"It's actually impressive that they are as useful as they have turned out to be."

A good analogy is flight - aircraft don't flap their wings like birds but need engines instead. Less efficient but still useful.

If we're not intelligent then the term is meaningless. And we're more that just a search engine (well, you might not be) because we have self awareness (yes, we do , its not an "illusion" as some idiots claim because otherwise who or what is the illusion fooling?)

"Many (most?) have labored under the hubris that there is something mysterious and unattainable about the human mind"

Few people claim that. What they do claim is that the human mind is way more complicated than was assumed plus it works in a different way to ANNs anyway - biological brains do not use back propagation. What they do use in lieu of it isn't really understood plus its not only the neurons that affect brain state and operation. White matter and various chemicals plays a big part too.

No one is saying AI isn't useful, the argument is whether its intelligent in the human sense. The point is it doesn't need to be and it doesn't matter anyway - all that matters is whether it gives useful output that would be difficult or impossible to reproduce with conventional single level (ie writing code to solve the problem directly, not using a learning simulation of neurons) programming.

Unfortunately the legacy of the anti-nuclear anything ideology from the CND clowns, green hippies and their ilk has taken FAR too long to purge from the establishment. This should have been done 20 years ago.

The ways data can be hidden in plain site are virtually limitless. Obvious ones are using the least significant bit in WAV data, putting space and tab whitespace on the end of lines in plain text etc. The only limitation is the imagination of people who need to do it.

In the 14th century?? You must be joking! The worlds first police force which was formed in london in the 19th century. In the past all you had was military, kings guards or the shire rieve (sheriff) out in the countryside who kept the peace but solving crimes was way beyond their remit. The local courts back then tried to do that but often had zero evidence to go on except heresay and was often biased. See various witch trials in europe and the USA for how balanced justice was in the past.

As a licensed radio operator, you are eligible for emergency tags in the state of Tennessee. While that wouldn't insulate you fully from the effects of the law, I can't imagine law enforcement pulling over someone with emergency tags talking into a handheld radio, so this could be a solution to your problem.

Umm, you do realise reactionless drives that work against earths magnetic field are already used in satellites? Unfortunately no use outside a magnetic field. But if I had a quid for everyone who once upon a time said something was impossible (eg human flight) I could afford to build my own rocket.

Unfortunately the large fly in the ointment is the perchlorates in the soil. Even if somehow the mars atmosphere was terraformed so walking outside without a suit was possible, the soil would still remain toxic to earth life.

For anyone who wants to actually read the linked story.

But if some alternative propulsion tech to rockets, nuclear or otherwise that doesn't involve chucking matter backwards to go forwards is developed in the coming centuries (no, I've no idea what) and the time to Mars is reduced to weeks or even days then it just might become feasible to get enough equipment, food and water there to build something useful. But for now and the near to mid term future that's going to remain sci fi.

Worldcom was not a .com startup, it started as a small LD reseller in the 1980s. By the time of its bankruptcy two decades later, it was the second largest telecommunications provider in the US.

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.

Given how critical that permission is, how are they even able to request it quietly? I would think Android would be screaming at the top of its lungs if that permission were requested.

...are you just trolling? You said:

but the original comment I was responding to said:

To put it into the simplest possible language: No, that alleged 16TWh of batteries is not "household installations" because the claimed sizing specifically excluded those.

Well, given that the person who supplied that particular number specifically stated that it "exclud[ed] batteries associated with behind-the-meter solar installations" I would suggest you're "most likely" wrong in your assumption.

I'm wondering why you're scare quoting "the county" as if that were something I said rather than something you added whole cloth?