Slashdot Mirror
BuzzFeed and Washington Post To Use Robots For RNC Coverage (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Engadget: The Washington Post and Buzzfeed have sent robots to cover the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. The Washington Post is using a telepresence robot from Double Robotics that consists of an iPad mounted on a Segway-like base. It's objective: to roam around the convention, streaming live on Periscope. Those viewing the stream will be able to ask questions of delegates, politicians and other figures who stumble upon the robot. BuzzFeed is using a robot called 'BuzzBot.' It's a Facebook chat bot that collects and caters news from the convention to users' messaging feeds. All you have to do is add the channel to your Messenger app and it will deliver news updates from BuzzFeed reporters. Specifically, it will collect reports from delegates, protesters and others in Cleveland. You have the option to send pictures and other info to BuzzBot, but it may ask you questions about your experience. The questions it asks will be different depending on your location. For example, if you live in Cleveland it will want to know what kind of impact the RNC is having on your daily life. Meanwhile, with roughly 50,000 attendees and likely millions of viewers watching across the country and abroad, the RNC is preparing for cyberattacks that aim to disrupt the network.
Life isn't ideal. People know this. Maladjusted adults think there's some sweet action-movie style alternative, as opposed to the kind of domestic war power vacuum ad-nauseum that happens in places all around the world. So again, do you want to vote for the candidate that is most likely to preserve your way of life, even if you feel you've been wronged so badly by the system? Or the candidate that espouses the kind of thing you really want to hear because he knows you're not worldly enough to know it's just a Disney movie?
"Old man yells at systemd"
Disclaimer: I am NOT a republican and I DO NOT support Trump even the slightest bit.
Perhaps the problem is that you're trying to justify what amounts to laziness and apathy with what you think sounds like informed cynicism, but what to others sounds like playground-level petulance. When you boil it down, what you're really saying is a Cartmanesque "Screw you guys, I'm going home."
There's wisdom in that. The political discourse in this country is really stupid, and it seems to mostly come from the left, but the right does it a little bit as well. For perfect case in point, why the FUCK would you protest a gathering of a political party? That is to say, what exactly are you protesting? Their right to peacefully assemble? Their right to speak their minds? I must be missing something huge because I really have no idea what is wrong with either of those things. I highly value free speech, and free speech means people can say things that you don't like. And to further that, why is it that if somebody says something that the left doesn't like, they almost immediately have to label it as racist, misogynistic, or otherwise hateful against a particular group when it practically never does any of the above? I keep hearing the word "racist" get thrown about Trump, however I've yet to hear anything from him that is definable as racist. So he wants to have tighter controls against illegal immigration, mainly directed at Mexico...umm...Mexico isn't a race.
It's not so much a "screw you guys, I'm going home" moment, it's more of one of these moments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
But what Trump and his supporters are railing against isn't a lack of free speech, it's the fact that there are consequences to saying certain things. What they really want is freedom from consequences. They want to say blatantly racist or bigoted things and not have anyone say "Hey wait a minute, that was horrible a prejudiced and wrong." They want CEOs to have the right to say "I hate homosexuals" and somehow not have boards of directors go "You're out of here."
No one is contesting anyone's right to say anything they want. Go for it. Say you hate Mexicans. Say you hate Muslims. Say you hate gay marriage. But to imagine that other members of society have to keep their mouths shut or that people can't condemn you for it, well that's not demanding free speech, that's demanding that only you have those kinds of freedoms, and everyone else just has to accept it and keep their mouths shut.
Trump doesn't represent some grand bastion of free speech. He represents an arrogant, rude, bigoted type of individual who wants to hold noxious beliefs, and then force everyone to simply pretend like the verbal diarrhea coming out of their mouth is just plain fine. So really it isn't about freedom of speech at all, it's about freedom from the consequences of speech.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Which is ludicrous. Waiting for the perfect candidate is rather like waiting for the perfect spouse. Both are naive and overly romantic. All candidates are going to have flaws, and if you believe your favorite candidate doesn't have flaws and isn't going to be a forced into countless compromises, then you've ceased to have a political point of view, and have become a religious adherent.
I can't think of a single candidate for president in my entire life that wasn't at the very least one of the lesser evils in some way. If you're walking away because voting for the better/less bad candidate seems like a compromise of principles, then you're not acting like an adult, but rather like a petulant child.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They want to say blatantly racist or bigoted things and not have anyone say "Hey wait a minute, that was horrible a prejudiced and wrong."
Such as? Be specific.
And on that note, there are lots of things that are bigoted that the left doesn't seem to have a problem perpetuating. For example, it's considered totally acceptable to bash rednecks and Christians, even though doing so is by definition bigotry. How many times on an internet forum do you see people say "murica'"? Again, by definition that is bigotry. Have a look at the "unfair campaign"; again, bigotry. Need I go on? Why is bigotry acceptable so long as it's popular?
It also occurs to me that you yourself are being bigoted against the Trump camp.
Say you hate Mexicans. Say you hate Muslims.
I haven't seen any of these things out of the Trump camp. I've seen comments to the effect of restricting their entry into the country (and given the impact that the later is having on Europe, there may be wisdom to that -- I don't know -- but it would be a very clear cut violation of the first amendment, so it cannot be done.)
But to imagine that other members of society have to keep their mouths shut or that people can't condemn you for it, well that's not demanding free speech, that's demanding that only you have those kinds of freedoms, and everyone else just has to accept it and keep their mouths shut.
I haven't seen this out of them as well (and my comments about bigotry on the part of the left have nothing to do with this; rather, that is to point out that it's pretty hypocritical to call out bigotry on the part of others when I have yet to meet a single person who hasn't exhibited some form of bigotry, myself included.)
Trump doesn't represent some grand bastion of free speech.
I didn't say he does, rather I'm pointing out how idiotic (and indeed hypocritical) it is to protest a convention.
Considering the repetitive, scripted coverage of "news" by the media, I would assert that most journalists have practiced robotic performance for a long time.
Get $narrative
go to
Print %story
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.