I think your signature line sums up this whole thread to fair level.

Thanks for this answer. I do take exception to the label "philosophical laziness", I would call myself agnostic because I have yet to see what I consider proof of the existence of any gods, but realise that it is possible they do exist. So for me it really is an odds game, with the existence of gods holding very low odds in my assessment based on my life experince.

I simple answer about gender is who cares? Be what you want to be, as long as you are not hurting others.

But then people always bring up sports. On the face of it sounds like a valid issue, but if take a step back and ask what sports is then things are not so simple. If you see sports a good way to stay fit and have fun then gender is not an issue, this is the non-competitive social sports that is a good thing. Then you have competitive sports and things get ugly, with gender issues making a bad situation worse. It is all about money and a religious level of belief in support for teams and competitors. Once you get in to that area there is no way to have a consensus about where gender fits in, there are too many conflicting issues at play.

Try telling that to a front line Russian soldier.

Well dementia would explain a lot. My father died of dementia and in the earlier stages when it was having a significant effect it was clear he could no longer hold a normal depth of information processing. He knew what he wanted to express but when he then tried to turn it into a normal verbose English sentence he would engage the part of the brain that builds a sentence, start of with a few normal words but could not complete the sentence as he had lost track of the key point of the sentence and he would halt in frustration. It happens with healthy people to, most commonly expressed as "what were we talking about again?" when you have wonder off subject during a long rambling answer.

When looking at AI it appears conscious until you dig a bit deeper and realise it doesn't actually understand what it has said. To see that you need to have some depth in your thinking to pull together the contradiction that appear. So this is why even mild dementia could lead to an elevated trust in AI.

There is a wider issue with AI with it at risk of creating a new generation who effectively have a mild form of dementia. The healthy development of the brain is aided by the deeper thinking needed to solve problems. To hold multiple ideas and information in your head and work out the relationship between them. Now we have a large number of people who when faced with a problem no longer try to solve it but simply ask an AI for the answer. I worry such people will loose the ability to think more deeply about things, with critical thinking being the skill people are at risk of losing. I do worry we have already reached that point as it would explain why people vote for politicians which clearly do no have the interests of those voter in mind.

Probably getting off topic but white noise is a great way to introduce true randomness into a system. When looking at that in the sense of an LLM I don't think there is anywhere such noise is introduced into the system in it's normal internal processing. The forced adding of randomness raised would be deterministic if using a seeded random number generator and not deterministic if using a quality white noise source. However there is another huge source of effectively randomness and that is system users, with when and what they ask.

Back on topic I think there is a big problem with the actually definition of consciousness, but I think is a safe bet it is not something a LLM has.

Well actually...

It will depend on the exact legal wording of the GDPR. Such laws do often give the you the right to know who the data collector is sharing your data with. The general principle of such laws is to know what information is being collected about you, how it is being used and who it is being shared with. It is this last principle that Noyb is seeking to enforce.

Take that redundant and pointless data center and AI buzz words soup out the headline and the story is far more interesting. The linked video is well worth watching to see how this power generation system actually works. Wish them good luck with this power generation project, hopefully the tech won't be wasted on AI, and instead be used for something useful, such as replacing existing fossil fuel use.

Wave energy is more constant than wind. You can have windless days but waveless days are not really a thing, just how big the waves are. That said I like tidal generation because the moon and earths relative paths are stable and predictable hence when and how much power you can generate is easy to determine and the cycle is within the scale that batteries can cover the dead time when the tide is turning.

I didn't dislike trump, until I heard him speak. That was on the TV show where he got huge pleasure from telling people "Your fired!". My immediate reaction was where is his compassion? You don't talk to people like that, it is a rule of basic human decency. Of course now he is no longer a TV side show act I no longer dislike him, I hate him. While I feel sad for the destruction of the USA, I have friends there and used to enjoy visiting when it was an open country, however it was a choice that the people there chose. They put personal greed ahead of the interests of their country and are now paying the price. However the biggest reason I hate him is he is fucking over the whole world and we didn't get a say in that.

A weird part of that perfect storm may actually be gas shortage, in the short to medium term, in the USA. From that I gather the USA can't actually refine much of the oil it pumps, so imports oil from Canada. So while it may be a net exporter of oil it is currently reliant on imported oil. The problem is Asia can no longer get the oil it needs due to the Iran war but has realised Canada is a safe and viable option as a replacement source. Canada is pissed with the USA so will be quite happy to redirect oil sales currently going to the USA to more stable and respectful customers in Asia.

Meanwhile I am stocking up on popcorn while I watch how this plays out...

Two party systems is what you usually get with a "First Past the Post" voting system, as used in the USA, as voting for a third party is a wasted vote. Better democracies usually use some form of proportional representation so minor parties that get past a modest threshold get a voice, so are not a wasted vote.

Also first past to post leads to an us vs them mindset, very evident in recent years in the USA. With proportional representation you often have consolation governing so that drives more common ground and less extreme parties.

There are plenty of other flaws in the USA system, hence it's poor global rating for the quality of it's democracy, but there are too many vested interests there that want to lower the quality of the USA system, not improve it. The Republicans seem to be in a race against time to ensure that the next election's outcome is not related to actual votes.

Abject, ignorance? The three named people have been responsible for the deaths of a large number of people for their own egotistical reasons. That qualifies them as evil in my book.

In the case of trump it is fine if he fucks over the USA as that is what people there voted for. The problem is trump is fucking over the whole planet. In this example he is increasing global warming, with the key word there being 'global'. And for such a petty reason, the view at his Scottish gold club. Scotland rightly put him in his place and his ego is so fragile that he is hell bent on stopping all wind turbines like a extra dumb Don Quixote.

Well that is worth an informative upvote. Not sure if anyone is still using ISDN or ATM anymore? Having not looked at AX.25 since the 1980's I had to check if it was still in active use. I see it under pins APRS so does appear to be in active use. When not being used point to point it looks like it is using BPQ over Ethernet framing for wider routing. AX.25 does fell like something that could be done in user space on the radio side for the type of use it probably gets, then passed over a modern network if needed.

These days it is GNU Radio and HAMLIB I am interested in with my Linux systems.

Is poorly stated as both are actively used. Yes amateur radio usage is well below it former peak usage as the motivation for using it has changed, but it is still popular with people who like to explore technology with the rise of SDRs driving interest. Likewise NFC is now has record use in daily life.

Instead of making it sound like support for amateur radio and NFC was being removed they should have said support for some long obsolete hardware was being removed.