Unlike the chainsaw, where carnage can manifest only near the chainsaw, AI is a tool with the ability to reach a far wider audience.
No, you should not fear a tool, IF IT IS USED CORRECTLY. But without any sort of moral standards for AI behavior, regulatory limitations on usecases, or ability to ban results of AI computed actions, we end up with a world where it's basically possible to build a tool that is capable of manipulating ANYONE. We are not there yet, but we will be one day. And when that day comes, I want the people building these engines to have enough foresight (or regulatory requirements) to limit the ability of the AIs to tasks that are not criminal in nature.

Today, criminals use AI to generate phishing schemes. Autoplace adds that target audiences who are particularly gullible. Quickly build code to exploit zero day vulnerabilities when found etc. etc. All of this will get worse, if AI does not have a moral component, and worse when the AI becomes smarter. Imagine an AI that can outsmart law enforcement, design dangerous drug, Or even simple things like more quickly earn more money for the rich people, while taking away jobs from poor people, further building divides in the populace.

Remember tools are regulated too. Not everyone gets access to machineguns, explosives, nuclear materials, to name a few. Because these things can be dangerous when not handled correctly. So can AI. And it's not enough to just make things "illegal". Remember the war on drugs ? Prohibition ? Solicitation ? People who WANT to break the law, will break the law. But if the gun is a smartgun, it wont fire bullets at real people. Similar protection elements can be built into AI... If we demand it.

True random isn't only about our understanding, or lack thereof.
In theory no two snowflakes are alike, the same goes for flowers etc. etc. However, that doesn't mean they are totally random. A flower cant all of a sudden be a polar bear. Randomness is within certain limits. And those limits bring bias. The study didn't actually mention that any had been noticed, but that doesn't mean it's not there. Bias is a HUGE thing in random numbers. If a single number is being generated significantly more often than any other number, then that provides loop holes for anyone working on decryption schemes.
In nature there are degrees of enthropy in all systems. Any bias will lower this entropy significantly, and thereby invalidate its use in terms of "totally random".
However, totally random might not always be needed. given that this method is using low levels of electrical current, it might be something that could easily be made small and independant, like an RNG computer chip, providing a cheap, readily available source of random numbers to anyone.

Precisely, The current investigation into the Schrems ruling from EU court on the non-acceptance of the US "privacy shield", is that companies in the US are potentially NOT protecting the data as is mandated by EU law (mainly because US laws do not provide for data privacy to the extent that the EU demands), and therefore the data is not allowed to leave the EU, in point of fact ACCESS to the data is not even allowed outside EU. This charter of the GDPR regulations is there to ensure that noone is subject to undue prosecution, as per the UN human rights charter (also signed by the US btw), and it has been implemented to avoid problems with authoritarian regimes. So it should be no issue for any freedom loving country to want to abide by these rules.

Keep in mind the ruling is so far only leading to an investigation, because of the current findings. Meta (and any other company that holds personal data on EU citizens) might still implement measures to keep up to the EU standards. Google has already provided the "what does google know about me"-feature, precisely to conform to GDPR rules.

Meta are similarly free to KEEP the data in EU, or transmit "targeting wants"-data from the US to the EU servers, rather than moving the personal data to the US and processing it there... But this will cost them money, because then they need to expand the EU datacentres and their many algorithms. They might also need to employ more people in the EU, at a higher cost.... All this is expensive. It's easier (cheaper) to try to combat the legislation (MS, Google and a few others have tried the same when they blatantly ignored EU rules, but they usually loose since laws in Europe are not really open to interpretation in the way they are in the US.

Why Meta would want to threaten with social suicide, I cannot understand. It must be a desperation move. Maybe they are trying to mobilize support for their position amongst its users. Multiple competitors have no issues complying with the rules, and if facebook and instagram are gone tomorrow, EU users will migrate to alternatives. A few might try to do the china trick and use VPN, but that would be a minority of users, since this is not easily done by the average tech illiterate user.

