Art distorts reality in order to show us different perspectives and perhaps give a warning.

Could the world of Bladerunner 2049 be a thing? Absolutely. Is it likely to be exactly like that? Probably not. Same with Gattaca.

I love cyberpunk literature. I've been reading it since my teens. It prepared me for everything that's happening these days. And what I really like about that is that some things have been outpaced by reality. In many places we are already in post cyberpunk utopia before we even reached cyberpunk.

As Deni Villeneuve said to the Google engineers:"You guys are making it really difficult for us to write science fiction."

Which pretty much sums up the state of things with fiction vs. reality.

Steam was introduced by making it mandatory to be able to buy and play Half-Life 2. Big red flag right there and then, which is why I decided _not_ to use Steam right then and there at the beginning of it all.

Yes, HL2 was an excellent game and dominates the hall of fame of videogames for good reaons. Which is why Steam took off like a rocket. And yes, Steam offers great value and Gabe and his crew manage the service well. But if he changes his mind or valve gets sold to some greed leech investment gang things can go belly up pretty fast. I buy my pure-bits versions of videogames with GOG and archive the packages myself. If GOG would shut down tomorrow, I couldn't care less. Which is the way things should be. I'm too much of a (seasoned) computer and internet expert to be fooled otherwise.

... up with a method to convert radiation to electricity directly, we'd be ready to back to nuclear power.
Until then it remains a dead end.

Nuclear fuel or power isn't the problem. Nuclear Fission steam power and nuclear waste is.

There, FTFY.

Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but ever since the switch to MacOS X he always had one budget item in each category with sometimes great or even exceptional value for the money and Apple quality along with it. The legendary white 12" iBook G4 was by far the cheapest subnotebook at it's time and the first Mac minis could be bought for 250-300 euros, offered great value for the money, were excellent machines and very small. Any PC equivalent that even could come close would cost hundreds more and came with ultra shitty windows.

So good for Tim Cook finally getting back into offering a neat quality budget item. I might actually buy Apple again, believe it or not.

... than an elaborate auto-complete / stochastic parrot inside an evolved naked ape. So am I. So I'd say you're likely dead wind about your assessment. At the state of tech and the rate it's improving it's short-sighted to assume that by some magical mystery attribute humans can have consciousness and artificial beings can't. That's just silly.

There is quite a bunch of solid evidence that what we call consciousness originates in the different levels of brain and the two hemispheres interacting, communicating with and reflecting each other.

Why shouldn't a non-biological brain setup be able to do the exact same things?

Example: Those countless AI CPUs going into "model rearranging" mode on a regular (daily) basis looks to me pretty much like what sleeping is to us. It even happens in the same intervals (based on our sleep and wake cycle).

The only thing I see a larger gap in is use having (and basically being) bodies with loads of secondary sensory input, hormones and gradual shifts in body and brain metabolism. But I wouldn't be so sure that those are required to build a consciousness.

Bottom line: He definitely knows more about AI than I do, but his statement sounds very simplistic IMHO. Not buying it.

This is smart actually. Tech is moving so fast, classic universities can barely keep up. Yes there are basics you need to know regardless what decade you live in. Graph theory and Boolean algebra doesn't change that often. But all that is better covered in premium video courses and in-house exercises with the seasoned devs. No need for degrees, wasted years and hundreds of thousands in debt. I actually agree with Peter Thiel on this one, believe it or not.

... a Vacubot yet, even though they're getting cheaper and better to the point of actually being useful.

No effing way am I going to let some Internet of Trash device load excessive amounts of very personal and private data to some anonymous computer in the cloud. Obviously.

... this "computer simulation" thing is.

We just ditched abrahamic revelation cult superstition only for it to come back in disguise brought in by pseudo "atheists" and "anti-theists" and their "computer simulation" shtick. Very strange indeed.

If the universe actually is a simulation (which would make no sense at all), the universe that simulation is running in would need to be infinitely more complex and large than the one we're in. That's non-sensical in itself. On top of that, we couldn't tell either way if we're in a simulation, because, well, we'd be simulated. Which alone makes the whole thought exercise pointless in itself.

What "simulation theorists" also seem to generally overlook is the fact that their is a very hard physical limit to how complex a separated computation device can become within a given universe that contains it. Given, those limits are way beyond any human brain in our case, but they _are_ there. A computer the size of the moon in which every atom is a bit would eat up large portions of energy the sun emits and one read/write operation over the entire memory would take a day or multiple days, making a computer of that size totally pointless and any "universe simulation" an impossibility or so slow as to be pointless.

Maybe we should be focusing on actual problems?

I feel you should also list the Apple team that developed this feature... modern families are complex; how the hell could they make the "just one administrator" mistake? Having two (involved) parents is common. Having messy divorces is common. Having court ordered-custody is common. What sort of family were they designing for?

... critical in the cloud that you can't get out again within 2 hours.

"framing effect"

... 27" workdesk monitor (extra slim) from HP as my main gaming and movie monitor that I use while sitting on the couch. Price/performance unmatched. Sure, AMOLED would look slightly better, but I still clearly remember the times when 13" Triniton CRT was the best your could get. Compared to that a 27" led LCD display that's only 5mm thick and only costs 130 euros is pure science fiction. Add to that the fact that my eyes are getting worse with age and I'm good and probably won't even go beyond 1080p anytime soon.

... error prone that might be a good thing. Ditching superfluos electronics and adding in good smartphone / tablet mounts as a default instead is actually a better way to do this. It makes the car more repairable.

But something tells me that GM is likely to do the exact opposite. Like removing Android and Apple and adding in their own shoddy version of electronics and software that will be instantly outdated and insanely expensive to repair.

Normally, developers are focused on making the product do something, but security is the inverse: it's making sure the product cannot do some things.

  It's difficult enough to hire good developers who can make products that do stuff, but hiring ones can ensure it doesn't do anything bad requires that you find the people who really knows their shit and have the imagination to identify all the things a product shouldn't do.

Likewise, organizational leadership, project management, QA, etc, have got to be bought into it.