Nobody is actually ahead in AI, because they're all solving the wrong problem, as indeed AI researchers have consistently done since the 1960s.

I'm not the least bit worried about the possibility of superintelligence, not until they actually figure out what intelligence is as opposed to what is convenient to solve.

As for Musk, he's busy trying to kill all engineering projects in America.

If there's an issue that needs resolving, it's best to acknowledge it. Hiding away, like Microsoft does with their abysmal records on reliability and security, achieves nothing.

If honesty is a problem, then neither IT nor science seem good professions. Politics and economics might be better.

In neural nets, the network software is not the algorithm that is running. The net software is playing the same role as the CPU in a conventional software system. It is merely the platform on which the code is run.

The topology of the network plus the state of that network (the data) corresponds to an algorithm. That is the actual software that is being run. AI cannot be considered open until this is released.

But I flat-out guarantee no AI vendor is going to do that.

Which means that a household of 10 can all connect to different sites and get full speed.

What is with this assuming only one person in a house can be connected?

They figured out that Open Source was the correct direction. True, it took 25 years, but they figured it out.

And that's definitely an improvement over Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle, who have never understood that.

Veronica worked with Gopher, IIRC.
As best as I can remember, WAIS didn't need a search engine.

I really don't recommend telling admins in America that an extended finger is good.

*runs away and hides under a rock

If you click on parent directory, then the beta directory, you find the source tarball.

Forever growth is impossible, yes.

The longest-running companies, which have operated in the region of 1,000-1,200 years, opted for stability and sustainability over growth.

Microsoft shows no interest in surviving on that kind of timeframe.

I am basically the opposite of a crypto expert. However, I do know enough about cryptography in general to know that this basically can't work. There is no way that I would trust a stranger, who had just handed me a piece of paper with a QR code on it, unless I could verify the QR code. In fact, it wouldn't even be enough to verify the QR code. I would want to move the funds into my own wallet first. After all, the stranger could easily have an accomplice that withdrew the money the second that I verified that the funds existed.

The note generator is an interesting idea, in that you can have a QR code that verified the existence of the funds, but you could cover up the secret with a scratch off covering. However, the person receiving the note would still have to trust the person creating the note to not have recorded the secret elsewhere. You could never trust such a note to actually be worth what it said on the front.

About a month ago I spent a week in Peru. For the first time in a couple of decades I used cash as a primary means of transacting business. I purchased things both with Peruvian soles and USD. Both of these currencies worked because the notes that were passed around were sufficiently well done that they passed as genuine. It is very possible that I handled some forged bills, but the bills were all good enough that they spent fine all the same. I did have one $10 bill, however, that was worn enough that no one would take it from me. Heck, I tried to give it away to the uber driver that drove me to the airport (I had already tipped him in the app). He wasn't interested because he knew that he would have trouble spending it. Personally, I don't blame the uber driver. I wouldn't have been interested either. Nor would I be interested if someone tried to pay me in Amazon Gift cards or some other form of payment where the value can easily be manipulated. Unless I knew the person well, I would immediately assume that I was being scammed.

Musk is hardly what I'd call smart. He is not a genius, he is not autistic, he is an idiot. He should know a lot of things, the pro L is that he doesn't. I wouldn't trust him with elementary trigonometry.

I'm not entirely convinced. Boeing list three airframes, I think in the 90s or early 2000s, due to metallic particles clogging the hydraulics. It took three accidents before they admitted there was any problem at all.

That tells me that there has been a denial culture in Boeing for a very long time, that they'd rather blame others first. It also tells me that quality has always been secondary to profits, a correct design would have cost more and that took priority over doing the job right.

Burst tyres happen a lot on aircraft. It's a frequent occurrence. So much so that they're supposed to be built to prevent that being an issue.

No, although they're not causally linked, they ARE linked through Boeing trying to maximise profit rather than optimise design.

Agreed that, if you rank things, air travel is extremely safe.

However, if you score not against the existing alternatives but the upper bounds of what is practical and feasible, I suspect the scores would look drastically different, with all forms of transport being crammed into one blip at the end of the curve of what we could (economically) achieve with the technology and resources available.

That's the curve I think we should pay more attention to, and we should be revising the standards, be it for cars, aircraft, or any other vehicle, to push as high up the curve as we can get away with. Since the curve is what's economic, and not what's possible, anywhere on the curve is profitable. You'll just get much lower profits the further up you go.