customer service to be about as good as Cambodia under Pol Pot. Did I mention the constant price increases?

My father was stuck with Comcast and it was even worse for him. The area he lived in had really old cable infrastructure. The techs told him how bad the lines were. But they also told him that Comcast refused to replace any of it.

When a local company put fiber in my neighborhood I switched immediately. Apparently everyone else did as every house in my neighborhood had a sign in their front yard that they had switched. My monthly cost was less than half of what Comcast was and for higher speed. There’s been one $5 price increase in ten years and two scheduled outages for maintenance in that time. There was more downtime with Comcast every month than that.

The problem with Comcast isn’t bad advertising or opaque pricing. It’s that and everything else about the company.

Maybe

By wakeboarder • Score: 3 Thread

trying not to be the most hated company in america would help

DoorDash Makes $3.6 Billion Offer For Deliveroo

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
DoorDash has sent a proposal to buy the British meal delivery company Deliveroo for $3.6 billion. “The current offer marks the first formal approach since the last report in the summer,” notes Reuters. From the report:
The deal is expected to face no regulatory hurdles, as it provides DoorDash access to 10 new markets where it currently has no presence, creating a highly complementary footprint - other competitors might encounter more antitrust issues, the source said. Last year, Reuters reported DoorDash had shown interest in a takeover of Deliveroo, but a source said talks ended after disagreements on valuation.

A deal between the two firms would help DoorDash solidify its footprint in Europe, after the U.S. meal delivery group’s 2021 purchase of Finland-based rival Wolt Enterprises in an all-stock deal valued at about $8 billion.

Google Is Killing Software Support For Early Nest Thermostats

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Google announced it will end software updates and remote control support for the first- and second-generation Nest Learning Thermostats (plus the 2014 European model) starting October 25th. “You will no longer be able to control them remotely from your phone or with Google Assistant, but can still adjust the temperature and modify schedules directly on the thermostat,” the company wrote in a Friday blog post. The Verge reports:
In other significant news, Google is flatly stating that it has no plans to release additional Nest thermostats in Europe. “Heating systems in Europe are unique and have a variety of hardware and software requirements that make it challenging to build for the diverse set of homes,” the company said. “The Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd gen, 2015) and Nest Thermostat E (2018) will continue to be sold in Europe while current supplies last.” […]

In a clear attempt to ease customer anger, Google is offering a $130 discount on the fourth-gen Nest Learning Thermostat in the US, $160 off the same device in Canada, and 50 percent savings on the Tado Smart Thermostat X in Europe since the Nest lineup will soon be gone. The original Nest thermostats were released while the company was an independent brand under the leadership of former Apple executive Tony Fadell. Google acquired Nest in 2014 for $3.2 billion.

So those plywood shacks called “smart homes”…

By ffkom • Score: 3, Insightful Thread
… have an expected lifetime of about 11 years. Sounds like a suitable offering for the US market, but those living in homes build from stone should take note and not buy such short lived toys.

Government Censorship Comes To Bluesky

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch:
Government censorship has found its way to Bluesky, but there’s currently a loophole thanks to how the social network is structured. Earlier this month, Bluesky restricted access to 72 accounts in Turkey at the request of Turkish governmental authorities, according to a recent report by the Freedom of Expression Association. As a result, people in Turkey can no longer see these accounts, and their reach is limited. The report indicates that 59 Bluesky accounts were blocked on the grounds of protecting “national security and public order.” Bluesky also made another 13 accounts and at least one post invisible from Turkey.

Given that many Turkish users migrated from X to Bluesky in the hopes of fleeing government censorship, Bluesky’s bowing to the Turkish government’s demands has raised questions among the community as to whether the social network is as open and decentralized as it claims to be. (Or whether it’s “just like Twitter” after all.) However, Bluesky’s technical underpinnings currently make bypassing these blocks easier than it would be on a network like X — even if it’s not quite as open as the alternative social network Mastodon, another decentralized X rival.

