This branch confused me. Not the kind of efficiency that I was asking about. This would actually be an advantage for countries that have a lot of hydropower. I think the advantage on this one would be for America (and perhaps Japan or some other places?) over China.

However the efficiency question I was asking about was the cost of building computing capacity that sometimes waits idly for the wind to blow versus the cost of batteries to keep the computers running. But on reflection I think the calculation is more complicated than I was thinking. There is also a savings from the idle time in that the servers are not wearing themselves out when they are just waiting. Also need to consider the cost of adding new servers over time. In general the CPUs are getting less expensive, but then you need to consider the value of getting the answers faster, and then you need to consider the possible advantages of thinking more carefully about which questions to ask in the first place...

Just think how much control we'll have over what gets taught.

Accidentally I found myself reflecting on some parts of this topic as America and Israel start another round of war crimes. If there are any historians in the future, and I'm increasingly skeptical there will be, I think they will probably say that the high point of America, at least in moral terms, was probably when the nation accepted the reality of Vietnam and took the loss for higher morality...

Appealing to the YOB's sense of morality will be the joke, perhaps the terminal joke, in referring to America's current situation. But the teaching bots will be able to say whatever with a straight face. And the kids will never know any better. If there are any kids?

I acknowledge that batteries exist and are significant, but the efficiency is significantly lower. I don't think it makes that much sense to do low priority stuff off of batteries and I regard most of the AI training as relatively low priority. However I have to acknowledge the other side of the inefficiency of building extra computing capacity that spends a lot of time waiting for the power...

Hmm... I just thought of a retired CPA who worked with this kind of stuff. Maybe he could work up the numbers? Or should I run it past a couple of AIs to see what they say? Bit of a funny story there. The flakiness of Gemini has been driving me to Bing these days. In one recent "incident", Bing decided to challenge my humanity and asked if I wanted to use a particular account or continue without logging in. So for grins and in hope of a less biased answer I selected the option of not logging in. Bing then continued by greeting me by my name. So much for opting out for privacy, eh?

Congratulations on the provocative FP, though I think it should have been moderated Funny over insightful. You evidently stirred up some major lying morons who had to leap to the YOB's defense with the change of Subject and the long diversion.

Unfortunately I have no joke for follow up. I think we've reached an age of Rumplicans versus Dumbocrats and "We can't get there from here", where "here" is where America is now and "there" is any better place. The orange-nosing Rumplicans are divided between cowards and sociopaths and wannabe fascists while the Dumbocrats are divided up based on which flying elephants they dream about or believe in.

Why are you laughing. The guidelines are quite clear. According to the YOB ethics rules, someone must now "donate" appropriate money to a YOB "charity" and a suitable pardon will be issued.

So did anyone see the video about the YOB saying what a great freeloader he is? Certainly not working for the US since he doesn't accept any of the salary. The particular video I saw then did the math on the YOB's charity compared to people who haven't pocketed billions of dollars recently. Turned out the presidential salary corresponds to about 10 bucks for normal pikers. Actually less if you use my recent income as the reference, but I did spend about ten bucks on lunch at a Chinese place yesterday...

(In related research I chatted with a couple of AI about the YOB's track record in business and the fluctuating value of his brand, but I couldn't dig up anything funny ha-ha, though there was plenty of monkey business.)

(Did I smell a brain fart?)

Two significant advantages on the China side, though I think the title of the story is clickbait and it's much too soon to see what is going on with AI.

The major advantage is the energy. But what do you do when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining? You just wait to train your AI because training can be done at your convenience. But I'm also sure that the Chinese are working on prioritization systems for the time-sensitive queries so that when Xi has a question he ALWAYS gets his answer ASAP. "That's what Xi said!"

The minor advantage is the number of engineers. Even if you insist that only the most brilliant engineers matter, the larger the number of candidates the more likely you're going to find some brilliant ones in there.

And one YUGE disadvantage on the American side. 'Nuff said, but the YUGE disadvantage hasn't stopped creating and empowering lesser disadvantages.

But at least the USA is the world leader in explosive diarrhea! (That was a joke. Really. In the explosive diarrhea race I'd bet on the former USAID recipient countries. (There must be another joke around here involving arms races versus other kinds of races to the... (Reminds me of my first joke about Texas: "Gawd oh gawd don't flush it!")))

Well, you got me to look at F-Droid, but I didn't find the solution approach plausible. Part of the implausibility came from the extremist tone. Not possible to predicts so many details of a final implementation even if it was an accurate description (and I doubt that) of the current form. Not persuaded, but maybe a visible financial model would have helped persuade me? Was it down there on the seventh screen somewhere? Or if I just clicked on the right link?

But no hint in your reply what you found implausible about my approach. The original premise of the google was that there was a truth out there and they were going to help us find it. I think the financial truths are kind of important...

Tangential take from Careless People involves Zuck's self-contradiction. On one hand, his profits are coming from advertising. The meta-ads targeting the advertisers tell them that buying ads on Facebook (and other Zuck productions/acquisitions) is the best way to invest their advertising budget because it will reach real customers who will then spend more money on goods and services. MUCH more many than the cost of the ads on Facebook. Actually it's worse than that, because the profits are only a fraction of the customer spending, so there's a kind of multiplier effect there. But on the other hand, Zuck says Facebook has no effect on elections and those political advertisers were just pouring their money into a toilet.

However I just had another bleak take on things.

The world could be different. The world could even be better. But the world is what it is and we just have to live in it. (There was a Peanuts joke along these lines...)

No one answered your sincere question, so I will. At least search shows no mention of "liability" and that's the key.

Actually the real question is "Given their completely lack of legal liability even for the most egregious flaws in their software, why did Microsoft bother to patch so many of them?"

Going for Funny:

Microsoft was feeling too humane to fire all the unneeded humans. Now the humans sit around testing the AI software, including the patches for all those bugs created in the past...

Only Funny in 200+ comments? I think there was room for more. Sadness?

I was looking for some joke along those lines, but maybe the story lacked implicit irony?

Mod parent extra funny, though the story deserved more.

Yes, Funny, but the story deserved more jokes. Rich target.

Too risky to laugh at so much evil in one corporate cancer?

Rather a late response. Why?

But I will say your version seems unlikely to fly through any Congress I've ever studied. Okay, they can't actually call this version a "death tax", but I'm sure they'll devise a suitable anti-marketing pitch.

Point taken. I miss George. And Bill Hicks.

Mostly the ACK, but I partly disagree as regards the Japanese market, which is another one big enough that no major international company prefers to ignore it. The phone companies have a major convenience grip on their customers private phone parts. Most concretely, they have special apps for their own accounting and billing (and ads, must not forget the ads). For example, my own company also requires the use of a special VoIP app for free (national) calls.

I don't want to name names on the theory of "There's no such thing as bad publicity", but it would be pretty hard for me to say anything good about Rakuten Mobile at this late date. Whoops? I'm one of their first customers, but I think I've already become one of the last of their first customers who is still putting up with the constant flow of "beautiful support". What did you think BS stood for?