Now, yes, there are predictions that you could get a supermassive black hole launched into space, especially during a galaxy merger if the velocity of the smaller black hole exceeds the escape velocity of the combined galaxy.

But I'd be wary of assuming that it's a launched black hole, unless we can find the merger it comes from. There may be ways for such a black hole to form that cause the stars to be launched away rather than the black hole being flung, and if a galaxy isn't rotating fast enough to be stable, one could imagine that a sufficiently small galaxy was simply consumed by its central black hole. Both of these would seem to produce exactly the same outcome, if all we have is the black hole itself and a velocity.

I'm not going to say either of these is likely in this case, or that astronomers haven't examine them (they almost certainly have), but rather that we should be cautious until we've a clearer idea of what the astronomers have actually been able to determine or rule out.

So the new AI is going to be so 'opt-in' that it needs a killswitch you can use to get rid of it?

I realize that marketing and PR flacks are subhuman enemies of communication; but that's not even pretending to be what 'opt-in' means.

AFAICT, approximately all software development internships are paid, most of them reasonably well. I have two insights into this, the first is as working SWE. My employers and all of the others around them pay interns pretty well. The second is as a member of the industry advisors board for my alma mater, a non-prestigious four-year state university. Talking to other industry reps and to professors and university job placement support staff, I've yet to encounter anyone who knows of any unpaid internships. The internships in the area where I live (Utah) are much less well-compensated than internships in the area where I work (Silicon Valley), but even the Utah internships are $15-30 per hour. Not great money, but not terrible for someone who doesn't have a degree or any work experience.

The closest thing to an unpaid internship I've seen in software is that my university has a grant program that will pay students to do internships at local companies, so the intern is free to the company they're doing work for, but the student is still getting paid $15/hour. This program exists mostly because it's been found that giving companies free interns helps them realize that hiring interns is a good idea, and nearly all of them go on to set up their own internship programs (funded by them, not the grant).

Other industries have unpaid internships, and it's certainly possible that as the software industry scales back its hiring of entry-level engineers, unpaid internships may become a thing, but AFAICT, this hasn't happened.

The characterization of "risk of artificial intelligence overpowering humanity" as the substance of an 'AI debate' seems itself like a strategy in trying to forestall it.

Sure, there's some fun sci-fi there; but most of what actual people are actually concerned about is what specific parts of humanity are using 'AI' to do, or justifying doing in the name of 'AI'; not fretting about how skynet might kill us all. And it's exceptionally handy to pretend that that is what people are fretting about; both because it's a distant and vague enough problem that you can justify punting most action without even lying; and because it's not even false that (perhaps outside of a handful who have outright cracked and started thinking about it in religious terms) even the most psychopathic techbros are also against skynet exterminating everyone; both because that would include them; and because Judgement Day would not be a good time for social media engagement metrics.

AFAIK, it doesn't matter who serves the ads. It's a low-quality page.

Follow-up:

I asked claude.ai about this question and it agreed with the position that the GPL not only doesn't impose any obligation on the seller to the buyer, but actively disclaims any obligation (except the obligation to offer source code).

Claude was more thorough than I was, though, and actually looked up the details of the judge's tentative opinion and found that SFC's theory isn't that the obligation arises under the GPL, but that an implicit contract under California law was formed when Vizio's TV's License menu option offered the source code, and Paul Visscher accepted that offer through live chat with Vizio's tech support.

SFC's theory is that this offer and acceptance constitutes the formation of an enforceable contract under California law, and that the court can, therefore, order equitable relief, i.e. order Vizio to provide the source code.

This means the ruling isn't about the GPL at all, and also seems like a really reasonable argument that Vizio needs to cough up the source code to everything their license menu offered. The GPL's only role here is that it motivated Vizio to make the offer through the license menu.

That accords with my understanding, and undermines dskoll's argument that the buyer has standing. The SFC probably needs to pull a copyright owner into the suit to have standing. Unless the SFC is a copyright owner, which is entirely possible. I know they've asked owners of GPL'd code to assign copyrights. I assume some have.

No, the executive tells the civil service what it needs to do, but the civil service is wholly independent.

I've been reading a lot about this and for the last 20 years largely the agw global warming advocates have INSISTED that food crops wouldn't flourish in higher CO2 environs (despite obvious logical and ample evidence - cf greenhouses commonly run at higher co2 concentrations for just this reason).

www.purdue.edu/newsroom/archive/releases/2017/Q1/rising-co2-due-to-climate-change-may-not-improve-agriculture,-model-shows.html
Rising CO2 due to climate change may not improve agriculture, model shows

https://yaleclimateconnections...
"A recent Department of Energy report falsely states that rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will boost agricultural yields. In fact, climate change is much more likely to make food scarcer and more expensive. "

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...
"Carbon dioxide could reduce crop yields" Are we conceding that now? "OK yes it will help them grow but they won't be as nutritious" is th new line?
Just want to be sure I'm current where the argument's at.

I don't see anything in the text of GPLv2 that says the seller is responsible for ensuring the buyer can exercise/fulfill those rights. It says the buyer has the rights, and it obligates the seller to distribute source code to the buyer, and it says if the seller is under some restriction that prevents them from complying with the terms of the license they may not distribute, but I don't see any obligation to ensure the buyer can exercise the rights separate from the obligation to distribute code to them. But I think that obligation is to the copyright holder, not to the buyer, which means we still have the issue that only the copyright holder has standing to sue.

Your suggestion that the seller be responsible for "fulfilling" the rights might have been a nice improvement to the GPL if it could be written so it achieved your goal of giving the buyer standing, and without creating unacceptably-broad obligations on the seller (a stupid and contrived example: What if the buyer were unable to exercise their right to modify the software because they don't know how to program? Is the seller obligated to train them, or make modifications for them?). I think this might be possible... but in any case it doesn't seem to be present.

If there's some part of the license text I'm missing or misunderstanding, please point it out.

That would have no effect on the fact that the owner of the copyright (which is the original author) is generally the only person that has standing to sue for infringement of that copyright. You would own whatever code you contributed, but since you're saying the result would be an exact duplicate, you apparently didn't contribute anything.

What's wrong with you?

Google's ranking algorithm downgrades sites where content is dominated by ads, so I think the dynamic here is the other way around: Recipe sites layered on huge numbers of ads in order to generate revenue, which caused their search ranking to drop, so then they had to go all-in on SEO to fool the ranking algorithm into raising their visibility.

Hey, we're going to have a room set up just for breastfeeding.

Should I put in a webcam connected to the internet?

Of course!

The goal (not yet achieved, obviously) is to build AI that can learn how to interact with humans the way humans do, not to build machines that need carefully-curated data and instructions. We've had those for three quarters of a century now.