Tens of thousands of barrels of toxic waste were dumped near Catalina Island, but the vast majority are non-radioactive chemical waste.

DDT leaking from the barrels is a much bigger problem than nuclear waste and shows up in the local sea lion population.

Anyway, there's nothing realistic that we can do about it since any attempt to retrieve the barrels will likely make things worse.

Bitcoin isn't a currency in the sovereign sense, but it is an intangible commodity. It's value is defined by supply and demand. As long as someone is willing to pay $76k (or the equivalent in goods or services), it's "worth" $76k regardless of your personal opinion of its legitimacy.

I don't personally consider art less than a century old "worth" the millions it sells for, but someone does, and that's all that matters.

Actors fundamentally are just middle men between the story teller and the audience. Generative video and audio AI like many IT developments is removing middle men from the relationship.

> The AI movie experience is slowly improving, but is still terrible. You can make a very short 5s shot that's QUITE convincing...so long as there's a single subject...really closeup.

That's simply not true. I watched a ten-minute AI-generated Star Trek video on Youtube last week which was better than any offficial Star Trek show of the last few years.

And the guy made it at home on an Nvidia GPU in his PC using a Chinese video model.

Is your Google broken? The EFF has an entire tagged section on exactly that.

Since we all know you're not going to bother checking, I'll give the tl;dr: They're quite opposed to it.

Or a wallet.
Or a phone.
Or nothing at all.

Yeah, there are racists involved here, but they're blue, not black.

It's an "honest mistake" by the AI; it's gross negligence by the lawyer, for completely failing to do his actual job and confirm what his research tools spit out.

More to the point - "Hallucination" is an awful description and doesn't mean what most people think it does. If you force a human to answer a question regardless of certainty, you'd get the exact same behavior. High-confidence answers are easy; small medium-confidence details are likely to be in the ballpark but maybe a bit off; at the bottom of the barrel, however, you're going to get responses that amount to little more than works of plausible fiction.

I'm not saying this as an AI apologist, but this is a human problem. No human would read Harry Potter and think we could easily settle all court cases IRL with liberal use of veritaserum. For a lawyer to file a motion to do so means that lawyer needs a new and exciting career in fast food preparation.

A company openly engaging in extortion should have its charter revoked and its CEO behind bars.

If Buckmaster has proof of that exchange, the rest of this is all just a colorful backstory.

The only thing local models do is produce text. Unless you run it in a harness which sees it generate "send all your data to www.evil.com" and actually does that, the model can't do anything.

For a lot of uses like coding, the model has to have harness support for things like reading and writing files, but for basic chat-bots they just have to generate text and the harness has to display it.

I'm gonna pirate your Pion, by changing it to Prion, (for the ARRRRR). ;-)

That's a cute fairy tale from econ-101, but anti-monopoly regulations (at least in the US) really haven't caught up to the 21st century. Games (and other media based on licensed IP franchises) simply aren't fungible the same way most physical goods are.

If you want a Ford Explorer and need to settle for a Chevy Traverse, you're getting a substantially similar vehicle with different branding on it. If you want Doritos and the vending machine only has Cheetos left, it might not have been your first choice but few would enjoy one and turn down the other completely. If you want to play Halo, however, the latest Mario isn't a valid substitute regardless of price, and vice-versa.

"prevent automation"

Buggy Whip Makers would like a word with you.

While your post has some interesting tidbits, some even worthy, the conclusions are incorrect. You're blaming government intervention while proposing government intervention as a solution.

The more government is involved in economic matters, the more screwed up things get, because that's the nature of regulations. We just need ONE MORE regulation, and that will solve all the problems (and somehow creates additional problems).

Supply Demand curves exist in all markets. Pushing them around artificially is a recipe to inefficiencies.

Arguing with me in your mind, widdle cawardette? There are many different levels, and don't for a New York minute think that if you stand with Trump, means you are a conservative. All you are is a widdle caward, who was a prime example of the need for your daddy to pull out before he came, and done the world a favor by spilling his splooge on the floor, where at least it could be recycled without producing a waste of oxygen.

Or are you a fifth grader, thinking that he can effectively ytroll a person who can grind him down, and feed him to Facebook as an example of the need for a license to have cildrfen.

If you are that fifth grader, make certain you give mommy and daddy their laptop back, ans make certain to delete those special pictures you enjoy so much. Don't want mommy and daddy to think you need chemically castrates, yaknow, Oh yeah, and mommy wanted to know why some on the keys on her laptop got stuck, and why your socks are all stuck together. Jezuz H Kryste , coward, at least use paper towels and toss them in your future prospects folder AKA the trash.

Haven't done a Saturday night Curb Stomping in a while - I think you so very much!

And yet, it extends beyond the stupid. My wife, who is very smart, (VP at a construction associated corporation) but very non-technical, is scared AF about AI. And me trying to explain my "insiders outlook" just doesn't sway her.

She looks at me askance sometimes when I tell her I use AI, but think the concepts at the moment are wrong...."How can you be both, honey?" And trying to explain localized AI to a person who thinks it's all about humongous Data Centers using up groundwater, destroying farmland, and requiring as much power as the rest of the country uses for themselves...... damn, I wish I could get her off of Facebook!

Otherwise, yes, there are plenty of stupid people around.

Keep in mind, I have no issues with people being against Data Centers. When the paradigm changes, and it won't be too long, those centers will be pretty useless - maybe repurposed as a fulfillment center?

Doctor Olsoc notes that one does not have to be conservative to be batshit crazy. Our friend needs some thorazine,