The whole article was AI written, the headings the “voice” scream AI

But you didn’t access a BBS via an ISP, that’s one of the key differences. You dialled your modem directly into the BBS

BBS’s pre-date what we know as the internet - that is, commercially available interconnections via an ISP to a “wider web” of servers. Pedantically you can argue there is overlap with the period when only universities and a couple of tech companies were interconnected but calling that the internet is like calling a horse and buggy a car because it has wheels and carries passengers

Re-read what they said. They’re talking about modem dialup to a long distance number, so the phone call the modem made was long distance and hence charged at the higher rate.

It’s ok to not get it, this is pre internet and a very long time ago

Australia’s a federation that has has both legislative houses allocated based on number of states.

Huh ? How do you work that out ? The electorates are sized to be equal and the number of electorates in each state changes when the demographics shift. The only qualifier is that out of the 150 seats each state is guaranteed minimum 5 to ensure they don’t end up with zero representation - there are 6 states, so 30 out of the 120 are locked out. Reallocation is done regularly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_and_territories_of_Australia#States

The territories aren’t states (by definition) and get treated differently (there is a strong argument nowadays for state-hood but it has not progressed).

“The requirements for territory seats are set via legislation, which currently requires that the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory have at least one member each”

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

“One vote, one value legislation requires all electorates within each state to have approximately the same number of voters. In 2022 there was an average of just over 117,000 electors per seat. However, the baseline quota for the number of voters in an electorate is determined by the number of voters in the state in which that electorate is found. The electorates of the smallest states and territories tend to have more variation from the mean in terms of numbers of electors. Each state is guaranteed a minimum of five seats in the Constitution, which has the effect of granting Tasmania more seats than they would otherwise be entitled to due to their population size.[4] Federal electorates have their boundaries redrawn or redistributed whenever a state or territory has its number of seats adjusted, if electorates are not generally matched by population size or if seven years have passed since the most recent redistribution.[5]”

Nah matching algorithms are ineffective because a) people don’t know what they want and/or b they’re wildly unrealistic about what they want and/or they’re delusional about their market value.

B is evidenced by the much joked about every woman wanting a 6’4 30yr old earning 7 figures who is good looking,single (not cheating) kind and funny (maybe 0.01% of the dating pool at most)

C is self evident - 3s who think they’re 10s or the woman with 3 kids from 3 fathers not recognising that’s a red flag.

A is the one that confounds the matching system though. People will say they want X, but have spent the last decade dating Y. The pic and profile thing is supposed to get ppl to reveal their actual preferences but it doesn’t seem very effective

Logical fallacy. Just because I rebutted the assertion that no one asked for the internet, does not mean I support the assertion it was being used to rebut (that no one asked for AI).

The internet was absolutely desired and wanted and actively built by thousands of hands in academia as well as privately, it didn’t need to be pushed by corporate interests.

I’m happy to accept that the chemistry research industry wanted AI, I have zero knowledge of it, the question I have is whether this LLM monstrosity is what you had in mind ? I did see an LLM came up with a design (is that the right word ?) for a bacteriophage - is it doing positive things for you guys ? Or is it causing as much confusion as it does value like it does in IT ?

Lol. It’s a potted history of networking not computing for a start. And if you’re not happy with it knock yourself out posting a better version.

Moaning & whining isnt helpful, add some positive value instead of adding negative value

Yes they did.

People wanted two computers to be able to talk to each other, so we wired them together when we got sick of walking punch cards and tapes back and forth.

Then we wanted multiple of them to be able to talk to each other so we invented a way to hook more than two together,

Then we wanted that to happen at distances further than we could just run a cable, so a bunch of different solutions were created, one of which was to connect over normal phone lines, one of which required dedicated telco cabling between big university computers and big business computers. Then clever people found solutions to making many smaller computers connect to fewer large computers for business and academic reasons, and then all those got connected and

Voila ! The internet.

It grew organically out of the need to transmit data.

If you meant the world wide web protocols and not the actual internet network, then that also was designed in response to a demand, and got popular because it met a demand.

You make a strong argument. Particularly given at least half the posters are also AI or bots

This has literally zero correlation with whether you can search your contacts by phone number, it is in fact the exact opposite

This is creating a signal account that has no phone number associated with it.

From the article:

“The ability to register for Signal without a phone number is a frequently requested feature. While Signal hides phone numbers by default and gives users control over who can discover them, some users would still like the option to create an account without using a phone number.”

