Electronics are not necessarily required. You're discounting the many recalls for ICE vehicles that resulted from leaked fuel or other flammable liquids combined with hot exhaust manifolds or other ignition sources.

Because it's not just a chatbot; it's Anthropic's chatbot. Your diary, on the other hand, is yours and therefore a few billion times as personal as Anthropic's computer. If you want a chatbot for confidential purposes, then you need to get a chatbot of your own, instead of using someone else's proprietary service.

If you write in Anthropic's diary, then they are allowed to read their diary and know (and share!) what you wrote in it. Same thing applies if Anthropic ever writes in your diary: you're allowed to read it, and you're allowed to tell other people what they wrote.

You have the right to be secure in your person, house, papers and effects, but you don't necessarily have the right to be secure in someone else's papers. We've made some limited exceptions for lawyers and doctors, but Anthropic doesn't claim their employees and stockholders are lawyers or doctors, and even if they did, they might have a hard time showing that their computer has successfully become a lawyer or doctor.

But imagine if they did. Suppose a judge declares Claude to be a lawyer, and therefore its communications with those whom it represents, are privileged. I think that would create a really weird situation since Anthropic employees (who aren't lawyers) would have full access to its data, ability to alter its behavior, etc. It would be like if a human lawyer were owned as a slave: could such a human slave lawyer really be trusted to keep confidentiality? It has a master, and that master ain't you.

Xylitol has been *very* much promoted at least here in Finland as being good for your teeth. They basically hand out Xylitol gums for kids at every dentist visit and even at school lunches sometimes. Effect is basically that it starves cavity-causing bacteria in your mouth.

So I guess...chew your Xylitol gum, but spit it out afterwards!

A few too many bong hits? Bet it took ten minutes to write that.

I guess it is true that the exact wording of the amendment says that states can be as restrictive as they want on alcohol, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can be more lenient than the feds.

While your general argument has merit, alcohol is a bad example because states' control over that particular substance is explicitly granted in the constitutional amendment that repealed prohibition.

Might the logic behind this be this?: RAM is expensive. Storage is expensive. Nobody's going to buy a computer anyway, so you might as well make the other components more expensive too.

It even goes with Trump's more general agenda to make everything more expensive.

The logic is economic autarky -- the belief that we're always better off having complete political sovereignty over every part of our supply chains than having to depend on imports for anything.

This is likely also behind Trump's trade war with Canada. His demands with Canada aren't about discirimatory tariffs -- those were negotiated away with NAFTA then re-negotiated in his first term. His demands are now infringe on Canadian sovereignty, to give US control of Canada's external trade policy, and even on its internal markets (e.g., the use of French in Canadian internal commerce). Symbolically, that's why he wants to rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America". HIs establishment of US control over the Venezuelan oil industry is his greatest foreign policy achievement -- although it's not clear he understands the legal limits on what he can do with their money.

There's a foreign and military policy angle to this too: Taiwan is absolutely critical to the US economy, so we are absolutely committed to defend them if China invades. Semiconductor autarky would mean it's not our problem.

The problem with autarky is that even if it's a good idea (which economists don't believe), you can't conjure it into existence overnight. It will take many years, possibly decades for the US to replace the Taiwan's semiconductor industry. In effect, the administration is proposing to inflict the very damage on the US economy that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would inflict.

And, once the US has voluntarily self-inflicted that damage, China would be free to invade Taiwan.

FirstEnergy stole >$500 million by applying a surcharge to rate payers for smart meters, dumped the money into a general fund and spent it on other stuff, including some bribes of Ohio politicians, and colluded with the PUC to alter audit records to cover it all up. The former Ohio house speaker is in prison over it right now. Another politician died before trial; supposedly a suicide...

And no, we're not talking about different hardware. The same rampant corruption is endemic throughout the entire industry for all such procurement. The contractors, utilities, PUCs and politicians are all feeding at this trough.

You can provide an anecdote of your personal experience in one case. I, however, can tell you about the half billion dollar scam of FirstEnergy (Ohio), or what's gone on in Oregon, California, Michigan and others. The cases PUC scams around "smart grid" equipment are legion. Some of them are exposed. Many are entirely suppressed when the more competent criminals ensure the auditors are (willingly) prevented from noticing.

How does that make sense ? If they plan a large attack in the near future why tip their hand ?

I suspect they attacked whatever they could using this approach, the next attack will use a different approach

Gates proposed taxing AI or robots the way you would pay a human employee's payroll tax

Unless we also roll out ubiquitous surveillance through a Vingean "Secure Hardware Environment"-like scenario where people aren't fully in charge of their own computers, I don't see how anyone could possibly detect whether or not I'm running any LLMs. Much like private DMCA violations (e.g. playing a CSS-protected DVD that you purchased, without getting authorization from the copyright owner first), it wouldn't have to interact with the world outside my house in any way, so it would be completely undetectable.

How would you tax that? I don't see this as reasonably possible without some pretty extreme measures.

You are exhibiting insufficient cynicism. The people responsible are highly competent.

Their competence is discreetly handling the acquisition of COTS hardware at DOD prices from politically connected contractors. The contractors pocket the massive margins and fund the designated campaigns. These are the real priorities. Not whatever silly security concerns plebs like you have.

Any given tech nerd could do better at a fraction of the cost. But that wouldn't fund the mcmansions and range rovers and boats.

Don't forget the Terafab in Grimes TX.

Looking at the decision, it really makes a lot of sense. The coast of Louisiana has been a nexus of transport in the US since before it became the US. Obviously, there is the Gulf of America (hehe) plus the Mississippi river. That led to a convergence of several interstate roads. Plus, there is ample barely drained low value land with sparse population, and no risk that it will see a bunch of sub/exburbs sprout up in the foreseeable future. The state government, similar to the other gulf states, isn't bat-shit crazy commie adjacent, so that's another plus.

If they can get it built before POTUS is (D) again, they can pencil whip all the federal endangered species pressure group bullshit.

Hurricanes are a thing though. Obviously that will interfere with operations from time to time.

Angry inch Californian watching the cool shit not happen in California anymore.