>"tenant admins will decide whether to enable it and require end-users to opt-in."

That is a misuse of the term "opt-in". That is like saying I am requiring you to volunteer.

He said "helped issue in" so it's quite plausibly correct. Lots of groups probably helped.

The problem is that an AI will "confidently lie", in a convincing way. It's a real problem, and that's why the submitter MUST remain responsible.

If, as seems probable, AI improves over the next few years, then that responsibility may be relocated, but not yet

Acid rain from cloud seeding? Just...no. The article didn't mention it because that risk doesn't exist. You (and the mods that modded you up) need to brush up on chemistry and atmospheric physics.

Cloud seeding uses silver iodide, sodium chloride, and (occasionally) dry ice to encourage condensation, because their crystal structure looks like ice nuclei to the H20 that is already bouncing around in the clouds. None of those reagents create acids in water. What produces acid rain is sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides reacting with that H2O to form sulfuric and nitric acids. That's the chemistry you seem to be missing. Unless the seeding aircraft are dumping tons of sulfur compounds—which they aren’t—the process doesn’t generate new acids.

What it does do is hasten the removal of what’s already there. If the air column is saturated with industrial SOs and NOs, a seeded rainstorm could bring that down faster, leading to a (very) brief spike in local acidity. But that’s a temporary redistribution, not a new chemical source, and it’s already happening every time Delhi gets a natural monsoon downpour. This is atmospheric physics 101 -- you seem to have missed a few chapters.

The real limitation is that cloud seeding only works when there’s sufficient moisture and the right cloud microphysics—it’s not a magic pollution scrubber, so your SoCal analogy is (way) off. Los Angeles photochemical smog is mostly ozone, peroxyacyl nitrates, and particulates, not the sulfur compounds that drove the 1970s acid-rain panic in the U.S. Northeast. You are mixing apples and turpentine; at least oranges are a fruit.

In short: seeding might wash out particulates and existing acidic aerosols more quickly, but it doesn’t create acid rain. You did get one thing right, though. The “better option is pollute less” is absolutely true—but you really need to work on your chemistry.

I was playing on a 53K USR Courier at 185 ping and that was a bit laggy when compared to the LAN at college (even if it was 4xT1s for 25K students). I really want to know how the hell you were able to do anything useful at 500+ms.

Well said. Huxley, Orwell, and Bradbury salute you. Solzhenitsyn would’ve smiled — quiet dissent is still dissent. We welcome you to the Gulag. :)

You’re right that I should’ve written “with only money and some technology” — I thought the "only" was implicitly obvious, but I am happy to spell it out for you. To address your hypothetical, I'll provide one of my own: If an engineer really could build a self-sustaining photochemical CO cracker that turned greenhouse gas into profit, they’d already be running the table on carbon markets and Nobel nominations alike. The fact that nobody has done so isn’t because the idea lacks imagination — it’s because the physics and materials science don’t pencil out past the TED-talk stage. By all means, show us working data, pilot results, or even a peer-reviewed prototype. Otherwise, this kind of “what if” speculation just burns oxygen better spent on solutions that actually exist. Instead of lobbing hypotheticals at each other, we could, like, you know, do something in the real world. Like enforce existing emissions caps, stop subsidizing fossil fuels, invest in grid-scale storage, incentivize green tech, and maybe even carpool once in a while. The unglamorous stuff that works when everyone — not just a hypothetical engineer with sunlight and a dream — pulls in the same direction.

Or do you have some issue with collective action and personal responsibility?

> The Japanese have found a way to use small temperature differences to generate electricity

And for about $50 I can buy an engine that runs off the temperature difference between the ambient air and a cup of hot water. The idea of using thermal gradients in the ocean to generate power is at least 150 years old. Any guesses why it's not caught on?

Hint: the facility in Japan you're probably thinking of only generates 100kw (~135HP), and it's not clear if that's before or after they account for the power to pump the seawater.

There is no utility in chasing down such incredibly low quality thermal energy unless you happen to actually want heat, but even then it's not really hot enough for most things you'd want scavenged heat for.
=Smidge=

How are they supposed to detect whether AI was used or not? This is pretty much a forced move. The key part is that the developer still has full responsibility.

Lockheed and Boeing formed ULA because efficiency. Then SpaceX came along and ate their lunch anyway by offering an actual improvement in efficiency.

It is absolutely incredible how people are unable to just... stop... and do nothing... and think to themselves... and just sit and enjoy the scenery nowadays.

I live in a quiet rural town precisely because it allows me to do that. But during lockdown, I heard NOTHING but people saying how they were going insane and "had to" break the law/quarantine in order to go out and do stuff and meet up with people after just a few days. They literally couldn't be in their own company for a few hours without going mad.

When the time comes to choose some Mars settlers, I hope we chose from the people based on their reaction to lockdown. Even supposed scientists went apeshit at each other in those biosphere projects.

You could send me to live on Mars on my own to terraform the place and the only time I'd get pissed about that would be if others came and tried to set up camp near me.

One jurisdiction does not form international law.

Fair point — optimism is a tough sell in this atmosphere (pun also intended). But climates do change — that’s the whole problem and the whole opportunity. Political ones can shift faster than planetary ones if enough of us keep turning up the heat where it counts: at the polls, in the markets, and in our own habits.

If we can engineer the weather with aerosol jets, surely we can engineer a little political will. The trick is to start the feedback loop in the right direction this time.

You didn't need to have a dependency on Clippy, just a prohibition on uninstalling it. Personally, I never liked it, and disabled it after a few days, but many organizations have a stricter configuration policy.

???
Apple bought Next, but I believe that MS developed it's own software after the first few years. Not that I agree any of it is "a great product", but at least until around 1995 most of it was pretty usable. (At that point I switched to Apple for a few years before moving on to Linux, so I don't know about recent MS products, but I'm pretty sure most of them were developed in-house.)