Time zones make sense as you don't want my clock to be 5 minutes different than your time but the time itself should be set based on some concept of sunrise, sunset, or high noon. What you are really asking is "what time of day is it in X?" or even "will so-in-so be awake / at work?" If we just set people's timezone where 7am is always the approximate time of sunrise then this would answer this question fine and businesses can set schedules appropriately. Many businesses already have summer and winter hours so daylight savings time does nothing but complicates the communication.
The different lengths of days doesn't really matter that much either as people still tend to be awake for the same number of hours regardless of season and if we are talking international, Australia has short days during the same time that Europe has long days. Better to just pick the timezone where your true sunrise is the closest to 7am and be done with it.
The ultimate solution to this is primarily technological in nature.
The real problem though is that these robocallers make money...
The ultimate solution is not merely technological but rather financial. Even if they are hacking PBXs and getting the phone calls for free, there is still someone's time involved somewhere. There needs to be a way to quickly report them in real time so that the telecoms can disconnect them as well as a way to make it unprofitable. If on average it takes 100 calls to get one victim, if just 5% of those first 100 had to ability to report it, you could shut them down the majority of time before they reached the first victim even if it was a hacked PBX. Secondly, you need to put in better safeguards in the financial world so that finding a victim is less profitable. Better restrictions on first time users of western union, bitcoin gateways, or any other ways that they are getting the money. The harder you make it for the victim to send money, the more likely the victim will be unable to do it, will ask for help, or detect something is up.
There are 3 main ways to stop almost all types of spams, scams, and crimes: 1) Starve the money so that they don't make as much per scam or there are more hoops to jump thru to get it. 2) Increase the noise to signal ratio so it's harder to find victims. 3) Better reporting so they are more likely to get caught or shut down before finding a victim.
The spam calls I receive do not mention my name or any other identifying information.
As far as I can see, they are just calling numbers randomly.
I am skeptical that keeping your phone number confidential will make any difference at all.
Completely agree. Most of the calls I receive have the same matching 1-XXX-XXX prefix. As I no longer live in that town or have any friends there, I can safely ignore them but my assumption is they are just calling all 9999 numbers in that prefix with another random number in that same prefix. I know the number is spoofed too because I originally tried to call a few of them back out of curiosity and I also get people regularly calling "me" back so I know they are using my number to call other people as well.
I say something similar when it comes to karma. Good things happen more often to good people. Bad things happen more often to bad people. Criminals usually eventually get caught. Itâ(TM)s a numbers game. Yes, bad things happen to good people and vice/versa but in generally doing the right thing is rewarded more often than doing the wrong thing. Luck is a huge part of life but it helps to try to stack the deck in your favor by being nice, aquiring appropriate skills, avoiding stupid decisions, being prepared, etc...
An informed public is elemental to a healthy democracy.
Sure, sensationalism sucks but this alternative is far worse. Do you really want whoever is currently in power deciding which outlets receive funding? For news to be worth anything it can't be controlled by the government and if the government is collecting the money and distributing it then they effectively control the media. Would CNN receive some of this tax money? What about Fox News? What about Breitbart? What about Wikileaks? What about the National Enquirer? How can anyone fairly decide who gets to pick the winners and the losers because anytime the government is handing out money that is exactly what happens. Letting any government body handpick which media gets funded eventually results in state controlled media.
If Mercury is close to the other planets, it may be beneficial to get to there rather than to Mars.
Not really. The only reason that the average distance between Mercury and the other planets is shortest is because the distance is shorter when Mercury is on the far side of the sun so you would need to travel thru the center of the sun to traverse this path. It would still technically be the shortest also by going around the sun but I canâ(TM)t think of a scenerio where stopping at Mercury first on the way to a planet on the far side really makes sense unless it was to take advantage of a free ride on their faster orbit around the sun to reach the backside.
Find a boss who'll let you work 8-4 in the summer instead of 9-5.
Plenty of white collar jobs have flex hours, core hours, or something similar. Many blue collar jobs already use the sun not the clock to decide when work starts.
Except there are literally hundreds of additional data points which allow websites to uniquelyidentify you.
