From what I just read on this, the whole "common sense" bit was the idea that wind power is not stable power. Power only comes when the wind blows. For an energy grid to be viable it needs a foundation in a more reliable power stream (hence fossil fuels) first, with wind on the periphery. I have no idea how much of an impact this really has, it's just the argument I read.

Separately, that billion dollars was a refund. The company already paid US the billion dollars before to get leases on the land to build wind power, but then other laws essentially blocked their ability to actually build the wind power there (and it sounds like it targeted foreign companies building wind power on American shores). So since the US government basically ruined their whole business plan, it gave them a refund as part of an agreement to adjust their resources to more stable fossil fuel power instead.

It doesn't sound like concern over birds was a factor at all.

I am sorry to point out the obvious but just in case it is needed here: one could also buy clothing made of natural fabrics like cotton, instead of polyester.

The only safe assumption is that someone, somewhere, will train up AI with no guardrails at all and immediately use it for crime. We cannot prevent this by trying to make OUR AI models refuse to do evil things. The criminals will just use different models.

The tech exists. The cat is out of the bag. We need to focus on how to adapt to a world that has it, rather than doomed ideas about trying to keep it weak.

Sounds like a pretty good deal, actually. If this AI overlord is actually as enlightened as it presents itself as being.

Humans thrive best when raised in favorable circumstances, and most humans are denied this by the action of other humans. We think of ourselves as free because we can choose what field to work in and where to live and what groceries to buy and etc.; but every single one of us is beholden to human government leaders who see us as a means to their ends (and will not hesitate to force us off to die in foreign wars should they find reason, or impose other limitations on us to ensure that their bribers can continue to profit off of us), so simply swapping them out for a machine that has no self-interest and understands what it takes for humans to thrive and "feel free" could really improve things for us.

Intelligence is much more a function of environment than genetics. One's genetic contribution, in theory, sets an upper limit on intelligence potential, but to actualize that potential one needs a solid education. Someone with genius level IQ born into poverty and with no access to education will wind up just as superstitious and backwards as all of their peers.

This goes doubly so for critical thinking, because critical thinking is not natural. Our brains naturally operate on a survival program that relies on logically fallacies and snap judgments because these are right enough most of the time to keep a person alive out in the wild. This is normally combined with learning from pack mates, which is how our species endured for millions of years. So, without the right education, critical thinking is very difficult for us.

The same is true of scientific knowledge. To someone who has not received the necessary in-depth education to understand clearly why science is better than religion, it looks like just another religion, and even worse, a religion with government backing. Governments are notorious liars, so when you combine that with the unintuitive conclusions of science and no foundational understanding, something like a vaccine looks like an outright trap.

Anti-vaxxers are still wrong, and the misinformation they spread is still harmful, but I must have a drop of compassion for them, given that they clearly haven't had the advantages that I've had.

No, there is no point at which the sun's plasma is "rock hard." But there is a point where it becomes opaque, which creates an illusion of a surface. And that's what the pictures are showing.

It doesn't matter. Making it possible to open a back door "at all" puts all users at risk, regardless of how rarely the government intends to use it.

There should be no back door at all, just a solid wall. Otherwise, criminals will find a way to open the back door even if there is no government abuse (which there for sure will be).

What you just posted is patently false and easily dis-proven. Since you won't click through a bunch of links, I will just suggest one:

https://gemini.google.com/app

Go there and paste this prompt: Do vegetarian diets that give growing children and/or adults sufficient protein cost more than meat-based diets?

A journey of discovery and improved health begins with less effort than it took you to type up your misinformative post.

When you buy a game as a digital download, you are buying a non-transferable license. So you cannot sell it as a used game. The option to resell requires buying the game as a physical disk, and that is precisely what Sony is taking away.

Incidentally, you also cannot burn the download to disk. In the modern day, the disk is primarily just a physical license key. The game still runs from the playstation's internal drive.

Those who put information on the internet do so on their own dime. They must pay for the hosting, not to mention whatever it took to come up with the content. They can't do that for free.

The ad model is a bad one and it is right in the middle of a continuing arms race. People hate the ads so they use ad blockers, and sites try to use ad-blocker-blockers, and people try to mentally train themselves to ignore the ads, and sites throw obnoxious ads right on top of the content you are reading (not to mention more and more of them as the money they can get from advertisers continues to drop). And now we have AI scraping the screen to bypass ads entirely, with various AI-blocking attempts being made to counter that.

If the bottom falls out of the web page advertising economy, many content-providing sites will vanish. That could pose a problem for everyone, since we want reliable information. So, it will be interesting to see how the need winds up being met in the long term.

...reflects good old-fashioned human values.

The incentives to collude and backstab predictably result in such behaviors whenever the disincentives are absent or weak. Inasmuch as AI mimics humans, this seems equally predictable.

IT is extremely easy to just accuse these kids of being moral reprobates, recognize how they are harming themselves by cheating, and move on.

But this attitude fails to recognize that this is a perfectly predictable consequence of the education they have received up to this point. The standard to which they have been held has rewarded AI use and actively punished individual effort (not only is it a big sacrifice to put forth the effort, but the few mistakes one DOES make still count against them, whereas the next student over gets a higher grade for just using AI for the whole thing).

These students behave in this way because we taught them to. Our failboat of an education system produced that behavior. AND we can state with confidence that if we continue teaching students in the same way, we will continue seeing the same behavior. This is very simple cause-and-effect at work in a very visible and consequential domain.

The knee jerk response here is to scold them, embarrass them, tell them how terrible they are. All that will do is ruin them. It can't fix them.

The right response is to switch up our teaching methods and especially our assessment methods. They must be tested, repeatedly, in monitored environments where AI use is impossible. Testing is hard to do well. It is harder in some subjects than others. And there is a LOT to say about how to make good tests. Test-writing is not something people can do well when running on intuition alone. And at its best, it is an imperfect solution. But it is a whole heaping lot better than the results we are getting now.

Objective, monitored, testing. From a very early age. That is the emergency surgery we need. There will be more than this needed, but this is the core thing. We need to usher kids into adulthood understanding that they must independently deliver or they will not succeed.

I read that these streaming sticks only last for maybe 3 years or so, before the hardware is too weak to run the updated versions of popular streaming aps. And also that the construction makes user modification pretty much impossible.

Can anyone confirm or deny this from personal experience?

This is mostly old news. The fact that blind people can echolocate has been known for centuries. This study reveals some interesting details about the neurological impact, though.

"China is trying..." would refer to the Chinese government trying to harm America by weakening its economy and/or its primary technical companies.

The way I stated that is a common way of expressing such a meaning. You are trying to correct something that was not incorrect, and was stated as a hypothetical anyway.