A Mastodon user could move their account around to different servers to avoid censorship targeted at the original Mastodon instance (server) where they first made posts that attracted the censors. Users on the official Bluesky app can configure their moderation settings but have no way to opt out of the moderation service Bluesky provides. This includes its use of geographic labelers, like the newly added Turkish moderation labeler that handles the censorship of accounts mandated by the Turkish government. (Laurens Hof has a great breakdown of how this all works in more technical detail here on The Fediverse Report.) Simply put, if you’re on the official Bluesky app and Bluesky (the company) agrees to censor something in your region, there’s no way to opt out of this to see the hidden posts or accounts. Other third-party Bluesky apps, which make up the larger open social web known as the Atmosphere, don’t have to follow these same rules. At least, not for now.

Just a fact of life

By luvirini • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

It does not matter what you think about cencorship, companies have to make a choice: Either they operate in a given country or not, if they do, they have to follow the laws of that country. If they do not, that the causes their revenues to be lower and companies exist to make money, so option two wins almost always.

There are really only two ways it can change: 1) people in the country in question change the laws. 2) The company is convinced that the cost to them for exiting such a market is less than the benefit they get in other markets.

Neither is very likely given that the blocking is often political and suppressing oppising views to the current regime and most people running companies know the harsh reality that people are much more likely to yell at a company to do X than actually do something about it if the company does not do anything.

Top Colleges Are Too Costly Even for Parents Making $300,000

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Families earning $300,000 annually — placing them among America’s highest earners — are increasingly finding themselves unable to afford elite college tuition without taking on substantial debt. Bloomberg’s analysis of financial aid data from 50 selective colleges reveals households earning between $100,000 and $300,000 occupy a precarious middle ground: too affluent for meaningful aid but insufficiently wealthy to absorb annual costs approaching $100,000.

The squeeze begins around $150,000 income, where families typically contribute 20% ($30,000) annually toward tuition. At $270,000 income, expected contributions reach $61,000 per year. Most institutions eliminate financial aid entirely at approximately $400,000 income. Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania recently expanded free tuition thresholds to $200,000, acknowledging this middle-class pressure. The changes take effect for 2025-26.

The US is excellent at destroying itself

By dskoll • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

An educated population is the key to competitiveness. If a country does not invest in its people, it will fall behind. Allowing tuition to reach impossible levels is going to hurt the USA as a whole.

Re:The US is excellent at destroying itself

By bjoast • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
It’s not only important for competitiveness. An educated population is desirable for many more reasons.

What The Actual Fuck?

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 3 Thread

Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania recently expanded free tuition thresholds to $200,000

Cry me a river if you can’t afford a top notch university education on a $300k income.

Meanwhile there are lots of people out there getting degrees from very good state universities for $10k in annual tuition.

I don’t care that you can’t afford your vanity uni.

Insane tuition inflation

By cascadingstylesheet • Score: 3 Thread

Caused by subsidized loans and grants.

The politicians buy votes with student loans and grants. And the colleges raise their tuition to soak it all up.

Subsidies - whether direct or in the form of low or no interest loans - drive prices up.

That is insane…

By gweihir • Score: 3 Thread

Here is an option: Study abroad in Europe. Yes, you have to have good grades to get in. But apparently it will be much cheaper and give you a better education on top.

Microsoft Launches Windows Recall After Year-Long Delay

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Microsoft has finally released Windows Recall to the general public, nearly a year after first announcing the controversial feature. Available exclusively on Copilot+ PCs, Recall continuously captures screenshots of user activity, storing them in a searchable database with extracted text. The feature’s original launch was derailed by significant security concerns, as critics noted anyone with access to a Recall database could potentially view nearly everything done on the device.

Microsoft’s revamped version addresses these issues with improved security protections, better content filtering for sensitive information, and crucially, making Recall opt-in rather than opt-out. The rollout includes two additional Copilot+ features: an improved Search function with natural language understanding, and “Click to Do,” which enables text copying from images and quick summarization of on-screen content.

