"The Insider said senior members of the unit received awards and political promotions for work related to the development of “non-lethal acoustic weapons” that include both sound and radio frequency-based directed energy devices."
This is the thing that makes me think there might be something to all this.

>No, _you_ have it wrong. I found out because she complained to me she was being harassed by staff to be something she's not. She was happy when we moved so she could get away from them.
Oh, I'm sure that happened

You have it backwards: your child told their school to refer to them as a boy, not the other way around.
Now: ask yourself this: WHY did your child do that, WHY did your child not tell you, but did tell the school?

They literally do that, it's just that they do that early in the AI development; if they are testing on the streets of NYC, they are past that part, and at the point where they need to now let the AI drive.

It's a difficult problem. It turns out it is practically impossible to maintain alertness, focus, readiness to take over driving at a split second, over extended periods. They aren't mimicking the actions of driving before the moment of takeover, they aren't engaged in "driving", just "observing". Even if you hire athletes and pay them exorbitant amounts to perform the service (and they are doing neither), they are going to fail at anything requiring split-second judgement and reflexes. Tack on the conditioning of being driven around for a week and it gets much worse.
The safety "driver" is there to take over in slower situations, and hopefully to have time to apply the brakes if they see the car act dangerously. They are never going to be as prepared as an actual driver to react instantly to a situation. They are interns that are there to drive the car around construction that altered the right-of-ways etc. and report spots on the map that need updated guidance rules during the training on a new city.

Yes, I misread the post and thought he was disagreeing with you. I plead a caffeine deficiency this morning, which I am working to rectify.

No, you can't read a graph. The data you linked to explicitly agrees with him: it even specifically states, in a big font next to the graph:
"Change 1979–2022:
Productivity
+64.7%
Hourly pay
+14.8%
Productivity has grown 4.4x as much as pay"
Productivity has been on an upwards trend since forever, but wage growth has not kept pace.

Ivan can't help himself.

Yes. And? That's what we pay the police to do: the dangerous things that might involve "taking fire". I think the basic level of assuredness that the Shamily family were involved should be necessary before they crash the door down with a SWAT team. Can't get that? Don't go in.

"NVIDIA's Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) technology" = the game only works with an online connection, and only works as long as compatible ACE services are available online.

But the studies clearly show that banning (sic) handguns lowered handgun crime. So yes, it in fact clearly addressed your point. I'll say it again: restrictive laws on handguns lowered handgun crime. Read both of the posts I made on the two different studies. It didn't eliminate handgun crime, but it lowered it, and not just relative to the U.S.: it lowered it in Canada. Significantly.

Gun Control and Rates of Firearms Violence in Canada and the United States

This article was published in 1990 by Robert Mundt of the University of North Carolina. The study looks at Canadian and U.S. rates of violent crime, suicide, and accidental death over time (1974-86) to attempt to determine if Canadian gun restrictions enacted in 1977 affected these rates in Canada when compared to the U.S. In brief, Mundt concludes that the restrictions had little perceptible effect in decreasing the rates in Canada in comparison. Mundt concluded that the only category in which a noteworthy decrease occurred over time or in comparison with parallel trends in the U.S. was in the use of firearms in robberies. He critiques numerous other studies that have attempted to examine the effect of the Canadian restrictions, including Sproule's and Kennett's earlier study, but not their study summarized above.

Mundt found that Canadian homicide rates by firearms as a proportion of all homicides dropped rapidly between 1974 and 1976, stabilized through 1978 and declined gradually to 1981. After increasing in 1982, the rate stabilized thorough 1987 at about 31% (i.e., 31% of all homicides are with firearms). While the U.S. statistics also show a decrease in the proportion of all homicides occurring with firearms during this period, the U.S. proportion is twice the Canadian proportion.

The proportion of robberies involving firearms in Canada dropped from 38% in 1977 to 34% in 1981 to 25% in 1988. The proportion of U.S. robberies involving firearms decreased from 45% in 1974 to 33% in 1988, but the rate of decrease was less than in Canada so that the gap in proportionality between the two countries is now 8% instead of 3%. Mundt would not speculate whether the difference is due to Canadian gun control or part of the same general decrease that went on in the U.S.

The overall Canadian suicide rate has consistently been slightly higher than the U.S. rate, but suicide rate by firearm is significantly higher in the U.S. each year. (The suicide rate by firearm in 1986 was about 4 per 100,000 population in Canada and almost 7.5 per 100,000 in the U.S., but overall suicide rates were close at around 13 per 100,000. Mundt saw no particular effect in suicide rates that he would attribute to the Canadian gun restrictions of 1977.

