I suspect the idea they are hinting at is that ancient yeast might have been living on (then-livable) Mars and got meteorite-blasted over to Earth, and survived the trip. For a temporary trip like that, survival is sufficient.
The article claims to measure the severity of a memory leak defect based on the amount of memory it leaked -- but most memory leaks (that are severe enough to be noticed) are small leaks that occur at regular intervals, meaning that the program's memory footprint will continually grow larger over repeated operations.
Therefore, do you want a 1MB memory leak? Run the program for a while. Do you want a 1GB memory leak? Run the program for that much longer. Keep going, and you can eventually get to any number you want, to post in your Substack article; this makes the reported numbers arbitrary and therefore meaningless.
TL;DR: Memory leaks are a problem, and they can be avoided with care and proper coding techniques, but claiming that software quality is worse now because the leaks "are larger" is silly.
OTOH there are actual Apteras on the roadways... only about three of them, but they do exist, at least in prototype form.
Is it just me, or what's so bad about having an engine that is quiet? I don't really want to add noise pollution and overall general stress to my neighborhood.
In general, nothing. But rich people buy sports cars for the same reason less-rich people buy video games that let them pretend to race sports cars, i.e. so they can have fun "going fast". Driving a sports car without cool engine sounds (however you want to define them) would be like playing an auto-racing game on mute -- less fun than it might otherwise have been.
Wind can be put in the sea [...] but solar can't
It seems it can (although whether it's economical to do it at scale is another question).
AI has invented a new variant of Pokemon Go. Gather points by taking virtual photos of imaginary destinations!
Why would you need to be highly skilled to use an automated coding tool?
If the automated coding tool is reliable, you wouldn't need to be skilled. OTOH if the coding tool keeps emitting code that contains bugs or misfeatures, then someone will need to analyze and debug the emitted code, which is a skill. In some cases, that might requires more skill than simply writing the software by hand.
Fusion is an unproven technology.
It's surprisingly similar to AI in that respect. Both technologies have been shown to work in principle, but neither of them has been shown to turn an actual profit, yet.
Solar, wind and energy conservation are proven, cost effective and realistic technologies.
Yes, those are all great. And geothermal is looking really promising too, with microwave drilling technology potentially enabling it in locations where geography previously made it impractical.
We don't need to wait for fusion when we already have the real solutions being developed right now.
Who said anything about waiting? We should be (and, broadly speaking, are) deploying renewable technologies now, and simultaneously developing fusion technology for later. There's no need to do just one or the other, when we can and will do both in parallel.
... is a movie trope where everyone in the world has perished, except for the protagonist, who is now free to roam the world unmolested, help himself to any of the remaining resources available, do whatever he/she wants, etc.
The fantasy part is the idea that the catastrophe will get rid of all the people you don't care about, freeing up their resources for your own use, while sparing you and the people and resources that you do care about.
The people in this article can be blasé about AI killing humanity because at some level they think that they and what's important to them will be spared. Most likely, they think their wealth will save them. If and when they find out that they will suffer and die as well, their acceptance of the idea will evaporate quickly.
Once these robots get better at their designed purpose, it will free up human labor for some other activity that cannot yet be performed by a machine.
What's the end-game there, once there are no activities left that cannot be performed better by a machine? No more jobs for humans, and then everyone retires (in the optimistic scenario) or starves/riots (in the pessimistic scenario)?
Air-delivery can be faster for small items, but land-delivery is much more energy-efficient, since you don't have to support the weight of the robot and the payload for the duration of the trip.
That means that the wheeled bot can have a larger range, carry larger payloads, and needs to be recharged less often. OTOH it has to wait for stoplights, can only go 5-10 miles per hour, etc.
Take the $billions you were going to spend on Solar Powered Space Data Centers, and instead build equivalent Solar Powered data centers here on Earth at 1% of the cost. Make up for the lack of 24/7 sunlight by adding additional solar panels, energy storage, and transmission lines as necessary.
Then take the other 90% of the money that you just saved, and spend it on cocaine and hookers.
Your ping times will be much better also.
I prefer to think it's Leonard Cohen's doing.
Drive-by-wire? From the description, it almost sounds like all they need is a trailer to be pulled behind the primary vehicle. Maybe with a fancy hitching mechanism to give it more separation, but still, self-driving seems like overkill for this application.
It's a bit sad to think that the internet has gone from something that was originally designed to be capable of functioning after a nuclear attack to something that can now be disabled by one stray bullet.
Then you'll be happy to find out that 99.9999% of the Internet was unaffected.
Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it.
