I agree that having assets that are fully liquid is a silly standard to hold something to, but that's not the issue here. If you own real estate, its value may change over time, but selling your properties wouldn't drive the fair market price down across the entire market. There's nothing stopping you from selling any or all of your properties fortheir full value. Those assets may not be liquid, but they still have a worth that can, for all intents and purposes, be redeemed at full value.
In contrast, when someone owns a large chunk of stock in a company, the very act of attempting to sell that stock usually devalues the stock to the point that they aren't actually getting anywhere close to the price on paper. The problem isn't that they aren't liquid: the problem is that not all of the stock can be redeemed at full value, and because the stocks can't be redeemed at full value, they aren't actually worth what they're listed at.
Apple isn't and hasn't been sharing FaceID data. Your facial "fingerprint" is not being shared. No data from the Secure Enclave is being shared. And apps do have to ask for and be granted permission before they have access to any of the new APIs.
This whole thing is being poorly reported by the media to make it sound like something other than it is. It is a cause for concern, to be sure, and certainly something that users should be aware of, but it's not nearly what they're making it out to be.
So what's actually happening? Well, while iOS is sharing facial data, it is NOT sharing FaceID data. iOS can now recognize one of about 50 different facial expressions and report them back to an app in realtime via new APIs, allowing the app (after it's received permission) to understand your facial expressions. And in the same way that the recently added AR APIs allow iOS to provide the shape of nearby objects to apps so that they can map virtual items into 3D space, apps can now use those APIs to map items onto your face. The example they gave was applying a silly mask onto the user's face in realtime, which is a fun thing for the kids to do, I guess?
However, based on the images I've seen of the raw points apps have access to, they're not getting anything even CLOSE to the full-resolution scan of 30K IR points, which makes sense, since (as you said) there really isn't a need for them to have anything of the sort. Rather, they're getting a significantly lower-resolution 3D mesh of your face that's sufficient for their needs without being good enough to create their own "fingerprint" that could be used to produce a facsimile of your face. And, of course, at no point is the actual "fingerprint" of your face that the iPhone produces for FaceID ever handed over to apps. It remains locked within the Secure Enclave.
As for permissions, right now apps are receiving them when they ask for access to the camera. To me, that's the biggest issue at play, since it's not immediately apparent to users what's happening, but they're all part of that same sensor suite, so I can see why Apple may have grouped them like that. That said, with this much public concern regarding the sharing facial data, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple makes the 3D sensors require separate permissions starting in an upcoming dot-release of iOS.
Thus, the distinction you outlined is without difference and we are back to spin.
Not so. Re-read what you originally asked for. You questioned "[t]he technically-important differences" between the two, so I made a technical distinction between them: "plugs work this way, injections work that way". That's not spin. That's factual. It's plain for anyone to see that there's a clear difference between them, which is precisely what you asked for. You made no effort to ascribe or discuss any sort of moral judgment.
And yet, the injection is highly beneficial to you and "blocking" it is generally considered dangerous [...] the addition can still be useful — indeed, life-saving. And the other way around — adding poison will kill you even if you use the "official" orifice designed for it (your mouth).
The fact that neither is inherently good nor inherently evil has no bearing on the technical distinctions I outlined between the two, which is what you asked for and what I provided (i.e. you're moving the goalposts by bringing up an unrelated topic to "refute" what I said).
Had you instead simply clarified that you intended to discuss the moral distinction between the two from the start, you would have quickly found me in agreement with you that neither method is inherently good nor evil. We make those determinations on a case-by-case basis, and I'd agree with you that in this particular case it's a bit murky. There are arguments to be made for both sides as to whether injections are good or bad. I lean towards them being bad, but I can see how someone else would come down on the other side.
So, I don't mean to pick on you specifically, but your post is a good example of a common misconception I frequently see in Slashdot comments whenever this topic comes up. Namely, your whole post is predicated on the notion that the AI to worry about is the AI that has decided to kill us, whereas we have far more to fear, particularly in the short-term, from systems that have the ability to kill us without any comprehension of what they're doing.
For instance, anyone familiar with the concept of gray goo is aware of how artificial systems can destroy humanity without possessing any notion of what they are doing. We wouldn't be supplanted by a greater intelligence. We'd simply be eradicated by mistake.
Current AIs are closer to resembling specially trained animals than "intelligences" that we can reason with. We already have remotely operated and semi-autonomous drones operating in war zones, with more in development, and I have no doubt that should a major war break out we'd soon see fully autonomous drones making their own kill/no-kill calls in the field.
At that point, it's easy to imagine a scenario where these relatively dumb war robots kill us all, not because a super intelligence like Skynet makes a choice to eradicate us, but rather because a mundane bug causes the drones to misidentify their targets. We wouldn't be destroyed by an intelligence intent on supplanting us: we'd be destroyed by mobile, autonomous mines on land, air, and sea.
