There's a spicy thing that looks like a state-mandated program that's been going on in Russia for a couple of years now, since 2023 or something: it turns out a bunch of major Russian Android apps -- Sber, VK, Wildberries, even AliExpress Russia -- quietly request the READ_GSERVICES permission. This lets them grab your Google Services Framework ID, a persistent device ID that survives app reinstalls and SIM swaps. Translation: perfect for long-term tracking.

The punchline? The international AliExpress app doesn't need this permission -- only the Russian one does. So either the Russian dev team's just really curious, or someone upstream wants tighter user traceability. ;-) It's like digital surveillance on hard mode: no GPS, no drama -- just one stable ID and a dash of plausible deniability.

How do we know people are not getting cloned?

We've had the full wiring diagram of C. elegans -- all 302 -- for decades. Still can't predict its behavior. But hey, who needs details when you're uploading 86 billion human neurons? Neural lace, brain emulation, consciousness on a chip -- so close, just a few Nobel Prizes away.

You could argue that we don't need to understand the brain in order to emulate it. That may be true, but does that mean we have to emulate neurotransmitter states? Dendritic potentials? Local field dynamics? Epigenetic states? Membrane lipid configurations? Where do we draw the line? If we go deep enough, not even all the compute power in the world would be enough to emulate a single human brain in real time.

The human brain is the most complex known structure in the observable universe. It is probably more complex than the underlying physics and the grand unified theory of this world, if such a theory exists.

In its first 30 hours, the stream got over 77,000 views.

In other words, the general population does not care at all.

It would have been a much cheaper and better option to partner with companies like Samsung or Xiaomi to replace Gemini as the core AI service. Or even Apple considering their AI division has been floundering.

Name one reason why people would need an extra device that needs to be recharged every 24 hours when almost everyone has a smartphone nowadays. And it will likely be extremely limited compared to any half-decent smartphone.

This entire project is going to be a total flop.

By this logic, we already have AGI. About 98% of people, I guess, never invent anything in their lives. They basically exist to live, work, reproduce, and die without improving any facet of life. To be clear, I'm one of those people, except I've yet to reproduce, and I think I've missed that opportunity.

Yes, I know, but AI companies have received investments totaling trillions of dollars, and a single invention like this doesn't bode well for the industry as a whole. There's been too much hype around AGI while "general" is few and far between.

Again, I still want AIs that can be fed all the information known e.g. prior to Maxwell or Einstein and see these models invent the Maxwell equations or the special or general theory of relativity.

What's the new test that AI is supposed to pass to be considered generally intelligent? Given that humans are defined as generally intelligent, it has to be a test that a below-average human would pass.

Arc-AGI-2: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Farcprize.org%2Fleaderboa...

The best models currently perform at 4% versus a human panel at 100%.

Personally, I still don't think this is a valid test. A valid test would be an AGI making discoveries from existing data or offering testable, falsifiable theories. As far as I know, nothing has been done yet.

1. The people in question are not stuck. They live happily.
2. Those systems work like clockwork. They don't usually need replacing.

For all 1000 people in the world? Should I tell you how popular IRC or Jabber are? Hint: hardly anyone uses them.

And then are you willing to host all the user data? Because Skype had its chat history stored on Microsoft servers.

Finally, the mobile client sucks. Very slow and buggy. Are you willing to rewrite it?

Sorry, never going to happen. That ship has sailed.

That's probably the main reason for its downfall. With other messaging apps that use your phone number as an ID, you don't have to share anything. All your contacts are already there.

With Skype you have to share IDs that can be misspelled/misunderstood or lost as you need some app or an actual piece of paper to write them down. With a phone number you just add it to your contact list. Boom, done.

Relatively cheap international calls and even calls to other cities of your own country.

Google is not perfect as a steward of Chrome, but any other company or government agency could be a thousand times worse.

<p> will get you a new paragraph :-)