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Comment Really? (Score 2) 13

It's certainly possible that some people do, sincerely, 'fear' that the onrushing machine god will speak chinese and that it would be just the worst if all humans were rendered obsolete by the wrong side's robot when that's supposed to be our job; but, especially with how tepid the results are for the money poured in, it seems much more the case that we are seeing a lot of nakedly cynical playing of the 'give us what we want, lest the chinese win' by people who are otherwise on deeply shaky ground in terms of things like massive copyright infringement, voracious data mining, and an endless hunger for capital without any signs of returns.

It's like a vastly hypertrophied case of the 'race to 5G' stuff; where, if we didn't give Verizon whatever they asked for, China would have a faster rollout of 5G and we would lose the 4th industrial revolution or something? It was never entirely clearly what losing the race was going to involve.

The existential tone of the claims seem especially curious given how meagre the leads people are pouring billions into seem to be; and how readily 'AI' models can be poked at via distillation attacks or good, old-fashioned, electronic intrusion. If The Singularity kicks off that presumably changes everything beyond the powers of meaningful prediction(though that holds for whoever develops it as well as everyone else; given the odds that it will slip the leash); but as long as you are in the realm of incrementally more or less flakey chatbots it seems a bit weird to even talk like there is some sort of victory condition that will trigger and cause one side to lose.

Comment Re:I thought this is what giftcards were for (Score 1) 60

Sell gift cards for $x, pay out all but $0.44, but do it 800000000 times. you now have a gargantuan pile of cash that you can't touch, but can use as collateral. This is what Starbucks and every other company that sells gift cards does.

Does anyone actually do this? Sounds like an urban myth to me.

The benefit of gift cards to shops is that they encourage people to spend more precisely because people donâ(TM)t want to lose that 44p. So if you've a gift card for £20, you spend £21 and pay the rest in cash/card.

Comment Re:Good Idea (Score 1) 91

So... complicate the whole scheme by adding graduated licensing by vehicle classification? Yeah... that'll fly. Imagine the bureaucratic nightmare if every time somebody wanted to move to a more capable car they had to certify on it.

Your SCCA license doesn't mean your solution is better than anybody else's.In fact, it might be working against you.

Comment Re:How many direct jobs, Toyota? (Score 1) 39

If you want to know these things have you looked for the answer?

It's Toyota. They are known. They employ over 63,000 Americans already. They are good jobs. This announcement marks the start of producing batteries - not some hazy "agreement" about the future if this and if that and if the other. It's a done deal and it's a good thing.

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