The point isn't just to identify you as unique but for you to both be unique the first time AND recognizable the next time you come back. This seems like a much easier problem to solve. Just change as many of the settings as you can each time you visit a website. If you had a browser capable of randomly tweaking settings at each page load it should be able to add enough noise that browser fingerprinting would become worthless. As an added bonus, not only would it protect your browser, the noise would add a touch of herd immunity and help other people with stock browsers as well. The goal shouldn't be to lock down a browser so that nothing is leaked but rather to leak so much random crap that it becomes worthless.
Bascially, all your "customers" are required to do is share the source if they share binaries (in the case of the GPL 2.0) or not remove the license information (in the case of BSD-like licenses). If you can't live with that, don't publish under those licenses.
The problem is that places like Amazon *ARE* "sharing the binary" as a service but then not sharing the modified source. The GPL was written when the primary way of sharing software was via binaries not services.
Open means you don't get to control what other people do.
You're wrong. Pretty much every open source software out there has an actual license attached which controls what people can do. One of the more common, GPL, was designed so that anyone can use it but if you sold a derivative that you have to open source the derivative too. This worked well when people were primarily selling software. The problem is that now places like google and amazon are selling services not software and as their derivatives are technically not being sold, they are not required to release the source to them. The GPL probably needs to be updated to include SaaS or at least IaaS but this is easier said than done because companies like Netflix and many other companies are also SaaS and also likely use custom GPL software that isn't exposed at all to the public. The goal of the GPL isn't "if you make money we want some of it" but rather "If you make improvements, you need to open source them so we can back port them". The GPL is basically saying "No Closed Source Forks". By that definition, Google, Amazon, and are plenty of others are in clear violation. The simplest solution is probably to rewrite the GPL explicitly so that it does say "No Closed Source Forks" and make it a requirement that all Forks are publicly available on something like github.
start providing ARM Linux laptops with very similar processors to the ones used in servers. I'll buy a few myself.
The don't have to be identical just function similarly. For instance, if you can do development on a 16 core Raspberry PI that functions identically to a 64 core ARM in the cloud, that would be enough in many cases. What you don't want is subtle changes between the systems and/or the local development to be a unsupported variation. The local development needs to be just as supported and tested as the cloud version if not more so. Noone wants to hack together a local development environment that is only halfway compatible with the production version. It's the same reason things like Docker and $5 cloud development servers are winning.
It would seem to me, that we need to solve the problem where these conditions where people cannot get a bank account needs to be solved. The problem isn't the plastic card, but the fact the banks will not offer them.
This problem is solved. They are called prepaid debit. Basically, unlike a credit card or a bank account, overdrafts/overlimits are impossible. Some companies have even started using them for payroll cards. Overdrafts/overlimits for a credit/debit card is a stupid money grabbing idea anyways. Overdrafts only really made sense in the paper check day when it took a while to verify funds. If you can't overdraft the card then everyone can always get one even people with bad credit.
Many smarttvs now have roku built in and although this is better than crappy software that is never updated, it still locks the upgrade of the smarts to the upgrade of the tv. This sometimes makes sense in small form factor devices but there is no reason I should have to upgrade my tv and my straming device at the same time.
They're either buying into the same marketing and media hype for the half-assed excuse for AI everyone keeps trotting out, or they've got something nobody else has, meaning general AI. The latter is highly unlikely, if they did we wouldn't be hearing about it at all.
If they had general AI, they wouldn't need to build a super computer powered expert system just to tell whether someone is buying something. This is a complete waste of time. You have a better chance of reaching the moon by building longer and longer ladders than you do reaching general intelligence by hardcoding facts.
Obviously enough that Netflix received over $800 Million a year just from those iOS users that paid for their subscription via the app.
Using IOS to pay for Netflix and occasionally watch Netflix is not the same as watching Netflix exclusively on your phone. My guess is most of that $800 million will still flow to Netflix a different way. Netflix is likely making the same assumption.
No one in their right mind would ever allow an always listening, internet connected, device in their home.
They aren't technically always listening devices *yet*. They are currently built so that they can only recognize their special phrase and only then does it capture and send the data to the cloud to interpret. This is why it can still respond to its special phrase even when there is no internet but it can't actually interpret what you say without internet.
I can't imagine Apple allowing that sort of behavior to stand. All they would have to do is pull the app from iTunes. They aren't required to provide the user base to Netflix for nothin ya know.
