"Boffin" made me think the slashdot post is about a post at The Register, and sure enough, it is.
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I just assumed that was someone's name. I had never heard that term before.
No, it's a British term The Register uses a lot. From Wikipedia:
Boffin is a British slang term for a scientist, engineer, or other person engaged in technical or scientific research and development. A "boffin" was viewed by some in the regular military or government services as odd, quirky or peculiar, though quite bright and essential to helping in the war effort through having and developing the key ideas leading to transformative military capabilities.
What's the next biggest tech grift after "AI" and quantum computing? Crypto scams? What else?
Anything that can is promoted as being able to do 'everything' instead of being the specialized tool that it is. LLMs have some limited uses but are being promoted to do the things they are terrible at and will never be AGI as an example of the current trend. GenAI being promoted as being able to create entire movies from scratch is another exaggeration of it's actual near future capabilities.
Humanoid robots is next on my list of tech bro bullshit as it is already in the works.
Fuckers at 1X keep trying to recruit me to work on their horseshit. NEO is actually just remote-controlled: https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/i-tried-the-robot-thats-coming-to-live-with-you-its-still-part-human-68515d44
Biotech and generic engineering can still be pulled into mainstream.
Microslop