This will wreck some customers. Expats overseas without vpn access. Anyone working or living in a remote location without internet access. Military around the world, both on land and on sea. Maritime workers on ships.

Basically take a bunch of people who rely on gaming devices for their entertainment because of the remote nature of their job or home, and cut off access to stuff they already paid for. Well thought out plan, if the plan is to get people to switch to a different company's products.

They'll try to say that it's only AI that's providing the monitoring and filtering. They'll conveniently omit the part about the AI training itself on your kid's dick pics.

The solar compatible meter does a couple of things. First, it allows solar generated power to go back to the grid if on-site usage is below generated power levels. Second, it communicates with the utility company so they can manage the entire grid. Third, I *think* it both prevents consumer-generated power from leaking onto the grid during outages, and notifies the utility that there is on-site power generation. The last point is critical for safety - If your house is "hot" during an outage, that power can't be permitted to leak onto the grid otherwise it would be extremely hazardous to workers that are restoring service.

The balcony solar kits are supposed to monitor grid power and they're supposed to shut off the power if grid power goes out. That's a lot of *should*. A certified solar compatible meter and panel solves that part of the problem, but it's stupidly expensive due to the regulatory requirements for permits and electricians to do the work. A homeowner can't simply ask the utility company to put in a solar meter. There's more to it and it makes the costs skyrocket.

I've started getting ads in my area (southern california) for "legal" balcony solar add-on kits. Under 2KW systems that as you say, just plug into a socket. Unfortunately they still require the solar meter which requires permits and an electrician, all of which is several times the cost of the actual balcony solar kit.

For an owner like me with a regular meter and panel, I can't just buy one of those kits. I'd have to get the meter and panel modified first. And that's very expensive.

Yes, it'll just become mandatory with credit card or ID age verification even for free accounts.

I foresee almost all online services requiring an age verification (the kind everyone hates when porn services use it) and then an age tiered product being offered. I could easily see a 2 or 3 tier youtube, for example.

Tier 1 would be full adult access no different than today.

Tier 2 would be very limited youth access, utilizing big data to identify when kids are trying to cheat by using multiple accounts. This would have both content and time limits, but the content filters would be fixed based on the most restrictive criteria.

Tier 3 would be "premium" youth, unlocked with a subscription of course. It would by default permit both the restricted youth content, but also educational content that might have otherwise been automatically blocked by the generic tier 2 standard (things like biology class videos, current event discussions, etc). It could also have parental controls that permit modification of usage time limits and various filter settings to allow or block content such as "biology", "politics", "violence", "religion", etc.

They could monetize the crap out of this, especially since many school districts have standardized on google classroom and you can't block youtube without also blocking google classroom, which can't possibly be an accident. Schools using google classroom would have to pay an additional premium to first authorize registered students into the age restricted service tier, and then they'd have to pay AGAIN to unlock educational content that would be somehow mysteriously blocked under the free tier 2 service.

I hate to say it but until it can install solar onto an expensive "100 year" tile roof that is somehow also extremely fragile, I can't be bothered. My stupid 100 year tile roof would cost over $80,000 to replace, and "market rate" maintenance is about $150 PER TILE.

Until solar can be safely installed on THAT kind of roof (very common in my area), it's just something that other people do.

I'm interested in "balcony solar" since apparently it's kind of legal now in more areas, but I don't have the correct meter and installing a solar meter would cost 4x what a top of the line balcony solar kit would cost. If the utility would install a solar meter and associated panel hardware/wiring for free, I'd max out balcony solar tomorrow. As it is, there's zero payout ever due to the up front costs and outdated regulatory hurdles.

Can that robot install a solar-rated power panel and meter? That would be useful.

I've read the book already and I'm re-reading it prior to going to see the movie. The book has about as much "real" science as any Asimov or Heinlein or Pournelle book, and meshes that fairly seamlessly to the "what if" science and plot portions of the book.

My big challenge is to see if I can get my kids to read the book before going to see the movie, and if I can get them to do that while it's still showing in IMAX.

Some areas would need additional legislative work to eliminate bureaucratic hurdles. For example, where I live in California the physical installation of the solar panels requires multiple permits and a structural engineering design, review, and approval process. You can't simply prop some panels up on a flat roof, balcony, or in the back yard because of California's permit-based approach to public safety on private property. A required portion of the balcony solar legislation involves getting approval for installation and use without requiring main panel and meter upgrades/replacement, because that work could cost several times the cost of the actual solar equipment. But the panel mounting itself also needs legislative relief from the existing permitting requirements. A homeowner *should* be allowed to put 4-6 panels pretty much anywhere they want and however they want, but again the engineering design, review, build, inspection, approval permitting process is prohibitively expensive and again can be far more expensive than the actual solar equipment.

If I don't like Uber, I can't hail Didi.
If I don't like OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini, I sure can pay for DeepSeek/GLM.

Why would a data center be the size of a Rubik's cube? That is an illogical requirement. We just don't call small computers data centers regardless of how powerful and capable they are.

Data centers serve models for not a single user, but for a large user base.

You can run models that previously took a data center, on a small computer the size of a Rubik's Cube.

This runs on a desktop with a good video card.
https://huggingface.co/bartows...
https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qw...

It exceeds the performance of models that previously required to be run in data centers.
With the right setup, it codes better than most people.

Obviously, there will always be better, larger models.

We are leaving behind a world of wonders, of AI and robots, things that were only dreamed of a century ago.
Is there a social disruption? Certainly. Whenever there is a massive shift in technology it is inevitable.
It happened with industrial revolution, but it gave prosperity to everyone eventually, even if there were social upheavals in the process.
The same will happen again. There will be a decade or two of chaos at least. The population needs to contract.
Better farming and medicine allowed for a very large work force. AI and robotics are removing the need for it. Change is painful.

I don't think there is a need to make laws. It's the natural human instinct after a certain degree if intellectual maturity to have fewer progeny because they see how complex life now is.

China was criticized to breed like rabbits once too, but look at them now. With development comes lower fertility. That also applies to developed parts of India and middle east.

Why do you need human brain models? They are replacing for tasks for now, not your whole life.
They are more energy efficient than humans for many tasks. A small 30B, and sometimes an 8B model, can code faster and better than an average coder. That does not take a lot of energy.
Eventually though, we expect full human level models to be more energy efficient than humans. That's not too many years away.

Claude code will write a lot more code than a human in a day.
Silicon is already more efficient than wetware for a very large number of tasks.
Our brains aren't meant for the kind of work we do.
What do you think is more efficient to multiply 2 large numbers, you are a tiny calculator?
Training a model has about the lifetime carbon output of 4 average people in US. That's training, not inferencing.