This page conflates age verification, which Brazil's law requires, with single source of truth age restriction APIs, which California's law requires. One requires validating a government ID. The other just says that each app shouldn't separately ask about age, with no change in how that age is required to be verified (it isn't).
This confusion makes the summary tables completely misleading. For example, GrapheneOS's cited statement (https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116261301913660830) is incompatible with the Brazilian law but not the Californian one.
Not really - for either system, the transformer substations are the part that's vulnerable to drones. Any munition capable of breaching the outer containment structure of a nuclear power plant (let alone impacting the core, dozens to hundreds of meters further inside) is closer to a bunker buster than a drone.
What I'd really like to see though is heavy subsidies for synthetic e-fuel plants running a carbon negative process during off peak hours. That would work with both solar & nuclear.
No I am not against that. I'm just against any medium-to-large to large nuclear reactor built in within striking distance of a credible foe. Which is to say, at this point in time, all of them.
But if we start producing Fallout style reactors everywhere, sure, why not.
IME yes, it absolutely can be. I am approaching middle age & still comfortably enjoy pushing myself in physical activities where falls are likely, with zero significant injuries aside from a couple sprained ankles from playing basketball (& technically the ankle rolling came before the fall in these couple mishaps; letting my body roll/fall out of it just helped reduce the severity). Also it's more about technique & familiarity/reflex training than safety gear, although I do wear a Zamst ankle brace on my weak ankle whenever I play basketball & started wearing a helmet for snowboarding a few years ago. Jackie Chan & Buster Keaton were even better at this, although they pushed it a lot farther & did sustain major injuries in their stunt careers.
However, there's a big caveat: I've been practicing falling safely since a young age & really mastered it in my teenage years practicing martial arts & snowboarding. I'm sure it's much harder & more dangerous to learn if you first start in middle age, although I'd imagine it's still possible with the right training & appropriate caution.
Thank you. Yeah given the caveat I think it's probably hard then, unfortunately. (For context, I'm someone who's generally very uncoordinated, didn't play any sports growing up, etc, and a few months ago at 39 I fell from kitchen-counter height or possibly even just footstool-height and somehow managed to fall awkwardly on my side and fracture my hip (acetabulum), which took a couple of months to heal. I'm told that this kind of fracture is unlikely in people this age unless there's high-speed impact or osteoporosis involved, but well, I have a talent for awkwardness.)
The broader point of the post I actually agree with though, but the lesson I'd take away is to engineer environments such that it's ok to fall/fail safely.
It would be a lot easier if the global population stabilized at around 1 billion. It's conceivable we could get down to that by bringing 3rd world areas up to 1st world standards in terms of women's rights, access to birth control, education, standard of living, etc., since developed nations have had declining birth rates for quite a while. But it's not a cheap or popular idea & would take several generations anyway.
A lot of things would be easier if 90% of people suddenly disappeared, but there is absolutely no sane scenario in which we actively chase such an unbelievably low population count.
The birth rates are declining in large part because of the expenses and time required to raise a kid these days. If life was perfectly easy for anyone to have a child, then the population increases. So, what - you’re going to kill extra children? Forcibly sterilize most? Purposely make life difficult so people lose interest?
I didn't propose any of those things you mentioned & am strongly opposed to them. If I were proposing anything, it would be more along the lines of ending theocracies, increasing equality, access to education, birth control & abortion services, & creating a social safety net so people don't have to rely on having as many kids as possible to assist in subsistence farming. But like I said, none of this is a popular goal - especially not among billionaires or the global south - so my comment was more of an idle musing than anything resembling a proposal.
I know you didn't propose those things - I'm saying they are going to be required in order to force the population to stay at an unreasonably low 1 billion people on Earth forever
Good point. I've always found high humidity makes things a lot more unpleasant unless the temperature is in a fairly narrow range around 71°F or so. It intensifies the heat of course, but IME it also makes chilly weather a lot harsher too. I get uncomfortably cold really easily when it's e.g. 51°F with a cool damp ocean breeze in places like SF or Monterey, but when I go to the mountains in winter, 25-32°F is totally comfortable -- even in literally the same clothing. I think it must be partly a psychological effect, but humidity seems to play a role too (along with other factors like IR reflection off the snow).
Could it be that the handful of people with computer access were well connected & well regarded, & the people running the radio broadcasts wanted to cater to them especially? I'd imagine there could be some sense of personal & national pride & prestige around supporting these emerging technologies & promoting them to the public. (I'm just guessing though - I wasn't there & haven't studied the topic in depth.)
My guess would be that the broadcaster had one geek who pushed for that. Fellow geeks had software over the radio, the broadcaster had an opinion of a modern one, keeping up with the newest tech. Win-win.
There was a similar situation last summer over a prediction market on whether Iran's Fordow nuclear facility would be destroyed by a certain date. That one was resolved as "yes it got destroyed" after the air strike on the facility. A lot of people on the other side of that bet were complaining because it seemed like an arbitrary guess: All we can really tell from publicly available info is that it was hit. The actual effect may have been anywhere from superficial light damage to comprehensive destruction, with no way to be sure without access to the underground facility.
I didn't bet on that one, but I'd seen something about it on Twitter & gotten curious how they could come to a firm conclusion one way or the other. AFAICT the market didn't have a solid way to be sure & were just taking a White House press briefing that said it was probably destroyed at face value.
I'll never buy a car manufactured after about 2014 for this reason. I'm planning to just keep getting repairs & upgrades done on my model year 2006 for at least the next 10-20 years. By then perhaps I will want to switch to electric, but I'll do it by electrifying something older.
Cars from around 1998-2014 usually have side curtain airbags & adequate rollover durability. The only improvements since then that I'd even want at all are better EV batteries & marginal efficiency gains for IC engines, but those can be retrofitted &/or aren't worth the anti features they also added IMO.
If car companies want my business they'll have to remove the telemetry & automatic updates.
I don't care if I end up paying more to drive an old car eventually, but this approach has also been saving me money so far.
No thank you. I will take predictable handling and a steering wheel that responds to my inputs. Loss of traction situations are exactly where I don’t want any systems helping. I need to countersteer and feel the car. Speaking as someone who was raised in winter driving and encouraged to find the limits of handling in snow and ice covered parking lots.
Of course if you are one of those drivers who removes their hands from the wheel in a stressful situation (there are many), these systems will help somewhat.
It really depends on the situation and the car. I’ve had it really help and not take over too much (very modern Porsche in the mountains), and systems where it was actively making the situation much worse by alternately locking the brakes on individual wheels. That was down a long hill which turned icy a third of the way down in a borrowed 2013 BMW F30, and I still consider it luck that I kept it on the road and nothing was coming the other way.
I have a car from 2017 that is perfectly dumb. It had been a rehash of a car being produced since 2010 though.
All other models of the same year by the manufacturer had telemetry, mobile app start etc. All those models are now dumb though since for those earlier years they used 3G wireless which is now a dead spectrum.
> An AI may not produce information that harms a human being, nor through its outputs enable, facilitate, or encourage harm to come to a human being.
This part is completely intractable. I don't believe universally harmful or helpful information can even exist. It's always going to depend on the recipient's intentions & subsequent choices, which cannot be known in full & in advance, even in principle.
reply