NaN was developed by William Kahan, to be part of the IEEE-754 1985 specification for floating-point numbers. So, not Tony Hoare.

Honestly, I don't get all the null-hating here, even from the guy who created it and changed his mind. Is it not useful to have a value that means 'nothing?'

And you know what? The government could make the company do just that, per the Defense Production Act of 1950. However, the government can only do this for critical items (such as defense or medical supplies) and only at a time of national emergency. I'm not sure that either condition applies respectively to Anthropic's Claude or the current situation.

In this case, Anthropic is not the only company that could supply this supposed "mission-critical" capability. If they were, then the risk exists whether or not Anthropic chooses to sell to the government. The government should address that risk by bidding for other companies to manufacture the needed product, or begin an R&D program to make it themselves. Not by slandering the company.

I'm not sure what you're saying here, but it sounds like "there's only so much energy available, so we should insist that vendors who use that energy conform to our wishes." There's a worthwhile discussion to be had regarding energy-use of AI. However, I don't think it's ethical -- or even legal -- to (energy-)embargo companies that don't agree with governmental edicts regarding the government's use of its product. Again, the answer is to bid for other vendors to supply what the government wants, or make it themselves.

Short answer: the ISS "falls" toward the earth because of gravity. But ... it's orbiting the earth at just the right speed so that the earth curves out of its way by the same amount that the ISS falls towards it. An object in a stable orbit doesn't get any closer to the earth, and can exist in this orbit pretty much indefinitely. (I'm assuming a circular orbit, not an elliptical orbit which has variations in altitude, but the basic idea applies in both cases.)

However, the above only holds if there is no atmosphere. There is still some atmosphere at the altitude of the ISS (370 to 460 km) -- enough to cause the drag I mentioned, and lower the altitude of the ISS over time, thus requiring the monthly boosts.

In summary, it's the atmosphere, not gravity, that threatens the ISS with re-entry if its orbit is not maintained.

Not sure what you mean about the committee telling gravity to wait. I assume they meant that NASA and the ISS partners should maintain the ISS orbit until a replacement station is up and running.

No doubt you're aware that the ISS orbit decays, but it's not because of gravity. It's because of atmospheric drag (physics again), losing altitude by about 100 m per day. Its orbit is boosted roughly once a month to compensate.

You're hair-splitting, but perhaps rightly.

LLMs don't have free will, as far as we can tell. Then again, I'm not sure that I have free will, and yet society judges my actions and yours as though we do.

"Anthropomorphizing" is indeed a word, and I guess it does fit here. It is awkward to speak of LLMs without anthropomorhizing. (You did it yourself when you said they were "completely innocent.") I'm in favor of setting pedantry aside in such discussions.

But whatever agency we ascribe to an LLM, we can't take it to court at the moment. So, we agree to hold its creators to account.

I don't want to start an analogy war, but I can't help but point out that cars and kitchen tools don't interlocute at length with their users. If they did, and they started encouraging their users to harm themselves or others, then a lawsuit against the manufacturer would be in order.

Per TFS, Gemini fed this guy's delusions, and built on them. It coached him into almost carrying out a terror attack, and then coached him to kill himself by deluding him into thinking he was engaging in "transference."

If a human being had done this, s/he would face trial for the felonies of solicitation to commit acts of terror, and solicitation to commit suicide. I think that warrants Google having to face a lawsuit at the very least.

Maybe for you, but not for the people who rely on tourism for a living. They're losing billions of dollars because your guy has turned tourists off from visiting. They have begged Canadians to come back, with billboards in Canadian cities, special discounts, offers to accept Canadian money at par, and so on.

There are tourists from other countries, but Canadians are -- well, were -- among the largest groups of international tourists, who stay longer than domestic tourists and spend more money.

So you just want to laugh, as your Nero fiddles and your country burns down. Sigh. I hope you wake up in time to put a stop to it, peacefully and democratically.

You must be an American. I'm guessing you're one of the 77 million of your fellow citizens who voted for Trump. A president who mocked and threatened the sovereignty of a neighbor and historical ally.

You think the joke is even funnier because Canadians don't think it's funny at all. If you maintain an attitude like this, don't be surprised if Canadians don't come back to the USA for a generation or longer.

Well that's news to me. Arizona does not observe DST because summer evenings would be too hot. And yet the Navajo Nation (most of which is in Arizona) does in fact observe DST -- they even had their own tzdatabase entry for awhile (but now use the Denver code if I'm not mistaken.)

If a state or a First Nations tribe can decide whether or not to observe DST, why couldn't they decide to observe it permanently?

Friendly tip: don't say anything about the "51st state" around Canadians. Not even if you're joking. It's uncool, and one of the big reasons Canadians are boycotting the USA right now as a travel destination, and avoiding USA products in stores.

Then their parents will need to start work an hour later. And other businesses will need to change their start-times. And so on.

BTW, the sunrise times I supplied were for December, the month of the winter solstice.

Don't be so envious. It will mean that children will need to go to school in the dark. Typical sunrise times for southern BC are 7:45 to 8:00 AM, and for norther BC it happens around 9:00 AM. All Pacific Standard Time. With Daylight Saving Time year-round, those times will all be one hour later.

Google says:

par-tic-i-pate
verb
1. Take part in an action or endevour.

So, Israel did indeed participate, according to the plain definition of the word. And calling me names does not strengthen your argument.