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Comment wait, they did this already? (Score 2) 13

"The company will also create a program in the next major Android release allowing alternative app stores to register and become what Google calls first-class citizens."

They did this already in Android 12. Third party app stores could even do automated background updates. Did they undo it?

Comment Re:If all of AI went away today (Score 1) 147

And my point is that AI wouldn't just stop being used even if the bubble imploded so heavily that all of the major AI providers of today went under. It's just too easy to run today. The average person who wants something free would on average use a worse-quality model, but they're not going to just stop using models. And inference costs for higher-end models would crash if the big AI companies were no longer monopolozing the giant datacentres (which will not simply vanish just because their owners lose their shirts; power is only about a third the cost of a datacentre, and it gets even cheaper if you idle datacentres during their local electricity peak-demand times).

Comment Re:Can't reject waste heat with a laser (Score 0) 47

A quick and non-technical explanation of that, is summarized by the amount of drool pooling in your audience while you give a "non-technical" explanation.

You think there was a time when most people understood entropy? Or the mathematics needed to understand it? How quaint.

Comment Re: An endless supply of nuclear waste. (Score 1) 79

let the market decide, instead of being a political decision based on feelings. But that is unrealistic:-(

It's unrealistic because the market doesn't get to decide. Logic doesn't decide on the supply side OR the demand side. On the supply side, the market is controlled by regulations which were put into place because power companies proved they couldn't be trusted to function without them. On the demand side it's limited by physics, power has to get to places before it can be used.

In the USA for example power companies are really only able to profit from new generation projects, so they are motivated to produce the most wastefully expensive projects because when they cost more, they can pocket more of the costs. That means nuclear whether it makes sense or not. And while everyone complains about solar requiring grid improvements, so does nuclear. It represents a large amount of production in one place, so you need a large grid connection to that place. And they are typically not built near other things for obvious reasons, so there's no synergy.

And then of course there's the fact that it's already a requirement to pay the expected decommissioning costs up front, but it's never enough, so The People always wind up paying.

Comment Re:Knew they were working on it (Score 1) 79

Or you could bury it at the bottom of an oceanic trench, where "given enough centuries" it will be subducted into Earth's mantle.

This has been studied and it's not that simple. First you have to get it there, then you have to ensure it doesn't break open and spread before it gets subducted. I had the same idea, it just turned out to not be a good one.

Comment Re:If all of AI went away today (Score 1) 147

Because we're discussing a scenario where the big AI companies have gone out of business, remember? And the question is whether people just stop using the thing that they found useful, or whether they merely switch to whatever alternative still works.

It's like saying that if Amazon went out of business, people would just stop buying things online because "going to a different website is too hard". It's nonsensical.

Comment Re: If all of AI went away today (Score 1) 147

They believed you could mimic intelligence with clockwork, etc. Why do you only count if it if it involves computers?

If you want to jump to the era of *modern* literature, the generally first accepted robot in (non-obscure) modern literature is Tik-Tok from the Oz books, first introduced in 1907. As you might guess from the name, his intelligence was powered by clockwork; he was described as no more able to feel emotions than a sewing machine, and was invented and built by Smith and Tinker (an inventor and an artist). Why not electronic intelligence? Because the concept of a programmable electronic computer didn't exist then. Even ENIAC wasn't built until 1945. The best computers in the world in 1907 worked by... wait for it... clockwork. The most advanced "computer" in the world at the time was the Dalton Adding Machine (1902), the first adding machine to have a 10-digit keyboard. At best some adding machines had electric motors to drive the clockwork, but most didn't even have that; they had to be wound. This is the interior of the most advanced computer in the world in the era Tik-Tok was introduced. While in the Greco-Roman era, it might be something like this (technology of the era that, to a distant land that heard of it, probably sounded so advanced that it fueled the later rumours that Greco-Romans were building clockwork humans capable of advanced actions, even tracking and hunting down spies).

Comment Re:Car for douches (Score 1) 9

This is what got me. Why the hell are they calling a crypto auction something aimed at "the AI generation", when they clearly mean "Cryptobros"?

This is unscientific, but long ago I once conducted a poll on the Stable Diffusion subreddit, and one of the questions asked about peoples' opinions of crypto and NFTs. Only a small percentage liked it. The most popular poll choice by far was one with wording along the lines of "Crypto and NFTs should both go drown in a ditch."

It's an entirely different market segment. Crypto and NFTs appeal to gamblers, criminals, and anarcho-libertarians. AI appeals to those who want to create things, to automate things, and to save time or accomplish more. There's no logical relation between "This high school kid wants to save time on her homework" and "this 42-year-old mechanic thinks this bad drawing of an ape is going to be worth millions some day because a hash somewhere links its checksum to his private key."

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