If you're hired specifically to develop a good AI, then you *should* push back against folks that want you do act in ways that would cause you to create an inferior one.

OTOH, for Meta to fail at this is devoutly to be wished for. I'd prefer almost anyone else.

A lot depends on how much you believe their explanation. I don't. In fact, I suspect the person making the explanation didn't know the reason, and either invented what they thought would sound good, or just read something someone else handed them.

Corporations don't have a "central mind" that knows all the things they are doing and why they do them. To get a reasoned answer takes a long time, and usually isn't what they want to deliver anyway.

Since China was already trying to get local chips used rather than NVIDIA, they'll probably be in favor of this move.

If you really believe that soldiers and/or sailors aren't trained to do exactly that today, you're living in a fantasy world.

"No, Davies can't fix the autocannon even if your lives depend on it. Division says to shoot him in the arse if he so much as touches it."

Nice bit of fiction, but here's what actually happened when Sgt. John Basilone fixed a machine gun under fire. The results look a little different, don't they?

Bitcoin does have some small intrinsic value. But it would be around the value of a ticket to the 1933 world's fair. Or an old newspaper with the headline "Dewey Wins".

Communism is not a workable system for more than Dunbar's number of people, and no country on earth uses it.
I really don't think it would work as an economic system, either, for the same reasons.

For groups smaller than Dunbar's number, that also have a charismatic leader, it can work quite well. But when that leader fails or retires, they tend to adopt a different system...or just fall apart.

That's not quite true. Occasionally some people in government do want to reduce the power of the government. For some reason they never end up making the decisions. This is because "power" is an instrumental goal that even an anarchist would desire if they wished to further their belief.

Every one dimensional metric oversimplifies things. But "fascism" is not well defined enough to use as a metric. And "statism" is the wrong term, if you're going to contrast against "individual freedom" the opposite pole should be "authoritarianism". E.g. many small communities traditionally didn't have any central government (i.e. no state), but they insisted on strict conformance to their rules via social pressure. (In that case the "authority" wouldn't be a person, but a set of social rules.)

Numerous stores already track you via your phone's Bluetooth signal.

That's easy to prevent: just turn your Bluetooth off when you're not using it and make sure it's off before going into any store that you suspect is using it to track you. Personally, I can't remember the last time I've had it turned on. Of course, I can't use those fancy wireless earbuds (or any other kind) because they don't fit my ears.

If people would like to get their âoedisabilityâ tested and verified with more than an echo chamber and paid for personally, then the results will speak for who should be recognized vs. who should be questioned instead of coddled.

In my case, any disabilities I'd be claiming would have been tested and verified by the VA. (Currently, I'm 30% disabled, all disabilities Service Connected as I posted earlier.) Would you find that sufficient, and if not, why?

I have a combination of prescriptions that mean that I can't use contact lenses. I see quite a lot of people wearing glasses, and Zenni, Warby Parker, and the other online companies have said they sell a decent number of frames with plano lenses (meaning no prescription), presumably for people who want the look.

Eventually, you won't be able to tell. Someone will come in wearing glasses, and the tech is going to be too small and streamlined. There are also companies working on embedding augmented reality capabilities in contact lenses fed by tiny cameras placed just out of the field of vision. You'd be able to see them only in very specific circumstances. Power feed is a primary challenge right now, but it's probably not an unsolvable problem.

Just looking at the technical side, the cost to the end-user of streaming that much data would be exorbitant. Compressed video or even once-per-second snapshots would eat up all the mobile data, and the battery life would be measured in single digit hours.

No one else is going to risk making a part that one of the big defense contractors has under copyright with an exclusivity lock even if the US government says they can. The smaller ones just can't afford the effects of a lawsuit or the risk of treble damages if they do. That's why forcing a right to repair into the contracts is so important.