LTS

We had neighbors who had an aging dog. They had asked us how they would know when it was time and we told them, you just know. They moved away about a year ago and they texted us to let us know that they "knew" and had to say goodbye. We went through it... it sucks. My condolences. I love dogs and as I've said on here, I love them more than most people. Dogs are incredible. I'm glad you 14 years to spend with him. May he always brighten your day when you think of him.

I think a lot of what people get from public AI stems from what they put into it. If you write a fairly generic prompt you get a fairly generic response. Of course writing a more detailed prompt requires one to have the capacity to structure the prompt in the first place. This means having a more in depth understanding of the information they are looking to get and a lot of people just want AI to answer questions for them. It can of course do that and through iterative prompt writing its possible to eventually get to a more in depth response. The search engine viewpoint is certainly solidified by Google's Gemini offering "AI" summaries in its search results. Those summaries generally just being recaps of the top 3 search engine results and then parsed to eliminate duplicate data.

I'm seriously concerned about those who do worship him at this point. Business in Victor, NY - this image is from a few years ago when Let's Go Brandon was just kicking in. During Trump's election campaign they had a big banner over the front of the business supporting Trump. Today they have another large banner hanging in the same spot Trump 2024. I always wonder if there's anyone who works there that isn't a Trump supporter. I think if my place of employment put out something like that, either physically, or in some email, etc. I would walk off the job immediately. I have to think there are potential customers/partners of this business that no longer consider doing business with them because of this. He's next level delusional now... and so is everyone speaking out in support of him. It would almost be laughable except for the fact that we are talking about the position of the President of the United States. Due to that it is pretty much a top of the list concern in my book. Certainly far more than it was the first time.

I disagree and I suppose it's a faith question because I certainly can't prove that we will. I think it's safe to say that emotion can already be predicted to a certain level and I think it's easy to mentally get to a point where understanding emotional response can be mapped to data points. Again, we're talking about gathering an insanely large dataset in order to achieve this. Far beyond what is possible today. AI training 100%. Imagine a body suit that is full of thousands of sensors that can read the movement, temperature, resistance, pressure, and more of the human body. Imagine a hockey stick filled with enough sensors to be able to measure positioning, motion, tension, etc. Now put that on hundreds of thousands of hockey players and draw the data models over decades. Certainly it's not possible today, but its not hard to theorize what it would take, especially when engaging doctors, engineers, and other areas of specialty who are experts in their particular fields. We're maxing out our current technology but quantum computing will take computational power to incredible new levels. This paves the way for the ability to collect and process exponentially more data than what is possible today.

I'm in Rochester. I play once a week in the summer and twice a week in the fall and spring. I sub on a few other nights periodically. It's not high level, certainly I'm not able to play high level but I look forward to it still, even when games start at 10:30pm (although I look forward to those far less).

AI will be extremely strong when given the task of working inside something structured, like writing code. There is no end to the amount of sample code and best practices to draw from. AI is not as good at concepts, but it is getting better. However, to think of AI is as a data parser/search engine is definitely underestimating it. While it's true that AI begins only as good as whomever programmed it, the good AI is reprogramming itself on a continual basis. The ability for AI to run an extreme amount of simulations with an inordinate amount of data points allows for it to hypothesize, test, and prove in rapid fashion. Certainly much faster than any human. If I were looking at sports applications I think an AI's given access to a depth of data could derive optimal strategies. It's a little mind boggling to think about how much data it could use to accomplish this. Imagine a world where athletes are covered in sensors that provide continual data points and then an AI that can consume that data. It builds models that are predictive not only to each player but player types. Once it models players it can then predict success rates based on comparing the data on player A versus Player B given the environmental variables of the moment. It could, in theory, analyze and entire defensive unit, its players, plays, etc. and build an optimal offensive strategy given the teams offensive players, plays, etc. Certainly there's the fact that players are human and have to execute. Things like a foot slipping on turf at the snap could ruin the entire model, but given enough data an AI could even get to the point of predicting that based on the real time feedback from sensors. The player is exhibiting this level of exhaustion, the turf is demonstrating this level of wear, and so on.. then it predicts that the player's foot will slip. If it's correct, it uses it in support of its model and if its incorrect it makes a tiny change to its model and then determines if that prediction is better. It's hard to conceptualize that the entire world and everything that happens could be broken down into data and a predictable model created. I firmly stand in the camp that there is no such thing as randomness. Any appearance of random is simply the result of a set of variables that at that point in time are incalculable. At some point the ability to collect all relevant data and process it into a calculation will eliminate what had appeared as "random" event.

