While the article focuses on Mercedes-Benz, as a Volvo owner, I was immediately concerned about what will happen when my lease is up.

Buried at the bottom of the article are these three paragraphs:

Volvo, which is majority-owned by Shufu’s Geely, said on Tuesday that it received specific authorization from the U.S. government to bypass federal bans restricting connected vehicle software and hardware linked to China.

Volvo confirmed its special authorization but did not immediately respond to questions about the other bills and their potential impact on the company.

Volvo Cars sold 121,600 vehicles in the U.S. last year. Mercedes-Benz sold 303,200 passenger cars and 12,400 vans in the country during the same period.

Clearly, the correct answer is Dr. Acula.

The sound of a dog drinking from a sprinkler?

Isn’t it a reference to the trick that mentalists have been doing for decades? My mind immediately went to Uri Gellar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_bending

Exactly.

Most of the comments in this thread are accusing him of trying to take credit for the work of a machine that’s just imitating other work. It’s the FuckAI echo chamber and people who didn’t actually read the article.

In this case, it’s more like he’s claiming to have created a genuinely creative being that deserves rights previously reserved for humans (like copyrights and patents).

It’s a completely different (and IMO, much weirder) story than people are assuming.

Yeah… Checking his website at https://imagination-engines.com/founder.htm, he certainly seems like an “interesting” character.

My understanding is that he did do the work of creating the AI. This isn’t just someone using ChatGPT.

In this case, it’s not that he’s trying to claim copyright for himself based on coming up with a prompt. He’s spent years applying for patents and copyrights with the AI listed as the creator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DABUS

Michael Ironsidearm

As popcornpizza called out, most of the answers in this thread unfortunately seem unrelated to your question.

I live in the US and haven’t been to the UK in years, but I do visit Romania every year or two. I don’t notice a big difference between Coke Zero sold in the US versus Romania. I’m certainly not a Coke Zero expert, but they taste pretty much the same to me. My hunch is that Coke Zero tastes the same across Europe, but I’m happy to be corrected.

Huh… I had always assumed that it related to having one and a half feet/legs.

At Costco, they’re less “greeters” and more “people who check your membership card”. Actually, since Costco switched to automatic card scanners, they’re “people who watch to make sure you scan your card and the machine makes the happy beep”.

That said, at least at my local Costco, they also smile and welcome you into the store – it’s just not their primary function.

Oh, maybe! I didn’t understand how it chose the points, but it does look like the random convergence approach.

Nice, thanks!

I’m disappointed that none of them seem to have gone with the random convergence approach.

Set the three corners of an equilateral triangle. Pick a random starting point on the canvas. Every iteration, pick a random corner from the triangle and your next point is the midpoint between the current point and that corner. While the original point is almost guaranteed not to be a point in Sierpinski’s triangle, each iteration cuts the distance between the new point and the nearest Sierpinski point in half.

If you start plotting points starting with (say) the 50th one, every pixel is “close enough” to a Sierpinski point that you see the triangle materialize out of nothing. The whole thing could be programmed in about 20 lines of QBasic on DOS 30 years ago.

False. The Liberals are generally centre-right even within Canada. Your compass is off.

Your Newtonian physics argument is nonsensical and frankly rude.

I babysat a brother and sister in the early 90s and we played Mousetrap properly after dinner to kill time until bedtime. Worst babysitter ever.

Then I let them stay up past bedtime while we figured out the most cursed modifications/add-ons. Best babysitter ever.

(In truth, I remember that I had talked with the parents beforehand about “stated bedtime” versus “real bedtime”.)

This was my first thought, too.

I started taking antidepressants a few months ago to treat ADHD-related anxiety and depression. (The doctor suggested that I could try ADHD-specific meds, but pointed out that I’m already a relatively successful adult, so clearly I’ve built coping mechanisms over the years.)

I’m surprised by how much more rational I’ve become when dealing with stuff.

I first really noticed it when I was crossing at an intersection and a driver turning right didn’t see me and almost hit me. She slammed on the brakes and waved her hands in a clearly startled and apologetic way. Before the meds I probably would have flipped her the bird and had my heart pounding in my ears for the next half hour as I seethed with anger. Now, my thought was “She made a mistake. I’m fine. She knows she made a mistake and she’ll certainly be more careful next time. It’s okay.”

That’s not to say that I don’t get angry anymore. I just get angry about stuff that matters or where I can change something. It feels a lot healthier.

Standard disclaimer: I’m not a doctor. This is not medical advice. It’s just my anecdotal experience. Maybe talk to your doctor about getting tested for depression and/or anxiety. (I had never thought to before this year, because in my youth I was just called “disorganized”, “lazy”, and “scatterbrained”.)

Inferring doesn’t mean the same thing as implying. They’re kind of complementary, like borrowing versus lending.

The OP may have been implying something, but it looks like you’re inferring something (which may or may not what they’re implying; I don’t care enough to parse that out).