Mundt states that the accidental death rates from firearms have been declining in both the U.S. and Canada from 1974 through 1986, but that the U.S. rate is consistently two to three times greater than Canada's rate. He concludes that there is no statistical evidence of an independent effect of Canadian gun restrictions, but that the constant gap between the rates in the two countries is more easily related to the general availability of guns in the respective populations than it is for violent crimes and suicides.

Mundt concludes, based on what he acknowledges are general approximations, that the number of firearms in Canada may have actually risen following implementation of the gun control measures from a rate of 44,500 weapons per 100,000 population in 1976 to 46,000 per 100,000 in 1988. He estimates handgun ownership to have increased from 2970 per 100,000 in 1976 to 3560 per 100,000 in 1988. While citing the significant problems with data in both countries on firearms totals, he concludes that while the Canadian firearms stock has grown, the growth is less rapid than in the U.S. during this same period. Specifically, he estimates that the number of all firearms grew by 26% in the U.S. during this period compared to 4% in Canada. Growth rates for handguns only were 35% in the U.S compared to 12% in Canada. While rate increases in gun owners are probably more important than in the number of guns themselves, Mundt states that there are no data beyond occasional surveys for estimating gun owners.

Since he concludes that gun availability has probably increased in Canada over the period encompassing implementation of handgun controls, Mundt states that the significant effect of the control measures may have been to slow the rise in firearms violence that otherwise would have occurred in Canada. On the other hand, he states that the inhibiting effect of the U.S.-Canadian border has had an evident effect on keeping violence rates relatively low in Canada over time compared to the U.S.

Killing with Guns in the USA and Canada 1977-1983: Further Evidence for the Effectiveness of Gun Control

This article, published in 1989 by Catherine Sproule and Deborah Kennett of Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, examines the results of several other studies and analyzes killing rates in the United States and Canada for the period from 1977 to 1983 to demonstrate the relative effectiveness of Canadian gun control. The authors start with the expectation that the rate of killing by guns will be lower in Canada than in the United States and that, due to Canada's strict regulation of handgun availability, the difference in the two countries' killing rates for people using handguns will be even greater than with killings for other firearms.

To begin, the authors briefly characterize the difference between Canadian and U.S. restrictions on handguns. Essentially, this difference is that in Canada, handgun ownership is controlled by federal law while in the U.S. it is primarily a matter of state regulation. Handgun ownership permits in Canada are restricted to police and other security personnel, members of bona fide gun clubs, bona fide gun collectors, and people who are able to demonstrate a need for handguns for self-protection. The authors assert that avoidance of gun restrictions is considerably easier in the U.S. than in Canada because boundaries can be crossed easily to take advantage of more lenient controls in another jurisdiction.

Using data from national statistical sources in both countries, the authors calculate an average "killing" rate per 100,000 population for the period from 1977 to 1983. They note that the two databases are not strictly comparable in that the U.S. data are for murders while the Canadian data are for homicides, which includes murder, manslaughter, and infanticide. They assert that the fact that the Canadian category is more inclusive than the U.S. category ultimately supports their conclusions more effectively.

They found that the average killing rate (per 100,000 population) using handguns was 0.28 for Canada and 4.05 in the U.S. The rate for firearms other than handguns was 0.67 in Canada and 1.32 in the U.S. The rate for nonshooting methods of killing was 1.79 in Canada and 3.31 in the U.S. Thus the average murder rate in the U.S for all killing methods was significantly higher than average Canadian homicide rates. They concluded that their prediction that the difference between the two countries' average killing rates would be greater for handgun killings than for killings by other types of firearms was supported by the statistical analysis of the data.

They also drew several other conclusions from the data as follows:

1. The average U.S. murder rate for handguns (4.05 per 100,000) was significantly greater than the average Canadian rate for all methods of killing (2.73).

2. Even though the average U.S. rate for nonshooting murders was significantly higher than the Canadian nonshooting rate, significantly more Canadian homicides occurred by nonshooting than shooting methods (1.79 vs. 0.94).

3. The U.S.shooting rate was significantly higher than the Canadian shooting rate (5.37 vs. 0.94).

Untrue, that's why we have noise laws in residential neighbourhoods.

Oh, and it appears the price you quoted is a low value on the wildly swinging Spanish electrical costs: check out the graph on this at https://euenergy.live/country....
While the current price as we speak is around what you quoted, the price a few weeks ago was 42.30, and the price in late December was over 67 Euros per MWh...same as France. It fluctuates INCREDIBLY wildly.
"The Spanish government regulates electricity prices to ensure affordability and stability, while also promoting renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. They are aiming towards becoming carbon neutral by 2050.
Despite this, electricity prices in Spain remain higher than the average for Europe, though efforts are being made to reduce costs for consumers. If you live in Spain or plan on moving to Spain, we recommend that you compare prices of different electricity companies."