0°F to 100°F spans the full range of temperatures I'd go out in & not consider it "extreme weather", so it's rather intuitive in that you can think of it as "how hot is it on a scale of 0-100". It feels very human centric & convenient for everyday usage IMO.
I see two main types of 'AI safety': (a) Safety for the business providing the model. This includes a censorship layer, system promoting, & other means of preventing the AI from giving offensive/controversial/illegal output. A lot of effort goes into this & it's somewhat effective, although it's often useless or unhelpful to end users & doesn't address big-picture concerns. (b) The science fiction idea of a means to control a hypothetical AI with unbounded powers, to make sure it only uses those powers "for good". This type of safety is still speculative fiction & often assumes the AI will have agency & motivations, as well as abilities, that we see no evidence of at present. This would address big-picture concerns, but it's not a real thing, at least not yet.
It remains to be seen whether (b) will be needed, or for that matter, possible.
There are a lot of other ethical questions around AI too, although they mostly aren't unique to it. E.g. AI is increasingly relevant in ethical discussions around misinformation, outsourcing of work, social/cultural biases, human rights, privacy, legal responsibility, intellectual property, etc., but these topics predate LLMs by many years.
It sounds like a fun & challenging record. Falling off a scooter at 110 mph would certainly shake you up, but it'd probably be a little safer than moto gp if you used similar safety gear. I wonder how it feels at high speed though - I've never ridden one anywhere near that fast, but the scooters I've ridden didn't feel like they'd be very stable at high speeds.
When I'm snowboarding on an overcast day, it can sometimes be hard to see the exact shape & conditions of the snow ahead so I have to slow down to make sure I don't catch an edge on a 'hidden' mogul. I'd like an AR system that used LIDAR/FLIR/etc. to augment my vision to see these features better.
I'm also bad at learning & remembering a lot of people's names at once in social settings, so I'd like a discrete pair of AR glasses that used a local model to add virtual nametags to people in certain situations. (Assuming I controlled the data - I wouldn't like it if this meant data about my acquaintances would be sold behind my back).
So there's at least two potential AR applications I'd be interested in, assuming they could be made to work in a trustworthy & reliable manner for under $1k.
In terms of microplastics, I would think 100 of the old flimsy single use bags would be much worse than 5 reusable plastic bags, even if the total mass is the same. The heavier reusables have less surface area per mass, so they'll be degraded more slowly by the sun. They also are less easily blown by the wind, so it's more likely someone will dispose of them properly or that they'll naturally end up buried somewhere that does a better job of containing the eventual microplastics. Fewer bags in total would probably be better for sea turtles than thinner bags as well.
I'm not sure if that makes the reusables better overall, but I don't think we can say they're 10-100x worse based on weight alone.
I agree with most of your comment, except that microplastics come from paint, tires, and washing synthetic garments, not plastic bags, and I'm dubious about your photodegradation point.
Are you sure about that? AFAIK effective laser drone defenses are not yet widely deployed proven technology, but I don't think small beam size is a limiting factor. Getting enough power onto the target to disable it is a big challenge, but part of that is fighting the natural tendency of the beam to spread out & be attenuated by the atmosphere - not that the beam affects too small of a spot on the drone.
Having a laser that spreads out to e.g. 30cm radius at 500m is not hard to do if you need an area of effect weapon & can push enough power (ie. your laser is powerful enough, but not so intense that it ionizes the air & blocks itself). Reflections seem like a bigger problem: If the most effective defense includes guys with shotguns &/or there are a lot of unprotected personnel in the area, how do you make sure stray reflections don't end up blinding them?
The point is that a focused laser will put a hole through the drone, much like an armor piercing round, but that is often insufficient to disable the drone. A larger ballistic projectile (think a solid shell or a rock) is much more effective. Alternative energy weapons based on microwaves and SPL also work well.
Already tested. Success rate is too low. A great deal of aenergy gets wasted.
Remember, this is about asymmetric warfare. If the number of rounds or amount of energy required costs more than the drone it shoots down, then it's not an effective deterrent. Militaries are looking for single-shot weapons to take down drones. Fire once and move on. It's the only way to deal with a swarm. Think about it for a bit and it will become very obvious.
I often see pop sci articles saying something like '400 dB would represent a sound strong enough to tear the world apart', or 'military sonar is X dB -- strong enough to liquefy your organs at Y distance'. It's rarely clear to me which of these usages of 'dB' are directly comparable. I think the dB measurement for sonar is a different scale/unit than the one for hearing damage thresholds in air, but I couldn't figure out how to convert between the two last time I spent a few minutes trying to look it up, so in my opinion it can be fairly confusing.
I worked for a 3rd party food delivery service in the summer of 2007. Ordering was generally done by phone, then the office would text us (the drivers) order details for pickup & delivery. They provided GPS navigation devices, but they were stand-alone units that were slower & less accurate than modern ones, plus they charged a small fee for using it that came out of our pay.
Some cars like the Mini Cooper S do lift a rear wheel when turning sharply under braking -- I've seen this a lot in autocross racing. I normally only see front engine/FWD cars with limited suspension travel do it though. Trikes are less stable & will lift a wheel more easily overall.
The Wikipedia article says it's "self sharpening" on impact. I think this involves the projectile's leading parts ablating away into burning pyrophoric dust as they interact with the target.
