If you want the epoch of the "Clay Age" I suppose it would be about 2900-3100 BCE, in the Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia. They started writing in cuneiform script on wet clay tablets that dried and became a hard record.

Investors and shareholders need consumers. Not the other way around. If consumers abandoned a product because they found it annoying, you can be sure investors and shareholders would want to see some changes.

You underestimate how much power consumers have. They can vote with their wallets.

Oh wait, you said Apple consumers. Never mind.

More than a few bits. You can still be lazy by dividing by 2.2 and get a much better answer: 800 kg.

I gather you went to high school somewhere other than the USA. Did you not learn C = (5/9) * (F - 32)? That yields about -267.77 C, or about 5.4 K (by adding 273.15.) In other words, close to as cold as you can possibly get.

And "exactly -half a thousand degrees Fahrenheit" sounds oxymoronic. Just saying.

If only there was an anti-dupe that could annihilate dupes on Slashdot. Then again, the energy released by them could be the death of us.

Assuming it's remotely true (and there's good reason for thinking it isn't), it still means the FBI director was negligent in their choice of personal email provider, that the email provider had incompetent security, and that the government's failure to either have an Internet Czar (the post exists) or to enforce high standards on Internet services are a threat to the security of the nation (since we already know malware can cross airgaps through negligence, the DoD has been hit that way a few times). The FBI director could have copied unknown quantities of malware onto government machines through lax standards, any of which could have delivered classified information over the Internet (we know this because it has also happened to the DoD).

In short, the existence of the hack is a minor concern relative to every single implication that hack has.

I think a crucial point is that AI does not need to face consequences for its actions the way humans do. I'm not even sure it can understand what consequences are.

Liked your post. I'd add a mention of the book Empire of AI by Karen Hao, which I just finished reading. It's a fascinating study of the rise of OpenAI and the impact of the needs of the AI industry for data and compute-power.

Sam Altman doesn't fare well in the book. He comes across as a duplicitous Napolean-fanboy, who nevertheless managed to develop a cult following amongst his employees. A following that has eroded over time but is still holding. Many ex-OpenAI employees have gone on to create rival companies, including Anthropic.

As for OpenAI ignoring specific areas of the market where AI can create revenue: they never really had that focus. They began as an altruistic effort to produce AGI for the human race, and bit by bit, their mission was compromised over time. They took on VC funds with some strings attached, and pleased their backers with some relevant products (see Copilot for example.) Now they have shed their altrusitic non-profit ambitions, but they continue to appear to be fixated on achieving AGI no matter what.

Copper oxidizes on both continents. All around the world, in fact. And the Statue of Liberty has an outer layer of (oxidized) copper. That's why she's green.

[I don't see an /s tag, though you have been modded Funny. I plead Poe's law.]

Any copper that is exposed to oxygen (even briefly) will oxidize. Presumably TFA is talking about ultra-pure copper that has not been contaminated by exposure to air.

It'll be a while before that has a chance of happening. Per TFA, the team at CERN transported 92 anti-protons. Ninety-two. If that many antiprotons annihilated with protons, they would produce an energy of 2.8 x 10^-8 J. Not enough energy to tickle a gnat.

Addiction is neurological, not chemical. Addiction is the consequence of the rewards centre of the brain becoming dependent on stimulation and that can be from anything.

Do try to make an effort.

Doesn't have to be a credit card. A class III user digital certificate requires a verification firm be certain of a person's identity through multiple proofs. If an age verification service issued such a certificate, but anonymised the name the certificate was issued to to the user's selected screen name, you now have a digital ID that proves your age and optionally can be used for encryption purposes to ensure your account is only reachable from devices you authorise.

And those come with warnings, legal penalties on vendors who sell to known addicts or children, legal penalties for abusers, financial penalties to abusers, etc. There are cars which have their own breathalisers.

So, no, society has said that the responsibility is distributed. Which is correct.

It is possible to verify age to the same degree (or better) than any "age verification service" without any sort of privacy invasion.