If we manage to get to the point where we achieve strong, general purpose AI, I agree with you that we have every reason to believe we'd be able achieve a peaceful coexistence with them, but we're still decades (if not centuries or more) away from needing to worry about having AIs that are capable of turning against us out of malice/misguided principles/etc.. For now, it's the things that we'd hesitate to even call "AI" that we need to worry about killing us.
From what I've gathered, there are a few issues at play: 1) Redbox neither purchased a digital copy, nor are they selling a digital copy. They purchased and are selling a code that can be used to redeem a digital copy. That said, to actually redeem the digital copy, one needs to agree to Disney's license.
2) Redbox is almost certainly aware that it won't be legal for their customers to redeem those digital copies without also owning a physical copy, since the fine print in these sorts of licenses almost always requires that the person also owns a physical copy. As such, those codes are worthless without the physical copy.
3) Redbox is apparently selling the codes as if they are a standalone means to purchase a digital copy, even though they can't be used that way. In doing so, there's an argument to be made that they're either engaging in fraud by portraying the product as something other than it is, or else that they're inducing others to engage in illegal behavior by selling an item that they have every reason to believe will be used illicitly.
Yes, the first-sale doctrine means that Disney exhausted their rights to the items included in the purchase at the time of sale, but the digital copy wasn't included in the purchase. The code to redeem it was. And while it's likely perfectly legal to sell the code, portraying it as a standalone item that can be legally used by others without any additional purchase is exactly the sort of thing that I'd expect to see end up in court.
What's the difference between "plugging in" and "injecting"? Spin!
Hardly, and I'm a little disappointed that there's a need to explain the difference to an adult.
You plug things into receptacles designed to accept those things, whereas you inject things so as to bypass barriers that those things are not otherwise able or intended to cross. I'm not "injecting" a power plug when I plug it into the wall. The wall outlet is designed to take the plug. I'm not "plugging in" a syringe when I receive a tetanus booster shot in my arm. It's being injected into me in order to bypass my skin, which would otherwise keep it out.
Chrome provides frameworks by which developers can "plug in" third-party code (e.g. userscripts, extensions, apps, etc.), and many of us here have experience in developing those. But those frameworks are intentionally limited so that they can only accept code that's designed to work within their APIs. In contrast, the code being injected by these third parties has no such constraints, since they've injected it in a way that bypasses Chrome's frameworks.
Great questions. At least to me, there's one other distinction at the heart of our expectations: did we share it incidentally or intentionally?
The phone companies only have this information because they must as a requirement for providing service, not because I'm intending to share it with them. In fact, the data is being shared from the exact same device to the exact same company by the exact same person as it would be when I make a phone call, so why wouldn't they be treated the same? I expect my calls to be private, even though the phone company incidentally has access to them as a necessity for the operation of their service. Why wouldn't I expect my location data to be private as well, given that it's only shared to them incidentally for the operation of their service?
What you're describing is exactly why experts frequently have their credibility challenged and why they need to provide the means by which to verify their credentials. The problem here is that they're providing no means by which to establish or confirm the credibility of the algorithm, and they know that doing so doesn't harm them as it would with an expert witness.
Imagine if the prosecution put an "expert" on the stand who testified how the prosecution wanted, but when the defense attorney asked where the "expert" went to school, where they worked, or how long they had been practicing, the "expert" refused to answer those questions and instead asked the jury to simply trust their "expert" opinion. They'd be laughed out of the court room, since the jury wouldn't know whether the "expert" was actually an expert or just a guy off the street. And that's how it should be.
Unfortunately, refusing to provide a means by which the credibility of this algorithm can be ascertained doesn't elicit the same response. Machines are commonly viewed as unbiased, logical, and factual, so while a human's refusal to allow their credentials to be verifiedwould be an immediate red flag, with a machine it doesn't mean much to most people. People are accustomed to thinking that algorithms produce factual results that can be taken at face value.
That's a problem when it comes to things that need to be verifiable, whether it's evidence in court or votes in an election.
You wouldn’t, but that’s sorta like asking why we bother adding lanes to highways when they already have enough lanes to cover today’s needs. We add them because we need to be ready to handle tomorrow’s needs.
These sorts of specs are the roads tomorrow’s content will be driving on, so if we ever want better content, we need to keep pushing out the means by which we’d enjoy it. And, frankly, while it sounds like Verizon is screwing you over (a shock, I’m sure), there’s plenty of 1080p and beyond content available that many of us are able to enjoy at this point, with more and more becoming available each day, so it’s time to push the standard ahead again.
For my part, I’m most looking forward to dynamic HDR, quick resolution changes with no blank screens, and variable refresh rates becoming part of the standard. Hopefully in 10 years or so, I’ll actually be able to enjoy some of those benefits.
The scandal angle I don’t care to read here, but hearing that a famous founder of a company is “taking a leave of absence” just a few weeks after the launch of their much-hyped device? That’s news for nerds, since it’s a klaxon call for anyone still working at Essential to abandon ship, and it’s a signal to the rest of us that Essential is essentially done at this point.
If it were really that important, why didn't Obama implement it early in his tenure?
