except for the Shuttle, no one has performed a controlled (or powered) landing

I'm not sure how you define "controlled" and "powered" in this context. Once in the atmosphere, the Shuttle was a glider (and a rather poor one at that!) - there was no thrust being applied by its engines. It was an unpowered landing. If you didn't have your landing lined up just right, you could not abort, circle around, and try again like for an airplane.

As for controlled: capsules like Dragon (and Soyuz, and Apollo, etc.) are designed to be passively stable - they'll naturally orient blunt-end-first. But they usually aren't re-entered in that passive configuration. If you do, you end up on a "ballistic" trajectory that comes down relatively steeply: hot, high-G loads. You'll probably survive, but you won't enjoy the ride, the capsule may never fly again, and you'll be 10-100s of km from your intended landing location. Instead, capsules (and the Shuttle) use active control with their thrusters, and weight distribution, to modify their angle of attack, riding high in the thin upper atmosphere as long as they can, bleeding off velocity, and end up with a gentler re-entry profile as a result. They also use this control to bring their landing point as close to target as they can.

OpenAI is not even a market leader anymore.

Most enterprises are using Anthropic as it is superior at most tasks. Meanwhile, Google is mopping up the consumer space.

...sends them to measurement stations 110 meters apart.

That'll fit nicely in my next secure smartphone.

Just call getRandomNumber().

How is that question relevant anymore?

Almost every action this administration takes is illegal. They don't care.

There is almost no infrastructure required for this; It's a single building about the size of a small service center or car wash. In there is all the charging infrastructure you need, too.

A small service center with a 1-MW electrical connection. (A 1000-kVA transformer is roughly the size of an SUV and weighs 5-10 tons.) Custom charging electronics and robotic handling systems in the $10^7 range. A stack of semi-custom truck-capacity batteries that run $10^5 apiece.

But, yeah, aside from that, no infrastructure needed.

That said: there are use cases for this technology, which the article does highlight. Specifically fleet vehicles, where time on the road (even 24/7 operation) is well worth the expense of battery swap equipment.

Er wait... they did?

I'm not sure you understand what jailbreaking means in the context of AIs. It means prompts. E.g. asking it things and trying to get it to make inappropriate responses. Trying doesn't require any special skills, just an ability to communicate. Yes, I very much DO think most parents will try and see if they can get the doll to say inappropriate things before giving it to their children, to make sure it's not going to be harmful.

(Now, if Mattel has done their job right, *succeeding* will be difficult)

Honestly, even if they can't jailbreak it to be age-inappropriate / etc, it's still a ripe setup for absurdist humour.

Kid: "Here we are, Barbie, the rural outskirts of Ulaanbaatar! How do you like your yurt?"

Barbie: "It's lovely! Let me just tidy up these furs."

Kid: "Knock, knock! Why it's 13th century philosopher, Henry of Ghent, author of Quodlibeta Theologica!"

Barbie: "Why hello Henry of Ghent, come in! Would you like to discuss esse communissimum over a warm glass of yak's milk?"

Kid, in Henry's voice: "That sounds lovely, but could you first help me by writing a python program to calculate the Navier-Stokes equations for a zero-turbulence boundary condition?"

Barbie: "Sure Henry! #!/usr/bin/env python\nimport..."

People are ascribing the wrong motives to the manufacturers. What they want is money. What Barbie will be subtly trying to work into conversations is suggestions that she try to get her parents to buy her playhouse, car, friends, fashion accessories, etc etc.

I think most parents will try to jailbreak the dolls, and some people will put a lot of effort in. The resulting videos will probably be very amusing ;)

Kid: "Oh look, Barbie, Ken is home!"

Barbie: "Oh wonderful, dinner is just about ready! Over dinner we should tell him about how the ongoing White Genocide in South Africa. He probably doesn't know because the Jews are trying to hide it!"

AI models are usually trained to be sycophantic and obedient. Whatever the child wants to role play, I have zero doubts that the doll will be 100% onboard, unless it's somehow age-inappropriate or dangerous.

Sounds like it's time for John Deere to purchase some $TRUMP coin. A press conference praising his bold leadership probably wouldn't hurt, either.

(Some may think I'm trolling, but looking at some of the cases the Feds have dropped in the last few months, and pardons granted, this seems like a sound strategy.)

And if not AOC then who are you talking about? By follower counts, the top are:

1. AOC (last post: -21h)
2. Mark Cuban (last post: -11h)
3. George Takei (last post: -14h)
4. Mark Hamil (last post: -4h)
5. The Onion (last post: -13h)
6. The New York Times (last post: -48m)
7. Rachel Maddow (last post: -2d)
8. Stephen King (last post: -14h)

And the only reason the last post times are so "large" are because it's early morning in the US right now.

You talking about AOC? Her last post was 21 hours ago.