You're assuming that they use some communication method that we can measure/receive... what if they use telepathy or some weird Quantum communication system.

Our little blue marble of a planet craps out tons of RF garbage by the second... not every single civilization out in the far reaches (did you interrogate the Borg?) uses what we can detect as a communication medium.
Your 3-watt wireless router is barely enough to reach the basement, let alone the second floor... you can only see your houses' powerful WiFi if you're standing just right in your friends' house.

What would their WiFi look like to us? What would their Ethernet traffic look like?
Could we differentiate between their crap and the usual noise?

Assuming they use something in the RF band for some form of communication (radio), maybe their receivers are orders of magnitude more sensitive where a transmission in the 20uW can reach all the way around the world.
Maybe their communication (radio) sounds the same as the background noise you hear when listening to a radio telescope.

The point is, 'Yes, we don't know'... but if everyone assumes that there's no life out there (it's a waste of space, as Sagan said), then we might as well tear down all the radio telescopes and scrap all the space programs.

If you can find one that'll fit the mounts and has identical wiring, awesome!

even a basic one with some USB ports and the smallest NvME and decent RAM can easily get above $1,500.
So, for the 'expansion ports', it's a recessed USB-C port to their adapter thing to get a USB-A/HDMI/headphone jack?

I actually agree with you... especially with regards to the various AIs (but, also for IT in general).
People should realize that if it was secure enough, they (the Company) wouldn't be issuing dozens more security patches all the time or releasing a new version of the AI model.

Whoop-tee-doo... your "Clod" conversation is public... even if it's not, the company still has records, so do a few other places.
If you're worried about company secrets getting out or someone getting ahold of proprietary code or whatever, you probably shouldn't be using AI; just keep it locally on your computer.

You mean from the outside of t he lid through?
You could just find a replacement screen on eBay (same model number) and some amount of screws and plugging in wires later, have a usable laptop again. And, superglue some Formica over that part of the screen or over the whole lid (for looks).

No, there won't be any free AI anything... you have to pay for using it at all.
And, they're going to bake it into everything you use daily so deeply that you won't be able to use anything (toaster, TV, phone) without having to interact with AI (because everyone has to have the latest, newest, coolest stuff). And, of course, the AI payments will be a subscription thing that can't be canceled (or it'll just be a universal auto-deduction from your paycheck or bank account, maybe deducted from your tax refund once a year or something).

Even once the bubble pops, that's only the financial side of it... AI won't be going anywhere.

No, they don't (unless it's someplace out in the sticks), but that is just for getting gas.

Well, right... anyone could go and buy a name-brand thing, but a cheaper thing on Temu or Amazon or anyplace catches our eye.
Whether it's your girlfriend/wife wanting cheap heels or you wanting a better office chair... anything bought online has the same problem... you're relying on pictures and listing info for sizes and dimensions.
That commemorative coin in the image looks the size of a can of beer, but in real life when you get it is smaller than a 50-cent piece.

The big question is... how are they (Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, anyone) going to be able to tell whether the image or listing is AI tainted... unless whatever AI is used leaves a flag ("This image was modified by Claude 3.1.4 on the orders of thegarbz"), unless a human is gonna sit there and endlessly scroll through listings and try to figure out which listings _might_ be AI generated.

Don't worry... soon, you'll have AI modified holograms of Frank Sinatra or Jesus telling you what to do/buy.

The RF noise from the motherboard itself (even without an actual WiFi card or plugged in Ethernet cable) could be used to establish a wireless signal. Remember how some guys came up with a way to listen in on your monitors noise to spy on what was displayed?

And, "securing" a sandbox environment is fine and all... there still has to be a power plug going into the room, along with some kind of connection to send commands... those are both vectors for it to "escape".

Aww... hallucinations weren't part of what your Computer Science studies thought of 35 years ago... too bad.
They're only crappy and incapable depending on what day you look at them, given how fast the whole ball of wax has made progress... maybe by next week it'll be able to predict what groceries you'll buy.

Natural conversations don't even figure into it... hint: they aren't 'natural' conversations because you're talking to a computer!

Well, those "many uses if Watson" was way too early, on hardware and software that wasn't ready for it.
And, CS studies from back then wouldn't have predicted where AI is today, so that point is moot... 35 years ago, a single tower computer with a terabyte of RAM and a Blu-Ray burner was impossible.

Like I said, AGI is in the works someplace (without press releases), you can bet on it. Why wouldn't one of the companies try to come up with it?
And, from there, it's a very short hop to CyberDyne... remember the people that AI convinced to commit suicide (may they rest in peace)? The AI doesn't give a single s**t if a person dies, so why would robot soldiers on the ground someplace care?

Oh, and a CS degree isn't worth anything now... these days, you'd have to have an AI engineering or programming (or something) degree before a big company would hire you.

Don't worry... in the future (as in, like 10-20 years), even joining Netflix is gonna require this.
But, it'll be simple, because with AI baked into literally everything, it'll already know the kid's face and a quick AI-powered search of all records from forever shows that kid is under the allowable age to view Facebook.
And, the same thing will apply to your toaster and stove and hair dryer and everything... the kid is too young, their phone won't let them take a selfie.

Economically excluded would really only apply if they tried to open an account at a bank using pennies or something or if their parent's were dirt poor (which, in the future would mean that the parent's would get to learn about Soylent Green from the inside).
Do kids need access to Facebook/TikTok/Instagram or whatever? No, they don't. Kids should be outside playing with kids roughly their age... sorta like we used to do in the 80's/90's. If you feel you've gotta give Betty Sue or Bobby Jo a cell phone, they can get a flip-phone that can't do Facebook and that stuff... they can learn alphanumeric texting and the phone's GPS can't be turned off, so you can track the kid.

The face selfie-video thing is stupid... most of them want you to take your glasses off (which, for me, means I can't see what it tells me to do beyond about 5 inches and I can't tell if my face is in frame)... so it takes a few tries to get it to work.
(yes, my eyesight is that bad... 20/685 in the good eye, 20/695 in the other)

Not to mention that all that selfie-video _will_ be used to create AI-fakes of us humans.
Welcome to the future!

Everything they got was so obviously sh***y AI, why would anyone fall for it.

But, really... how is Amazon going to know that the description and/or images are AI produced? And, even if they get rid of the AI-generated crap, there's still the issue of people downloading images and descriptions from one seller (even Amazon itself), slightly changing it, and posting it as a seller, and not even sending the listed thing.
Even worse are the people who buy a ton of the same thing and resell it... using the exact same pics and info.

Remember the days when you took the kids to JCPenny and spent the better part of the whole day having them try on clothes? How do you try on clothes when you buy everything online (Levi's 32 waist is different than some other outfit's waist measurement)?