FWIW, both the Democrats and the Republicans pretty much fit the Mussolini definition of fascism. "The government working together with the commercial companies to benefit and strengthen the country". There's the implication of centralized control by the government in Mussolini's formulation, but I think a oligarchy or plutocracy would also fit.

I don't think fascism is NECESSARILY bad, but it sure is easy to turn it that way. (Fascism is NOT Nazism. They really are distinct, if compatible, organizational principles.)

Well cameras & lights should be enough for most safe driving. Or at least as safely as people drive. (I'd add mics, but a lot of those people are driving in noisy enough environments that they can't register a loud noise off to their left.) Maybe add vibration sensors.

OTOH, if you want to drive more safely than people, it probably helps a lot to have accurate distance ranging.

The only thing wrong with your comment is that science isn't a "lone genius" driven activity either. That it sometimes seems to be is an artifact of the way histories get written. Without a massive support group, Einstein wouldn't have accomplished anything.

Corporations are not merely people, they're people acting in an environment that rewards particular motivations and discourages others. They're essentially a minimally regulated bureaucracy. They positively select for those who are power hungry and immoral to be rewarded.

I didn't either. I grew up with various different movies selling different lines...and I pretty much avoided those about business. But ISTM that more movies said "our government is good and trustworthy" than said the same about corporations.

Perhaps that should be "The model improvement for chatbots seems to be dying down.", as I think that's the correct statement of what you mean. And that's probably correct. Once you get beyond chatbots, though, the model improvement is continuing.

FWIW, I think chatbots have an intrinsically limited capability. However if you use chatbots as an interface to some other capability (i.e. robots, in various meanings of that term) then the limitation changes drastically.

Actually, for simulating molecules quantum computers OUGHT to have a big advantage. But it's not clear to me that for this purpose Google has an advantage over DWave. And that's a really special case (though sometimes important).

IIRC, yesterday there was an internet connected toilet that took pix.

Well, you can't be sure. Possibly they're just now being more protective against lawsuits.

That's not right either. Advertising and reference manuals should be on the internet. Probably some other stuff that I haven't thought of too. But nothing that needs to be private. If you MUST have it remotely available, give it its own phone line, and put protections on that. Dial-up access has its place.

Accurate statement: "Humans invented a way to harness CRISPR/Cas9 to create transgenic organisms"

Inaccurate statement: "Humans invented CRISPR/Cas9"

This isn't complicated.

But patching ASAP is also a bad idea. What you really need to do is
AVOID putting dangerous stuff on the web!!
Then you can take time to be sure that the "patch" isn't a real screw-up.

This is probably now wholly absurd. They *have* been sued in the past. I'd guess it was rather low frequency, but that's a guess.

OTOH, my real guess is that it's mainly a political talking point.

Actually there are markets where these might be reasonable. (MIGHT, I'm not real sure of their capabilities.) The ones I'm thinking of are pretty niche, though. Generally hospitals or care homes. (But they probably couldn't pay the costs.)

If US companies lose a market, less money flows into the US. Theoretically that should disadvantage the citizens of the US, but that's based on the assumption that the wealth is shared, even though not equally. A somewhat dubious proposition.