It lessens the tangibility for the average fan. You look at it the way you do but for the vast majority of fans they won't even remember when that draft pick was traded. So I think the immediate impact is lessened for the average fan. I personally don't get excited over teams trading picks 4 years out. Not that this trade did much for me anyway. but.. 🙂

Well.. I didn't have a reason as I mentioned. Just a hypothesis. Fischer isn't much of a prospect from what I see (5th rd). The draft pick compensation is more direct and probably adequate although the 2028 pick is just laughable. Seriously.. perhaps the NHL should put a time frame around what picks can be traded.

Love this. Good move by Edmonton to at least get a little more for losing the players. Not that the 2028 3rd round pick matters and i have no idea who Paul Fischer is. I wonder if Paul Fischer, a 2nd round, a 3rd round, and the 2028 third would have been enough for two roster players from Edmonton if they had just straight up agreed on a trade. Seems like it would be, but if the league would have rejected it this could be a way around it.

I was in the Clearwater area on Sunday/Monday when Debby went through. Hard to quantify what 13" of rain is like in such a short period of time. Thankfully my AirBNB was elevated and we had little impact. The flooding was significant only 2-3 miles from us. The storm surge was definitely easy to quantify given how much beach was covered with water on Monday morning.

There is a very simple explanation actually. Your profiles are linked in a greater identity resolution and marketing database. These companies collect all manner of information from all manner of sources and then link them to your virtual identity. They then use relational data to create circles of connections. Advertising companies (and many others) then pull this data to help determine ad relevancy and boom. It can be as simple as your phone unique identifier and your friend's phone unique identifier were in close proximity for a certain amount of time. Your friend did a search for "XYZ" and through relational data the system reasonably assumed you two might have had a conversation about it and thus you see an advertisement on your phone a little bit later. I think the extent to which our lives can be modeled through collection of data would blow most people's minds. No doubt people expect the more obvious items but the depth goes far beyond that. Certainly linking browsers and/or a shared profile on her desktop computer and your browser would do it as well. The points of connectivity are endless.

It's quite literal for me. People = humanity (unless you are of the mindset that some segments of humanity are not people) We = everyone, as in all of us, together.

Any chance you'd share the workout? Sounds like it's working.

Same. We also installed it at the youth baseball concession stand and it works great there as well. I would recommend it.

Because of a lot of people like hockey in this region and the Sabres are the team in the region? Not every one is on this forum analyzing the franchise day to day. It's conceivable to think that people just like the team. I don't know how the poll was fully conducted but I could see hated teams being from bigger markets because they have big rivals. People from Chicago are not going to like St. Louis.. Chicago is a big town. Lots of people like San Jose, they really aren't major rivals with people and they've had some likeable players, Joe Thornton, Brent Burns, Erik Karlsson, Joe Pavelski, Patrick Marleau, Owen Nolan, Logan Couture I mean, in the end its an internet poll, so how much stock do you put into it?

Prompt: Pretend you are a hack sports writer on the Internet. Write a Sports Illustrated article on the quality of the Buffalo Sabres prospect pool. Use these articles at The Hockey News and The Athletic for reference. Use "The Contrarian" by A Perfect Circle as motivation.

https://www.wkbw.com/news/local-news/we-can-save-lives-death-of-nys-thruway-authority-worker-highlights-importance-of-responsible-driving This might be why? Sometimes big brother is required because we, as a society, are a bunch of douchebags. May 10, 2024.. People drive like entitled ***** and there are people working there. I get where you are coming from, but if people just respected the situation perhaps it would not be necessary.