Because it wasn't a problem at the time?
Prior to cable ISPs, all other ISPs (e.g. dial-up and DSL) were classified as common carriers, but cable ISPs were able to sneak through a loophole because they had started in a different industry. Despite that, cable ISPs originally respected net neutrality because they needed to remain competitive with the dominant dial-up and DSL ISPs who were being compelled to respect net neutrality. It wasn't until cable ISPs achieved dominance that they were finally in a position where they could take advantage of the loophole, which is when the FCC began making attempts at closing that loophole, though it took them a few tries and a few years to succeed at doing so.
Of course, he's a Trump appointee, so he must be evil and lying.
As you said, he was originally an Obama appointee, but my opinion of him has nothing to do with who appointed him. Rather, I, along with plenty of others here, were actually quite willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially after the previous chair of the FCC defied many of our expectations, having come from a background as a telecom lobbyist. I was willing to withhold my judgment of Pai until he first had a chance to prove himself. Now that he's shown his colors, yes, I think that he's evil and lying, but it has nothing to do with who appointed him. It's simply based on the actions he's chosen to take.
Much of the regulation pushed through the FCC by the Obama administration was a deliberate departure from the intent and letter of the law. This is one of them.
Not so. While I can't speak to other regulations (none of which are relevant to the topic at hand anyway), the federal appeals court specifically said (as it was striking down an actual regulatory overreach on the part of the FCC) that the FCC had the authority to regulate cable ISPs by reclassifying them as common carriers, so the FCC's doing so was most certainly in accordance with the intent and letter of the law. Moreover, it was in line with the regulations imposed on every single prior ISP in the history of the world wide web, so these are far from being new, arbitrary, or heavy-handed regulations.
Now, if you're asking for a US-specific example, you won't find them, because—despite the false narrative to the contrary—net neutrality has been around in the US from the start of the world wide web, preventing exactly these sorts of shenanigans from happening.
Originally, net neutrality was enforced because dial-up and DSL ISPs—which are classified as common carriers, meaning that they have to treat all data equally—were how we connected to the Internet. Later, even though the cable ISPs weren't under any legal obligation to respect net neutrality, they did so anyway because they weren't in a position to abandon net neutrality while remaining competitive with common carrier ISPs. Eventually, however, the cable ISPs became dominant, so they began to take advantage of their lack of competition and lack of regulation, which is when we saw Comcast and others begin engaging in various shenanigans (e.g. charging sites like Netflix extra to deliver packets that their customers were already paying Comcast to deliver).
Thankfully, the FCC reclassified the cable companies as common carriers within a few years, meaning that the cable ISPs came under the exact same regulations that every ISP prior to them in the history of the Internet had been regulated under, namely, that they would be compelled to respect net neutrality, the same as all others before them.
Frankly, despite being a registered Republican who never voted for Obama, I'm sick and tired of the false narrative "my" side has been spinning about net neutrality, and it sickened me when it became a politicized, partisan issue after Obama voiced his support for net neutrality. "My" side has been suggesting it's an unconscionable form of heavy-handed regulation enacted by a dictatorial President, when the truth of the matter is that the FCC was simply closing a loophole that allowed newcomers (the cable ISPs) to avoid regulations that had been in place from the very first days of the world wide web.
Why shouldn't they believe it works? It does! The people don't know what they don't know.
I talked with a Chinese grad student quite awhile back, and eventually the topic of censorship came up. When I suggested that the Great Firewall was a problem, he contended that it wasn't and that the US did the exact same sorts of things. As you'd expect, he couldn't name a single example of the US actually doing so, he'd just been told that we did it too. And when I listed off a half dozen different terms, sites, and services that were censored in China and spelled out how a person's lack of access to them could shape their views or impede their ability to make informed decisions, he had no clue what I was talking about. He had either never heard of them, had been told that the nearest Chinese equivalents were the same/better, or else he was under the impression that the things I mentioned were far, far different than what they actually were, so he didn't see any harm in their removal.
More or less, despite having been in the US for a few years at that point, he lived in a bubble, so he continued to believe what he had been told and filtered all new information through that lens. Or, putting it differently, he was living in ignorance and was—at least in some regards—blissful for it. It's the same reason North Korea is able to continue as it does.
To say the least, when I invited him to spend Thanksgiving with my parents and my family it was an eye-opening experience for him. He was shocked to see the seeming opulence we enjoyed as a middle-class family, since despite having been in the US for three years, he had never been in an American home. Having five bedrooms for a four-person family? And keeping it after two of them had left for college and beyond? Having an entire cabinet merely to display curios that had been collected over the decades? Having decorative plants, both real and fake, that served no functional purpose, not to mention numerous other decorations? Eating a bird that was the size of a small dog and knowing that everyone else in the country was doing so as well that day? All of it flew in the face of the narrative he had been fed about the standard of living in China being just as good as it is in the US, and he made no attempt at hiding his continued astonishment.
