Times New Roman aligns with President Donald Trump’s mission to "present a unified, professional voice in all communications
It’s good they have their priorities straight. The main issue for their unified, professional voice is obviously the font, not the guy that blabbers hilariously contradictory nonsense all the time.
I feel slightly reminded of the card scene in mad men. Why do I get the feeling Rubio might be the type?
Me, too. Good thing I don’t travel any more.
So I have been wondering about this and the data centers themselves which are just giant metal sheds. Easily twisted and completely blown away by tornadoes and hurricanes, which easily spawn tornadoes miles from the hurricanes. Arkansas and Louisiana are regularly ripped up by tornadoes and high winds in exactly the areas where they are being built and it is happening more often.
Ooh, I have an idea:
It all works out. The ‘AI giants’ have already been noted for the accounting trick of extending the expected life of servers. This has massively reduced their annual depreciation expense, which booms their reported profits. Trump and the GOP have done their part by making these inflated profits not turn into greater tax burdens.
But what happens when the reality sets in: server farms in cutting edge applications actually have the same short lifespans they have always had, if not even shorter. What happens to the bottom line, and stock prices, when equipment has to be replaced when it hasn’t even been fully depreciated on the books?
Simple…the bill gets kicked either to taxpayers through ‘disaster relief’ after a hurricane, or it gets kicked to insurance premium payers when “unexpected early failure due to environmental conditions” and insurance corporations protect their own investments by paying off the losses and then balancing their own books with widespread premium increases to the public without raising rates on their corporate brethren.
Meanwhile, the actual AI itself is just software. It gets migrated to a new server farm in a new tin shed and keeps on making money.
Add to all that the fact these tech companies are not the ones putting up the money to build these centers any way.
I wonder who gets the insurance money
So my car needed some sensors replaced. They gave me a loaner. Was it a regular car? A used vehicle?
Of course not.
They are desperate to sell the overpriced behemoths on their lots.
They send me off in a brand new F150….for $65,950…
Nope
Not just in cutting edge applications. Something as mundane as storage is going to be an interesting problem one day. Essentially, our storage got faster and faster, but also shorter lived. With the current growth of demand for storage, and the livetimes of our current storage media, a point becomes foreseeable where our maximum storage capacity is limited by our ability to produce them. At one point, disks might literally start failing faster than we can churn them out and deliver them.
That would be a fun day, for sure…
What is not necessarily clear is that Diddly Squat Farm is owned by Jeremy Clarkson, avid right-winger, and staunch supporter of the politicians who wrecked our health service in the first place.
If people are dying on the floor of his garden centre, it’s because for 20 years people like him starved the public services of cash, and gave the money to rich people (like himself) instead.
So it’s the owner who doesn’t give a diddly squat
Watch for similar scenes from the US very soon…
At least this man finally got help, had a hip replaced and is recovering
Nice to meet someone who hasn’t forgotten what a prick Clarkson is just because he “works hard on a farm” now.
People are so fickle 
The only reason Clarkson bought a farm is because it allows him to have a palatial house, outbuildings for his car collection, and land, tax-free. It’s a financial dodge, and he admitted as much in a newspaper interview. The only thing Clarkson “works hard” at is promoting Jeremy Clarkson.
The UK Government is currently operating a scheme called “Warmer Homes”. It involves financial help with heating and home insulation, but is only available to specific disadvantaged groups. Generally, extremely vulnerable people on low incomes. I am not eleigible, because my income is too high.
For the last month or so I’ve been getting phone calls from “energy edvisors”. I don’t want any advice - and I tell them so. They are polite, and they hang up.
Today I got another such call. “Hello” said a very well-spoken young woman. “My name is Wendy, and I’m calling on behalf of XYZ Energy Advisors”. Something about the call made me doubt her. Perhaps the fact that “Wendy” sounded very similar to the “Julie” who called me last week.
I said “Are you a machine?” There was a pause, followed by a barely audible “click”, and “Wendy” replied “No, I’m not a robot”. I was astonished. It clearly was a robot, and it was blatantly lying about thee fact.
I said “Yes, you are. You’re a machine”. “Wendy” said “Thank you for your interest”, and hung up.
“Wendy” and her sisters appear to be an AI equipped with extremely convincing voice recognition and synthesis.In the past, I have spoken to it - it’s undestood me, and replied. If not for its failure to immediately parse my awkward question, I might not have realised this time, either.
Afterwards, I looked it up on the web site of the UK Government Information Commissioner - apparently it’s a known scam.
It’s quite scary - it sounds absolutely human. For the most part, it responds like a human.
There has been a surge in scam calls out this way too, I get one every morning same time and never answer it.
I’ve never gotten them before and everyone I know is experiencing them. Sounds like that HSE databreach has come home to roost all our names, numbers and addresses sold to the highest dark web bidder. 
I must admit, I would never realize if a bot called me. But that’s because if it’s “Hello, I’m X from Y and wanted to ask…” I hang up the phone before they can finish the sentence. 
Welcome to the new world. Scamming calls and robots that sound real have been a thing here for a while. I have also experienced the robot girl. The awkward pauses when waiting for an answer and the odd little clicks are the giveaway.
I have been receiving notices from my electric and gas company for a long time. You are doing good, but your neighbors are doing better. None and I mean none of my neighbors use natural gas. They all use propane tanks or are all electric. In which case, they definitely do not use less electricity than I do though they do use less natural gas. But I am afraid zero usage is out of the question for me.
I just rip the notices up
Oh, we’ve had scam calls here forever. And calls using actor voice recordings are not new. What’s disturbing about this one is that it understands your answers, and, in most cases, replies instantly and intelligibly. It’s not just a recording - it’s an AI that responds correctly to what you say. Unless you wrong-foot it with a left-of-field question or comment, you can’t tell it’s not a real person.
Yes. I have encountered that. I knew something was off and I asked an off hand question as well, though I don’t remember what it was. I heard some clicks and then “I’m sorry. I did not understand your question.” But it sounded like I was talking to a real person. Creepy.
In the meantime, T says every working person will get $2,000 deposited into their checking account…which means they have all of our banking info…
I keep hoping one of these politicians will pop a fuse or a capacitor will blow and we will realize they are all AI bots. We can run for the killswitch and end all these shenanigans
What if you accept the call but lay down the receiver next to a talk radio station or podcast? Then the bot would waste its time and doesn’t call the next person? (Applied Discordianism…)
Wasn’t there also an intermediate phase where humans (not native speakers) silently picked the answers or typed a custom response, and a voice read them out or typed in chat for them? Guess even that job got outsourced.
Why are we even talking to these guys, they never say anything useful. If it was important, the provider would write officially, or not?
