Ordered and eagerly awaiting it.

Thanks for the info.

I tend to disagree.

Or maybe we just have different circle of friends. The people I generally concern myself with value peer esteem far above bling-bling.

You said nothing I'd disagree with. The unfortunate fact is that the law does not agree with you.

Thanks for all the insightful posts over the years, WaffleMonster! Especially this one. I linked to it in a comment from a discussion thread relating to another AI story on:
"AI Could Explain Why We're Not Meeting Any Aliens, Wild Study Proposes"
https://science.slashdot.org/c...
"James P. Hogan's "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" is another good novel about the emergence of AI (and a "hard sci-fi" one on I which is rarer), and it shaped some of my thinking on such things. Even though it was mainly about AI in conflict with humans -- and now I am more concerned (in the short term) about humans using AI to dominate other humans. Interesting post by "WaffleMonster" mentioning that theme: ..."

In general though I think restrictions on AI development -- no matter how sensible some may be -- won't work as well as moving towards general socio-technical enlightenment as I mention in my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

Because as you suggest, the impulse of greed is driving many abuses of AI (and other things) and a ban is not going to stop greed, and greed will find ways around a ban. But one way to deal with greed may to transcend it somehow in a healthy way (as it true for any of the Seven Deadly Sins).

Like Albert Einstein said about nuclear weapons, the same may apply to AI:
"The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. (1945)"

Of course, since we now have AI delivered through watches, things are even more complicated these days. But a change of (societal) heart can still can make sense.

It involves more work than that actually. To save a whopping 10 cents on BOM, apple stores all of the firmware on the SSD, which means you have to extract the contents of the SSD and load them on to another one. And you'll need additional tooling for that given macos doesn't allow you to read that area of the disk.

As an added bonus, if your SSD fails, your whole computer is bricked. You know what else? Apple doesn't even offer a service to fix it out of warranty. But wait, there's more: No independent repair shops will fix it either, because doing so involves copyright infringement and Apple will sue.

Well that's easy, don't buy a mac. You signed up for that when you made that stupid choice. I have to use one at work for testing and I really don't get the appeal of it. Unless you're doing hobby video editing crap they're a net negative. And even then I question that given they don't even have access to the best hardware for it.

Dude you're seriously fucking bonkers if you believe that provides any material benefit at all. The absolute best it can do is add a very miniscule amount of energy efficiency, but we're talking on the scale of adding less than one second to a ten hour battery life.

What model of iMac? I could upgrade them RAM on my 2008 iMac, but what about a new one with Apple Silicon?

There are NO laptop manufacturers apart from Apple who make a laptop capable of running macos apps*. If you need to run mac software, you have to buy a mac. There is no competition so far as macos compatible laptops are, and some software only runs on macos. So Apple have a monopoly so far as mac-compatible laptops are concerned.

*Unless you count hackintoshes, but those are a dying breed now that Apple makes their own exclusive silicon.

You're welcome. And thanks for your kind words (and also those from "Chrontius" in reply to you). It makes me glad to hear them.

Agreed, the Culture novels are another interesting perspective on humanoid/AI coexistence.

James P. Hogan's "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" is another good novel about the emergence of AI (and a "hard sci-fi" one on I which is rarer), and it shaped some of my thinking on such things. Even though it was mainly about AI in conflict with humans -- and now I am more concerned (in the short term) about humans using AI to dominate other humans.

Interesting post by "WaffleMonster" mentioning that theme:
https://news.slashdot.org/comm...
"AI is today being leveraged on an industrial scale to judge, influence and psychologically addict billions for simple commercial gain. As technology improves thing will only become worse especially as corporations pursuit global propaganda campaigns to scare the shit out of people in order to make them compliant to legislative agendas that favor the very same corporations leveraging AI against them today."

I raised that issue with Ray Kurzweil via emails circa 2000-2010 when he (unwisely in my opinion) suggested that developing AI through the vehicle of capitalistic venture-funded hyper-competitive corporations emphasizing artificial scarcity would produce all sorts of wonderful results for humanity. I suggested he may have had trouble seeing that because he have been financially rewarded in the past for his AI-related successes done in corporate settings.

