Comment Re:Tax break = taxpayer paying for water and power (Score 1) 59
Comment Re:Just for clarity (Score 1) 86
"Past performance is no guarantee of future returns" applies to any recorded dataset.
Not to recorded datasets, particularly. For example, that's the reason to think the sun will rise tomorrow morning - it always has.
Comment Re:You need this for an emergency (Score 1) 199
Comment Re:Starlink origin (Score 1) 50
Comment Re:Even the description is AI written. (Score 1) 147
Comment Re:If they are thermally efficient enough (Score 1) 122
Comment Re:Now it has to play Risk (Score 1) 39
Comment Re:Now it has to play Risk (Score 1) 39
Comment Re:Fascinating... (Score 1) 39
Comment Re:China is a totalitarian hell (Score 2) 142
These were people who worked in defence so anywhere behind the Iron Curtain was right out and I imagine Cuba would have been too. Even Austria was considered a risk, probably because so many spies would hang out there from both sides.
Or so they told me. I can't be entirely sure they weren't exagerrating.
Yes, certain destinations were off-limits to people who chose to work in defense, however that falls far shy of this "Exit Ban".
The US saying "If you travel to Cuba, you may face charges when you return" or even "You have been charged with a specific crime, so you cannot leave until the charges are resolved is significantly different from China saying "You are important to our plans, so you cannot leave the country at all, and neither can your immediate family", or forbidden a US citizen from leaving because of visa inconsistencies, much less the common situation where Chinese employers require staff to surrender their passports.
Yes, a judge can require the defendant to surrender their passport as a condition of bail, but the USA lacks effective exit controls, so that isn't actually a high barrier to exiting (but makes it tough to come back).
Comment Exit Bans (Score 2) 142
If, as the article suggests, this is an "Exit Ban" on certain individuals and extending to their family members, that's significantly more restrictive than anything the US has imposed on defense workers and top scientists other than during wartime.
Yes, people with sensitive jobs and a security clearance are strongly discouraged from visiting hostile nations, with a subset even being required to submit their travel plans before any foreign travel, but this is explained clearly when you accept employment directly with the US government, or start working under a government contract, and you're always free to not accept the job offer. And yes, all US citizens were for many years prohibited to travel to embargoed nations (Cuba). But this was nowhere near an "exit ban" on key personnel, much less on their family members!
When I held a clearance, I was never forbidden to leave the USA. I might not have a job when I get back, but that's not the same thing at all.
Comment Re:This didn't have to happen twice (Score 2) 162
It only applies to black men.
Per the statistics, police shoot and kill quite a few white men as well. Nobody gets worked up about those dudes.
OTOH, when you dig into the individual incidents, pretty much all of those dead white men were actively attacking the police, usually with a weapon (), so it's difficult to get to worked up about those deaths.
Comment Re:LLMs = human extinction? (Score 1) 70
Comment Re:Beat you to it! (Score 1) 49
However, much progress has been made. I am alive right now because of a breakthrough cancer therapy that was FDA approved in 2011. (Well after Nixon!)
This fall I am going to get a therapy that mass-replicates your own immune cells in a lab for re-injection. It's so expensive (and has uncertain benefit) that it's not generally available in the UK or Canada yet. Automation will be a key to making it cost-effective.
It's such a complex area, I think information retrieval and computational science / simulation, or AI if you prefer, will help.