kwhitefoot

there are often fire vaults[

Many years ago I was Unix sysadmin responsible for backups and that is exactly what we did. Once a week we rotated the backup tapes taking the oldest out of the fire safe and putting the newest in. The fire safe was in a different building.

I thought that this was quite a normal practice.

I was hoping the FAQ would answer that but, as I expected, I was disappointed.

We should all strive to make it so.

"It's not that I don't want to stop smoking, but the cigarette companies put chemicals in that keep me addicted"

"I live in an environment that pushes me to smoke"

But those two things are true. The nicotine is addictive and being surrounded by other smokers, smoking materials, smoking in films and on television, all compounded to make smoking more attractive. Plenty of smokers offered me cigarettes when i was in my teens.

what specific actions to gain power over us can be achieved now with LLMs, that could not be achieved before using a few tens of thousands of paid humans?

It's being able to do it without having to employ the tens of thousands of humans that makes it different. With the LLM you are able to react much faster and pay fewer people more money.

Pretty much all the old Teslas in Norway have been retrofitted to allow them to connect to CCS only chargers as far as I can tell. Had mine (2015 S 70D) done years ago when it became clear that future Tesla chargers would be CCS only.

Cotton socks exist as well as wool worsted, so not a huge problem as far as I can see. Tights and stockings will be a much bigger challenge.

In Norway this is flatly illegal and the relevant government department would probably get involved. Here in Norway companies are legally required to make accommodations for people who fall ill in order to keep them working, so the new CEO would definitely be in the wrong regardless of whether such additional flexibility had actually been requested.

B) you can “decline to accept” a demotion??

You probably can't simply decline it but you can certainly argue against it and if necessary sue in the courts depending on what your employment contract says. If he resigns then I think under UK law it is arguable that it is constructive dismissal:

"Constructive dismissal

Constructive dismissal is when you’re forced to leave your job against your will because of your employer’s conduct.

The reasons you leave your job must be serious, for example, they:

- do not pay you or suddenly demote you for no reason

- force you to accept unreasonable changes to how you work - for example, tell you to work night shifts when your contract is only for day work

- let other employees harass or bully you "

https://www.gov.uk/dismissal/unfair-and-constructive-dismiss...

Why is it impractical? It would be unpopular and put prices up but it could be done. We would have to reduce the amount of clothing that is produced but that is hardly a problem as we produce vastly more than we need. We could eliminate fast fashion for a start.

In Europe Tesla offer a subscription that gives you the same prices as Teslas get. Otherwise you pay more. Of course Tesla then makes a profit on the subscription cost.

Tesla chargers are CCS. It's just that in the US they use a different plug, in Europe Tesla chargers uses CCS-2 connectors.

Sounds like something Peter Watts might have invented. I like it, sort of; almost plausible, barely survivable, and deeply unpleasant.

That's enough to vaporise about 100 g of water according my back of the envelope calculations. Overkill? Or is modified for an entirely different purpose?

One could even have the occasional face to face meeting, at the office, at either party's home, at the lab, the shop floor, at a co-working space, or even just at a cafe or bar.

it actually cost the firm money while "saving" the team money.

Only in the short term. It left the desirable parts of the building empty. It might be possible to rent out this space. That's what happened when the company I worked for downsized the factory; they just partitioned the building and rented out the empty space.

The proximate cause is obvious: more calories consumed than are necessary to maintain weight.

I do understand that the causes of over eating are not necessarily so simple.

What I wonder about is that essentially no government has an explicit policy to combat this despite its obvious negative consequences.

Ai in practice doesn't have anything to do with simulation, nor with 'solving a significant part of the most complex brains'.

The immediate threat is that humans will use the leverage that LLMs give to replace and to influence other humans, in other words to gain power over us.

Whether this is AGI or not is beside the point.

I'm still wondering why so many people are so much heavier now than they were fifty years ago and why instead of attempting to medicate our way out of the problem we don't try to attack the actual cause.

In the end we had sufficiently good tests to detect such foolishness. But even that isn't good enough because if the result of the test is merely slightly off some people will just adjust the assertions!

Norway is special

I know, I live there. Been driving electric since 2017.

Could you explain why?

We all have to sell ourselves in order to live. I'm sure that there are plenty of people working at jobs that they thoroughly dislike. Shouldn't we concentrate on making sure that people really have a choice rather than on discriminating against people who make a choice?

the additional toll it will take on the creators in terms of social ostracism, future prospects, future opportunities, and mental health.

Is it such a big problem nowadays as it used to be? My impression is that society in general, and younger people in particular, have become more tolerant of such things; at least in Northern Europe.

Foreigners certainly don't want our cars (outside of maybe tesla in the nordics,

The Nordics are not all the same, Norway is far ahead (20% of private cars already full EVs) of the rest with Denmark a distant second when it comes to electrification of transport.

But also the Tesla Model Y was the best selling car in the WORLD in the last twelve months, not just Norway. Of course quite a few of those were built outside the US so perhaps they don't count as US cars.

People have been getting into taxis for over a hundred years. Uber is just a slightly sketchy taxi service. What shift of thinking is involved?

As long as there's any amount of leeway in enforcement of the law, things like courtesy cards will exist

Do they exist somewhere else?

The police have wide discretion to issue a warning instead of a fine in most countries as far as I know. But these cards seem to be unique to NYPD. I don't mean that corruption doesn't exist elsewhere but usually it's a little less obvious!

But the properly made microwave of that kind will probably carry on living after you. Mine (Moulinex) outlived my mother and has been working for me for the last thirty years.

I inherited my Moulinex microwave from my mother thirty years ago. Apart from the internal lamp failing it is in perfect order. No electronic controls just a power dial, clockwork timer.

writes comments that explain why the code isn't written in another way."

Exactly! I have written code that required comments five times as long as the code itself to defend the code against well meaning refactoring by people who did not understand the code, the domain, or the care needed to handle large dynamic ranges.

I have also written substantial functions with no comments at all because it was possible and practical to name the function and all the variables so that the meaning was clear.

But are you the right person? :-)