Mind you, nearly all large organizations, from businesses to nations, attempt to control and influence the narrative surrounding them for the benefit of their own self-interests (the US included, of course). The difference here, however, is the degree of direct influence the government exerts over all of the information that their citizens receive, as well as the degree to which they've succeeded in doing so up to this point.
We can and should condemn it, but we can't say that it's proven itself to be ineffective. At least not yet. Hopefully that day will come.
Interesting. Based on the comments, it sounds like it's somewhat divisive. Some Brits are saying "of" is wrong, others are saying they could go either way on it, so perhaps it's not as widely derided in Britain as I recall reading all those years ago?
An Americanism? Your (the whole group of you) google-fu was poor. "Get Off of My Cloud" is a song written by a British (English) band, The Rolling Stones [...] If it's an Americanism, it made it back to England some time before 1965.
I'm afraid you jumped to a conclusion.
As I recall, we quickly figured out the link to The Rolling Stones in our Googling, but we also recognized that rock stars tend to be well-traveled—and thus poor indicators of regional usage—so we kept Googling to see where the usage was considered acceptable. Again, at that point we (the Americans in the room) were still trying to prove that it was Indian English that had dropped the usage, rather than that it was an Americanism. Nevertheless, the more we dug, the more we found that its acceptance was largely isolated to the US, though historically it may have been more widespread. From what we gathered, some Brits do use the term, but it's discouraged in many British English grammatical texts today and is considered by many to be just as grating as "on of" would be to an American.
That reminds me of a story from my time in grad school. We had these weekly seminars in my research group where we'd present papers from our field in a round robin fashion. One week, the paper being presented had a title that included "Get off of my cloud" (which was apparently a reference to a song none of us had ever heard of).
An Indian student in the group voiced his annoyance at the use of the word "of" in the title, saying it was nonsensical and grammatically incorrect. Our Russian research advisor (who spoke English as well as any native speaker) was aware of the "of" usage, but didn't know if it was grammatically correct or not. Those of us from America all said that the usage was perfectly acceptable, no different than "get off of the bus" or the like, but we acknowledged it was a rather weird quirk of the English language and suggested that Indian English may have simply dropped it.
But the original student was soon joined by the others from India and Bangladesh, all of whom insisted that the usage was patently incorrect, just as much as an American would agree that "get on of the bus" is patently incorrect. Eventually laptops were pulled out and Google was consulted for the answer. As it turned out, "off of" is an Americanism that none of us had been aware of, and in all other Commonwealth and former colonial territories "of" isn't used in that way.
More broadly speaking, however, English is the lingua franca of the day, so it's a moving target. In just checking, it looks like macOS' baked-in localization has defined 135 variants of English, which is up substantially from just a few years ago. I expect, however, that with us increasingly communicating with people from around the world, English as a trend will converge on whatever's easiest, so that'd mean simpler spellings (e.g. "colour" -> "color"), the dropping of extra words (e.g. the aforementioned "of"), and a more widespread acceptance of oddball expressions (e.g. "do the needful") as people choose not to care about whether it's grammatically correct, so long as they can understand it.
That's the desktop browser share, but the majority of Internet browsing has been on mobile for several years now, so citing desktop numbers without providing any context is rather disingenuous.
When you look at overall browser usage, Firefox falls back to 4th with a 6-7% share (behind either IE or a Chinese mobile browser I had never heard of), depending on whose numbers you use. And regardless of whose numbers you use, Chrome + Safari account for about 2/3 of all browser usage (with Chrome alone accounting for about 1/2).
So, a few thoughts: 1) Most people in retail aren’t doing it as a career. They’re doing it as a way to make supplemental income, as something to do over the summer, as something to put themselves through college, or as something to hold them over between jobs. All of those people will likely find better jobs later, regardless of retail being around, but having that retail job in the meantime allows them to avoid student loans, avoid having to scramble to put food on the table, and avoid being left behind by friends who can afford the new Xbox. Having easy access to low-skill jobs is a good thing.
2) The “unemployment rate” calculation has been modified over the years, with the new methodology tending to produce significantly better looking values. I’m fine with either methodology, so long as you stick to just one when making comparisons to previous years, since that’s the only way to have an apples-to apples comaprison. When you actually do so, you’ll see that, no, we’re not at a historic low.
3) There isn’t evidence that these jobs are being replaced by others. Rather, these people are simply not working (since the pay was supplemental to begin with, the loans were easier to find than the work, or they could stretch their emergency fund out longer to cover job loss), which in most of those cases doesn’t get reported as unemployment according to the new methodology, hence why you may have thought as you did. While I’m fine with the new methodology, that is one of the ways that it has the potential to mislead people.
Mind you, I’m fine with malls going bust and most of retail dying out, but let’s not stick our heads in the sand and pretend that there are no downsides should that occur. Nor should we lie to ourselves about the benefits retail provides to people, particularly people in transitional phases of life.