Unlike regular banking, I believe the Ethereum is doing the math on a central location, they call it "one central book" or something like that. This would be akin to all bank transfers going via only one server. That would also put some strain on that. With the huge size of the chains and the math required, ethereum averages like 13-15 transactions per second on a good day.

It makes sense that any single scarce resource in the chain would drive up the cost of that resource. But if this is a weakness or not, I'm not sure, as it provides simpler access to changes in the programming, chains etc. This would also make it simpler to make changes to make the currency more green, I suspect. Ethereum currently uses 100.000s times the power for a single transaction, in comparison with a normal visa/mastercard transaction. From what I read, they want to "go green" by capping this power requirement sometime in 2022. That MIGHT make it more user friendly at the time (and more investor friendly, if you dont have to worry about CO2 footprint in your investment)

I do know that ethereum will never make it as a payment source, if transaction fees rake in at 62$. Even at 1/10th of that, you would easily have to quadrouple the price of a chocolate bar, if you pay with Ethereum. So change is needed, IMO.

Agree. But, the only viable geo engineering technique we have developed for this purpose is the Carbon Capture and Storage tech. While it is promising, it is also either energy intensive, or resource intensive. So as long as we use carbon BUILDING the damned things, its not really a good option. But we will get there at some point.

Lasering the molecules, to break them into core molecules, is not possible yet, at least not at anything resembling scale. Solarshade, also not invented yet. We MIGHT be able to get a supervolcano going, but that also requires a lot of research and guesswork, as we have never tried actively forcing a volcano to erupt. Increasing speed of ocean currents might not be enough by itself, and the tech has never been scaled to the size we would need it. Am I missing anything ? :)

It's not the ranking You need to worry about, mate. But the growth.

This is the exact reason we cannot wait 50 years for a solution. In order to reach the UN goal (or the IPCC), we need to cut back about 90% from current greenhouse gas emmisions. But many developing countries, such as China and India are still growing their CO2 footprint at an alarming rate. This means that we might end up with a peak that is twice as high as the current scenario, making it a LOT harder to reach the goal.
Similarly, A lot of business are having trouble finding a good alternative to burning CO2... Steel for instance. You cannot create an electric or firewood oven strong enough to melt down steel, so steel casting is still done using coal as a heat source. Farming is another example, it's really hard to avoid using ammonia for fertilizer, and ammonia when breaking down turns into a lot of different greenhouse gasses, which is a LOT more powerful than simple CO2 (about 2000 times more powerful per ton). This is a huge problem if we want to feed everyone (without fertilizing the soil, it will not have enough nutrients to grow food - as evidenced by the many jungle clearings done in southeast asia and south america which turns into "dead" savannah).

In order to be effective, we need to engage in developing solutions now, and set standards for lowering the current footprint, now. As someone suggested elsewhere in the discussion, it's not practical, if a goal is set so far into the future, that no action is taken now. The earlier we adopt new technologies and habbits, the less we will have to cut back later, in order to reach the preindustrial level. In the EU we have started a lot of projects to produce fewer greenhouse gasses, as Your chart also shows. But even if everyone adopts the same technology, we still need more action, new technologies and better ways to do things. This work needs to start now, if we want to keep to the 1,5C goal.

- "Sometimes the very young do not do as they are told".

This is a universal truth (ask the Nox ;) ). And the leftwing movements are generally very young in our part of the world.
The very young generally dont play by the rules and so believe that violence is an acceptable way to achieve goals. With most rightwing movements being older and "wiser", they are generally not using violence to achieve goals in free countries, because the use of voilence to force your views on someone else, is contratry to the concept of personal freedom, which is the central part of the rights ideology. So there is rarely much to fight for, via violent means. Exceptions being war on opposing ideologies, like Korea, Vietnam, WW2 and Afghanistan being the more known ones.

Look at fascisim, communism, nazism, bonapartism, and I could go on. All left wing movements who are/were willing to use violence to achieve or consolidate their power.

