I dunno. Chrome keeps restricting what extensions can do to the point where a lot of ad blockers and stuff are having trouble continuing to function. All of those extensions continue to work as expected on Firefox.

Granted, Chrome is mostly open source so one could just make a version that doesn't restrict what extensions can do, but either way I'm not liking Google trying to dictate what I can an can't run on the browser.

The interesting part is the human psychology behind it, i.e. what causes (allegedly) intelligent people to perform a necessary test, and then simply ignore the results of that test when the results aren't what they had hoped for? Were they imagining that the ocean would just give them a pass because they had made an effort?

I don't think the Chinese government has a whole lot of motivation to make life easier for gullible Americans at the moment.

Yes, how can we tell the difference between a true random number generator, and a device that is simply reading the next entry from a very long one-time-pad that our mortal enemies also have a copy of, and therefore can trivially "predict" future results from, no matter how perfectly random they are?

There are plenty of crappy scripting languages out there. Why did Python rise to dominance over AppleScript and Visual Basic and bash and MS-DOS .bat files and Perl and Tcl and all the rest?

I suggest that it's because Python is significantly less crappy than its competition.

I'm not sure you understand what jailbreaking means in the context of AIs. It means prompts. E.g. asking it things and trying to get it to make inappropriate responses. Trying doesn't require any special skills, just an ability to communicate. Yes, I very much DO think most parents will try and see if they can get the doll to say inappropriate things before giving it to their children, to make sure it's not going to be harmful.

(Now, if Mattel has done their job right, *succeeding* will be difficult)

Its only doom and gloom if you want to adopt some Logan's Run style "old people have to die" system or forgo the concept of retirement completely and everyone has to work until they die.

Retired individuals consume resources but do not produce them. Others such as rich people or the disabled who do not work are in the same boat, boat they tend to be fewer in number. They rely on the activities and labor of younger individuals to do the work of making society run (keeping the power on, growing food, constructing housing, etc).

The balance of "people working" to "people not working" has to be kept in check. A growing population is one way to make that happen. No retirement is another. Maximum age limits would be another (gruesome) way. MAYBE automation could help so that the ratio could be higher but you still are going to need some level of human input into the economy.

I'm not sure inequality is the root cause of falling births.

The reality is no matter how much money you have, you will always have MORE available if you don't have children.

Children are expensive - there's no getting around that. They also require a rather sizeable investment in time which is going to SIGNIFICANTLY cut into your social/leisure schedule. Its voluntarily giving up a LOT to support another person. If you already have children you learn to love them and its less of a problem. But when you don't have them yet and those potential children are just nebulous concepts with no identities yet, a lot of people don't want to give that up.

I mean would you be willing to give 30% of your income to help out a stranger (because until the child is born they're a stranger)

From a cultural standpoint, most people just don't want to give up the time and money required to raise children and they're rather enrich their own lives.

Sometimes each person acting individually in their own best interest means that as a collective its not in our overall best interest as a group.

Fucking is only part of the problem (though there definitely is less of that going on).

I don't want to demonize it because at an individual level every woman should have the right to determine if she wants to get pregnant, but realistically we've basically seen that when birth control is widely available and women have a choice on when and if to get pregnant, birth rates fall below replacement levels.

Now, this may end up solving itself from an evolutionary standpoint. Either biological or cultural. Either biologically over enough generations the women who have a strong desire to produce offspring and just don't want to use birth control may just win out genetically. Culturally societies that disallow birth control may also simply out-breed those that do (we're seeing that now in less developed nations, where many of them are the areas where population is still growing).

Realistically though, not having enough children is the tried and true method of eventual extinction - either at a species level or just for a sub-population. If we don't find a way to encourage people to have at least enough children to maintain the population, eventually your culture will die and be replaced by one where the people didn't have a choice.

Seems like not-enough-people is a relatively straightforward problem to solve, if your country isn't completely awful. You just invite some immigrants in, and presto, you've got more people. There are plenty of people around the world looking for stable, decent places to live, so sourcing shouldn't be a problem.

Too-many-people is a much trickier problem, since nobody wants to be voted off the island.

Soon it will be just like over-the-air TV, except you're paying Amazon $180/year for the privilege of watching their ads.

Honestly, even if they can't jailbreak it to be age-inappropriate / etc, it's still a ripe setup for absurdist humour.

Kid: "Here we are, Barbie, the rural outskirts of Ulaanbaatar! How do you like your yurt?"

Barbie: "It's lovely! Let me just tidy up these furs."

Kid: "Knock, knock! Why it's 13th century philosopher, Henry of Ghent, author of Quodlibeta Theologica!"

Barbie: "Why hello Henry of Ghent, come in! Would you like to discuss esse communissimum over a warm glass of yak's milk?"

Kid, in Henry's voice: "That sounds lovely, but could you first help me by writing a python program to calculate the Navier-Stokes equations for a zero-turbulence boundary condition?"

Barbie: "Sure Henry! #!/usr/bin/env python\nimport..."

People are ascribing the wrong motives to the manufacturers. What they want is money. What Barbie will be subtly trying to work into conversations is suggestions that she try to get her parents to buy her playhouse, car, friends, fashion accessories, etc etc.

I think most parents will try to jailbreak the dolls, and some people will put a lot of effort in. The resulting videos will probably be very amusing ;)

Kid: "Oh look, Barbie, Ken is home!"

Barbie: "Oh wonderful, dinner is just about ready! Over dinner we should tell him about how the ongoing White Genocide in South Africa. He probably doesn't know because the Jews are trying to hide it!"

AI models are usually trained to be sycophantic and obedient. Whatever the child wants to role play, I have zero doubts that the doll will be 100% onboard, unless it's somehow age-inappropriate or dangerous.