It was 6800 stores, not 6800 people, and many of the ones being mentioned were department stores (e.g. Macy’s, J.C. Penny, etc.) that could easily be employing hundreds of people apiece, so we’re not talking about just 6000 people. Even places like American Apparel, which is closing all 110 of its remaining stores, averaged about 22 employees per store. The Mom & Pop place my wife works (which is thankfully doing quite well, since they depend more on service than sales) only has two people in the front at any given time, but between people in the back, support staff, and people not scheduled to work on any given day, they actually employ around 10 people, which you’d never realize by just walking in.
And the trend towards closures has been rising in recent years. The linked Wikipedia article mentions that between 25% and 50% of America’s 1200 malls are expected to close within the next five to six years. Sears has closed nearly 2000 stores in the last few years. Kmart has closed about 1500 in the last decade, with more to go.
Suggesting it’s just 6000 people is a gross underestimation.
Please stop modding my comment up. I was incorrect in saying it was India (it was actually Pakistan), so please mod my comment down and mod up one of the responses that corrects me.
Darned if I know. It’s pretty clear I got it wrong, and the corrections are immediately under my post, so I don’t know why mine keeps getting modded up. I’d retract it if I could.
Thanks for the correction, rude as it may have been. I actually did search for it, but finding nothing (since I was apparently barking up the wrong tree with my searches), I went ahead and posted a quick response, figuring that if I was mistaken someone would be along to correct me. So, again, thank you for the correction.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that having assets that are fully liquid is a silly standard to hold something to, but that's not the issue here. If you own real estate, its value may change over time, but selling your properties wouldn't drive the fair market price down across the entire market. There's nothing stopping you from selling any or all of your properties fortheir full value. Those assets may not be liquid, but they still have a worth that can, for all intents and purposes, be redeemed at full value.
In contrast, when someone owns a large chunk of stock in a company, the very act of attempting to sell that stock usually devalues the stock to the point that they aren't actually getting anywhere close to the price on paper. The problem isn't that they aren't liquid: the problem is that not all of the stock can be redeemed at full value, and because the stocks can't be redeemed at full value, they aren't actually worth what they're listed at.
Apple isn't and hasn't been sharing FaceID data. Your facial "fingerprint" is not being shared. No data from the Secure Enclave is being shared. And apps do have to ask for and be granted permission before they have access to any of the new APIs.
This whole thing is being poorly reported by the media to make it sound like something other than it is. It is a cause for concern, to be sure, and certainly something that users should be aware of, but it's not nearly what they're making it out to be.
So what's actually happening? Well, while iOS is sharing facial data, it is NOT sharing FaceID data. iOS can now recognize one of about 50 different facial expressions and report them back to an app in realtime via new APIs, allowing the app (after it's received permission) to understand your facial expressions. And in the same way that the recently added AR APIs allow iOS to provide the shape of nearby objects to apps so that they can map virtual items into 3D space, apps can now use those APIs to map items onto your face. The example they gave was applying a silly mask onto the user's face in realtime, which is a fun thing for the kids to do, I guess?
However, based on the images I've seen of the raw points apps have access to, they're not getting anything even CLOSE to the full-resolution scan of 30K IR points, which makes sense, since (as you said) there really isn't a need for them to have anything of the sort. Rather, they're getting a significantly lower-resolution 3D mesh of your face that's sufficient for their needs without being good enough to create their own "fingerprint" that could be used to produce a facsimile of your face. And, of course, at no point is the actual "fingerprint" of your face that the iPhone produces for FaceID ever handed over to apps. It remains locked within the Secure Enclave.
As for permissions, right now apps are receiving them when they ask for access to the camera. To me, that's the biggest issue at play, since it's not immediately apparent to users what's happening, but they're all part of that same sensor suite, so I can see why Apple may have grouped them like that. That said, with this much public concern regarding the sharing facial data, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple makes the 3D sensors require separate permissions starting in an upcoming dot-release of iOS.
Thus, the distinction you outlined is without difference and we are back to spin.
Not so. Re-read what you originally asked for. You questioned "[t]he technically-important differences" between the two, so I made a technical distinction between them: "plugs work this way, injections work that way". That's not spin. That's factual. It's plain for anyone to see that there's a clear difference between them, which is precisely what you asked for. You made no effort to ascribe or discuss any sort of moral judgment.
And yet, the injection is highly beneficial to you and "blocking" it is generally considered dangerous [...] the addition can still be useful — indeed, life-saving. And the other way around — adding poison will kill you even if you use the "official" orifice designed for it (your mouth).
The fact that neither is inherently good nor inherently evil has no bearing on the technical distinctions I outlined between the two, which is what you asked for and what I provided (i.e. you're moving the goalposts by bringing up an unrelated topic to "refute" what I said).
Had you instead simply clarified that you intended to discuss the moral distinction between the two from the start, you would have quickly found me in agreement with you that neither method is inherently good nor evil. We make those determinations on a case-by-case basis, and I'd agree with you that in this particular case it's a bit murky. There are arguments to be made for both sides as to whether injections are good or bad. I lean towards them being bad, but I can see how someone else would come down on the other side.
