I live in rural America, and an EV charging infrastructure is largely non-existent. In concept, EVs have their merits, but in execution, they are not usable everywhere.
I live in rural America, and EVs are great here. Oh, public charging infrastructure mostly doesn't exist, but that's fine because I have electricity -- get this -- at my house!. I even have flush toilets, 'cause we're high class. The nearest Supercharger is ~100 miles away, but I have a garage, and a barn, and I put EV chargers in both. For normal daily driving, it works fine to just charge at home -- car is fully charged every morning -- and when I go on a long trip, well, the Supercharger network has me covered.
Works perfectly.
So you are willing to pay out another $10K eventually for a battery just so that you can plug in at home?
It's not clear that will ever be needed. EV batteries don't just stop working (barring some unusual fault); they just gradually decline in capacity, and the decline is very slow after the first 1-2 years. So expect to have 95% of capacity after two years, 80% after a decade, 60% after two decades, 50% after three, etc.
So it's just a question of when the capacity drops so low that the vehicle no longer has enough range -- but over time charging infrastructure is going to get better and better, so long range will become less and less important. Also, batteries are going to get cheaper.
So, yeah, it seems entirely reasonable to me to replace the battery in 20 years (if you haven't replaced the vehicle by then). Especially since the fuel savings over that time will far more than cover the replacement cost, even if the replacement cost hasn't come down, which it will!
Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is.
The exponential growth achievable by Von Neumann probes that don't mind traveling for millions of years to get to the next galaxy make space small.
An implication of a physically implemented "superintelligence" would be that it needs to have much more computing power than a human brain. There are scientifically sound indicators (not proof, just plausibility) that no such device can be built in this physical universe, hence a machine that is a "superintelligence" is not physically possible.
What are these scientifically-sound indicators?
I suppose some of that may be down to the difference in the value of the change. It was worth about 2.5X what it is today back when I was working convenience store night shifts, so people might have cared more about getting it correct.
Even more, people at Starbucks are paying $7 for a cup of coffee, so they're clearly not very price-sensitive. If the customer doesn't bother to look to see whether they got the correct change, should the cashier waste everyone's time getting it right? I think yes, but I could see where people might disagree.
I know people at the convenience store got pissed when they got shortchanged, which is why cashiers who couldn't count change out got fired pretty quickly. They might last longer at Starbucks today. Especially since most customers don't pay with cash.
One girl works at Starbucks and said they've had to fire 3 workers in the last six months because they *literally* could not correctly count change.
That's not new. I saw the same problem when I was working at a convenience store in the late 80s.
Anyone who IS actually valuable with a rare skillset in high demand does not fear deportation. Before you can deport them, they already have another job, potentially in a hostile country,
The fact that they can get a job in another country easily doesn't mean they don't fear being required to leave this one. Most immigrants like the US and don't want to leave it, and even if they didn't care about the US in particular they've often built lives here that they don't want to uproot. I've seen several really smart, talented people get booted out of the country over bizarre rules or immigration snafus, even with help from expensive immigration attorneys. It's stupid.
And, of course, many more are willing to be abused by their employers in order to stay. I don't see that problem so much, because although I work with a lot of people on H1Bs, my employer (Google) treats them well, pays them the same as citizens, etc. But it make sense that there is a lot of abuse in the broader industry.
For people that are deemed so valuable that they need a special visa, they need to be given permanent residency and not beholden to a single employer, so if they are laid off, they don't need to fear deportation.
This is only part of the problem and does nothing to stop imported workers from memorizing as much IP as they can and returning home.
That doesn't happen much, not unless the worker is forced to go back because of crappy H1B policies. The fact is that nearly all foreign workers would love to stay permanently.
No one claimed that climate change will destroy the planet. Or wipe out Life on Earth.
Well, there is a non-zero probability that the Earth could enter a runaway warming cycle and become another Venus, with surface temperatures exceeding 400C. The planet wouldn't be destroyed, but life would probably be wiped out. AFAIK we haven't found any life form that can survive above about 120C.
That seems unlikely, though, given that Earth's hottest phases so far (after the crust cooled, anyway) have been considerably cooler than that.
So... remain in Mexico is the only one? Mexico has said they won't agree to reinstate it, and without their cooperation it would put the US in violation of our treaties. The president can't legally break treaties; Congress needs to act for that.
How often have you thought "All I want from this 20 minute video is an answer to a 5 second question and I can't even scan quickly past it to find what I'm looking for. Screw that shit, I'll rather spend those 20 minutes looking for a text alternative!"
I hear you. This is Google, though, and they already do automated transcripts of Meet meetings and YouTube videos. Odds are good that you'll be able to easily get a skimmable and searchable transcript, and to be able to jump into a location of the video by clicking on the transcript. Might not be there in the first release, though.
Honestly, I don't see any real reason to choose Vids over the more mature options out there.
We'll see, but I suspect that integration into Google's other office tools may give it a solid place. It doesn't have to be the best, it just has to be good enough, and well-integrated.
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. -- Steinbach