So board of directors are liable if the company itself isnt directly liable is the short answer, directors can hold joint liability along with the company

I believe there is a difference between bad decisions and illegal decisions

This is self evidently true, or I’d be in jail for the relationships I had in my teens.

and what individuals can be held liable for.

To be liable you need to have broken a law. So yes a person, or an AI, can make stupid but legal decisions, for which no legal liability accrues.

Not too sure where you’re going with this though

It depends on the country and the documents used to create the company.

US, UK, Australia & NZ (and probably Canada but I don’t know) have fundamentally the same (not identical but pretty close) corporate governance laws.

Yes a corporation is a separate legal entity; that was established in case law back in the 19thC in the UK (Salomon V Salomon), it does not however means that individuals are always protected, you can “lift the corporate veil” in specific circumstances (negligence fraud etc). IOW a corporation can be sued but sometimes the individuals inside the corporation can also be sued

I’m not aware of any laws in the above countries that require the presence of an explicitly named CEO role, however all the standard laws require governance of the organisation through the directors and via directors & shareholders resolutions. An individual company can specify a structure in the documents used to create it (variously called things like a constitution or memorandum and articles of association depending your country/state) mandating that certain roles need to exist within the coy but that is optional and not standard.

To address your actual point as opposed to the law, the CEO is an operational decision making functional role. If someone is making strategic decisions whether their title is Managing Director, CEO or Chief Stupidity Officer it doesn’t matter, it’s a functional role not a legal one. The legal buck stops with the directors regardless of who or what is making decisions for the company, however if there is a live person in the CEO role they can be sued on the “lift corporate veil” bases (fraud negligence malfeasance etc). If the CEO has acted within their bounds and in good faith then any issues sit with the directors (note I’m trying to condense a massive list of if ands and buts into a pithy sentence, there’s a zillion exceptions but that’s the broad rule).

So yes, the board could legally put an AI in place and direct it to run the company. If it makes bad or illegal decisions that liability rests with the directors.

If the AI oversteps its delegated authority is possibly the one area where it could get legally interesting. I would expect the directors to be held liable for any decision the AI made even if it executed something it was explicitly told not to as it is reasonably foreseeable (by anyone with a functioning brain cell anyway) that that could happen and oversight is needed. I could also see a board dragging the AI provider to court to try and hold them as being accountable (don’t think they’d win, but I can see there being a lawsuit)

EDIT some grammar/punctuation and a couple of wording tweaks for readability

Interesting, if I’m not misreading that index you have 2007 to 2015, then jan 2024 onwards monthly (at 30-50gb a file) but not the 9 years in the middle

Most don’t. A handful of high end tourers and sports bikes do.

Swingeing rhymes with whinging and can be remembered as likely to make the victim whinge (although it’s stronger impact than that implies).

I agree, there is too little accountability for the people who should be paying for their poor choices. I think the 18thC French solution is more instructive for the Epstein class than monetary fines though.

I don’t think your premise that it is going to grow more in terms of impact size is valid. It’s already eaten the US stockmarkets (and a number of others).

So I don’t think anyone has the power to make that choice between keep or pop later, but if it was possible then slowly deflating the bubble and regulations to prevent this sort of thing happening in the first place would be my answer. Not going to happen of course.

Out of the bad alternatives of the bubble popping now, and the bubble popping later, later would be better for we non-americans if we had govt’s who would actually work through the things needed to reduce its impact.

So, here in reality, damned if it does now, damned if it does later, either option is ugly.

I’ve been telling all my friends to get themselves and their pensions out of shares (US in particular) for the last 6 months I doubt they listened but what else can you do ?

Don’t know about a law, but there’s plenty of empirical evidence that you’re broadly right, it is I suspect what the Epstein class are counting on in the US - they’ll come out unscathed and the masses will wear the impact.

I did pick North Korea for a reason though - they have an economy with very limited reliance on even China and Russia and have basically spent 70 years preparing for this. I genuinely can’t think of a country less likely to be directly affected. Second order impacts such as say Russian (or even Chinese) rogue military units seizing areas and pillaging are possible, but even then they are already at subsistence level in the main, so impact should be minimal.

It will be poor countries like Bangladesh who rely on selling sweatshop clothing into the developed economies that will be in the biggest trouble - exports will be decimated and they are already on the breadline.