I suppose that's why so many rightwingers are/were distancing themselves from Trump, because they feared that he would use force to achieve goals.
And, ironically, as You are saying there are a lot of people more fearful of the violence that the leftwing brings, than the harsh criticism the rightwing brings, and therefore sell out on those freedoms.

No, it wasn't actually a successor. The 128 was an upgrade in processing speed and memory, aimed at a more professional market. It was however, in all other aspects identical to the C64.

However, the C65 was supposed to be both bigger and faster AND have an upgrade in sound and graphics too. The reason the C65 wasn't released, was the development of the Amiga 500, which came out earlier and with better specs. Ironically, Amiga was also released by Commodore, so they were outcompeting themselves.

Fun fact: Commodore ended up a dying brand because of their inability to get their many factories and development lines to work together. The last Commodores were IBM PCs made in a factory in Germany in the late late '90s (I think the last lines were the Pentiums or Pentium 2s so probably around '96)

WHAAAAT ? You aren't planning on installing 500 ft of cable pulling a 50 ton block to power Your own local generator ? I'm shocked. What kind of home improvement are you even thinking about ? :)

While I'm sure there are differences in the cost locally, how about comparing to wind power instead ? That's less than half the cost of solar ? And in the most modern of windmills, it's about 1/5 the cost of nuclear.

That said, a good mix of sources, including nuclear is still to be preferred, as each renewable energy source is not consistent in its output. That goes for wind, solar and even hydro. They all carry the instability drawback.

Not just inefficient. In the most remote parts of the world, the sun doesn't shine for 180 day in a row. In majority of the world 14 hours of night time is not uncommon during winter.
That means that given the earth circumference, grids would need to span at LEAST a third of the earths circumference, not accounting for earths irregular shape, that's about 15.000 km away you will need to get your energy from. While this is feasible (not to mention geopolitical issues), energy loss during transmission would be at LEAST 3.5% per 1000 km, or more than 50% when we transmit it 15.000 km. This seems to be an overly expensive solution, if we can just add in some wind, hydro, or even oil powered solutions "closer to home".

As it is, the US is still one of the most costly places in the world to use solar. So while lowering taxes on technology like this might help, it's far from enough.

You have to consider the limitations of the technology itself. First there is the storage and transmission. This is the same argument you also get with wind, wave and any other renewable energy source, it's not consistent in its delivery, and therefore you need to have large amounts stored, or supplemented from other sources when the production is low.
Second, low production and high storage also means long transmission paths, with energy loss (albeit minor) and infrastructure costs building up too.
Third, add in the geography of the US. While a large part of the country IS well suited for solar energy, Majority is not. Northern parts are too far north to produce much during winter, and climate things like snow, tornadoes, hurricanes etc. makes a large number of states potentially unsuitable as a location for solar power. That means that the places that ARE good, needs additional infrastructure to distribute to the rest of the states. Again, increasing costs.
Fourth, in modern society, majority of energy is not consumed when the sun is up, but rather at dusk, or in the evening when it is down. This means at least 60% of the daily energy need, needs to be met while the sun isn't shining (peak is after 6 pm - https://www.eia.gov/todayinene...)
Fifth, and potentially the most expensive part of the equation: In the US majority of power is consumed in the cities. That means local installations are done in places that are difficult to get to, to install on, and in many situations, are too decentralized to be serviced easily/cheap. The more... Scaled up versions in the form of large energy factories in the middle of the desserts, carry much lower maintenance and potentially also initial building costs per MWh. However, it's rarely, if ever, this type of construction that is considered by city councils or home owners (obviously), and at the same time these farms are usually not as high an ROI as for example wind or water power.

Solar is absolutely amazing, if You can consume it on the spot, if You have batteries to soak up the excess and if You have an alternative in place for when the sun is not enough. In all other cases, solar is not an economically viable alternative, and absolutely, the excessive costs added by tariffs in the US does not make it easier to choose solar, but in reality that part of the costs is minor when looking at the complete ledger. Solar is expensive, and needs to have other sources mixed in with it, to be truly efficient.

