Only one commencement speech about AI is going to get applause: https://www.smbc-comics.com/co... .

windows 11:
-1.256651575149455e-47

and I also remember the Pentium bug. We had to replace hundreds of chips for a large investment bank.

I'll bet that the kids who can't/won't read were not read to by their parents, or anyone else. If you spend quality time reading to a child, that child will grow up to love reading. I've seen it personally and it's been seen in multiple studies.

You are correct to recognize that cell phones don't work well for a bunch of reasons as the cause. But your causes suffer some of the same problems. In particular, fertility rates are going down throughout the world, and have been since the 1970s, while almost everything you've listed is US specific in the last 30 years.

Interestingly, I remember at one time, the whole "Fake it until you make it." slogan meant something much less devious. It used to be a slogan people said about a small business managing to present itself as much bigger than it really was, while delivering on promises and work that would usually only be expected from a much larger business.

To me, that was actually a positive/good thing. It was your classic case of an over-achieving startup, doing more with less and winning outsized contracts that helped it grow to be a formidable competitor with the established players.

I took the financial hit years ago, when I resold my high-end configured Intel Macbook Pro to move to the M1.

As soon as I saw the benefits of the M series processors on the platform, I knew it was the way forward. The Intel Core i9 version of my Macbook Pro had overheating issues where it would throttle its performance down every time it did anything demanding for more than a few seconds at a time. That's just wasted performance at that point.

The battery life on M series is insanely good without feeling like you gave up any processing power at all, which sealed the deal for me.

The idea of Apple using Intel CPUs was always, in my opinion, kind of a hack on Apple's part. They realized IBM wasn't going to live up to their initial promises to keep innovating the "Power" CPU to keep it competitive. There wasn't any real alternative for Steve Jobs and company at that point. They were left "high and dry" unless they just ported everything to run on the same processor all the Windows computers were using.

The M series gets the Mac back to being truly unique again. You're not just buying another Windows laptop on the inside, wrapped in an "Apple shell".

You mean countries who had escaped Russia's grasp asked to join NATO so they wouldn't get invaded by Russia. Fear of Russia made the Baltics ask to join NATO. And of course, Russia then invaded Ukraine, a country not in NATO, showing the Baltics were right to be worried. On top of that, to invade Ukraine and then continue its car with Ukraine, Russia had to remove troops along the borders with NATO countries, showing that the Russian government, for all its claims otherwise, understands that NATO is not a threat to Russia except in so far as it stands in the way of the Russia government's imperialist ambitions.

...a lot of people online were saying there was an upcoming event called The Halvening that would change everything.

I guess this is it?

This is a 30 year old module. It was originally made for MIR and has now been in space for 25 years. Even good engineering is in space is going to start having leaks at that point. Space is really hard.

Seems to me 'dead' for a taxi isn't 'dead' for a static power bank. If I'm running a taxi I've got hard limits on how large my battery can be and how heavy, and I want to maximise the mileage I get between charges, because while my taxi is charging it's not out on the road earning money. When that battery is keeping only maybe 80% of its original design charge, and now I have to schedule one recharge too many per working day? Bang goes my business plan, so I'm replacing it.

If I'm storing energy for the grid I'm a lot less worried about that. It only stores 80% of what it did when new? Better than nothing, and the taxi firm is selling them off cheap. I'll stack them up!

Perhaps not, but if you pick your moment right then permanently stopping the work of some of the most talented researchers there could very well make a difference. A spectacular incident that makes the headlines might also deter others - bright graduates might decide it's far safer to take up a different line of work, subcontractors and suppliers might decide doing business with AI firms isn't worth the danger, investors might figure the increased risk of loss of premises and equipment into their projections, that kind of thing.

If people genuinely believed AI takeover was a real, present and imminent threat, then they wouldn't just be publishing essays online, they'd be forming direct action groups, along the full spectrum of campaigning: all the way from awareness raising publicity campaigns, through picketing, blockades and sit-ins, up through Black Bloc type actions, right up to menacing intimidation campaigns and terrifying physical force operations. But I don't see any Butlerian Jihad getting started. Which tells me they don't actually believe this at all; they're just bigging up their own importance. 'Oh yes, our technology is so incredibly powerful, if it were done wrong then imagine what could happen! Keep the money coming to make sure it's done right instead! Then all that power can be ours instead!... I mean, uh, yours, Mr Investor sir.'

