As you can see, the room is clearly not filled with asbestos. Furthermore, the claim is absurd on its face. Asbestos was banned in the U.S. in March 2024 [1] and the clock was commissioned in May 2025.
The rest of the claims are equally questionable. For example:
> The actual port for the actual clock ... isn't actually hooked up to anything ... they use the other ports on the card for actual data transfer
It's hard to make heads or tails of this, but if you read the technical description of the clock you will see that by the time you get to anything in the system that could reasonably be described as a "card" with "ports" you are so far from the business end of the clock that nothing you do could plausibly have an impact on its operation.
> You can't put anything in the room or take anything out. That's how sensitive the clock is.
This claim is also easily debunked using the formula for gravitational time dilation [2]. The accuracy of the clock is ~10^-16. Calculating the mass of an object 1m away from the clock that would produce this effect is left as an exercise, but it's a lot more than the mass of a human. To get a rough idea, the relativistic time dilation on the surface of the earth is <100 μs/day [3]. That is huge by atomic clock standards, but that is the result of 10^24kg of mass. A human is 20 orders of magnitude lighter.
Agreed the stated claims don't seem to make much sense. Using a point mass 1 meter away and (G*M)/(r*c^2) I'm getting that you'd have to stand next to the clock for ~61 years to cause a time dilation due to gravity exceeding 10^-16 seconds.
Actually, it's even worse than that: the design of the clock makes it so that the cesium atoms doing the actual time keeping are in free-fall while they are being observed. So it is physically impossible for any gravitational influence to change the accuracy of the clock.
It's much worse than "designed for cars." It's more like "not survivable without a car." It's the same with apps on my phone. I don't want to use them, but sometimes there simply is no alternative in today's world.
We may end up building a world where AI is similarly necessary. The AI companies would certainly like that. But at the moment we still have a choice. The more people exercise their agency now the more likely we are to retain that agency in the future.
> who of those same people will stop using ChatGPT to write their work e-mails and assignments for them
Me. I never use AI to write content that I put my name to. I use AI in the same way that I use a search engine. In fact, that is pretty much what AI is -- a search engine on steroids.
Good. I can believe that a few people are principled enough, but principled people tend to be in a minority, regardless of the topic.
I am also a bit afraid of a future where the workload will be adjusted to heavy AI use, to the degree that a human working with his own head won't be able to satisfy the demands.
This happened around the 'car problem' too: how many jobs are in a walkable / bikeable distance now vs. 1925?
I don't think AI is comparable to cars. The problem with cars is that they necessarily use the commons. The more roads you build, the less space you have for trains, parks, housing, etc. AI isn't like that. I can continue to think for myself and look for ways to add value as a human even if everyone around me is using AI. And if that fails, if I can't find a way to compete with AI, if AI really is capable of doing everything that I can do as well as I can do it, why would I not want to use it?
Tell that to anyone who was hoping to upgrade their RAM or build a new system in the near future.
Tell that to anyone who's seen a noticeable spike in electricity prices.
Tell that to anyone who's seen their company employ layoffs and/or hiring freezes because management is convinced AI can replace a significant portion of their staff.
AI, like any new technology, is going to cost resources and growing pains during its adoption. The important question which we'll only really know years or decades from now is whether it is a net positive.
Nope, we have a lot more sprawl. Look at the old maps of cities and compare them to the current ones.
In Ostrava, where I live, worker's colonies were located right next to the factories or mines, within walking distance, precisely to facilitate easy access. It came with a lot of other problems (pollution), but "commute" wasn't really a thing. Even streetcars were fairly expensive, and most people would think twice before paying the fare twice a day.
Nowadays, there are still industrial zones around, but they tend to be located 5-10 km from the residential areas, far too far to walk.
Even leaving industry aside, how many kids you know walk to school, because it is in a walking distance from them?
I have not had anything explode, but I have had Macbook batteries expand on me on two separate occasions to the point where the case was visibly warped. Both times I was away from home, so it was extremely inconvenient.
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