This was explored in https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0...

On youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

One character even talked about "pinching off" to make the cells non-viable to create a person

Giving unbridled control of weapons (nukes) to an AI may not be a good idea: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0...

Thinking this will prevent war, the US government gives an impenetrable supercomputer total control over launching nuclear missiles. But what the computer does with the power is unimaginable to its creators.

Historical precedent: A temporary, year-round DST in 1974 caused children to go to school in the dark, and this was a major factor in the change being repealed due to safety concerns and public outcry.

I was in a Don Valentine backed startup in the early 80's (which eventually went [big] IPO). For a company that he was thinking of investing in, he had them send a prototype to us and we analyzed the tech for him. He invested in the 2nd company and it, too, went big.

Side note: Ironically, the linked article on nature.com about open access for journal articles is paywalled [login for "free" access, but still ...]. You only see this if you try to scroll to get the final part of the article.

The talked about APCs (article processing charges) that can amount to thousands of dollars? Supposedly, OA journals make their money from authors paying these (vs. paywalling readers).

Nature talks about paying these APC for the authors (i.e. we're doing you a favor when you go with us) to reuplink to OA journals. But, what OA journals need to charge this amount if the articles have been already reviewed/vetted by nature.com et. al.?

"Pubmed Central" is the NIH's website where the article must be catalogged/published to be in compliance with the law(?). I presume there are no such APC for it.

So, if the articles are available there, why have OA sites that charge thousands? The ongoing costs are maintaining an Amazon AWS (or google cloud, azure, etc).
Or self-hosting (cost of equipment, rental of equipment cage space, internet connection, and electricity).

Or, what about arxiv.org? AFAIK, it's completely free. Ditto for plos.org

Maybe the OA sites that feel the need to charge [IMO, excessive] fees could put up torrent magnet links??? ;-)

I disagree. Silly patents ["A planetary deflector shield to repel bubble gum pellets from Martians"] cost little to "process". But, a legit patent [that should/will be granted] by a small inventor might have highly variable costs, depending upon which examiner decides what amount of prior art s/he should investigate. A good examiner will zero in on what limited prior art should be taken into consideration. A poorly skilled examiner might look at many prior patents that really aren't germane to the given application.

Should the applicant have to pay for all this, not being able to calculate, up front, what the costs will be?

The patent office now allows for [post-grant] administrative review. That is, if a patent is granted, and there's clearly prior art that invalidates it (i.e. it should never have been granted), but the original examiner wasn't skilled enough in the given area to know about it (or where to look for it), an "amicus" filing can start a review (possibly, pointing out where to find the prior art). This was intended to reduce [and seems to have been good in practice] the legal costs of challenging an "obvious" patent. A "bad" patent gets retracted without having to resort to the legal system at all.

The [aforementioned] administrative review process has, generally, been regarded as a success in nullifying troll patents. Before that, a legit company that knows it is not infringing a bogus patent would have to spend serious legal fees to defend against a patent that should never have been granted in the first place. Now, it has a way to [cheaply] defend itself. That is, if the patent office had done the right review in the first place, the patent wouldn't have been granted.

IMO, the patent office is a public service like road building or police response. We should be able to call the police when we're in trouble, without them saying we must pay a fee for their services up front [this or something similar does happen in some other countries]. That said, clearly "frivolous" police calls can be charged for (and are if a court determines fault).

[In theory :-)] the patent system helps spur innovation that produces new medical treatments, medicines [vaccines], stronger/safer building materials, etc. This stimulates the economy and produces jobs. Yes, I know there are abuses, but that's the idea.

We all benefit when we ride on the same [gov't/tax subsidized] roadways. To me, this includes the patent system as well.

The fact that an "everyman" can apply for a patent, in theory, is a good thing. Just like it's a good thing that an "everyman" can vote (without "poll taxes" of the past). To me, any filing fee other than a small one seems like a "poll tax" on patent applications.

nber.org requires a fee to view this paper.