Indeed a risk. One that they hopefully suss out during the pre-drafting interview process. There's no perfect system. Look at what college sports have become. Every entitled athlete enters the transfer portal in search of a better NIL agreement with another team. Either that or they believe their current team snubbed them and they will have more success elsewhere. It's a joke.

Most sports sites have opted into hiring aspiring media people to manage a team or teams for the overall site. If you look at Hockey News you will find that https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/buffalo-sabres/author/michael-derosa is your editor for Buffalo, Boston, and Tampa. My suspicion is that each of the editors are tracked on how many eyeballs they can pull to the site on a daily basis so that Hockey News can pull in ad revenue. I would imagine an editor could easily use any number of searches on a routine basis to grab anything posted on the Internet and perhaps even go so far as to have AI summarize the daily news related to a team and then use that as an article. In that way, even we could influence what is being written as our conversations here are easily searchable and collected. Of course you could also look at Sports Illustrated's debacle from earlier this year. - https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/sports-illustrated-layoffs-iconic-magazine-end-of-era-rcna134820. There are some interesting tidbits in the reported use of AI to write articles on the site, etc. Finally there is also a site called Hockey Writer's that I often see come up in news aggregators and I don't know the quality of it but often I confuse it with Hockey News. Bottom line.. it's about ad revenue and remaining relevant so click bait is the name of the game.

I'm not taking the time to verify this... so yell at Buccigross if he's wrong about it being 9 years. I can see that the Oilers would likely have 9 forwards aged 32 or older. Technically older than 32 would work if you assume that the minute/day after their time of birth they are older than 32. Good luck Skinner! An interesting morsel of information (at least to me) nonetheless.

Not to mention that everyone in the league knew the Oilers had to adjust for the cap so the Sabres weren't dealing with EDM in a bubble. Their offer was going to have to be better than the next team.

https://thehockeywriters.com/canadiens-hughes-denied-signing-impact-players-2024/ Interesting and reads a lot like Buffalo On how hard it is to attract players... to Montreal. So perhaps it's not a Buffalo thing? At least they can put "exciting place to play" in their offer. Not sure that Buffalo can pull of the same story, certainly the arena ain't much to look at.

100%, but that's how it works with anything that is "developing". Right now the Sabres have players who are still developing. Generally that's the case until about 25 or 26 these days. The NHL is really broken down into 5 groups, and the predictability of performance is based on the mix of those 5 groups. 18-22 - super raw, hard to tell what will happen and generally should not comprise a good portion of the roster 22-25 - developing, you get a sense of what they can be, and you hope they reach that potential 26-29 - definitely know what a player has and will bring to the table 30-33 - you know the player, now the question is will they begin to drop off (the reverse of 22-25) 34+ - the reverse of 18-22. Will they drop-off So, if you look at a team's roster construction, the more the roster fits into each of those areas the easier it becomes to predict the capabilities of the team. The Sabres have fielded a young roster for a few years, not ideal. This year they project: 18-22 - 3 players (Benson, Power, Levi) 22-25 - 8 players (Cozens, Quinn, JJP, Krebs, Dahlin, Byram, Jokiharju, UPL) 26-29 - 9 players (Thompson, Tuch, Greenway, Lafferty, NAK, Malenstyn, Clifton, Gilbert, Bryson) - 4 of which were brought onto the roster in the last 2 days 30-33 - 1 player (Zucker) 34+ - 1 player (Reimer) The core of the team is still in the harder to predict stage and that leads to the uncertainty. if the 22-25 group goes off then the Sabres will be fine. If not, then not so much. Adams did add to the team in key areas so that more predictable players are in the bottom 6. This is also why people want an established 3C.. so think 26+... to improve predictability of what this team can do. It's certainly not a hard and fast rule as superstar 18 year olds change things as well as work horses playing into their late 30's. The Sabres roster construction leads to a lot of ifs... it's just how it is.

Benson..

Indeed! Also, for mental health reasons, if this team is lowering your quality of life I recommend stepping away from following them day to day. Save your wallet and your mind. We know fans are fanatical.. if you can handle the team being bad then great. but I think people are dealing with a lot of non-Sabres stuff and so adding the bad Sabres situation to the daily grind won't help.