What percentage of people watch Netflix exclusively on iOS? My guess is even if they pulled the app, most people wouldn't care because they are using a roku, a smart tv, or some other non-ios app to watch Netflix.
I am surprised though that Apple and Netflix didn't negotiate the rate down to something more reasonable like 5%. It would seem to be beneficial to both of them to negotiate this rate. My guess is that they did try to secretly negotiate and this is just each side trying to call each other's bluff. Either that or Netflix is starting to see Apple as a competitor and has decided that giving any money to a competitor is bad.
There is a huge difference between a storefront selling something and what Apple is doing. A physical storefront has to pay for shipping the getting the goods to the storefront as well as the physical store and the people to work at the store. Also, with a physical storefront, you generally have the choice of dozens of stores. Lastly, manufacturers can sell directly to consumers, set up their own stores, etc.... Basically storefronts might double the price but they are providing a lot of value to the customer.
Apple is providing practically zero value to the customer, has almost zero overhead, and doesn't allow competing storefronts. At least with android, android gives you the option to sideload apps. Apple doesn't even give you that. As far as providing "free advertising", that's pretty much worthless too. If you want to actually promote your app, Apple charges extra to the developer for that. 30% is highway robbery and they only reason they are able to charge it is because they have a complete monopoly.
Trump isn't aggressively enforcing anything. He's selectively enforcing. His wife's parents "chain migrated" to this country, to use his administration's terminology.
Trump's wife came here legally. Enforcing laws against ILLEGAL immigrants and not against LEGAL immigrants is not selective enforcement. Chain migration probably should be curtained but again that's why we have immigration laws and if we don't like them that we change the laws.
This idea where people pretend to be unable to distinguish between LEGAL and ILLEGAL immigrants is getting old. That's like not making a distinction between someone driving legally or not driving illegally and saying that the police are arresting people for driving.
Actually, Ulysses S. Grant begs to differ: I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.
This reminds me of Trump's current strict enforcement of immigration laws. By strict enforcement of the current laws, I'm still hoping Trump can convince both sides to come together and create a better system with better laws.
And, if your guests disregard parties being explicitly disallowed by rules they signed
It makes zero sense to rent out a house for New Years Eve and disallow parties. If you donâ(TM)t want parties thatâ(TM)s fine but then you shouldnâ(TM)t be renting your house out on New Years Eve because NO ONE rents a house for New Years Eve and then doesnâ(TM)t have a party.
I think oil changes, new tires, etc.. are a better example than gasoline and fits the analogy better. If you skip on oil changes or new tires you will eventually end up with an expensive tow bill.
Anyone have any suggestions on how to measure success of this experiment in a year or two or three, such that those who think it's a good idea
I don't think it's possible to measure the success or failure of something like UBI at year 2 or year 3 because I think it takes longer than 3 years to see actual changes in people's behavior. I think the bare minimum needs to be 5 years so that it at least gives someone enough time to go back to college. If we want to see actual results then look at the many smaller lottery winners with 20 year payouts. Does getting an extra 1k or 2k a month cause long term changes in behavior?
The idea of UBI is that if people had enough, they would would be more willing to take extra risks, to have their lives above basic income, but so far that doesn't seem the case. I think people value security vs wealth.
Exactly this. All the current experiments are a failure because they only give extra short term security not long term security. None of the UBI experiments last long enough for someone to even go back to school and get a 4 year degree. If you want a good UBI experiment then model it after one of the many lotteries which give X dollars for life. If this sounds too expensive, then you can do this on the cheap by selling lottery tickets to fund this. This might skew the stats slightly but lottery ticket purchasers have a pretty decent overlap with the people who UBI is supposed to help so it likely would still be plenty accurate. Have a lottery where the winner gets either 1k or 2k per month for life and then watch to see if these people go back to school, etc....
While I don't agree with such long copyright, the problem is people using your characters for sub standards story, or even porn version while you are still working on a sequel.
Imagine one movie theater projecting a porn version the same day as the latest star War from the original author.
Trademarks still usually apply and this already happens anyways. Porn versions usually fall under parody and there are already full length Star Wars porn movies.