It doesn't matter how big a SINGLE economy the UK is. It's about the MARKET you can reach when you manufacture there. And the UK hasn't actually managed to get any decent trade deals going, that makes it a favorable position over any other non-EU country in the region. Nor does the UK have any geographical or natural resource advantage, that would make it a favorable place to put an IC manufacturing plant.
This is specifically, because the UK is not the major consumer of those chips. All of Europe is, and presumably parts of ME and NA too. So it makes more sense to place the factory where there are easier access to customers, resources and logistics, in order to keep manufacturing costs down.

So looking specifically at "markets", You have: US, China, EU, southeast asia, rest of world. Put in this perspective, UK is actually VERY tiny. UK KNOWS it has to find new tradedeals, partnerships etc. to replace those that it lost during brexit. It's just not an easy thing to do, espcially in a covid world, with travel restructions, and a transportation bottleneck, where those potential partners are NOT immediate neighbours anymore. While these things might be something that can be adressed in the future, companies looking to establish manufacturing, have to consider them, NOW.

This has little or nothing to do with language, nor impotent Russian moneymen. Honestly, that's just grasping at straws, mate. Manufacturing happens just as fine in plants not using English, and honestly, outside of a few oil barons, Russia has no real economy to boast of, a certainly not enough of one to challenge market leadership in any of the market locations mentioned before. Be proud of your heritage. Sure. But be honest about it too.

Agreed. Knowledge have progressed a lot in the last few thousand years.

That is kind of my point too. We already know how to do what the ants do, and we already know that this is hardly enough for our needs.
So there isn't a lot of decent science in it.

The same thing can be said of the arches. As I remember it from history classes, the British Stationary Office sometime during the middle of the last century, concluded that studies of the pressures and directions of force in arches remains purely "empirical in nature".
And as I remember it, the only thing that can collapse an arch (other than sufficient pressure coming from an unexpected direction), is the removal of or movement in materials from the construction, which generally only happens due to external forces being applied, usually wind, rain or vibration moving them about. To that I added the empirical evidence that the haunches of an arch can be moved out of alignment with enough vibrations applied only as an example of how we can find natural ways to avoid the problems that occur, other than using cement or steel in the construction.

Given that access to rocks and sand is probably better than access to high grade steel once we reach Mars, then if "natural" methods are to be used in construction, we ALSO have to find similar "natural" ways to avoid the stress that potentially collapses the constructions.

Agreed. But that still suggests that You are looking for a NEW engineering principle, which they clearly state they have not found. Ants use arches. That's not a new engineering principle. I can build that today. My toddler can build an igloo in the snow from the same principle.

That still doesn't mean that the construction will stand up to how we humans end up USING it. The Igloo will melt when the sun comes. The ant tunnel will collapse when there is a tremor in the ground. Highways degrade and get potholes when enough cars have passed over the same weak spot.

So the principle is not enough to get us there. While You MIGHT be able to build something that "instinctively" can build a tunnel system, like an ant can (and I'm not saying that's not a good thing to do). However, we, as a species, are larger than ants while the materials might not be scaled up similarly, neither here, nor on Mars. We also apply more stress on our constructions than ants too, and we expect more safety and more durability from our construction works. A 10 trillion dollar underground dome that only lasts a few months, might not be what You can sell to NASA. It's my understanding, without actually having been employed there, that they have some concern for human life and safety.

So either we have to keep to those supports that we have labored over hundreds of years to develop and use, or we have to find alternative ways to minimize the stress on the constructions that we create, so that simple tunnels, like what the "ant machine" You propose, can build is sufficient for our needs. I know that several Mars building projects aim at trying to make a cement-like goo with local materials (presumably to be able to create better support for buildings). So I'm suggesting that potentially, the natural way is not what NASA is looking for ?

https://www.space.com/astronau...