All of the crap coming out of Musk's mouth are old ideas that people somehow think are new.  It's such a strange phenomenon...

Although, it's not like I see a lot of other new ideas being generated in society, so maybe this shouldn't be all that surprising..

In Musk's defense though - at some level drumming up the layman's support for old ideas that have now become feasible due to technological or organizational factors (widespread adoption of solar power, for instance) is admirable - because it's not like the politicians are doing any of that..

I have my own theories about his companies tho..

In any event, the side-track of this discussion to include a broader discussion of AI and ethics is, obviously, a much larger issue than will likely be addressed satisfactorily on this forum.  I'd just like to add my $0.02 to say that if you like dealing with autistic people and psychopaths - then you'll definitely love dealing with AI and robots with cloud-driven decision trees.  But, as the Ashley Madison hacks show, for 80% of people, these types of shallow iterative relationships will be "good enough" to take at face value.  The usual drivers of this technology are all there: devaluation of labor value, control over peoples' lives, and the biggest of all - military.  The military has yet to come across a robot idea they didn't like.  To say nothing of a Röhm Putsch (Night of the Long Knives) when there's a robot in everyone's bed..

discussion officially derailed..

-tid242

I like how the DPRK is such a nuclear threat, but Fukushima isn't even in the news...

Anyway..

North Korea is going to be a meat grinder with the US, China, and Russia all sending resources to have their little proxy war that they've been unable to have elsewhere (Ukraine, Syria, Senkoku, etc).  Shore up political support, and have a place to dump excess capital - since it's quite apparent to anyone paying attention that we're in the midst of a crisis of capitalism.

Personally, I'd much prefer a temporal fix instead of simply updating our own infrastructure, and maybe a WPA to make western economies less energy intensive.  But no one's asking me what I think..  go figure..

There's a big difference.

Fukushima was an accident.

The DPRK speaks of deliberately killing people.

While the former is tragic, the latter is unacceptable.

Right, while in Japan they don't talk about it, but instead criminalize anyone who does, while telling the people living there that it's all perfectly safe, and push food from the Fukushima prefecture through the Japanese school system.  Fukushima will kill far more people than NK ever will.. While the original meltdowns at the Diichi plant were accidental, the response has been anything but..

http://enenews.com/top-official-60-million-japanese-irradiated-fukushima-nuclear-expert-50000-square-miles-country-highly-contaminated-many-millions-be-evacuated-govt-decided-sacrifice-serious-crime-professor-70-l

http://apjjf.org//2016/06/Hirano.html

It's difficult, in my mind, to say that threatening to kill people is worse than actually doing it.  As you might have noticed, leaders threaten with hyperbole all of the time, I'm not saying that this is OK, but what I am saying is that it isn't unusual.  Granted, it's beyond my paygrade to determine which of these threats are serious enough to warrant action - but the same could be said for anyone expressing the alternative opinion that we should "do something" about it.  Especially for a place like the DPRK where it's really unclear what's actually going on there.

My original point remains, however, that there has been a complete media blackout regarding the ongoing Fukushima catastrophe, but plenty of sabre rattling about how the US, China and Russia are all itching to try out their new hardware goodies against all of the goodie countermeasures we've been working on.  Particularly after the US's brush with the newest iterations of Russian electronic warfare in the Black Sea and Syria (although the media, of course, doesn't say this, just that North Korea is "bad" and a "threat") ..

In my opinion, they're all just a bunch of crooks ...

With the ability to make stupid more than a household word. 

Under built nuclear reactors are stupid, but that's seriously overblown crap.  Radiation is utterly lethal in the reactors, but the most people will see from living around them outside the evacuated area is a slight increase in cancer rates.  After a very short distance, they're a non-issue, less relevant than high altitude.  North Korea on the other hand is an autocracy that starves it's populace so the chosen few can live it up in the government and play at being a world power with Seoul for a hostage.

There is a media blackout on this nonsense because it's trumped up bullshit by activists trying to scare people out of the nuclear power business.

That I believe.