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Comment Adversarial noise (Score 1) 63

There are methods to add noise patterns to audio that are imperceptible to humans but cause AI to go apeshit, such as misidentifying rock music as classical or transcribing speech as something completely different from what is said.

I wonder what the practicalities might be to deploy this form of attack in an area around you when having a conversation you with to keep private. Probably would not be inaudible when played through a speaker (unlike data implanted in audio recordings) but maybe masked? Listen to some music on your phone's loudspeaker at a modest volume and broadcast invisible noise that fills any eavesdropping AI's buffer with junk or even malicious payloads.
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Comment Re:Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score 3, Insightful) 95

> I mean, it cannot be that wind and solar plus a few batteries are actually more expensive, could it?

Nope. The TL;DR version: It would actually be cheaper to build wind/solar and batteries, if not for the fact that the cost of building the plant was covered fifty years ago and they're getting another $1.9B in free money for it.

But of course this was never about you "missing something" - this is about you having an agenda. At least I hope it's about having an agenda, because the economics of the situation are so plainly evident you'd have to be an incredible moron to genuinely be "missing something."

For one, the plant is not owned or operated by Google. It's owned by NextEra Energy - a multibillion dollar, multinational energy company. Google's name only appears on this story in so far as they want to build data centers and that gives NextEra Energy a reason to get the plant going again. NextEra also does wind and solar power and if they had local projects that were on hold instead of a mothballed nuclear plant the story would probably be about them resuming those projects instead.

For two, the lion's share of the capital costs for the plant have already been spent long ago. The Duane Arnold Energy Center started operating in 1975. It makes a lot more sense to revive the plant that is actively losing money every day it's not operating (because NextEra still has expenses to pay on it) than to keep paying the upkeep and spend even more money building new infrastructure elsewhere.

For three, there's a lot more federal money available for NON-wind/solar power under the current administration, which is openly hostile to those technologies. $1.9B worth in this case. For the equivalent ~615MW the existing nuclear plant is expected to produce, that would be about $700M in new wind construction even if you triple it to add 24 hours worth of battery storage at 615MW (an absurd amount) you're still comparable at about $2.1B. That versus, $1.9B in basically free taxpayer loans, is not a hard decision to make.

So basically the only time it financially makes sense to go with nuclear power is when you already have the nuclear power plant and you can get a bunch of free money to put a fresh coat of paint on it.
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Comment Re:In A Surpise To Only The Stupidest Of People (Score 1) 60

You're missing the point.

Leaks of personal information like this are only possible because some company decided to collect and store it all in one place. It's never a matter of if, but only when, a database will be breached and data leaked.

The age verification laws will create even more vast databases of personal information; names, addresses, financial information, various service accounts, even deep information about each person's habits and preferences. All in the hands private businesses who were the lowest (or at least most corrupt) bid. It's never a matter of if, but only when, a database will be breached and data leaked. It will be a prize sweeter than any criminal organization or malicious state actor could possibly have dreamed of.

Let's stop putting everyone's eggs in the same basket against their will, hmm? Especially when it doesn't even solve the problem it's championed to solve.
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Comment Re:Genius (Score 1) 246

Sure? I've had PV on my roof for the past year. 430W nominal panels. Problem is most of them point east and some of them point west, because the orientation of my house, and the ones that point west are shaded the later half of the afternoon due to trees. Despite the sub optimal orientation, they average about 2kwh daily when the sun is shining.

I'm in lower NY where we have like... weather and stuff, y;know? I'm sure they'd do a lot better in California with better orientation. Full sun for 5 hours a day on average is not unreasonable.
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Comment Re:Genius (Score 1) 246

The payback for these types of systems is like 3-6 years depending on circumstances.

A single 400W panel with microinverter should handily average 2kwh daily as pong as it's pointed in vaguely the right direction. In California that's reducing our electric bill by over 60 cents a day just for power costs, not including avoided taxes and fees. Doesn't sound like much, but at $400 "installed" it's paid for itself in well under 2 years. After that, basically free money as savings to the tune of like $20/mo.

And you can take it with you.

I'd say it's a no-brainer if you have a place to put it, but if you're actually opposed to the concept you might actually not have a brain.
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Comment Re:Something is missing (Score 5, Insightful) 153

> The measures taken did - nothing.

"The doctor said I needed surgery to treat this cancer. I took some aspirin instead. The measures I took did nothing, so clearly the doctor lied to me."

> Perhaps it is time to exercise our collective masses of grey matter (and our AIs) to figure out some feasible coping measures and implement them.

We know what to do. We've known what to do for decades. He simply have not done them, mostly because there's too much money and power to be had in maintaining the status quot. We don't need "AI" to solve this already solved problem and, in fact, "AI" is sucking up the resources we need to solve it while also making the problem worse, faster.
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Comment Re:Uh oh (Score 4, Insightful) 47

> Europe isn't socialist. They have some social policies.

So you know that meme, with the Orange County Choppers guys, goes something like this;

"Socialism doesn't work!"
"Norway is Socialist and they're doing great"
"They're not Socialist they're Capitalist with strong social policies"
"Then let's adopt those policies"
"No, that's Socialism!"

That's literally you. You are that asshole. Congratulations.
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Comment Re:A good test (Score 1) 209

> Solar and wind are dispatchable.

The other way around.

The availability of solar and wind are contingent on the sun shining and wind blowing. They are not considered dispatchable because we can't command the sun to shine or wind to blow whenever we need it.

Any powerplant can be disconnected from the grid. Happens all the time both intentionally and not so intentionally. The question is how much financial and logistical cost occurs when it does happen; and with solar and wind it's extremely low.
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Comment Re:So what (Score 1) 145

> The important context here you may be missing is that this entire opinion is in the context of Hachette v. Internet Archive where non-destructive digitization was ruled not fair use.

It's really strange to argue that the opinion is "in the context of" Hachette when it's not mentioned even once, but okay. The linchpin of that case was that Internet Archive was providing complete copies of the digitized works to others via a digital lending system (not free-for all downloads, but still allowing other people access). That case is also completely irrelevant here because Anthropic was emphatically NOT giving other parties access to the copyrighted works, on whole or in part.

There was also nothing about destructive vs non-destructive digitization in Hachette v. Internet Archive. That's really reaching for straws, man.

> The judge further makes this clear when at the end of the opinion, when the analysis is summarized on page 30 and 31, they write "On balance, as the purchased print copy was destroyed and its digital replacement not redistributed, this was a fair use."

Highlighted the relevant part you keep skipping over. Hope you see it this time.

> So if Anthropic had not engaged in the destruction, they might have won still on that

No, because it was decided Anthropic was engaging in fair use through three separate, existing cases and none of them had anything to do with destruction of anything. Let me re-quote the only thing you need to take away from all this:

"Anthropic was entitled to retain a copy of these works in a print format."

Since you cannot be both entitled to retain the physical copy, AND be legally obliged to destroy the physical copy, everything you are arguing is still, and forever will be, bullshit. Digitizing the works for easier reference and processing is fair use (Texaco, Google Books), and doing so did not materially impact the copyright holder's interests (Sony). That is what makes Anthropic's acts fair use. Destroying the physical copies is barely a footnote in this case.
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