I would like to thank Microsoft

By rsilvergun • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
For making this exclusive to co-pilot plus PCs.

Really surprised they made this opt-in. The real goal here is to get access to every single computer on the planet for the purposes of training their AIs.

The big problem right now with llms is that they are mostly trained on the internet and the internet is currently being flooded by AI slop. And that means that AIs are going to be trained on their own slop potentially leading to a degradation.

If you could basically spy on every computer on the planet and train your AIs from them then you would have a massive massive massive competitive edge over every other company.

What a terrible name …

By drnb • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
What a terrible name. Whenever I read something like “Microsoft Launches Windows Recall” my initial interpretation is it’s a recall of a defective product. A patch rollback or something. Then this new spyware comes to mind as a secondary thought.

FFS

By hamburger lady • Score: 3 Thread

just like microsoft to give the product a name that makes everybody think it’s defective

Intel’s AI PC Chips Aren’t Selling Well

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
Intel is grappling with an unexpected market shift as customers eschew its new AI-focused processors for cheaper previous-generation chips. The company revealed during its recent earnings call that demand for older Raptor Lake processors has surged while its newer, more expensive Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake AI PC chips struggle to gain traction.

This surprising trend, first reported by Tom’s Hardware, has created a production capacity shortage for Intel’s ‘Intel 7’ process node that will “persist for the foreseeable future,” despite the fact that current-generation chips utilize TSMC’s newer nodes. “Customers are demanding system price points that consumers really want,” explained Intel executive Michelle Johnston Holthaus, noting that economic concerns and tariffs have affected inventory decisions.

Uhm, ChatGPT is a website

By NaCh0 • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Why would a normal person need an AI chip on their local computer to talk with an online chatbot?

These AI PCs are destined to flop. It’s the hardware maker’s marketing team preying on the AI-everything media frenzy.

The main issue is the hybrid architecture

By lusid1 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The efficiency cores need to be disabled anyway if you do any virtualization, so they are a waste of space on the die that could be used by something doing actual work. At best, they artificially inflate the marketing specs.

Do consumers care about AI?

By PCM2 • Score: 3 Thread

The elephant in the room is that none of these companies that are betting their futures on “AI”—whatever they mean by that—has yet to prove that consumers are interested. Last I heard, Apple Intelligence wasn’t exactly driving up iPhone sales figures, either. They say the new MacBook Pros have it, too … great?

I was at Best Buy the other day, and I saw an electric toothbrush that claimed to clean your teeth with AI. It cost $360. Does anybody buy this stuff? Even as gifts? I just can’t see how slapping some mostly-meaningless tag onto a product that people are already familiar with, then upping the price, is going to be of interest to any average person.

Because most people couldn’t care less?

By jdawgnoonan • Score: 3 Thread
It would really be interesting to know what percentage of users are excited about any of the so-called features that these AI chips will enable. Sure, if your work hangs off the side of big tech you might care about it whether you need to or not (I personally always buy more powerful machines than I actually require), but outside of an extreme minority of users I do not believe that anyone cares about any of this. Personally, for my own work, I do not really see what benefit I will ever gain from any of these tools running on my own local machine. I manage cloud based systems that I work with through a web interface. I code in those platforms over web based interfaces or over terminals. I do not need local AI for my work. For my personal use, cloud based services are also fine.

What would you use one for?

By gillbates • Score: 3 Thread

Does Intel really believe end-users will be running or developing AI models on their laptops/desktops? Because while I’d like to have a 5.6 GHz CPU, the likelihood of a non-developer building or running a model on their desktop is between slim and none.

And if you are developing or running an AI model, why wouldn’t you buy the higher-performing NVIDIA GPUs?

There really isn’t any end-user case for running AI models.