From one of those emails by me to Kurzweil that someone else put up on their website:
"Subject: Review of Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near"
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
"... Kurzweil's perspective on life and politics presumably derives from being
a self-made captain of industry in the capitalist USA -- having made a
fortune producing sophisticated computer equipment and related software no
doubt through a lot of cleverness and hard work. In the USA, historically
that position in society generally implies adopting a
Republican/Libertarian militaristic and market-driven perspective, if for
no other reason than to get along easily with peers and to do well in the
marketplace. But also, for the few percent who succeed at the American
dream (unlike the masses of failures) he can look back at his experience,
and perhaps ignoring luck or help from others, claim his success was due
to his own choices, and if others just made similar good choices, they too
would be successful. It is like a millionaire lottery winner exhorting
everyone to play the lottery. As an expert in statistics though, Kurzweil
should, if self-reflective, be able to see some statistical problems with
this viewpoint. Who would be the workers to be bossed around if everyone
was a successful as him? And how would his products command a price
premium if everyone was making such things? Clearly such a society of
universal success would need to be fundamentally different than the one
which produced his own personal success.
      Also, Kurzweil made his money in control of patents and copyrights and
must presumably strongly believe in the value of their role in controlling
resources to create artificial scarcity to justify his own financial
success. Thus, for example, he laments the problems of the commercial
music industry in the USA in enforcing scarcity of the product of
musicians they control under contract, while he ignores the rise of
uncontracted individuals more easily producing their own garage band music
and the blossoming of a world of personal and private media production.
      One would expect anyone's personal experience to color his or her
projections for the future and what the best public policy would be in
relation to those projections. That is a given. But it is the failure to
acknowledge this that the most harm can be done.
      To grossly simplify a complex subject, the elite political and economic
culture Kurzweil finds himself in as a success in the USA now centers
around maintaining an empire through military preparedness and preventive
first strikes, coupled with a strong police state to protect accumulated
wealth of the financially obese. This culture supports market driven
approaches to supporting the innovations needed to support this
militarily-driven police-state-trending economy, where entrepreneurs are
kept on very short leashes, where consumers are dumbed down via compulsory
schooling, and where dissent is easily managed by removing profitable
employment opportunities from dissenters, leading to self-censorship.
Kurzweil is a person now embedded in the culture of the upper crust
economically of the USA's military and economic leadership. So, one might
expect Kurzweil to write from that perspective, and he does. His solutions
to problems the singularity pose reflect all these trends -- from
promoting first strike use of nanobots, to design and implementation
facilitated through greed, to widespread one-way surveillance of the
populace by a controlling elite.
      But the biggest problem with the book _The Singularity Is Near: When
Humans Transcend Biology_ is Kurzweil seems unaware that he is doing so.
He takes all those things as given, like a fish ignoring water, ignoring
the substance of authors like Zinn, Chomsky, Domhoff, Gatto, Holt, and so
on. And that shows a lack of self-reflection on the part of the book's
author. And it is is a lack of self-reflection which seems dangerously
reckless for a person of Kurzweil's power (financially, politically,
intellectually, and persuasively). Of course, the same thing could be said
of many other leaders in the USA, so that he is not alone there. But one
expects more from someone like Ray Kurzweil for some reason, given his
incredible intelligence. With great power comes great responsibility, and
one of those responsibilities is to be reasonably self-aware of ones own
history and biases and limitations. He has not yet joined the small but
growing camp of the elite who realize that accompanying the phase change
the information age is bringing on must be a phase change in power
relationships, if anyone is to survive and prosper. And ultimately, that
means not a move to new ways of being human, but instead a return to old
ways of being human, as I shall illustrate below drawing on work by
Marshall Sahlins. ..."

Anyway, there is always a reason for hope -- and I am glad I could encourage some more of that -- even as you are right that there are also always reasons for despair. Courage involves choosing hope in the face of despair and fear -- including for all the reasons Howard Zinn mentioned on future unpredictability.

I personally hope that using AI to support Dialogue Mapping with IBIS to visualize discussions could help small groups make better decisions together and get at least some positive benefits from AI (as I suggested in 2019):
https://cognitive-science.info...
https://issip.org/issip-cognit...

Right now they're more the flood people.

Here's a more interesting choice: This is a magical box here. It has a button. If you push that button, a person dies. A person you have never met and you would never meet in your entire life. But I guarantee you, as soon as you push that button, this person dies.

You'd be amazed how many people say they push it.

What's probably less amazing is how many regret pushing that button when I come and pick up the box, telling them it will go to someone they never met and will never meet in their entire life.

Well, I guess more and more people now realize how "that" could have been possible: It's what happens when people need money to survive and don't give half a fuck about some people they don't even know about.

Guess it's time to absolve the Germans because we notice that we ain't one lick better. It's easy to sit on a high horse if you don't have to slaughter it for food so you don't starve.

First they force you to return, then they ain't happy if you do.

And Walter Ulbricht said that nobody plans to build a wall.

Talk is cheap.