as long as this proposed model isn't hamstrung with too little memory or too little storage, and will run the same OS/software as its big brothers, it sounds like a good option for Apple to offer to the market.

While I agree that there are people out there who make such a claim, I don't consider their claims to be in good faith. I would put the majority of those into the "self-serving not in good faith" bucket and the remainder in the "very uninformed" bucket.

No one is claiming in good faith that *current* computers/AI have consciousness. But to make a definitive statement that says that no *future* non-biological system ever *can* is a statement waiting to look foolish in the future.

Humanity, in its history, has done many things once thought impossible because we didn't have the proper understanding. The argument here is to not make blanket statements that cover the entire future.

^^ THIS.

All I'm saying is that given that we don't have a real understanding of biological consciousness, it's the height of hubris to make a definitive statement about what can be consciousness and what can't.

Given that we don't have a real understanding of biological consciousness, "only biological beings are capable of consciousness" is a pretty dumb statement to make as a definitive. Now, actually reading the article further, his statement that

is not invalid logic, and is a much more nuanced thought than the summary.

Am I the only one who sees the irony in "America Online" being owned by a foreign holding group?

The simplest explanation would be "corporate greed." as in "we can increase the price of their existing subscription by touting it's *new* feature editions, and they won't even notice that a version that continues to give them exactly what they had at the lower price they were paying, because we won't talk about that."

I will definitely disagree, as you predicted, with your statement "people like Outlook." I'd be much more willing to say "people are familiar with Outlook, and lazy enough to not want to look for an alternative." Outlook is the definition of low-hanging fruit. It comes with the OS, is there already, you don't have to take any extra steps to install it, etc. Especially in a situation where a user is only using it as an email client, it's a bloated pig. But, it's a bloated pig they already have and will put up with. Would they still "like" it after trying a better client?

that's a lot of cards in that house of logic.

I'm with you this far.

More people having better lives is much more of an opinion than fact.

I'm not sure that's as good a thing as you think it is.

You're stating that as if there was a causal relationship between work on AI and low unemployment rates. It's far more likely that advanced economies have both work on AI going on and low unemployment rates than it is that low unemployment rates is a result of work on AI. Remember, correlation =/= causation.

it's been shown many times by companies opening up such job opportunities to everyone that most people don't want backbreaking jobs for little pay, which is what many immigrants take out of necessity.

PHP isn't the reason Magento sucks. Magento would still be a bloated pig no matter what language underlayed it. It was one of the first things I moved the company I work for away from when I was hired.

I used to work for a company that did all those things. We contracted with multiple geographically diverse datacenters, each of which had multiple redundant ISP connections, diesel generators the size of garbage trucks in case grid power was out, we ran replication software to keep the backup DC servers in (as close to) real-time sync with servers in the primary DC. At our office, we installed our own generator to power the entire office if necessary. Each server had 4 copies (primary in primary DC, backup in primary DC, primary in secondary DC, backup in secondary DC). The setup was HIDEOUSLY expensive to build out and to maintain, but we were in the financial industry and partnered with banks, so it was necessary.

I'm not arguing against cloud hosting, it can be useful and (economically) efficient for many companies. I'm just saying that I find it worrisome that AWS is so big that when it has a problem, it takes down a significant portion of internet-based services. Isn't that kind of the opposite of what the original internet design (DARPANET if you want to go back that far) was supposed to protect against? One node failing causing a cascade failure?

it's a GOOD thing that one company controls that much of the internet, right? I mean, super efficient.

why have the view that shows the original page at all? We don't have to *read* anymore.

I think this is the browser of choice at The Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good.

all the time Amazon asked for tax breaks from municipalities in order to build facilities there, and the trade-off was supposed to be "but we'll be bringing lots of jobs, and that'll offset the tax breaks you give us?" I sure do. Turns out it was all a scam. Like we thought, but politicians gave them the tax breaks anyway.