It's been a below-average season overall, but we just got a spring dump. TSV got 21" and down lower we got 8-10" and another couple over the next few days. Below ~8000 it's melting pretty quickly, but above 8k there is still decent snowpack - had to stick to the roads around US Hill as it was just too deep for the dog.

'Codeine' by Jason Isbell.

There are problems with Solar to be sure, but surface area is not one of them.

Top 3 are easy, although order fluctuates

Dylan

Leonard Cohen

Tom Waits

The other 2 slots are tough. *Right Now*, I'd say

Jason Isbell

First Aid Kit (known for their voices, but underrated writers)(probably make the list only because I've been on a bit of a bender with them due to the new album)

I agree that if AGI is achieved, it won't be through Von Neumann approaches.

But it's a pretty big leap from that to 'that means it's impossible to have a computational AGI'.

We don't know what future development in alternate computing paradigms are going to yield. It's not inconceivable that alternate forms of state management or interconnection or even hybrid analog/digital constructs might alter the tools available. We 'know' our brains don't really work like computers with separation of 'computation' from 'storage', but given how successful the current paradigm continues to be we haven't really pushed into investigating alternate possibilities.

My personal bet/assumption is that hybrid / cyborg approaches are what seems most likely. Genetic engineering of neural substrates combined with interfaces to more conventional computing capability seems feasible, although obviously there are many barriers to be overcome.

IMHO one of the most interesting avenues of speculation is whether AGI is even conceptually possible in a way that allows for direct replication, or whether a specific organism/instance will have to be trained individually. 'Nature' really hasn't ever evolved a way to pass down 'knowledge' or 'memories' - it passes down a genetic substrate and the individual has to 'train' it's neural fabric through experience.

Back in college, The Smiths filled this role for me. It was a boomerang effect - Morrisey was SUCH an over-the-top mope that it couldn't help but shake me out of it.

>Looking For The Heart Of Saturday

Ha - forget a 'break up song', we used this as our Wedding song.....(well, the Holly Cole version)

Exactly - a properly conceived decentralized system is basically impossible to monetize, and so there is very little to no incentive for any company with R&D $$$ available to explore it.

There will certainly be continued academic research, but how you grow a user community large enough to be useful is a bit of a question when

a) there's no money in it

b) you have to assume everyone is a bad actor and will attempt to exploit/co-opt the system wherever possible

The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir, read by Moira Quirk. Absolutely first-rate narration of a series that isn't entirely straightforward in it's presentation.