... according to the last breathless McKinsey report: "With its potential to generate up to $5 trillion in value by 2030, the metaverse is too big for companies to ignore." https://www.mckinsey.com/capab... . What a joke their reports are.

is not self-replicating?

Is there any evidence these "personality" tests actually correlated with performance in the workplace for specific job or is it just voodoo? I'm guessing just voodoo.

As with most machine learning, you have to wonder whether the pattern that the AI spotted was an unexpected one like "dead people don't get 'flu", and then designed a "vaccine" accordingly.

In Australia there is a Do Not Call list to which it is easy to submit your phones numbers. Telemarketers can be fined up to AUS$2.2 million in court for each day on which infringements occurred. I can't remember ever receiving an unsolicited call in the last 10 years. It's not that hard if there is a will for it.

Given there have only been around 4.3 x 10^17 seconds since the big bang, it seems unlikely that they actually sorted through 10^120 options.

Presumably there is some sort of machine learning being done here to predict re-offending. It would be straight forward for the creators to publish cross validation rates. I.e. Train their algorithm on 4/5 of the data, keeping 1/5 separate, and then seeing how accurate the predictions are on the 1/5. Repeat for each of the different fifths, and record the average accuracy overall. If the accuracy in predicting reoffending is say, 75% (I'll be that's higher than the real rate) then it'll be wrong one time in four, and the person being judged, as well as the judge, should have a right to know that. You would also want to look closely at the false positive and false negative rates. It's easy to create a predictor, it's hard to create an accurate predictor.

would have been a more fun choice. When Samuel L. Jackson says it's time to go to bed, you go to bed.

Currently my utility bills are debited directly from my bank account. I'm fine with that.

But I thought they'd managed to recover the code from its burial in the desert, dammit.

It sounds like it could have Ice 9 like problems. Will it eat our civilisation?

Even if it does turn out to be true, what is Lawrence Krauss doing giving the game away on other scientists discoveries before they are published? This would be one of the discoveries of the decade and he has not done the work and has no right to announce it. Further, it could cause problems if the researchers do have a result and try to publish. High impact journals often have rules about not disclosing results before they appear in print.

I don't know that we Australians were "unconcerned with this level of scrutiny of their lives" so much as constantly distracted by horror at the continual appalling actions, stuff ups and general inability to govern of the Abbott government. Given a few moments to think about things other than government officials chartering helicopters to go to party functions, rape and other abuses of asylum speakers in our care, blackmailing of the academic community to support legislation, an incompetent Minister for Defence amongst many others ministers, bashing of the Muslim community, awarding Prince Philip a knighthood, abuse of the Royal Commission system to go after political adversaries, attacks on the state broadcaster for not towing the line, and on and on every week for 2 years, then perhaps we'd have had time to kick up a fuss about data retention. Now that Abbott has been kicked out by his own party we'll have a chance to have a proper think about data retention and what it means, though it's probably too late.

Is nobody going to mention Godzilla?

As someone who reviews papers (by humans) for conferences and regularly says "reject this crap" (politely, and with reasons) only to see the paper accepted, I'm not too surprised.