So, I don't mean to pick on you specifically, but your post is a good example of a common misconception I frequently see in Slashdot comments whenever this topic comes up. Namely, your whole post is predicated on the notion that the AI to worry about is the AI that has decided to kill us, whereas we have far more to fear, particularly in the short-term, from systems that have the ability to kill us without any comprehension of what they're doing.
For instance, anyone familiar with the concept of gray goo is aware of how artificial systems can destroy humanity without possessing any notion of what they are doing. We wouldn't be supplanted by a greater intelligence. We'd simply be eradicated by mistake.
Current AIs are closer to resembling specially trained animals than "intelligences" that we can reason with. We already have remotely operated and semi-autonomous drones operating in war zones, with more in development, and I have no doubt that should a major war break out we'd soon see fully autonomous drones making their own kill/no-kill calls in the field.
At that point, it's easy to imagine a scenario where these relatively dumb war robots kill us all, not because a super intelligence like Skynet makes a choice to eradicate us, but rather because a mundane bug causes the drones to misidentify their targets. We wouldn't be destroyed by an intelligence intent on supplanting us: we'd be destroyed by mobile, autonomous mines on land, air, and sea.
If we manage to get to the point where we achieve strong, general purpose AI, I agree with you that we have every reason to believe we'd be able achieve a peaceful coexistence with them, but we're still decades (if not centuries or more) away from needing to worry about having AIs that are capable of turning against us out of malice/misguided principles/etc.. For now, it's the things that we'd hesitate to even call "AI" that we need to worry about killing us.
From what I've gathered, there are a few issues at play:
1) Redbox neither purchased a digital copy, nor are they selling a digital copy. They purchased and are selling a code that can be used to redeem a digital copy. That said, to actually redeem the digital copy, one needs to agree to Disney's license.
2) Redbox is almost certainly aware that it won't be legal for their customers to redeem those digital copies without also owning a physical copy, since the fine print in these sorts of licenses almost always requires that the person also owns a physical copy. As such, those codes are worthless without the physical copy.
3) Redbox is apparently selling the codes as if they are a standalone means to purchase a digital copy, even though they can't be used that way. In doing so, there's an argument to be made that they're either engaging in fraud by portraying the product as something other than it is, or else that they're inducing others to engage in illegal behavior by selling an item that they have every reason to believe will be used illicitly.
Yes, the first-sale doctrine means that Disney exhausted their rights to the items included in the purchase at the time of sale, but the digital copy wasn't included in the purchase. The code to redeem it was. And while it's likely perfectly legal to sell the code, portraying it as a standalone item that can be legally used by others without any additional purchase is exactly the sort of thing that I'd expect to see end up in court.
What's the difference between "plugging in" and "injecting"? Spin!
Hardly, and I'm a little disappointed that there's a need to explain the difference to an adult.
You plug things into receptacles designed to accept those things, whereas you inject things so as to bypass barriers that those things are not otherwise able or intended to cross. I'm not "injecting" a power plug when I plug it into the wall. The wall outlet is designed to take the plug. I'm not "plugging in" a syringe when I receive a tetanus booster shot in my arm. It's being injected into me in order to bypass my skin, which would otherwise keep it out.
Chrome provides frameworks by which developers can "plug in" third-party code (e.g. userscripts, extensions, apps, etc.), and many of us here have experience in developing those. But those frameworks are intentionally limited so that they can only accept code that's designed to work within their APIs. In contrast, the code being injected by these third parties has no such constraints, since they've injected it in a way that bypasses Chrome's frameworks.
Great questions. At least to me, there's one other distinction at the heart of our expectations: did we share it incidentally or intentionally?
The phone companies only have this information because they must as a requirement for providing service, not because I'm intending to share it with them. In fact, the data is being shared from the exact same device to the exact same company by the exact same person as it would be when I make a phone call, so why wouldn't they be treated the same? I expect my calls to be private, even though the phone company incidentally has access to them as a necessity for the operation of their service. Why wouldn't I expect my location data to be private as well, given that it's only shared to them incidentally for the operation of their service?
I mean, that's how it works here too, right?
You must be new around here if you need to ask. ;)
What you're describing is exactly why experts frequently have their credibility challenged and why they need to provide the means by which to verify their credentials. The problem here is that they're providing no means by which to establish or confirm the credibility of the algorithm, and they know that doing so doesn't harm them as it would with an expert witness.
Imagine if the prosecution put an "expert" on the stand who testified how the prosecution wanted, but when the defense attorney asked where the "expert" went to school, where they worked, or how long they had been practicing, the "expert" refused to answer those questions and instead asked the jury to simply trust their "expert" opinion. They'd be laughed out of the court room, since the jury wouldn't know whether the "expert" was actually an expert or just a guy off the street. And that's how it should be.
