Think of the physical brain as the TV set. "Consciousness" is the program sent to the TV set. Without the TV set you can't see the program, but no one would claim that the TV set IS the program. In essence the program manifests via the TV set. There is nothing particularly special about the brain. It's grey matter is as physical as the TV set. There is no reason why a sufficiently complex and advanced TV set cannot host consciousness. Karel Capek dealt with this very idea in the very first use of the term, "robot" in "RUR Rossum's universal robots" (They were actually androids, not mechanical, but the point remains.) One day this will become a serious issue.

This is like a cop show video that stops in the middle.

II, too, do not know what he means by "innovation." It sounds like standard CEO conference-speak blather to me. How do you "innovate" in gaming when your staff's top priority is clinging desperately to their jobs?

But the OP says the 32GB was "Not used. Not allocated. Leaked." It's a little hard to parse, but if true, then maybe the actual effect is truly negligible.

This is always the danger of beginning birders adding their findings to ebird. Many of us use another app, Merlin, made by the same organization, to listen to birds around us to help us identify birds by their sounds. The preferred method (the one we hope everyone does, but know that they don't all do) is to use Merlin to give you a list of birds to look for, then once you can confirm the bird is in the area, track it on ebird. Merlin uses "AI" to identify birds in the area, but makes mistakes. People trying to use Merlin to ID a bird using a picture are even more prone to errors than the part that identifies with sound. If someone just dumps what Merlin hears into ebird, and it's not a particularly uncommon thing for people to do, it can clog up the database with this AI spam.

I'm certain any ornithologists using the data would treat it like a CAPCHA, where they only count data that agrees among several accounts, instead of treating any individual count as being truthful.

Robots.

So, how does anyone enter the workforce?

One reason for quarterly reporting is that it gives greater transparency and insight into how a business actually works. Many businesses are seasonal. Most obviously, virtually all retail has its best quarter at the end of the calendar year. But many other types of businesses have key cycles each year that are tied to, for example, the buying habits of their largest customers. Suppliers matter, too; if farms have a bad quarter due to weather or other factors, for example, you're going to want to watch how that impacts food producers somewhere down the line.

Roughly 30,000 pounds? Totally worth it to get rid of her permanently.

Well, somebody recommended them to me. At high doses, too.

I remember hearing, years ago, that the EU no longer recommends beta blockers as a first-line treatment for hypertension (high blood pressure) for a similar reason: They don't seem to do anything. Sure, they lower your blood pressure numbers, but (as I recall) the meta-study showed no appreciable difference in outcomes. That is, people who received beta blockers experienced the same number of heart attacks, strokes, and other hypertension-related problems as the group that didn't take them.

Which is a felony all by itself. Good luck with that.

Real question: What would be the point of that? Even hoarded gold would have no value if nobody but a select group of people could do anything with it.

on this thread is excessive.

This country's government is designed to have checks and balances on power. Congress isn't supposed to rubber-stamp every suggestion the President makes about spending -- they're the ones in charge of those decisions. Judges, particularly at the highest levels, aren't supposed to be partisan stooges; they're supposed to follow the law, but that doesn't seem to be what we have now. Nobody outside of the executive seems to want to exert their power, for fear of losing it. Apparently, it's enough to be able to claim having it.