I loved it too. It got me out of a really long reading funk.
Sure, it's kind of hand-wavey in parts, and the science doesn't always make sense, but it's just so damn fun. I thought the character of Rocky never fell into tropes, and it was great how much personality and humor we get out of him.
Weir is definitely hit or miss from novel to novel, but when he hits he knocks it out of the park.
High-end human-powered spambots.
Ebert had other reviewers on his website before he passed. The ones that are still running the site have high standards that, I think, carry on the legacy of Ebert's thoughtful, approachable movie criticism. I'm glad the website is still going in the age of review aggregators and social media hot takes.
He's not warning of AI controlling nuclear weapons. He's speaking of the development of nuclear weapons as a cautionary tale that applies to the current development of AI: that, like the scientists who built the bomb, current AI researchers might one day wake up terrified of what they have created.
Whether current so-called AI is intelligent (I agree with you it isn't by most definitions of the world) doesn't preclude the possibility that the technology might cause irreparable harm. I mean, looking at how Facebook algorithms have zeroed in on outrage as a driving factor of engagement, it's easy to argue that the algorithmic approach to content delivery has already caused serious societal damage.
I don't disagree; I was using g as an example of a variable that appears constant under a specific set of circumstances. Obviously the charge of an electron is much more consistent.
That's literally YouTube Premium's value proposition.
I hated the "coin culture" with a passion (hey, look, it's Bill Gates, let's give him tons of paid emoticons he won't care about!), but it's clear this move is part of Reddit's further enshittification. You can bet whatever replaces coins will be even shittier, and I think Reddit's users know it.
I mean, it's a bold idea, but I don't find it so shocking.
It's well possible that what we call a "fundamental" constant is a variable that depends on other deeper variables. For instance, an earth-bound observer might consider acceleration in freefall to be a constant, but knowledge of universal gravitation tells us it's a variable that depends on the masses of the objects involved and distance between them.
It makes sense that other ostensible "fundamental constants" are also dependent on the structure of the universe at any given point in space and time, but the limited window of our observations makes them appear as constants.
A crypto company turns out to be shady? Who would have thought!
People always talk about sanctions, but unless you're sanctioning Cuba or North Korea, sanctions can be as damaging to the countries doing the sanctioning. Fully sanctioning China would essentially mean cutting ourselves off from the world's top manufacturer, which would hurt the U.S. way more than China now that their domestic economy is in full swing.
Not to mention that most if not will American-based multinationals would never go along with it.
People always talk about sanctions, but unless you're sanctioning Cuba or North Korea, sanctions can be as damaging to the countries doing the sanctioning. Fully sanctioning China would essentially mean cutting ourselves off from the world's top manufacturer, which would hurt the U.S. way more than China now that their domestic economy is in full swing.
Not to mention that most if not will American-based multinationals would never go along with it.
I have to believe he wanted to do something of a "suicide by enemy fire." No way he was up for the kind of detainment and "enhanced interrogation" they're gonna put him through.