You axolotl questions.

The history of AI is all about modeling human intelligence, just like the models we have in natural sciences. If the model happens to be a very good match with reality, we may sometimes mistake one for the other. OTOH, they may be the same thing for all practical purposes.

I'm not sure if I have any deeper intelligence than a fancy language model. When we say that LLMs don't really understand things, then what exactly do we mean by understanding? In my personal definition, the meaning of something is simply the graph of its associated things. I consider something very meaningful if the graph has a lot of nodes and edges, and this also explains why simple things gain more meaning as we age.

Well, if it's OK for a business to freely use copyrighted material for their commercial, for-profit purposes, then it throws out all arguments against non-commercial, non-profit "piracy". In other words, the court cases make a great test for the whole idea of copyright — they can't have their cake and eat it too.

How would an AI mine Bitcoin? Two extremes come to mind:

(a) It uses a language model to compute SHA2-256 hashes "by hand", and starts demanding more data centers to make a decent buck.

(b) It figures out a vulnerability in SHA2-256 and takes over the network.

you were told not to (a) copy that floppy and (b) waste precious energy on cryptocurrency mining. But when big companies are building data centers for industrial-scale copyright infringement, it's suddenly OK. Because it's "busyness" done by white men in uncomfortable suits, not by idealistic young hobbyists.

I like the 34 time convicted felon angle a lot. Not because I'm particularly pro Trump or anti Trump. I just like that depending on which judge is doing the talking he's either a 34 time convicted felon or a man who had 34 convictions thrown out on appeal. So is he or isn't he? With the mix of judges in this country and their various loyalties the world may never know.

Using cars?

At the risk of devolving this thread, I blame Nouvelle Vague. They play Bossa Nova versions of New Wave songs.

Is there any chance of Disney Lucasfilm ever being run by adults again? They announce new movies several times a year, but none of them get made, which is good, because the ones that do get made are all garbage. Well, all but one.

I can't believe they haven't damaged the company so much they have to start selling properties off, and I'll be happy when they do.

Disney delenda est.

SSAB has been developing a carbon-free steel process for years, using hydrogen to reduce the ore. https://www.ssab.com/en/fossil...

So we grow 80% of the worlds soybeans (give or take)? What happens when we stop selling them to China? Grow something else I guess? The same areas that grow soybeans are just fine for corn and other crops so to me this seems like the kind of thing that within a season or two means nothing to either side. American farmers can grow other crops. China can get soybeans from other places right?

Be realistic here. You probably speak for about 300 Canadians at most.

The average Joe might not know who this Jules guy is, but he might know about calories, which is a well-defined multiple of joules.

For years and years I've used the ignore_nice_load option in Linux cpufreq governors. If I know the task will be running longer and it doesn't matter if it takes a bit longer, I'll set its niceness level higher, so it won't trigger an increase in the CPU frequency.

I've also used my own scripts for turning applications on/off depending on electricity price for quite a while. I've only bought my electricity with the hourly market rate for about a year and a half, but the idea really started with my profitability scripts for cryptocurrency mining sometime in the early 2010s.

Besides the cost, another reason why I like to throttle my systems all the time is fan noise. I've always built my systems with low power consumption and noise in mind, starting with Mini-ITX boards in late 2003. I've always admired how laptops can be made with lower power parts, and wondered why they don't just use the same parts in "desktop" machines. Why should you consume power william nilliam just because it's plugged in?

They keep saying that XXX will eliminate the need for people to code. Code generates, Dan Brikline demo to convert demos to code, Microsoft Visual C, now AI.

In 1982, I was working for someone who insisted on flow charts, which practically was code-level. But even then, you had coders also doing programming and system design. You can have systems pump out code from designs, but the code would be essential template-level code. But you still need the system to be designed, the code needs to be checked, and designs need to be checked.