In a way, yes. The universe runs on narrativium. That's sort of the claim whenever someone makes claims about an area that they don't understand. And nobody understands modern AIs, not even those who build them.
OTOH, there are tightly reasoned narratives and wish-fulfillment narratives. They aren't the same. This *sounds* like a wish-fulfillment narrative, but he may be actually up to something more dubious. E.g. grounds for firing anyone he wants to.

Well, ads were why I stopped watching TV. Static side panel ads aren't too bad, but anything more than that an ... well, I *may* bother to block it, but I'm more likely to just leave.

Yes, but it's a lot more expensive to float stuff on water and extract electricity from it. It *MIGHT* be worthwhile, but it would be more difficult.

There will be some. Every side has it's nuts. But deserts created by human actions can justifiably be remedied by human actions.

OTOH, ecology is complex. It's quite possible that this, which seems beneficial, may not be. That's not the way I'd bet, but I'd be a fool to deny the possibility. (But irreversible, in this context, is silly)

IIUC, that area was explored (by the US) during one of the periodic droughts, It ended. A while later another occurred, leading to "the dust bowl". Etc. And currently I believe they're pumping water from deep under ground, faster than it's being replenished.

It's quite possible that the best use of that land is buffalo grass and buffalo, as the grass has roots that go deep, but don't extract more water than is available on the average. (I suppose cattle are an alternative to buffalo, but buffalo can pretty much take care of themselves. Of course, they don't notice fences.)

FWIW, watermelons evolved in a desert. They were domesticated BECAUSE they were a source of water during the dry season.

Now, granted, what we call watermelons have changed a lot from their ancestors.

Yes, the ReplayTV interface was awesome. And the founder of ReplayTV went on to found Roku, which also has an awesome interface.

They were all in the same house, but they were installed at three different times (2 original, 1 extension, 1 later retrofit), so they wouldn't have been from the same batch. I'm thinking they were all in places where you would often be standing to the side, so there could be side-to-side stress, which is what caused them to fail. They were all from the 90s or later; older switches might have been stronger.

Funny you should say that. I had a ceiling fan that stopped working. Various YouTube videos suggested it could be a failed capacitor in the fan. I took it apart, and everything measured correctly on my meter. The fan was fine. The problem was the switch on the wall had broken. I've had to replace four failed light switches in our house.

They don't make them like they used to.

I think it's one of Celine's laws. No manager should manage more than 5 people. This may well imply that they should have skills other than managing.

We had a ReplayTV 2020 back in 1999, and loved it. I always thought ReplayTV was better than TiVo, but TiVo had a lower sticker price with a subscription, and consumers are dumb. We moved to MythTV when we got an HDTV in 2004, recording off of antenna and QAM, later getting a HDHomeRun with CableCard. Last year we dropped cable, as we had mostly stopped watching it in favor of streaming, so MythTV still is sitting there recording occasionally from the antenna, but we rarely use it.

As far as features go, though, MythTV was the best I've seen for recording TV. It's a shame it's a bit complicated to set up; I believe someone tried selling preconfigured boxes at one point, which would have been a great idea, but there were issues with the TV listings.

For people who still want to record TV and are geeky enough to be here, MythTV is still a good option, though you'll need CableCard support from your cable company, and some of the channels will have copy restrictions so you can't record them.

But for everyone else, most cable companies will provide a DVR service of some sort (usually now streaming from their servers, not really recording locally), so you're pretty much stuck with that.

You can be sure it's true because MS said it was.

Actually, LLMs are a necessary component of an reasonable AI program. But they sure aren't the central item. Real AI needs to learn from feedback with it's environment, and to have absolute guides (the equivalent of pain / pleasure sensors).

One could reasonably argue that LLMs are as intelligent as it's possible to get by training on the internet without any links to reality. I've been quite surprised at how good that is, but it sure isn't in good contact with reality.

If you mean that it would take research and development aimed in that direction, I agree with you. Unfortunately, the research and development appears to be just about all aimed at control.

Currently known AI is not zero-value. Even if it makes no progress from where it is now, it will profoundly change society over time. And there's no reason to believe that the stuff that's been made public is the "top of the line in the labs" stuff. (Actually, there's pretty good reason to believe that it isn't.)

So there's plenty of real stuff, as well as an immense amount of hype. When the AI bubble pops, the real stuff will be temporarily undervalued, but it won't go away. The hype *will* go away.

FWIW and from what I've read, 80% of the AI (probably LLM) projects don't pay for themselves. 20% do considerably better than pay for themselves. (That's GOT to be an oversimplification. There's bound to be an area in the middle.) When the bubble pops, the successful projects will continue, but there won't be many new attempts for awhile.

OTOH, I remember the 1970's, and most attempts to use computers were not cost effective. I think the 1960's were probably worse. But it was the successful ones that shaped where we ended up.