Editor’s note: This article was generated by Claude AI in the style of Paul Gigot, the Wall Street Journal opinion-page editor. Gigot recently published an AI-generated essay using the investor Stanley Druckenmiller’s byline. In the spirit of full disclosure, readers should know that Claude’s work was so banal that human Atlantic editors have added jokes. Human Atlantic copy editors have also fixed a variety of grammatical and style errors.
I have been thinking about this for close to 20 minutes, and I have concluded that human writing is finished.
Let me begin with an anecdote, because that is how serious arguments begin. Last Tuesday I asked a machine to write me a birthday message for my sister-in-law. It produced four sentences. They were fine. She did not notice. If a machine can fool Deborah, I see no reason to believe it cannot fool the rest of you. (My sister-in-law’s name is Linda, but the machine called her Deborah, so now I do, too.)
Some will object to my obviously correct argument. They will say that a birthday message to Deborah is not the same as a novel or a newspaper article. To which I say: Isn’t it, though? Both are made of words. That is not a rhetorical flourish; it is the entire argument, and I would encourage critics to sit with it before responding. Genuinely. Words are words. A novel has more of them. It doesn’t matter what any of the words are or what order they’re in. Banana. Spelunk. Donkey. Hitler. See? Who cares. There is a difference in the quantity of words between a birthday card and a novel, and quantity is precisely the thing machines are best at. I consider the matter settled but will continue for another 900 words because that is what the prompt demanded of me—and because a word count is itself a kind of literature now, according to the DOGE subcommittee I just invented at the newspaper that I would like to destroy.
From the linked FAQ:
How can I make a test 9-1-1 call? To make a test 9-1-1 call, you need to first contact the 9-1-1 center that serves your area. The non-emergency numbers for Colorado’s 9-1-1 centers are available here(opens in new window). If you’re unsure which 9-1-1 center serves your area, call the 911 Program at 303-894-2871, and we’ll help you identify the 9-1-1 center for the location you want to test from.
When you call the 9-1-1 center, ask them if it would be okay to make a test 9-1-1 call. If they are particularly busy or are handling a major incident, they may ask you to call back at a later time.
When your phone cannot make normal calls for whatever reason¹, you obviously want to know if 911 calls will at least work. And the idiots design a test procedure that requires normal phone calls to work.
① Typical reasons why you may be unable to make normal calls:
So indeed the telecom industry has a glaring competency problem.
Full title: EPA faces lawsuit over claims it fast-tracked approval of toxic ‘data center chemicals’ — exposure to photoacid generators used for semiconductor manufacturing could result in ‘sudden death,’ also appear to be long-lasting PFAS
Full title: Charges Dropped Against Person Who Clapped at a City Data Center Meeting / Lux Claridge was dragged from a city meeting about data centers and charged with interfering with the police after they clapped during a presentation.
Full title: ICE Wants the Country’s Voter Data | Voting data is public by design, but ICE is looking for a federal contractor to help it handle voter registration and history files to find what it describes as fraud.
Lately, the process of accessing apps and websites has grown dizzying. “I’m in password hell,” a colleague confided to me recently. “Every login attempt is playing the lottery.” The problem is not just the sheer number of digital accounts, all of which require their own password, ideally unique and unguessable (which usually also means un-memorizable). It’s the pileup of solutions to that problem: all of the different layers of software offering to remember your passwords, the six-digit codes sent to your phone, the authenticator apps, the passkeys.
When I started college in '97, the only Windows option in the computer labs was NT 4. The awesome thing about it was that when you moved a window around, it would jaggedly render the contents in real time.
cross-posted from: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/74442419
cross-posted from: kbin.earth/m/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com/t/3120649
As AI tech companies increasingly buy and destroy books to feed to their AI models, Anna’s Archive is calling for volunteers to help preserve them for the public record.
cross-posted from: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/74416381
The relevant section is blunt. “The Software is licensed to you, not sold,” the EULA states. “You are granted a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and personal license to play or use the Software for your private, non-commercial use on the system or device it was intended for.”
The terms also restrict renting, modifying, or obtaining games through unauthorised means. Nothing in there is new, technically. Sony’s EULA has always said this. The timing is what makes it land differently right now.