But an assembly line manned by robots? Why should that be cheaper in China? Is capital that much cheaper?

Even if wages and other costs were equal, the location advantage is substantial. It's not that it's cheaper in China, but that it's cheaper in the huge manufacturing hubs. You have suppliers and manufacturers for just about every single component you need without long-distance shipping, and a deep pool of design and manufacturing expertise working in the area.

That's not to say you can't manufacture efficiently elsewhere (we have plenty of recent examples such as the Raspberry Pi), but that the advantages has as much to do with the concentration of resources as with the cost of labour and regulations. And of course, as this inudstry becomes ever more automated, it no longer matters much for jobs where it happens any longer.

There wouldn't be so many injuries if such a large chunk of the people setting them off weren't drunk ;)

Just ask Bandai. Scalpers bought up all the Action Figures for their Gundam Seed TV show in America. At one point a figure with an msrp of $15 was going for $150 on ebay and at the big action figure scalper sites.

Thing is, Gundam is a giant robot show, and the toys are a major part of what draws fandom in and gets buzz. Nobody could get the toys without paying 5x-10x msrp. Heck, I didn't even know Bandai had put the show out until I saw some of the toys at the old KB Toy Store for $3 a piece after it had finished bombing and Bandai dumped the remaining stock.

Oh, and if you're in a band and your show gets scalped you might sell 10000 tickets and only 1000 people show up. Thing is, you were planning to sell the other 9,000 ppl who showed up CDs and T-Shirts.

So yeah, scalping hurts. Lots. It's a much more complicated issue than "Just a secondary Market"

You can use the exact same arguments against fly-by-wire technology. Yet, that is now the norm, with not a mechanical linkage in sight.

You can live and work in the US without being a citizen, and still enjoy our wonderful holidays.

After 30 years of off shoring Unions are weak and ineffective in America. Laws can and will be changed. Paperwork can be automated and digitally stored and regulators can be captured.

The reason you're not seeing this in America is the top 1% won't pay the taxes for the infrastructure development, and they've got all the money. 1%ers don't use the subway...

If there's was any country with that special combination of whale-hunting and pyromania to do it, it'd be Iceland ;)

Oh I agree it's being worked on. But it sounds like a very familiar article, as in I think I read similar articles in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. But the mechanism that triggers initial consciousness is, to the best of my knowledge, still a mystery. It will one day be solved. maybe the article you read really does have it figured out, the ones I've seen were just speculation with theories that could not be realistically tested without interfering with the process.

So now I can't even hide my one time pad? Which I keep for perfectly legitimate purposes.

I'm going to start hiding beef jerky in random places in my house.

??? I don't see that all. The links are just google image searches on "reykjavík fireworks", "brenna gamlárskvöldið", and "jóðhátíð í eyjum". Oh, hmm.... I'm betting that because I'm searching from Iceland I get differently biased results. I know that my regular google searches at least bias towards Icelandic sites. Okay, well, basically picture this for an hour while several dozen of these are ongoing, or summer festivals like this.

We kinda like fire.

I have absolutely no power of a large corporation. They're so big I can't boycott them without basically dropping off the grid, in which case I cease to matter anyway. I would need to be a billionaire to have any say in them as an individual.

At least with the Gov't I have a chance, however small. It's happened before. In the 50s, 60s and 70s we saw a massive decline in the power of the aristocracy (fyi, America has an aristocracy, they just don't like to talk about themselves). We saw huge decreases in wealth inequality. Most of this was fueled by Unions along with a bit of the aristocracy turning on itself (Frank Roosevelt). Still, it's _possible_, however unlikely.

And what's the worst that can happend? At the end of the day it doesn't make any difference to me if the jack boot in my neck is a public or private jack boot. Might as well take a chance with Gov't.

Oh and understanding what needs to be simulated and the initial state of the human brain. How is consciousness born? We've wondered that for centuries, we don't have the answer yet. Will we eventually know all of this and have the capability to duplicate human intelligence? I don't doubt it one bit! Will we be there in 30 years, at least down the path you suggest? Extremely unlikely.

A cascade of AI's capabilities in a short period of time seems likely, but we haven't made much progress yet. And even with a 100 fold increase in processing power we haven't managed to take our simple learning models and make them 100 times more powerful. There is a real scalability problem right now. So it feels a bit like putting the cart before the horse to worry about these what ifs.

Hmm, interesting, they actually limit how many can be shot off?

Yes, your description of size, wind, etc are accurate. Also it's a rather moist climate, not much fire risk. And most buildings are concrete. And the city is half surrounded by ocean. And since the money goes to support the rescue services, the incentive is to encourage people to shoot off as many as possible, rather than the other way around.

Your cell phone is less capable of learning than a jellyfish. Although your cell phone can sometimes simulate very simple learning under extremely rigid frameworks for learning.

a human competitive AI in 30 years? seems unlikely given the almost zero progress on the subject in the last 30 years. But maybe we'll hit some point where it all cascades very quickly. Like if we could do a dog level intelligence it is not a far leap to do human level and super human level. But we have trouble with cockroach levels of intelligence, or even defining what intelligence is or how to measure it.

AI research for the last several decades have taught us how little we know about the fundamental nature of ourselves.