It allows 3 free papers per year. But, do I really want to burn one to view a paper that I've not seen in full?

Maybe they should either remove fees altogether or switch to nber.com and not abuse the .org domain?

Ironic, no?

I played with it, too. I was able to "stack it" where its response got longer and longer because I added a question about it's response. I got to maybe five levels before it reverted to a generic response.

Maybe, we could have a stacking challenge: longest response with the dialog that got it.

A long time ago (when I was in my 20's), I was working for a small H/W company and I wrote the low level SW/firmware. During a temporary crunch [of a month or so], the programmers were authorized to do (and got paid for) overtime.

I experimented with various amounts of hours/week. Up to 60 was doable [when I was young :-)]. Beyond that it was burnout [I tried 80 hours ;-)] and, more importantly (for the company) mistakes/bugs.

I discovered that staying at or below the threshold [60 hours], I was about as productive / hour as I was at a normal 40 hours.

After that, the rate of mistakes was high enough that productivity dropped because creating extra bugs (and fixing them) took longer than writing [relatively] bug free code in the first place.

The extra hours actually reduced "throughput" because the "error rate" grew.

non-compete agreements until now ...
California: not enforceable
Massachusetts: enforceable

Recently I read an article that venture capital firms [even those based in Boston] would not fund a startup based in Massachusetts because of its non-compete. They would say (e.g.) "Base the company in New York ..."

Maybe one reason why Silicon Valley is 10x the size of the the Rte 128 belt ... [Also, maybe the weather :-)]

The draconian good ole days ... https://opencasebook.org/caseb...

Wow! Bravo! When I saw the announcement, I immediately thought: "Now, I'll be able to see Frank(lin) Deremer's SLR CACM paper". I had to be content with a smudgy copy of his Phd thesis. I'm delighted to see someone else remembering this landmark paper.

UEFI wouldn't help your issue. You still need a device driver within the boot/bios (e.g. uboot) that can boot off the given device. On smaller systems, there may be limited EPROM, so adding a bunch of drivers doesn't make sense. And, as a workaround, you can image the SD card with whatever second stage boot loader you want, with whatever capabilities you want (similar to grub), so you needn't reflash the boot/bios.

IIRC, originally, fortran didn't have types. If you wanted an integer, the symbol had to start with a letter in the range I to N [from INteger]. All others were real.

Here is a CNN article that recommends that DST be eliminated. That is, rather than going to daylight savings time year round, it recommends staying with standard time year round.

The title is: "Permanent Daylight Saving Time will hurt our health, experts say" and the link is: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06...

It makes a number of points:
- Studies over the last 25 years have shown the one-hour change disrupts body rhythms tuned to Earth’s rotation.
- Your body clock stays with (natural) light not with the clock on your wall.
- There’s no evidence that your body fully shifts to the new time.
- Standard time, which we enter when we move our clocks back in the fall, is much closer to the sun’s day and night cycle.
- Current evidence best supports the adoption of year-round standard time, which aligns best with human circadian biology and provides distinct benefits for public health and safety.

When President Richard Nixon signed a permanent Daylight Saving Time into law in January 1974, it was a popular move. But by the end of the month Florida’s governor had called for the law’s repeal after eight schoolchildren were hit by cars in the dark. Schools across the country delayed start times until the sun came up.

By summer, public approval had plummeted, and in early October Congress voted to switch back to standard time.

A similar backlash occurred when the US first implemented Daylight Saving Time in 1918, as a way to to reduce demand for electricity usage by adding sunlight to the end of the day in response to World War I. (Studies since have found little to no cost savings from the practice.) The time switch was so unpopular that the law was repealed the following year.

The United States has tried permanent daylight saving time twice before and ended it early. The UK tried once before and ended it early. Russia tried it once, so did India and ended it early.

Drilling deep into the earth to release the limitless energy from the earth's magma ...

From the 1965 film "Crack in the World":

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0...
https://tubitv.com/movies/6396...

It did not end well ...