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I was working at a bank at the time, and had recently built (VB 6.0!) a part of the inter-bank money transfer, so was one of those required to stay home and sober that night, in case I was called in. Got a $1,500 bonus for it. Lots of it all was pure hype. People in the newspaper writing your microwave might stop working. Really? it might have a clock, but did you ever set the date on a microwave in 1999? Maybe you'd have trouble with the timer in your VCR, but there'd be workarounds for that if it happened. For banks, given they commonly offer 30 year mortgages, the year 2000 was a thing by 1970, so even with byte saving 2 digit years I don't think every bank system was guaranteed to have been neglected. But given how far and wide automation was by then, it made sense to be careful. It was entirely possible some forgotten bit of code in a local water supply pump station made the thing turn off, that extra emergency water was good to have ... there are other kinds of emergency too.

My WAG is that the cost of building, maintaining, and running interstellar trade would be more than the cost of just producing the goods locally. If wine from Zebulon 7 is $1,000,000 per glass but a bottle of local plonk is $10, what's the point? And I'd bet that technology for exact replication of Zebulon 7 wine would be developed before interstellar trade anyway. You'd need to postulate some (vital, not just luxury) commodity that just can't be sourced locally, for this trade to make sense. (Given the limits of lower than light speed travel and communication, I think human expansion (if any) beyond the solar system will largely be one-way.)

This is largely based on the myth that observation requires consciousness. Observation more just means interaction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

Trump liked to play on the "migrant crime" thing, and in many speeches during this campaign (and before) pretty much claimed every single migrant came from a prison or asylum. But the stats show migrants as a group commit fewer crimes than born Americans. (Various reasons.) So if he actually did follow through with mass deportations, I'd suspect crime rates will go up. (Slightly tongue in cheek of course, I just find it astounding Trump could make people think he'll make them "safe" and thus accept his fascist leanings. Meanwhile, kids will continue to be shot at school - and the the coming VP will just say that's a "fact of life".)

The per capita crime rate will go up.

If the GOP (as a whole) are not racist and sexist (regardless of more or less), why accept him as their figurehead?

gamer87 often had similar concerns, and also had this machine. Maybe they have advice for you? https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/124822-question-uv-plastic-and-rubber

This stuff is googleable: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-are-tariffs#chapter-title-0-2

Tariffs are applied as a kind of tax on the goods, not as a separate bill to the Government of the source nation. (The fantasy is that the seller has to lower profits to keep the final cost the same *, making local industries competitive again. The reality is that prices go up and the consumers pay more.) ((* or maybe even leave the market altogether, which while it might leave local manufacturers standing, it decreases their competition and still raises costs for consumers.))

What is yours? ... and what's your definition of a prime number?

Are they all greengrocers too?

The current AIs are LLMs, large language models. Very summarised, they just soak up data such as text and mathematically record patterns that can be echoed back out. They know nothing about "truth" or "reality". Recent cases you could search-up: somebody asks how to keep the cheese on their pizza and are told by an AI to add glue to the sauce. Another asks if it's good to eat rocks and is told by AI that a small rock a day is good. The first was traced to a joke reddit post, the second to an article on The Onion; both on the internet and soaked up in the LLM training. What this means is any crank can put something out there, that an AI "reads" it and can repeat; it means nothing. (Edit: was typing this when Mordreds' post arrived, not meaning to detract from that post.)

Yep. Watched a Sabine Hossenfelder youtube last week where she claimed this is why AGI is not going to be near what some people say it will.

Turning off all Bitcoin related systems would have more effect than halting fusion research. ... and be much better for us all.

I just remembered a detergent-only method described in a Kurt Vonnegut book (for common house flies): You fill a bowl with soap bubbles. Raise the bowl up towards a fly sitting on the ceiling. The fly drops a little before trying to fly away - and falls into and is caught by the bubbles. (Amusing in the book, no idea if anyone ever tries that.)