Unfortunately, refusing to provide a means by which the credibility of this algorithm can be ascertained doesn't elicit the same response. Machines are commonly viewed as unbiased, logical, and factual, so while a human's refusal to allow their credentials to be verifiedwould be an immediate red flag, with a machine it doesn't mean much to most people. People are accustomed to thinking that algorithms produce factual results that can be taken at face value.
That's a problem when it comes to things that need to be verifiable, whether it's evidence in court or votes in an election.
You wouldn’t, but that’s sorta like asking why we bother adding lanes to highways when they already have enough lanes to cover today’s needs. We add them because we need to be ready to handle tomorrow’s needs.
These sorts of specs are the roads tomorrow’s content will be driving on, so if we ever want better content, we need to keep pushing out the means by which we’d enjoy it. And, frankly, while it sounds like Verizon is screwing you over (a shock, I’m sure), there’s plenty of 1080p and beyond content available that many of us are able to enjoy at this point, with more and more becoming available each day, so it’s time to push the standard ahead again.
For my part, I’m most looking forward to dynamic HDR, quick resolution changes with no blank screens, and variable refresh rates becoming part of the standard. Hopefully in 10 years or so, I’ll actually be able to enjoy some of those benefits.
The scandal angle I don’t care to read here, but hearing that a famous founder of a company is “taking a leave of absence” just a few weeks after the launch of their much-hyped device? That’s news for nerds, since it’s a klaxon call for anyone still working at Essential to abandon ship, and it’s a signal to the rest of us that Essential is essentially done at this point.
If it were really that important, why didn't Obama implement it early in his tenure?
Because it wasn't a problem at the time?
Prior to cable ISPs, all other ISPs (e.g. dial-up and DSL) were classified as common carriers, but cable ISPs were able to sneak through a loophole because they had started in a different industry. Despite that, cable ISPs originally respected net neutrality because they needed to remain competitive with the dominant dial-up and DSL ISPs who were being compelled to respect net neutrality. It wasn't until cable ISPs achieved dominance that they were finally in a position where they could take advantage of the loophole, which is when the FCC began making attempts at closing that loophole, though it took them a few tries and a few years to succeed at doing so.
Of course, he's a Trump appointee, so he must be evil and lying.
As you said, he was originally an Obama appointee, but my opinion of him has nothing to do with who appointed him. Rather, I, along with plenty of others here, were actually quite willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially after the previous chair of the FCC defied many of our expectations, having come from a background as a telecom lobbyist. I was willing to withhold my judgment of Pai until he first had a chance to prove himself. Now that he's shown his colors, yes, I think that he's evil and lying, but it has nothing to do with who appointed him. It's simply based on the actions he's chosen to take.
Much of the regulation pushed through the FCC by the Obama administration was a deliberate departure from the intent and letter of the law. This is one of them.
Not so. While I can't speak to other regulations (none of which are relevant to the topic at hand anyway), the federal appeals court specifically said (as it was striking down an actual regulatory overreach on the part of the FCC) that the FCC had the authority to regulate cable ISPs by reclassifying them as common carriers, so the FCC's doing so was most certainly in accordance with the intent and letter of the law. Moreover, it was in line with the regulations imposed on every single prior ISP in the history of the world wide web, so these are far from being new, arbitrary, or heavy-handed regulations.
Portuguese ISPs are already charging people extra each month on top of their base rate if those customers want unfettered access to popular sites. It was even reported here just a few weeks ago. The only reason someone with an account at Slashdot, such as yourself, wouldn't be aware of these sorts of examples is if you're intentionally burying your head in the sand.
Now, if you're asking for a US-specific example, you won't find them, because—despite the false narrative to the contrary—net neutrality has been around in the US from the start of the world wide web, preventing exactly these sorts of shenanigans from happening.
Originally, net neutrality was enforced because dial-up and DSL ISPs—which are classified as common carriers, meaning that they have to treat all data equally—were how we connected to the Internet. Later, even though the cable ISPs weren't under any legal obligation to respect net neutrality, they did so anyway because they weren't in a position to abandon net neutrality while remaining competitive with common carrier ISPs. Eventually, however, the cable ISPs became dominant, so they began to take advantage of their lack of competition and lack of regulation, which is when we saw Comcast and others begin engaging in various shenanigans (e.g. charging sites like Netflix extra to deliver packets that their customers were already paying Comcast to deliver).
Thankfully, the FCC reclassified the cable companies as common carriers within a few years, meaning that the cable ISPs came under the exact same regulations that every ISP prior to them in the history of the Internet had been regulated under, namely, that they would be compelled to respect net neutrality, the same as all others before them.
Frankly, despite being a registered Republican who never voted for Obama, I'm sick and tired of the false narrative "my" side has been spinning about net neutrality, and it sickened me when it became a politicized, partisan issue after Obama voiced his support for net neutrality. "My" side has been suggesting it's an unconscionable form of heavy-handed regulation enacted by a dictatorial President, when the truth of the matter is that the FCC was simply closing a loophole that allowed newcomers (the cable ISPs) to avoid regulations that had been in place from the very first days of the world wide web.
Why shouldn't they believe it works? It does! The people don't know what they don't know.
