tombakt's comments

Yes, we can even call it “snow crash” ;)

Ah yes, a proper morning routine. A bit of coffee, exercise, becoming one with the void…

Melange.

Technically most sources of available energy on or near the planet are the output of fusion in some way, so this tracks.

No, a preflight (OPTIONS) request is sent by the browser first prior to sending the request initiated by the application. I would be surprised if it is possible for the client browser to control this OPTIONS request more than just the URL. I am curious if anyone else has any input on this topic though.

Maybe there is some side-channel timing that can be used to determine the existence of a device, but not so sure about actually crafting and delivering a malicious payload.

If your navigation software says "Continue on I-50 for 350 miles", you will likely not need to touch the steering wheel for that stretch. If it says "Take exit 123 in 1/2 mile", you grab the wheel, take the exit, and let the comma take over after that decision. It feels more like a competent copilot than a full driver replacement.

It removes almost all driving fatigue for me (RAV4) and I do not intend to purchase a car unless it is supported by comma. I needed a new car and specifically bought this RAV4 because of comma compatibility.

Driving is essentially 3 inputs (gas, brake, steer). I use the comma for steering to keep the car centered in the lane, which is does extremely well. My car has built-in radar cruise control which keeps the speed (gas) and distance from the car ahead (brake), so highway/city driving even in traffic is a breeze.

I have not tried the experimental mode that supposedly has some level of end-to-end capability where the comma controls the gas and brake, and have found the current balance absolutely perfect for my needs.

> It should be the responsibility of public bodies that levy fees to make sure that people are made aware of the nature of those fees. The ISPs aren't responsible for this stuff, and shouldn't be asked to do more work to further conceal decisions our elected officials are making for us.

What are your thoughts on businesses incorporating and listing the amount of sales tax paid on receipts of transactions at your local grocery/convenience store?

It appears to me that the least surprising place for these things to be listed is where it is most relevant, which is alongside the primary transaction presented as an invoice or receipt. How would you improve on this UX assuming that the fee is definitely going to be incorporated into the cost?

> I generally think most middle-class people aren't taxed enough (yell at me somewhere else about this)

I'll refrain from yelling. Can you expound on this since you thought to mention it?

It's hubris to think we are at a stage where human scientists are so disciplined and knowledgable that we can start patching existing life-forms in such a safe enough way so as to target certain types of cells reliably over time and not others.

Software is essentially a cleanroom in the sense that the environment tends to be deterministic and man-made, and that is still riddled with unexpected accidents. Fortunately we can turn it off, fix the bug, and redeploy and the people involved in that tend to survive.

> Additionally, a bacterium that's engineered to be almost completely harmless evolving into a deadly strain in vivo is fairy unlikely in itself, especially if transcriptional errors can be reduced several orders of magnitude like GGP suggested.

The proposition was to engineer a bacteria that targets and infects a particular type of human cell to kill it. Creating medicines in a vat (like insulin) is different from releasing infectious agents in the wild. I was under the impression that this was obvious, but apparently not.

Sounds great until natural selection kicks in, and because DNA replication is largely a lossy process, suddenly the thing you programmed the organism to do mutates to do something else a whole lot more problematic.

Imagine a software heisenbug, but instead it's a life form that you can't kill -9.

The idea of tailor-made medicines in a vat is awesome, but as far as creating a bacteria to "specially target" certain cells seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

> A photon leaves a star, then strikes your eye a billion years later, and those events could be entangled, as far as the photon is concerned, they happened at the same instant in time.

If a photon does not experience time then I find it challenging to imagine that it could have a perspective at all.

Until a language model can develop a generalized solution to a real-world phenomena, it's not even close to AGI. The current iteration of ML algorithms are useful, yes, but not intelligent.

Look at his connections, nothing of consequence will happen to him.

I suspect that the end goal with this carbon credits scheme is almost entirely control and surveillance. The effectiveness of the stated intent doesn't matter from that perspective. Once the system is in place, then it is gradually expanded to the individual level and someone has to keep tabs on everyone's credit balances after all. Think KYC but for everything but a bit worse. Good luck ;)