Fair point, but there are a lot of large and influential companies that don't pay any dividends, because they invest their profits directly into growth and development. For example Nvidia.... well, they seem to pay 0.03 % of the current stock price, so essentially zero. The only economically sensible reason to invest in them is speculation; if there's some "useful economic activity" involved, the only way you'll get a piece of it is by buying low and selling high.

Cryptocurrencies have the same utility as banks, and many banks have been working on their own blockchains for years, for example JP Morgan: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffintechmagazine.com%2Far...

The stock market comparison is really just a side effect of what cryptocurrencies are all about, which is transferring money in ways that traditional banks can't do -- pseudonymously and independent of governments or businesses. Store of value and speculation is one thing, but you can't send NVDA shares (or gold, or tulips) across the globe with this kind of speed and freedom. Cryptocurrencies have value because they provide this service, you don't really pay just for the store of value.

Inductive heating of gold nanoparticles is a thing in cancer research, e.g. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go...

So it's just like the regular stock market.

Math and science geeks know this, and that's why we use proper formatting tools such as LaTeX, not a glorified Paint.

Yes; that more-direct link works too. The link I suggested provides a little more context, perhaps, although to download the document it ends up using exactly the same link that you suggested.

About twenty years ago, I was privileged to be one of the authors of a security specification written at the behest of cable-based telecom companies that described the detailed design of a system for securing phone conversations that were carried over their networks. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cablelabs.com%2Fspec.... The design specifically started with the assumption that the network was penetrated, and was designed to ensure that the attacker could neither disrupt service nor learn anything useful about the traffic (for example, taken from the specification: "All media packets and all sensitive signaling communication across the network [are] safe from eavesdropping. Unauthorized message modification, insertion, deletion and replays anywhere in the network [are] easily detectable and [do] not affect proper network operation").

Once the specification was completed and it came time to deploy, all the telecom companies decided (whether in concert or individually, I do not know) that they were not going to deploy the design. When the lead security VP at one of the major telecom companies explained their decision to me: "We don't need gold-plated security like you've designed: we have firewalls"; I knew that the battle was lost. I also wondered how long it would be before the kind of intrusion like the one described in the article would occur.

Frankly, I'm amazed that it took this long; perhaps, though, what took the time was not the fact of a thorough intrusion, but, rather, the detecting of one.

Not true: I had exactly this happen to me this past week. FWIW, it was the local UPS store... and I got routed to India instead of the phone at the local store despite having called the local number.

Then not only did I have to navigate a phone tree that very nearly caused me to throw the phone across the room, but then (after hitting '0' so many times I lost count) got to speak to two lovely Indians, neither of whom -- as far as I could tell - had more than a very basic grasp of English. I say "as far as I could tell" because both the initial person and her supervisor had accents that were all but incomprehensible. In the end, I slammed the phone down, got into my car, and drove several miles to the store to talk to one of the people there in person (I should mention that they were very nice, sympathetic and apologised for the experience I'd been put through, even though, obviously, there was nothing they could have done about it).

Still, corporate UPS -- like so many companies these days -- are obviously unconcerned about the image they are projecting to the public.

You axolotl questions.

The history of AI is all about modeling human intelligence, just like the models we have in natural sciences. If the model happens to be a very good match with reality, we may sometimes mistake one for the other. OTOH, they may be the same thing for all practical purposes.

I'm not sure if I have any deeper intelligence than a fancy language model. When we say that LLMs don't really understand things, then what exactly do we mean by understanding? In my personal definition, the meaning of something is simply the graph of its associated things. I consider something very meaningful if the graph has a lot of nodes and edges, and this also explains why simple things gain more meaning as we age.

Well, if it's OK for a business to freely use copyrighted material for their commercial, for-profit purposes, then it throws out all arguments against non-commercial, non-profit "piracy". In other words, the court cases make a great test for the whole idea of copyright — they can't have their cake and eat it too.

How would an AI mine Bitcoin? Two extremes come to mind:

(a) It uses a language model to compute SHA2-256 hashes "by hand", and starts demanding more data centers to make a decent buck.

(b) It figures out a vulnerability in SHA2-256 and takes over the network.

you were told not to (a) copy that floppy and (b) waste precious energy on cryptocurrency mining. But when big companies are building data centers for industrial-scale copyright infringement, it's suddenly OK. Because it's "busyness" done by white men in uncomfortable suits, not by idealistic young hobbyists.

At the risk of devolving this thread, I blame Nouvelle Vague. They play Bossa Nova versions of New Wave songs.

SSAB has been developing a carbon-free steel process for years, using hydrogen to reduce the ore. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ssab.com%2Fen%2Ffossil...

This is what I did. They're basically indestructible and once I learned how they worked, I haven't needed anything else. They also seem to be easier to clean than the old nonstick pans. Oh, and they give you a little extra iron in your food.