How do you ensure that a body part was actually scanned, rather than some bits being replayed? Biometrics provide very high security in attended contexts, e.g. where there's a security guard watching you present the body part to a scanner that is under the control of the entity who is trying to verify you. But when the scanning is done remotely, using scanning hardware that is under the control of the person being scanned, it really doesn't provide much security.

Another problem with biometrics is that body parts can get lost or damaged, locking people out of stuff. Imagine being unable to pay your bills because you got a little cut on your finger.

Biometrics have their place, they are valuable authentication tools, but they have serious limitations. They have to be combined with and backstopped by other authentication mechanisms.

Also, potentially a lot more books became available to those of us who prefer to listen rather than read. If the AI "performance" isn't too grating.

For most fiction and some types of non-fiction, I prefer audio books over the printed word, because they're more time-efficient. I read far faster than narrators read, but I mostly can't do anything else while reading. Being able to drive, mow the lawn, work on refitting my boat, etc., while consuming audio books has significantly increased the quantity of "reading" that I have time for.

I don't think so. I think it's just a mechanical reproduction of the original work, not really any different than a photocopy -- just a different tangible medium. In order to be a derived work, it would have to be a new work, i.e. some minimal amount of creativity would have to have been added, and I don't think an AI can legally add creativity. Perhaps the configuration choices of the person who set the AI up could be considered "minimal creativity". But if not, it's just a copy in a different medium.

It would just be a mechanical reproduction of the original work, so only the original work's copyright would apply.

In the case of a human narrating an audiobook, the resulting work is a derived work, and both the narrator and the author have rights to it. To copy and redistribute it you need the authorization of both.

But in this case, it's just a copy. If whoever ran the AI on it added some of their own creative choices, for example, inserting, deleting or modifying text, then it would again be a derived work. It's even possible that if the only choices they made were which voice to use and how to configure it, that might also be enough to make it a derived work. But the original author still has an interest in the derived work, so none of this works as a way to escape the original owner's rights.

Yes, same as if you ran the book through a photocopier. In both cases, as long as you kept the copy to yourself nothing would come of it. The copyright owner could technically sue you for damages, if they found out, but there would be no damages to recover.

A lot of people don't realize that their primary email account is the key to pretty much every other account they have, because approximately all online accounts use email to secure their forgotten password reset flows.

Personally, I treat my email account as my "crown jewel", the most important thing in my life to secure, since it's the key to everything else. Many of my financial accounts will, of course, send me a notification that my password is changed -- via email, to the same email account (some of them allow a separate account, in which case I have them set to notify my wife's account, but not most). A few of the most important financial accounts will also send a followup snail mail notification of the password change, but an attacker can easily drain them before I get that notification.

I agree with the sentiment, but in practice most adults don't understand how to secure their accounts. Some nannying is justified here.

In that era, most people became slaves when their cities were conquered, and the normal practice was to slaughter the entire population. Slavery was seen as a merciful alternative to death, so it's safe to assume that all slaves were grateful that they were enslaved rather than killed, as evidenced by the fact that they chose not to kill themselves.

Modern sensibilities cannot relate to the idea that slavery was merciful, but it was. Plato himself was was to be executed but was instead sold into slavery, though he had a friend who bought his freedom relatively quickly. Likewise, if you read Plato's works, you'll find quite a bit in there that is shocking to modern views. Plato was an incredibly forward-thinking man for his times... but his was a product of his times.

To alvinrod's point, you almost certainly hold some beliefs that future generations will consider immoral, so it's not wise to judge the people of the past by current standards.

Yeah, Na-ion is not for cars.

I vacation around the US in an EV all the time, and it's really not an issue. Not unless your vacation travel is of the "pee-in-a-bottle-no-stopping" sort. If you aren't hardcore about minimizing travel time, making stops for decent meals, and stops for bathroom breaks and leg stretching, you'll find that you spend little if any time waiting for the car to charge. What you do is drive for 2-3 hours, then stop for 15 minutes for bathroom (and charging), then drive for 2-3 hours, then stop for an hour for lunch (and charging), then drive for 2-3 hours, then stop for 15 minutes for bathroom (and charging), then drive for 2-3 hours, then stop for an hour for dinner (and charging), then drive for 2-3 hours, then stop for the night (and charging).

Basically, you just make sure that whenever you stop for biological needs, you do in a place you can plug in. This is quite easy to do.

You do want to pick hotels with chargers to overnight. If you don't, then you'll probably have to 30-45 minutes in the morning to charge (during breakfast?).

I've done several thousand miles of road trips with an EV in the western US, where distances are long and cities are far apart. It works fine.

You actually can't in the US, not on the interstates, anyway. Tesla has the US interstates covered, with chargers every ~75 miles. Sometimes this means there's a Supercharger out in the middle of the desert, sure. There's always a gas station/convenience store there, too. Also, you don't actually have to think about when/where you're going to charge. The car's navigation system tells you where you need to stop and for how long.

If you get off the Interstates, you can find larger distances between L3 chargers. In practice I've never found it to be a problem, though.

What EV has a transmission? They have a reducing gear, but AFAIK, that's it.

As I said, you clearly don't have children, and therefore have no idea what you're talking about. In general I'm opposed to arguments of the form "You're not an X so you can't comment", but when it comes to raising kids, it's just the truth. No one who hasn't done it has any idea what it's really like.

Doesn't matter, because if you had children you'd know that no one is capable of being sufficiently attentive.

As a Googler... I think this comment hits the mark, far more than any of the others.

It is not, not even then. You'd need at least three parents: One to go to work, one to stay with the kid, one to cover for the second when they have to do something other than watching the kid (clean the house, do the laundry, use the bathroom, etc.). Oh, sure, you can try to put the kid in a safe environment while you do stuff, but many young children are shockingly good at finding ways to get into stuff they're not supposed to get into, and do it far faster than you would expect.

A team of nannies can do it.

People used to live in the middle of a village of other people who watched out for their neighbors' kids when their parents had to take their eyes off of them. And kids used to die. A lot. Far more than we'd consider acceptable today.

And not just one. KIds vary widely and it's not uncommon for parents who've only dealt with a single child to assume that all kids are like that one. Usually adding a second kid is enough to open their eyes when they realize that none of what worked on the first kid works with the second and vice versa. Occasionally parents get two that are very similar and don't learn this until they have a third, or until grandkids come along, or other close exposure.

How many children have you raised? I'll bet, one. One who happened to be easy to dissuade from putting stuff in their mouth, so you have extrapolated from that sample of one to all kids everywhere.

The fact is that kids aren't all the same. Some are easy to train, some aren't.

Source: I'm a father (4X) and a grandfather. Based on my sample, I should perhaps assert that all babies and toddlers stick everything in their mouths and there's nothing you can do to teach them otherwise until they're at least two, and usually three. But I know that kids are all very different, and so I can imagine that there may be some child who can be taught not to put stuff in their mouth younger than that.