Would you believe, so they can be used as an energy storage system?

It's actually a pretty good idea, but only if you can keep the command-and-control system secure.

Alas, it's historically been easy for people to slip into a mindset of "no hacker would ever know or care about OUR little system, because [reasons]", and use that as a justification for ignoring security concerns altogether.

Of course that's never really been the case, but now that any bozo with $200 in their pocket can just pay an AI to find every possible security hole and report back, it's REALLY not the case.

If you want the truth about why "affordability" might be a problem for you, look no further than this summary ("...would need the green light from those major mobile carriers...") and extrapolate that to essentially everything that costs too much, because that is exactly where it's coming from. Whether it's incumbent hospital networks deciding whether to permit new competitors in their territories, or incumbent universities deciding whom they will and will not permit to be accredited, and thus be eligible for government subsidies, government-backed debt, or any number of other examples where incumbents have wheedled themselves control of some measure of government apparatus to limit and control competitors.

In any case, none of this is "Capitalism." Actual "Capitalism" does not involve this sort of dysfunction. It certainly has other dysfunctions, but private-interest incumbent control over government gatekeeping is not among them. That's a different problem, and rational people don't confuse it with "Capitalism."

And all of this exists because every time one of your ancestors felt some frustration or suffered some grievance, real or imagined, they called the cops and created another opportunity for some wonderful new bit of "fairness" to be enacted into law. That's what you're really paying for. That's the price of your romper-room world, and why your elders have the jaws of a vise cranked down on everything today.

Refrigeration systems have heaters on the evaporator coils to defrost them periodically. Telling the control system to turn on that heater and leave it on will easily accomplish that.

how do you know that? it could easily be the case that this happens 10 times for every one we hear about.

"As technology and job responsibilities evolve, accommodations may be reviewed to ensure they remain reasonable and workable."

Translation: We'll grand the accommodation for now while our lawyers figure out a way around it.

A small percentage of a few billion people is a big problem.

Yes, regardless of whether their name is Muhammed or Breivik.

Why not here? Because for starters, humanism isn't a religion (and I say that as a humanist). It's a philosophical stance within atheism. And atheism is the absence of religion** (it's literally right there in the name), not a religion. You can't claim "religious" exemptions as an atheist. What this person actually wants is a philosophical exemption, akin to, say, a vegetarian wanting an exemption from having to cook meat at a restaurant or whatnot.

** - Well, except for those atheists who worship Athe.

Yeah, nothing insular about the Amish.

(Oh wait...)

Outright hostility, you say? I can't imagine how that came about.

Well, Debian has signed updates. I assume most other distros do. I'm not clear what the benefit of this is. Who are you going to trust to do the signing? Does the entire system need to be resigned after every update? At first glance this only works if your entire system is in one "file", and you sign that file with a unique signature. But who's going to know what the proper signature is?

Signing individual packages seems much more reasonable. Then two people can compare the signatures on a particular piece of software to determine that they are the same. (But for that, why rely on signatures when things like sha256 exist...unless that what they mean by signature, in which case the prior caveats still apply.)

Quite. Scientists and researchers have been using the term AI to describe this collection of technologies and algorithms since the 1950s. The field has (arguably) made great strides recently. Most of the current scientists and researchers have been perfectly content to continue to call it AI. But no! Now we're going to let somebody who was born stupid, dedicated his life to staying stupid, and now is seemingly in advanced stages of dementia tell us what we should call this field? What a bunch of bootlickers these tech execs are. I hope Trump has the good sense to walk through a cattle field before he asks these losers to get their tongues out.

I think we should assume that the acronym SI means "simulated intelligence."

Because that's what it is. It's not intelligent in any way, it just simulates intelligence.

*You* may know that, but that doesn't make it true. It *may* be true. At this stage I expect most attempts to use AI to fail. The same thing happened when computers came out. And again when personal computers came out.

Power new tools have a learning curve. AI is definitely a powerful new tool, but it's currently changing so rapidly that we haven't really started learning how it should not be used.

Well, the first computer game I found really attractive was Orbquest, a text game on a Unix system. No graphics at all.

Obsessing over graphic is at right angles to the quality of the game.