Slashdot Mirror
Time zones make sense as you don't want my clock to be 5 minutes different than your time but the time itself should be set based on some concept of sunrise, sunset, or high noon. What you are really asking is "what time of day is it in X?" or even "will so-in-so be awake / at work?" If we just set people's timezone where 7am is always the approximate time of sunrise then this would answer this question fine and businesses can set schedules appropriately. Many businesses already have summer and winter hours so daylight savings time does nothing but complicates the communication.
The different lengths of days doesn't really matter that much either as people still tend to be awake for the same number of hours regardless of season and if we are talking international, Australia has short days during the same time that Europe has long days. Better to just pick the timezone where your true sunrise is the closest to 7am and be done with it.
The ultimate solution to this is primarily technological in nature.
The real problem though is that these robocallers make money...
The ultimate solution is not merely technological but rather financial. Even if they are hacking PBXs and getting the phone calls for free, there is still someone's time involved somewhere. There needs to be a way to quickly report them in real time so that the telecoms can disconnect them as well as a way to make it unprofitable. If on average it takes 100 calls to get one victim, if just 5% of those first 100 had to ability to report it, you could shut them down the majority of time before they reached the first victim even if it was a hacked PBX. Secondly, you need to put in better safeguards in the financial world so that finding a victim is less profitable. Better restrictions on first time users of western union, bitcoin gateways, or any other ways that they are getting the money. The harder you make it for the victim to send money, the more likely the victim will be unable to do it, will ask for help, or detect something is up.
There are 3 main ways to stop almost all types of spams, scams, and crimes:
1) Starve the money so that they don't make as much per scam or there are more hoops to jump thru to get it.
2) Increase the noise to signal ratio so it's harder to find victims.
3) Better reporting so they are more likely to get caught or shut down before finding a victim.
The spam calls I receive do not mention my name or any other identifying information.
As far as I can see, they are just calling numbers randomly.
I am skeptical that keeping your phone number confidential will make any difference at all.
Completely agree. Most of the calls I receive have the same matching 1-XXX-XXX prefix. As I no longer live in that town or have any friends there, I can safely ignore them but my assumption is they are just calling all 9999 numbers in that prefix with another random number in that same prefix. I know the number is spoofed too because I originally tried to call a few of them back out of curiosity and I also get people regularly calling "me" back so I know they are using my number to call other people as well.
I say something similar when it comes to karma. Good things happen more often to good people. Bad things happen more often to bad people. Criminals usually eventually get caught. Itâ(TM)s a numbers game. Yes, bad things happen to good people and vice/versa but in generally doing the right thing is rewarded more often than doing the wrong thing. Luck is a huge part of life but it helps to try to stack the deck in your favor by being nice, aquiring appropriate skills, avoiding stupid decisions, being prepared, etc...
An informed public is elemental to a healthy democracy.
Sure, sensationalism sucks but this alternative is far worse. Do you really want whoever is currently in power deciding which outlets receive funding?
For news to be worth anything it can't be controlled by the government and if the government is collecting the money and distributing it then they effectively control the media. Would CNN receive some of this tax money? What about Fox News? What about Breitbart? What about Wikileaks? What about the National Enquirer? How can anyone fairly decide who gets to pick the winners and the losers because anytime the government is handing out money that is exactly what happens. Letting any government body handpick which media gets funded eventually results in state controlled media.
If Mercury is close to the other planets, it may be beneficial to get to there rather than to Mars.
Not really. The only reason that the average distance between Mercury and the other planets is shortest is because the distance is shorter when Mercury is on the far side of the sun so you would need to travel thru the center of the sun to traverse this path. It would still technically be the shortest also by going around the sun but I canâ(TM)t think of a scenerio where stopping at Mercury first on the way to a planet on the far side really makes sense unless it was to take advantage of a free ride on their faster orbit around the sun to reach the backside.
Find a boss who'll let you work 8-4 in the summer instead of 9-5.
Plenty of white collar jobs have flex hours, core hours, or something similar. Many blue collar jobs already use the sun not the clock to decide when work starts.
Except there are literally hundreds of additional data points which allow websites to uniquely identify you.
