It would be a LOT better off if the war had gone to plan and the IRGC had been toppled quickly. But wars rarely go to plan, and there is often short term pain as the war is fought.

Britain and France declared war on Germany in September 1939, a year later in 1940 you could have legitimately asked the same question - how is the world better off now than it was before? It was much worse for Britain and France at that point.

Looking back now it's obvious how much better off the world is, but in 1940 many people in occupied paris or bomb ravaged london would have thought differently.

You don't get rid of an entrenched abhorrent regime over night, and the longer they're allowed to exist the stronger and more entrenched they become.

Well first gen tech might not work very well, but the idea is good and will be refined over time.

It could also just be that this guy isn't familiar with how to use the functionality of the glasses yet.

It being pitch black would be beneficial to someone who was blind, it would not only level the playing field but actually tilt it in their favor as they would have much more experience operating without sight.

Why? The camera is not hidden, the meta glasses are branded and widely advertised, Most will recognize the meta glasses too or people wouldn't even be talking about it.

You don't need a camera to transcribe speech. They would be more useful for blind people whereby the camera takes a picture of what's in front of you and describes it audibly.

You can't be surreptitious with a well known, branded camera containing device attached to your face.

With a cellphone? Sure you can. You hold it in your hand to read something on the screen - which way are the (front and back) lenses facing? How is anyone to know wether you're recording video vs innocently reading something?
You hold it to your ear to have a call, the rear lens is facing away from you - pointing at what?
You put it in your shirt pocket, modern phones are big enough that the lens will protrude out of the top so it can see infront of you just as well as glasses could. Is anyone going to notice this and question if the phone in your pocket is actively recording?
You drop your phone on the floor, at least one of the lenses is facing upwards - looking up someone's skirt?
There have been lots of cases of perverts using phones to record under people's skirts on public escalators too...

In Japan locally sold phones don't let you turn off the shutter sound when you take a photo, but in other countries they do. And even in Japan this doesn't apply to video.

And what's to stop these perverts doing the same thing with hidden cameras, phones, CCTV etc?

If someone approached you with a large video camera on their shoulder and started asking you questions, you'd automatically assume you were being recorded right?
If someone approached you with a phone camera raised up so that the lens is pointing at you, you'd also automatically assume you were being recorded?

If you didn't want to be recorded in these situations, you'd refuse to talk to this person until they turned the camera off, right?

So if someone approaches you wearing a known brand/model of camera equipped glasses, why would you assume that they are not recording?
If you don't want to be recorded, why wouldn't you demand that the wearer remove the glasses and put them away?

There is nothing covert about a pair of branded and well publicized glasses stuck on the front of someone's face. You can see what they are, you know what they are capable of. Someone with a concealed camera is much more dangerous, and tiny concealed cameras have existed for a long time.

How exactly does wearing a pair of branded and recognizable glasses which are known to contain a camera conceal the fact that you could be recording video?

That's like having a traditional video camera on your shoulder, or pretty much any smartphone in your hand - everyone knows what it is, everyone knows it can record video.

How about a pervert who isn't wearing glasses and isn't carrying a phone, but has a hidden buttonhole camera?

Exactly, a pervert is NOT going to use these glasses.

They are a well known product, and they are openly visible when you're wearing them on your face. Anyone who can see you knows immediately that you are wearing smart glasses with an integrated camera.

Anything the glasses could record would also be seen by the wearer's eyes. With cellphones perverts have been known to hold the cellphones at low angles in order to intentionally see up someone's skirt for example - this wouldn't happen with glasses.

The wearer is also present when glasses are being used, whereas a pervert would put a hidden camera somewhere and then leave the area in the hope that the victim will unknowingly expose themselves to the camera. Noone is going to unknowingly expose themselves to someone who is physically present wether they're wearing glasses or not.

A modern phone is much more useful to a pervert than a pair of glasses with a camera.

What exactly makes Meta's glasses "creepy"?
They are a well known product with a camera. It's no different from walking around carrying a modern phone. Both have cameras in them, the fact one is attached to your head and the other typically held in a hand is really the only difference.

Many people carry phones in shirt pockets where the lens is above the pocket. These cameras could easily be recording and you'd have no way to know. A phone held in the hand could also be recording, are you always paying attention to what direction the lenses are pointing and if there's a cover over them? Many phones have both front and back lenses too, so they could be recording in either direction.

If someone is going to be a pervert they are not going to attach a well known and easily recognizable camera to their face, that's really no different than having a traditional video camera on their shoulder. It's extremely obvious that they have a camera.
A pervert is going to use hidden cameras that are NOT contained within well known camera equipped devices. They will use buttonhole cameras, pen cameras, and all the other various concealed cameras that have existed since long before Meta offered glasses.

The inherent flaw of democracy.
Dealing with something in advance is the best solution, but that would be expensive and unpopular costing them votes so it doesn't happen. Instead it's left so it becomes the next guy's problem.
Only if something blows up and becomes an immediate emergency will they try to do anything about it.

It's open source? It could be ... forked? No one wants to do that because it's a big deal, but I don't see why theat wouldn't be ont he table if he threatened to essentially try to shut the project down...

It's a way of reframing sloppy practices as a signal to your investors that your software has become powerful. Most of the horror stories about AI showing signs of becoming hyperintelligent are coming from the companies themselves, which should tell us something.

While the energy source of wind and solar are free, building and maintaining the plants is not free.

If all they were building were a single 100MW data center, sure: renewables would be cheaper to build. But they evidently are planning a major campus that will consume most of the plant's 615 MW output over the next 25 years.

A solar installation, in a favorable location, capable of supplying 600MW around the clock (with battery backup) would have to be roughly 1800MW in capacity. It would be among the largest inthe world, on the order of ten thousand acres in size at a build cost of maybe 2 billion. The battery backup system to ensure 99.9% uptime would be 9x the size of the largest li-ion grid storage system ever built, and set you back on the order of 4-5 billion dollars.

While it's probably cheaper to go renewable than build a *new* nuclear plant, if you can reactivate and one for just two billion that looks like a bargain, if you have a use for all that power. Inability to save money by load following is the financial Achilles' heel of this generation of reactors, but if you have a guaranteed customer for most of your output, years in advance, that's as close to an ideal economic case for them as anything could be.

ToS is the strongest argument, but the distillers are not parties to the ToS. They get their data from data brokers. It is possible that data brokers are violating the ToS, but it would be hard to write ToS that precluded running queries for third parties without creating problems for consultancies and other businesses. Even presuming the ToS could be written to preclude the data brokers doing that, it doesn't affect the resulting model.

But the general shape of the argument brings us right back to unclean hands: we worked hard on this model and it's not fair for you to profit off our work in a way that doesn't have our permission.