>>This is likely a patent gimmick.. put together something that "sounds" like it might work and patent it. Just another example problem with our IP system.

If these guys have proof, which is not likely, then we finally have one of the pieces needed for constructing actual AI.

What proof are you talking about? I mean, they have working silicon... and there are plenty of FPGAs which "rewire" themselves the same way.

The point of this is to increase the utilization of the math units, it doesn't do any other kind of magic that needs proving.

If other manufacturers are dropping the jack and consumers aren't flocking to devices that still have one it just proves that Apple was correct and that it was a feature that most consumers don't actually care about.

It just means that it wasn't important *enough* to flock to other devices. The inconvenience of having to switch to Android and all that comes with that is much bigger than the inconvenience of a dongle.

I don't know if that means that Apple was "right". Apple can do some deeply unpopular things (look at Macbook Pro keyboards) and still continue to sell well due to customer lock-in. It doesn't validate the choice, though.

Try pasting the first paragraph of a current political news story. It generates all kinds of semi-believable fake news... In that context, it's both impressive and a bit worrying. The Kentucky democrat in my "story" was suspected of felonies, hiding money, receiving undocumented donations, and his wife was also hiding money on the side... each with a full background story at a click of a button. It's really easy to generate 30 of those, pick the best 3 or 4 and start spamming them out.

It does a lot worse with random half-sentences, for sure.

By that definition, Star Trek isn't sci-fi either? It's fantasy with spaceships?

Terminator might be bad science fiction, but it fits within every common definition of sci-fi out there.

People do die every day in driving accidents already. It's not clear to me that there will be more deaths, even with everything you pointed out. Some will feel really wrong, where a car randomly plows through a pedestrian, but only because the explanation will be a software bug instead of a drunk driver.

These cars are never drunk, tired, distracted, never in a hurry, aggressive, or joyriding, have excellent vision in bad weather, see through other cars... they have many advantages over human drivers, as well as disadvantages that you've brought up. We'll see which ones are more important in the end...

Do businesses cover those premiums for employees?

and health care premiums are much, much lower thanks to universal single-payer health care

What health premiums?

He is saying that when humans are first "turned on", they take a hell of a lot of time to learn basics.

You're comparing a "trained" human and their ability to learn to a completely fresh network. There are some very interesting papers that shows that a networks that's trained to recognize certain things can be re-trained to recognize some completely different things incredibly quickly. It's obviously not human-level ability, but it's not as black and white as you try to paint it.

They also work longer hours and, since they're contractors, companies don't worry about burning them out. They also don't have to worry about them Unionizing and they have tremendous leverage of the employee since they can fire them at any time and send them back to their native country, usually with a large pay cut when they go back.

H1-Bs are not necessarily contractors, in fact I'd be surprised if you found many at all that are, outside of some of those "loophole" places like Tata Consultancy -- and, in those cases, you're not sponsoring those contractors yourself anyway.

In addition, if you fire an H1-B, they still have 60 days to find a new job. In SV, that's really not much of a problem these days. It's an inconvenience, for sure, but not one over which you're going to tolerate bad work environment for.

Robocalls work because they do thousands of them. If you caught one of the guys $1500 per call is already going to be millions, if not billions and maybe trillions.

Like this guy: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/05/11/robocaller-fined-120-million-fcc-nearly-100-million-spoofed-calls/601287002/?

I've been to a lot of small and medium sized cities in the US, and most of them would make a great place to settle down and have a nice life. No, you're not going to work for a megacorp there and make six figures, but you're going to do decently well, and will own a nice house for less than a one bedroom rental on the coasts.

The folks I meet on business in their coastal cities love to show them off almost as much as they love to bitch about them. When I ask why they put up with all the things they hate, they pretty much all say, "this is where the jobs are". They ignore the fact that there are hundreds of other cities where that's true as well.

Like you said, you're not going to make six figures, and you will not have the choice of jobs that you would in a smaller place.

Some (or a lot, based on population) people do want to have more career opportunities, even if it means smaller homes and less space. Just having any kind of a job is often not at all enough.

Yeah, yeah, ignorant people are scared of a "prop plane..."

It's not that simple. Even WestJet says that they are only more efficient on short-hauls, less than 300 miles. They are louder, they generally don't fit in normal gates and require buses / walking to the plane, they have very little overhead room... They introduce a new type of plane to be handled by ground crews in many small airports with small crews.

There are real disadvantages, along with advantages. If they made sense for an airline, the "sacred of prop plane" wouldn't be an issue, just like it's not an issue for Porter.

Even if you do not have a paid Xbox Live Gold subscription, you can head to this link and claim what appears to be a permanent copy of the game for your Microsoft Account.

It says right under the 'Get' button that Xbox Live Gold is needed to play the game. So, maybe you can *get* it, but you can't *play* it.

They sell because people are gullible and think pricier=better.

Why do you have to have such low opinion of people?

You don't think it's possible that better screens, better cameras, faster and thinner phones, are not features that anybody wants? You have to be aware that expandable storage and swappable battery are simply not that important to most people. And as much as I don't like the idea of the disappearing headphone jack, that looks like it's going to go the way of the expandable storage... something that only a few "corner case" users will need.

Very well said.