How Democrats and Republicans Cite Science

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader shares a Nature story:
The United States is known for the deep polarization between its two major political parties — the right-wing Republicans and left-wing Democrats. Now an analysis of hundreds of thousands of policy documents reveals striking differences in partisan policymakers’ use of the scientific literature, with Democratic-led congressional committees and left-wing think tanks more likely to cite research papers than their right-wing counterparts. The analysis also shows that Democrats and left-leaning think tanks are more likely to cite high-impact research, and that the two political sides rarely cite the same studies or even the same topics.

“There are striking differences in amount, content and character of the science cited by partisan policymakers,” says Alexander Furnas, a political scientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and a co-author of the analysis, published in Science on 24 April. The researchers used the government-policy database Overton to assemble around 50,000 policy documents produced by US congressional committees in 1995-2021 and around 200,000 reports from 121 ideologically driven US think tanks over a similar period. These documents contained 424,000 scientific references.

A statistical analysis revealed that congressional reports are now more likely to cite science papers than before. But, in each two-year congressional cycle, documents from committees under Democratic control had a higher probability of citing research papers, and the gap between the two parties has increased. Overall, documents from Democratic-controlled committees were nearly 1.8 times more likely to cite science than were reports from Republican-led ones. The differences were starkest for reports produced by partisan think tanks, which the researchers say are “key resources for partisan policymakers.” Left-leaning think tanks were 5 times more likely to cite science than right-leaning ones. And there was little overlap between the science referenced by the two sides: just 5-6% of studies were cited by both groups.

US democrats are “left-wing”

By Anonymous Coward • Score: 5, Informative Thread
Citation needed

The U.S. Doesn’t Have a Left-Wing Party…

By Jerrry • Score: 5, Informative Thread

…only a conservative party (the Democrats) and an ultra-conservative party (the Republicans).

NPR once told me that according to science

By RightwingNutjob • Score: 3, Insightful Thread

some women have penises.

Feynman warned about shoddy thinkers adopting the trappings of science, hoping to bask in the glory of a spectacularly and conspicuously successful enterprise.

He was quite right. Many things that call themselves “science” aren’t science.

Now’s a good time to remind the audience that I’m watching this from somewhere quite close to the belly of the beast. And I’ve watched it all get stupider and more explicitly partisan and politically-motivated over the past two decades. With my own eyes.

#shutdownstem for example.

Re: US democrats are “left-wing”

By OrangeTide • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

I usually vote for Dems, and I disagree with Gavin Newsom on many idealogical and philosophical points.

But right now I am mainly focused on criticizing authoratarians that have infiltrated the federal government. It’s a matter of priorities, and a matter of not every instance of accusing your opponent of being like Hitler is hyperbole.

At this stage, I’ll work with wall street friendly Third Way Democrats, old guard neoliberals, New Left Democrats, actual card carrying communists, conservative independants, etc.
The priority is counter revolution, a return to the status quo, restoration of the US Constitution, and return of economic and geopolitical policy of the previous decades.
Why? Well mostly I don’t want to pay duties when I order R/C parts from hobby stores in Hong Kong. But also, I kind of wonder if my driver’s license would be accepted by ICE as proof of my citizenship, or if they could just accuse my scorpion tat as evidence of being in a gang.

Boy…

By ZombieCatInABox • Score: 4, Funny Thread

Boy, there are a lot of pissed, angry conservatives in this thread.

Swiss National Bank Chairman Rebuffs Bitcoin as Reserve Asset

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
The head of the Swiss National Bank said on Friday that cryptocurrencies failed to meet the institution’s currency reserve standards, rebuffing calls by crypto advocates that it hold bitcoin as a hedge against growing global economic risks. From a report:
Cryptocurrency campaigners are ramping up pressure on the SNB to buy bitcoin, arguing that the economic turmoil triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs made it more important for the central bank to diversify its reserves. They have launched a referendum campaign to change the Swiss constitution and require the SNB to hold bitcoin in its reserves alongside gold. SNB Chairman Martin Schlegel, however, rejected the idea at the central bank’s shareholder meeting in Bern.