The point isn't just to identify you as unique but for you to both be unique the first time AND recognizable the next time you come back. This seems like a much easier problem to solve. Just change as many of the settings as you can each time you visit a website. If you had a browser capable of randomly tweaking settings at each page load it should be able to add enough noise that browser fingerprinting would become worthless. As an added bonus, not only would it protect your browser, the noise would add a touch of herd immunity and help other people with stock browsers as well. The goal shouldn't be to lock down a browser so that nothing is leaked but rather to leak so much random crap that it becomes worthless.
Bascially, all your "customers" are required to do is share the source if they share binaries (in the case of the GPL 2.0) or not remove the license information (in the case of BSD-like licenses). If you can't live with that, don't publish under those licenses.
The problem is that places like Amazon *ARE* "sharing the binary" as a service but then not sharing the modified source. The GPL was written when the primary way of sharing software was via binaries not services.
Open means you don't get to control what other people do.
You're wrong. Pretty much every open source software out there has an actual license attached which controls what people can do. One of the more common, GPL, was designed so that anyone can use it but if you sold a derivative that you have to open source the derivative too. This worked well when people were primarily selling software. The problem is that now places like google and amazon are selling services not software and as their derivatives are technically not being sold, they are not required to release the source to them. The GPL probably needs to be updated to include SaaS or at least IaaS but this is easier said than done because companies like Netflix and many other companies are also SaaS and also likely use custom GPL software that isn't exposed at all to the public. The goal of the GPL isn't "if you make money we want some of it" but rather "If you make improvements, you need to open source them so we can back port them". The GPL is basically saying "No Closed Source Forks". By that definition, Google, Amazon, and are plenty of others are in clear violation. The simplest solution is probably to rewrite the GPL explicitly so that it does say "No Closed Source Forks" and make it a requirement that all Forks are publicly available on something like github.
start providing ARM Linux laptops with very similar processors to the ones used in servers. I'll buy a few myself.
The don't have to be identical just function similarly. For instance, if you can do development on a 16 core Raspberry PI that functions identically to a 64 core ARM in the cloud, that would be enough in many cases. What you don't want is subtle changes between the systems and/or the local development to be a unsupported variation. The local development needs to be just as supported and tested as the cloud version if not more so. Noone wants to hack together a local development environment that is only halfway compatible with the production version. It's the same reason things like Docker and $5 cloud development servers are winning.
It would seem to me, that we need to solve the problem where these conditions where people cannot get a bank account needs to be solved. The problem isn't the plastic card, but the fact the banks will not offer them.
This problem is solved. They are called prepaid debit. Basically, unlike a credit card or a bank account, overdrafts/overlimits are impossible.
Some companies have even started using them for payroll cards. Overdrafts/overlimits for a credit/debit card is a stupid money grabbing idea anyways.
Overdrafts only really made sense in the paper check day when it took a while to verify funds.
If you can't overdraft the card then everyone can always get one even people with bad credit.
Many smarttvs now have roku built in and although this is better than crappy software that is never updated, it still locks the upgrade of the smarts to the upgrade of the tv. This sometimes makes sense in small form factor devices but there is no reason I should have to upgrade my tv and my straming device at the same time.
They're either buying into the same marketing and media hype for the half-assed excuse for AI everyone keeps trotting out, or they've got something nobody else has, meaning general AI. The latter is highly unlikely, if they did we wouldn't be hearing about it at all.
If they had general AI, they wouldn't need to build a super computer powered expert system just to tell whether someone is buying something. This is a complete waste of time. You have a better chance of reaching the moon by building longer and longer ladders than you do reaching general intelligence by hardcoding facts.
Obviously enough that Netflix received over $800 Million a year just from those iOS users that paid for their subscription via the app.
Using IOS to pay for Netflix and occasionally watch Netflix is not the same as watching Netflix exclusively on your phone. My guess is most of that $800 million will still flow to Netflix a different way. Netflix is likely making the same assumption.
No one in their right mind would ever allow an always listening, internet connected, device in their home.
They aren't technically always listening devices *yet*. They are currently built so that they can only recognize their special phrase and only then does it capture and send the data to the cloud to interpret. This is why it can still respond to its special phrase even when there is no internet but it can't actually interpret what you say without internet.
I can't imagine Apple allowing that sort of behavior to stand.
