Rhaedas

I have a laptop that's suffered from that for a while now, so it's not just one update but a trend. Tried a number of things from clearing space to even a manual download on a USB to force it. It always reverts back to churning away trying to complete the update, restarting, and then reversing it. The irony is the laptop works fine until it comes time for it to check again, then repeat ad nauseam.

I have to credit ChatGPT4 for this answer.

Credit, or a warning?

From my understanding a big part of the problem with PET is the availability, either because it's such a small percentage of plastic and demand is too great, or because it gets lost among all the rest and so is mixed or ruined for recycling.

Honestly the debate on which material is better totally ignores the real problem - consumption demand. Reduce used to be the first 'R', but it was not friendly to the capitalistic mindset or an exploding population, so Recycling became the big focus along with the subtle blaming of the consumer for not being THE solution when they didn't participate.

It's partially because of cost, new plastic is cheaper than trying to recover old. But very few plastics can be truly recycled chemically, much being reformed for other purposes. Glass and metals were always a better environmental choice (with their own limitations too), but plastic is so cheap and versatile it's hard to compete. Not just plastics - just a look around the household imagining the lack of petroleum products, it's amazing how it's everywhere. Yet another dead end we've gotten ourselves into.

There are two dangers in the current race to get to AGI and in developing the inevitable ANI products along the way. One is that advancement and profit are the goals while the concern for AI safety and alignment in case of success has taken a back seat (if it's even considered anymore). Then there is number two - we don't even have to succeed in AGI for there to be disastrous consequences. Look at the damage early LLM usage has already done, and it's still not good enough to fool anyone who looks closely. Imagine a non-reasoning LLM able to manipulate any media well enough to be believable even with other AI testing tools. We're just getting to that point - the latest AI Explained video discussed Gemini and Sora and one of them (I think Sora) fooled some text generation testers into thinking its stories were 100% human created. In short, we don't need full general AI to end up with catastrophe, we'll easily use the "lesser" ones ourselves. Which will really fuel things if AGI comes along and sees what we've done.

The Earth doesn't care how we move things around in our spreadsheets.

That's about the speed you can read text...it's why pre-internet sites like BBSes weren't all flashy, you had to keep it loadable. Actual downloads you would plan overnight and hope you didn't lose connection. The first big breakthrough was resumable downloading where you left off. Huge.

True of many things we take for granted now. It would be a different world entirely. Another non-computer example would be the 3-point seat belt that Volvo left as an open patent, saving countless lives over the past decades.

Or a different "feel" when turned on vs. off (more resistance or something). They spent effort printing all that text to show where the switch was when a universal 0/1 would have made it clear.

I can't think of any example of a button or switch that by itself can be clear if it is engaged or not. A button could be assumed to be on if in, but that isn't always the case, like for example with emergency stops.

In areas that are prone to earthquakes, not really. This isn't one of them, so it's unusual and worth a report and determination of the source. A 4.0 at the epicenter would feel different farther depending on the material too - most of Florida wouldn't transmit the energy well and slosh around a bit, unlike some bedrock that can carry the energy much farther. My real question would be if this is a natural cause, can there ever be a potential for seafloor movement that would power a tsunami (I don't think so)? That would be far worse than the actual ground shaking for Florida coastline residents.

Be sure to have backups and not that sole location. Same is true of any physical drive, but at least a drive failure might be recoverable. A cloud storage can just be gone one day.

Their work resulted in the often-posted newspaper article speculating how in a few centuries the emissions of burning coal might become a problem for the world's environment. What they didn't anticipate was the rate of increase from a population explosion which would begin its climb in a few decades from various factors.

Or full VR experience online eg. Neuromancer. Though even if the tech was available and fully tested and working, there are many pros and cons to all forms of enhancement or out-of-body existence, or a more extended life.