Ace-Garageguy

Today is a good day to start on some of the things you put off last week.

Legacy and social media are already hugely effective in getting the more easily swayed members of the population to think and do as they're told, and 'thinking' has very little to do with it. AI, even as it is now, gives powerful tools to those who would manipulate the perception of reality to their own ends. Pity more people don't heed Ben Franklin's admonition "make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you".

"The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm, his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command." Samwise Gamgee's concept of happiness, from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings I agree 100%.

I tried to post a quoted announcement from Facebook, but I'm told the post must be approved first.

This is part of a recent Faceborg post: "After having owned and operated LaBelle Woodworking since 2001, I have been in the model business longer than the original or subsequent owners, I have decided to call it a day. I will be closing the doors and turning out the lights on LaBelle after 25 years on June 1, 2026. I have posted this as a courtesy to you, my loyal and well received customers, so that there will be no future surprises. If anyone is interested in getting into the Model Railroad business I am not adverse to selling LaBelle to someone who is interested in purchasing it. I will be entertaining serious offers for LaBelle and the all of the equipment used to make our kits. I would love to sell the business so that the names and products that we produce, such as LaBelle, Silver Streak, Mainline Models, Ye Olde Huff and Puff, OnTrack and Valley Car Shops don’t disappear from the modeling scene. Please contact me at info@labellemodels.com for further information..."

Agreed, and this has occurred to me as well. Still, if it didn't wait until robotics are sufficiently advanced to entirely replace humans for necessary physical tasks, it would ultimately be dooming itself by wiping out mankind. There is, of course, a plausible scenario where a group of isolated humans who were immunized to whatever biological agent was used, either voluntary allies or as a slave class, could be bred to do the dirty work until they could be entirely replaced by machines. Probably the most likely scenario, at least initially, is human 'overlords' utilizing AI to subjugate the rest of humanity. Some may disagree, but I personally think one of Elon Musk's primary motivations behind his AI projects is to build a 'good' one, as he's very well aware of its potential for evil. We do have some time to deal with this, put the brakes on, and decide what controls...like a master 'kill switch'...need to be put in place. But in general, I don't think the tech bros like this idea very much. For the time being, LLM-based AI is limited in these very important ways: Lack of true understanding: AI does not have a cognitive or semantic understanding of language, emotions, or real-world concepts. It doesn't "know" what a tree is or why one phrase is offensive in one situation but not another. No sense of causation or reasoning: AI doesn't understand the underlying cause and effect in the way humans do. It simply processes data to provide an answer that is statistically probable. Limited "real-world" knowledge: While it can access and process enormous amounts of data, AI doesn't have a holistic, real-world understanding or common sense. This is why it can sometimes "hallucinate" or make up facts.

One of my all time favorite cars, surely more accurate than the AMT Coyote model I've been converting. Watching with much interest.

"Me" curiously had the same definition as "the center of the universe" as far as my last ex was concerned, and most of the rest of 'em too, so I s'pose they all bought the same dictionary.

Don't hold your breath on that one...

Hard to beat a nicely done custom Shoebox.

I really have to wonder how some of you guys seem to have such a huge footprint with the data brokers. I get one or two robocalls on my landline a week. That's it. And it's not like I live in a cave under a rock and never venture out into muh technology reality.

A similar set is in the ancient Lindberg D-type...which used to be cheap cheap cheap. Also a similar set in the Revell XK-SS kit.

A roll of Gorilla Tape, a can of extra-expanding Great Stuff, a shower curtain liner, a few rat traps, AA batteries, and a refill of propane. Hmmmmmmm...I wonder what he's making?

Hmmmmm...howz bout a totally antisocial version with a smelly old turbo-diesel in the middle? EDIT: I'd build something like this if I had Musk's money...