All they would have to do is pull the app from iTunes. They aren't required to provide the user base to Netflix for nothin ya know.
What percentage of people watch Netflix exclusively on iOS? My guess is even if they pulled the app, most people wouldn't care because they are using a roku, a smart tv, or some other non-ios app to watch Netflix.
I am surprised though that Apple and Netflix didn't negotiate the rate down to something more reasonable like 5%. It would seem to be beneficial to both of them to negotiate this rate. My guess is that they did try to secretly negotiate and this is just each side trying to call each other's bluff. Either that or Netflix is starting to see Apple as a competitor and has decided that giving any money to a competitor is bad.
There is a huge difference between a storefront selling something and what Apple is doing. A physical storefront has to pay for shipping the getting the goods to the storefront as well as the physical store and the people to work at the store. Also, with a physical storefront, you generally have the choice of dozens of stores.
Lastly, manufacturers can sell directly to consumers, set up their own stores, etc.... Basically storefronts might double the price but they are providing a lot of value to the customer.
Apple is providing practically zero value to the customer, has almost zero overhead, and doesn't allow competing storefronts. At least with android, android gives you the option to sideload apps. Apple doesn't even give you that. As far as providing "free advertising", that's pretty much worthless too. If you want to actually promote your app, Apple charges extra to the developer for that. 30% is highway robbery and they only reason they are able to charge it is because they have a complete monopoly.
Trump isn't aggressively enforcing anything. He's selectively enforcing. His wife's parents "chain migrated" to this country, to use his administration's terminology.
Trump's wife came here legally. Enforcing laws against ILLEGAL immigrants and not against LEGAL immigrants is not selective enforcement.
Chain migration probably should be curtained but again that's why we have immigration laws and if we don't like them that we change the laws.
This idea where people pretend to be unable to distinguish between LEGAL and ILLEGAL immigrants is getting old.
That's like not making a distinction between someone driving legally or not driving illegally and saying that the police are arresting people for driving.
Actually, Ulysses S. Grant begs to differ: I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.
This reminds me of Trump's current strict enforcement of immigration laws. By strict enforcement of the current laws, I'm still hoping Trump can convince both sides to come together and create a better system with better laws.
And, if your guests disregard parties being explicitly disallowed by rules they signed
It makes zero sense to rent out a house for New Years Eve and disallow parties. If you donâ(TM)t want parties thatâ(TM)s fine but then you shouldnâ(TM)t be renting your house out on New Years Eve because NO ONE rents a house for New Years Eve and then doesnâ(TM)t have a party.
I think oil changes, new tires, etc.. are a better example than gasoline and fits the analogy better. If you skip on oil changes or new tires you will eventually end up with an expensive tow bill.
Anyone have any suggestions on how to measure success of this experiment in a year or two or three, such that those who think it's a good idea
I don't think it's possible to measure the success or failure of something like UBI at year 2 or year 3 because I think it takes longer than 3 years to see actual changes in people's behavior. I think the bare minimum needs to be 5 years so that it at least gives someone enough time to go back to college. If we want to see actual results then look at the many smaller lottery winners with 20 year payouts. Does getting an extra 1k or 2k a month cause long term changes in behavior?
The idea of UBI is that if people had enough, they would would be more willing to take extra risks, to have their lives above basic income, but so far that doesn't seem the case. I think people value security vs wealth.
Exactly this. All the current experiments are a failure because they only give extra short term security not long term security. None of the UBI experiments last long enough for someone to even go back to school and get a 4 year degree. If you want a good UBI experiment then model it after one of the many lotteries which give X dollars for life. If this sounds too expensive, then you can do this on the cheap by selling lottery tickets to fund this. This might skew the stats slightly but lottery ticket purchasers have a pretty decent overlap with the people who UBI is supposed to help so it likely would still be plenty accurate. Have a lottery where the winner gets either 1k or 2k per month for life and then watch to see if these people go back to school, etc....
While I don't agree with such long copyright, the problem is people using your characters for sub standards story, or even porn version while you are still working on a sequel.
Imagine one movie theater projecting a porn version the same day as the latest star War from the original author.
Trademarks still usually apply and this already happens anyways. Porn versions usually fall under parody and there are already full length Star Wars porn movies.