AI stock valuations don't make a bit of sense unless the technology turns out to be every bit as powerful as that. If they don't keep that thought alive, then the bubble bursts right now. That's what all this hot air is about, and that's why nobody really pulls a Miles Dyson at the AI research lab.

The interesting thing about the Terminator movies is that when AI researcher Miles Dyson became convinced that his work had a high probability of resulting in an artificial general intelligence attempting to replace humanity, he did not go and post a ten thousand word essay on LessWrong about how he had updated his timeline and p(doom) estimates and discussing the full Bayesian analysis of the situation. He went to the lab that very night with some heavily armed companions and he blew the place up.

I keep hearing that one AI researcher or another claims that they believe as Dyson came to believe. Until one of them takes similar action, I simply do not believe that they actually think their research carries such a risk.

You have access to the lab where the work is being done? You regularly meet in person with leading researchers and talents driving the project forward? You are an American and you have the Second Amendment? And the entire future light cone is at stake? Quintillions of hypothetical future lives riding on the outcome of this project here and now?

What's the most effective, altruistic thing you could do for them?

Yeah, exactly. I've never heard of anyone shooting up their AI lab. Which tells me they don't believe their AI is at all likely to wipe us all out.

While it constitutes a weak argument that "it won't be worth making a new StarGate series because only the original fans would watch" ... I can't argue it may not have been the best series to do more with right now.

I used to love Stargate, as did some of my good friends. But this wasn't one of the sci-fi shows that only got a couple seasons and then got canned too early. This was a very successful show that arguably ran its course, with a LOT of material to watch.

I'd say there'd be more justification to bring back Firefly, or even just do one more good season of "The Expanse" that does justice to the last novel in the series of books.

I know quite a few people who refused to vote, in at least selected elections. Had zero to do with being cowardly or lazy. It's much about a realization that after studying the people on the ballot and what the candidates running are likely to do/support? None of them reflected anywhere near what they wanted to vote for.

If there's one thing I think that drug America down a slope to stupidity in politics, it was the huge push to "get out and vote, no matter what!" Swarms of totally uninformed people went to the polls and voted based on any number of ridiculous preferences -- more to get the little "I Voted!" sticker to wear around and feel good than anything else.

The "vote for the lesser of evils" thing isn't a great argument for voting either, ultimately. Sure, there are times when you dislike both candidates but feel like one is a "devil you know" and won't surprise you, while you may deem the other too risky of an unknown. But ... that's also a pretty strong reason Trump won re-election, if we're honest about it. Democrats didn't run a better opponent who people could "hold their nose and vote for" if they generally leaned more conservative in their political beliefs.

Our third party options are realistically non-starters, and that will continue unless one of them has their own huge financial resources to throw at running for office without needing their party's backing.

Do you mean fusion power? If so, it is worth recognizing that we've made major progress on fusion power with the average predicted time to fusion power going down over time. For example, the triple product, which is an important measure of how effective a fusion system is, has been growing since the 1950s. with a brief pause slowed down in the early 2000s when almost all fusion research money went into ITER and is now increasing again https://www.fusionenergybase.c... . Additionally, usion research has been drastically underfunded compared to what predictions of fusion being soon would have assumed https://x.com/ben_j_todd/statu... . .But even given that, the predictions by experts of when we're going to have fusion power gone down over time https://link.springer.com/arti... at about 1 year every 3 to 5 years. To some extent, the question for fusion is not will we develop it, but given the timeline, will it ever be cost competitive in practice against very cheap wind and solar whose prices are dropping rapidly.

The state of quantum computing is pretty similar. There's ongoing progress in a bunch of ways. There's been not just improvement on the physical end, but there's been improvement on the algorithmic end on how quantum error correcting codes and other needed algorithms would function, reducing the quality of qubits and number of qubits needed for applications. See for example https://www.quantamagazine.org/thirty-years-later-a-speed-boost-for-quantum-factoring-20231017/. Microsoft's 2029 claim is likely overly optimistic, but it is a mistake to think we're never going to have these systems.