Re:Current Stage: The Great Grift

By dfghjk • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

says the crypto bro.

Crypto is pure fraud, arguing that it is a “reserve” requires that crypto has some inherent value which it does not. This move is pure market manipulation, is that why you don’t like arguments against it?

Re:Once ECC is broken, BTC will be worthless…

By dfghjk • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Unplug enough computers and bitcoin is also worthless, no breaking of ECC required. Crypto is nothing more than records in a database, it has no inherent value and the database is neither guaranteed safe or accessible. It is literally nothing.

Microsoft’s Big AI Hire Can’t Match OpenAI

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader shares a report:
At Microsoft’s annual executive huddle last month, the company’s chief financial officer, Amy Hood, put up a slide that charted the number of users for its Copilot consumer AI tool over the past year. It was essentially a flat line, showing around 20 million weekly users. On the same slide was another line showing ChatGPT’s growth over the same period, arching ever upward toward 400 million weekly users.

OpenAI’s iconic chatbot was soaring, while Microsoft’s best hope for a mass-adoption AI tool was idling. It was a sobering chart for Microsoft’s consumer AI team and the man who’s been leading it for the past year, Mustafa Suleyman. Microsoft brought Suleyman aboard in March of 2024, along with much of the talent at his struggling AI startup Inflection, in return for a $650 million licensing fee that made Inflection’s investors whole, and then some.

[…] Yet from the very start, people inside the company told me they were skeptical. Many outsiders have struggled to make an impact or even survive at Microsoft, a company that’s full of lifers who cut their tech teeth in a different era. My skeptical sources noted Suleyman’s previous run at a big company hadn’t gone well, with Google stripping him of some management responsibilities following complaints of how he treated staff, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. There was also much eye-rolling at the fact that Suleyman was given the title of CEO of Microsoft AI. That designation is typically reserved for the top executive at companies it acquires and lets operate semi-autonomously, such as LinkedIn or Github.

Github Copilot

By toxonix • Score: 3 Thread

Copilot users are ChatGPT users. They’re just using it via Copilot. Or am I mistaken? I seem to be using GPT-4o according to Copilot.
We only see Copilot as a coding assistant tool. I can’t imagine there are more than 20 million programmers using Copilot. I mean everyone is trying it out, seeing the limitations and what it can do. The CFO is probably trying to show that there’s really no need to have Suleyman in that position. Which is correct.

Stunning

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 3 Thread

It’s quite stunning to hear that their usage volume has been so flat for so long. This is especially so when you consider how they have forced it into users faces, in Edge, in Windows,in Office, in GitHub…

20 million to ChatGPTs 400 million? Stunning.

CEO of a department?

By Mspangler • Score: 3 Thread

“There was also much eye-rolling at the fact that Suleyman was given the title of CEO of Microsoft AI.”

Executive vice-president is the usual title for the head of a semi-autonomous department or special projects unit.

Microsoft To Kill Windows Maps App in July

Posted by msmash View on SlashDot
Microsoft will remove its Maps app from the Microsoft Store in July 2025, delivering an “update” that renders the application completely nonfunctional. Following the cutoff, users won’t be able to reinstall the app even if previously downloaded, according to a Microsoft support document. While the app will retain personal data like saved navigation routes and map URLs, this information will become unusable after the deprecation.

The Maps application, a remnant from the Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile era, will disappear completely while Bing Maps will continue functioning as a web service through bing.com/maps. Microsoft hasn’t provided specific reasoning for the decision to sunset the desktop application, which has existed as an increasingly anachronistic holdover from Microsoft’s abandoned mobile platform efforts.

Microsoft Flight Simulator used the maps app.

By xack • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
The Flight Simulator team worked with the maps team at one point, as they were using a lot of the same data, even promoting the Windows Maps app with the Flight Simulator marketing. Seems that Microsoft would rather focus routing everything Through Bing and Copilot now. Expect “copilot maps” to replace it in the future.