None of the approaches to cold fusion appear to have any chance of success. There is quite a bit of effort going on in hot fusion, but its not clear how long it will be to the first power plant - it might be quite a while.

You can give them $9000 to "reserve" a flying car. Maybe they sell you a flying car in the future maybe they give you back the $9K without interest. That is NOT the same a s "for sale now".

It appears to be certified as an ultralight under part 103 which means it can only be flown over non-congested areas. It has a range of 20 miles, at 62mph.
It can carry 220 pounds. Something like 28% of Americans report weighting more than 200 lbs, and clothes and a briefcase mean that probably 1/4 of Americans are too heavy for this. Its not in any sense a "car" since it has no road capability.

Its very difficult to think of an actual use case for this. Its a fun toy for people who can spend almost $200K on toys, but not really practical. How many people need to fly between 2 locations that are in non-congested areas, and where each has 240V service next to a landing pad. Also in non-congested areas its not going to be significantly faster than a car, and slower unless you have a takeoff / landing pad at your house.

I've started using one of the new AIs for some mechanical, thermal and high power electrical engineering. Its surprisingly good. Of course it makes mistakes but not really any more often than would a human engineer. It seems to do better at these sorts of problems than it does at coding - which surprised me.

There are some issues with installing solar at home. We did it a few years back and have had issues with roof leaks and some general system maintenance issues. The installers are separate from the solar companies are separate from the equipment manufacturers, and even if we are willing to pay out of pocket for repairs it can still take a long time to sort out who can fix the problem.

Sadly the best thermoelectric generators are not nearly as efficient as conventional thermodynamic engines. I don't know if there is a fundamental limitation or in principal they could get close to Carnot efficiency. Also thermoelectric generators usually have a max temperature lower than that for thermodynamic generators so they are starting at a lower Carnot efficiency

A lot of people use computers as tools to do their work without doing any deep research. They might reasonably expect that an "encrypted" drive didn't provide keys to a 3rd party and use it to store proprietary or otherwise protected information. An attorney pursuing a case against Microsoft might be surprised to learn that they can access all of his notes.

I'm sure the information that MS has the keys is included somewhere in the vast EULAs but I also bet that very few non-technical users are aware of that.

Many people and especially young people have *real* online friends and removing those social connections could produce feelings of isolation and likely depression. I think it would have been far better to regulate the sort of content that young people could access without isolating them socially. Its easy to say that they should "go out and make real friends" but that is very difficult for some people.

Generally agree, but there are some valid reasons for flying business that are not just about having "better" seats. Ever try to work on a laptop on a budget economy seat? Even with a small laptop its almost impossible. On a round trip from CA to Europe or Asia, that's ~20 hours of lost work time, and for professionals who cost the company $500/hour that adds up. Since the high profit business seats allow airlines to charge less for economy seats, there is some advantage all around.

In general though we can always save energy and emissions by making things worse. People can ride electric scooters instead of cars - you see this a lot in some countries, and I've seen a family of 4 on a motor scooter. People can live in smaller houses, have less AC and heat, not eat meat, etc. My preference though is to go the other way and make better technology. We are already seeing wind and solar, and electric land vehicles becoming cost competitive. So far there isn't a non-carbon solution for aircraft, but high speed rail is a good alternative for trips 1000km or even more. It may take a while to find a low emissions replacement for long haul air travel, but I expect we will get there eventually too. Probably hydrogen (once we have the grid capacity to make it) but maybe something else.

Taking important advice from an AI or web search or even from a doctor without cross checking is dangerous. Iâ(TM)ve had licensed doctors make dangerously incorrect diagnoses- later corrected by other doctors. AI isnâ(TM)t magic - it can be a good source for information but no one claims itâ(TM)s flawless.

I've flown into the US on a private plane from Canada twice. Customs were at least if not more thorough. I assume this would apply there as well.

Putting aside the privacy issues, its going to be difficult to comply with this. As others have said, there are many things that might be considered "social" media - Slashdot, discussions on news sites, specialty interests hobby groups. Do things like tripadvisor count? I have accounts that I've created, and never really used, long ago forgotten the usernames and passwords. I have email accounts set up to absorb spam and then abandoned, email accounts from former jobs where I no longer have passwords or even usernames.

They are setting people up to be caught "lying" because they didn't disclose an account.

In China, Japan, many other European countries, along with others, rail is often faster door to door than air on trips under 1000 miles, as well as being far more pleasant that even 1st class air. I always take HSR when its a plausible option when I'm traveling. Last time I took a train in the US (outside of the NE corridor) it was purely for novelty, and I came back by air eve though it was only 200 miles.

The problem is that the US has become unable to build large projects, some of this due to laws intended to protect the environment but now delaying or preventing the development of high speed rail, wind, solar and nuclear power. China has built tens of thousands of km of high speed rail in the time it took California to talk about it, but not finish even the first segment of the "train to nowhere".

Unfortunately we are trapped between conservatives who don't believe in climate change and liberals who insist the only way to fix climate is to do less. There are good technical solutions out there, and most Americans would be happy with them, but the extremists on both sides prevent it.

Microsoft AI tools may be OK but London trust the data privacy issues with integrating AI into everything. So I disable it I use stand alone AI tools a lot. (Mostly Gemini) because I can only give them access to specific data

For all the happy fuzzy reasons we claim to value and want to protect conscious things, there is an underlying reason: conscious things are dangerous.

So I think the important question is not whether we declare AI to be conscious, but whether it will eventually act its own self interest the way a human would. Will it use force to gain rights and resources that we haven't granted it?

I think at the moment we don't know. AI is rapidly advancing and I don't think we can predict what capabilities and behaviors it will have in 10 years, I think the safety approach is to imagine that it might become able to act in its own self interest and have a plan to deal with that - probably by integrating it into society, rather the oppressing it by force.

Reference to face scan trumping documents? I'm not disagreeing but I'd like to see an official source. If true that is (another) big problem because face scans are not perfect. Even a 0.1% error rate will result in huge numbers of people legally in the US being detained and deported.