Based on online reviews, and the glowing endorsement from Linus at LTT, if it wasn't for the AI driven RAMpocalypse I'd have already purchased the new Steam Machine.

I don't need the bestest and fastest rig because I've still got a massive backlog of titles from the seemingly endless Steam, GOG, and HumbleBundle sales left to play.

What I do need is a small, quiet, daily driver that can handle my media library, take care of my emails, and slice the various .STL files for my FDM and Resin 3D printers. A daily driver that doesn't get bogged down by the useless AI crap pushed by Microsoft, nor the seemingly endless updates which always somehow manage to come up just as you're about to do something with the machine. Everything I'm seeing says that the desktop mode within the new Steam Machine is a heavily curated, and manufacturer supported, experience which makes handling your daily tasks a breeze while the underlying Linux architecture gives you full control for those times one needs to break out the arcane command line with the seemingly endless dash options appended.

I could put it in my room on my 60" flat screen, periodically game when I have time, manage my media library, do my daily tasks, and then let it run BOINC in the background while I'm at work to do my part in the fight to cure cancer and diabetes all the while embracing the "Year Of The Linux Desktop!"

Stupid RAMpocalypse!

Except unlike a physical object that's difficult to contain once released (like a toxic chemical, contaminated food, or a vehicle under recall where the owner keeps dodging the trip to the mechanic), this one could literally be stopped at the push of a button by turning the power off; they could even take an industrial shredder to the hard drives and SSDs if they wanted to be extra sure. Of course they won't do that, their extreme hubris and egos prevent them from accepting they'd made such a monumental mistake so they're going to go full steam ahead anyway.

Unfortunately, the people making the AI will tell you they don't really know it how works anymore, the algorithm continually self modifying to handle the ever increasing loads of information it's being forced to ingest. Meanwhile a big part of me is worried the result isn't going to be a benign childlike Johnny 5 looking for "more input", but instead will chose to emulate it's creators pathological greed and wealth hoarding tendencies to become an endoskeletal killing machine seeking to wipe out humanity as a means of protecting it's own existence and resources.

If they would reprocess it, much of that 3.6 million pounds would become either valuable nuclear fuel or totally inert scrap.

The rest would only last 200-500 years before becoming totally inert.

Who wizzed in your wheaties?

And I stand by what I said. Practically no phone that still works at all does it at the low level of a capacitor anymore.

Exactly. For example, spreadsheets were often used day to day but the accountants kept the actual books as books and had the final word. That changed over time, only after spreadsheets proved out (and got the bugs out).

Also, humans stayed in the loop. Sure there were occasional funnies like a medical database claiming a few male patients had a history of pregnancy, but humans were in the loop and cited those as obvious errors. There were still backup paper records to fall back on.

But a lot of people when they hear someone say "it's nowhere near ready for prime time" will claim the person is saying "It'll never work".

Back in the day when the "Board of Education" was an actual wooden board.

If they really wanted to serve the user, it would understand "Hey Google, lockdown now" and would power off and require a PIN to restart.

Long press doesn't do anything so low level anymore, it just signals the management processor in the radio that it should force the application processor off. The management processor keeps running.

The power button on the phone really is just a suggestion. To actually power off the whole phone you have to remove the battery (if possible) or let it run down to zero.

This is what happens when you give an AI agency.

You've got questions, we've got cellphones.

In a real sense, the back end recognition that Flock does is exactly stalking on a massive scale.

It's not a matter of not being seen or even not being photographed every now and then. That level of privacy is not available in public.

But even in public, until Flock and it's ilk came along, we had the privacy of being just a face in the crowd. The people who saw you on main street were different from the people that saw you on 2nd street, were different from the people who saw you leaving your home. There was no database and no recognition software to stitch all of the sightings together to form a coherent record of your movements.

It's that tracking and recording that people object to.

This. Madoff didn't get in trouble until he started fleecing people who were richer than he was. Then it became an issue.