I talked with a Chinese grad student quite awhile back, and eventually the topic of censorship came up. When I suggested that the Great Firewall was a problem, he contended that it wasn't and that the US did the exact same sorts of things. As you'd expect, he couldn't name a single example of the US actually doing so, he'd just been told that we did it too. And when I listed off a half dozen different terms, sites, and services that were censored in China and spelled out how a person's lack of access to them could shape their views or impede their ability to make informed decisions, he had no clue what I was talking about. He had either never heard of them, had been told that the nearest Chinese equivalents were the same/better, or else he was under the impression that the things I mentioned were far, far different than what they actually were, so he didn't see any harm in their removal.
More or less, despite having been in the US for a few years at that point, he lived in a bubble, so he continued to believe what he had been told and filtered all new information through that lens. Or, putting it differently, he was living in ignorance and was—at least in some regards—blissful for it. It's the same reason North Korea is able to continue as it does.
To say the least, when I invited him to spend Thanksgiving with my parents and my family it was an eye-opening experience for him. He was shocked to see the seeming opulence we enjoyed as a middle-class family, since despite having been in the US for three years, he had never been in an American home. Having five bedrooms for a four-person family? And keeping it after two of them had left for college and beyond? Having an entire cabinet merely to display curios that had been collected over the decades? Having decorative plants, both real and fake, that served no functional purpose, not to mention numerous other decorations? Eating a bird that was the size of a small dog and knowing that everyone else in the country was doing so as well that day? All of it flew in the face of the narrative he had been fed about the standard of living in China being just as good as it is in the US, and he made no attempt at hiding his continued astonishment.
Mind you, nearly all large organizations, from businesses to nations, attempt to control and influence the narrative surrounding them for the benefit of their own self-interests (the US included, of course). The difference here, however, is the degree of direct influence the government exerts over all of the information that their citizens receive, as well as the degree to which they've succeeded in doing so up to this point.
We can and should condemn it, but we can't say that it's proven itself to be ineffective. At least not yet. Hopefully that day will come.
Interesting. Based on the comments, it sounds like it's somewhat divisive. Some Brits are saying "of" is wrong, others are saying they could go either way on it, so perhaps it's not as widely derided in Britain as I recall reading all those years ago?
Yeah, I already addressed the fact that the song was British in origin in another comment.
An Americanism? Your (the whole group of you) google-fu was poor. "Get Off of My Cloud" is a song written by a British (English) band, The Rolling Stones [...] If it's an Americanism, it made it back to England some time before 1965.
I'm afraid you jumped to a conclusion.
As I recall, we quickly figured out the link to The Rolling Stones in our Googling, but we also recognized that rock stars tend to be well-traveled—and thus poor indicators of regional usage—so we kept Googling to see where the usage was considered acceptable. Again, at that point we (the Americans in the room) were still trying to prove that it was Indian English that had dropped the usage, rather than that it was an Americanism. Nevertheless, the more we dug, the more we found that its acceptance was largely isolated to the US, though historically it may have been more widespread. From what we gathered, some Brits do use the term, but it's discouraged in many British English grammatical texts today and is considered by many to be just as grating as "on of" would be to an American.
That reminds me of a story from my time in grad school. We had these weekly seminars in my research group where we'd present papers from our field in a round robin fashion. One week, the paper being presented had a title that included "Get off of my cloud" (which was apparently a reference to a song none of us had ever heard of).
An Indian student in the group voiced his annoyance at the use of the word "of" in the title, saying it was nonsensical and grammatically incorrect. Our Russian research advisor (who spoke English as well as any native speaker) was aware of the "of" usage, but didn't know if it was grammatically correct or not. Those of us from America all said that the usage was perfectly acceptable, no different than "get off of the bus" or the like, but we acknowledged it was a rather weird quirk of the English language and suggested that Indian English may have simply dropped it.
But the original student was soon joined by the others from India and Bangladesh, all of whom insisted that the usage was patently incorrect, just as much as an American would agree that "get on of the bus" is patently incorrect. Eventually laptops were pulled out and Google was consulted for the answer. As it turned out, "off of" is an Americanism that none of us had been aware of, and in all other Commonwealth and former colonial territories "of" isn't used in that way.
More broadly speaking, however, English is the lingua franca of the day, so it's a moving target. In just checking, it looks like macOS' baked-in localization has defined 135 variants of English, which is up substantially from just a few years ago. I expect, however, that with us increasingly communicating with people from around the world, English as a trend will converge on whatever's easiest, so that'd mean simpler spellings (e.g. "colour" -> "color"), the dropping of extra words (e.g. the aforementioned "of"), and a more widespread acceptance of oddball expressions (e.g. "do the needful") as people choose not to care about whether it's grammatically correct, so long as they can understand it.
That's the desktop browser share, but the majority of Internet browsing has been on mobile for several years now, so citing desktop numbers without providing any context is rather disingenuous.
When you look at overall browser usage, Firefox falls back to 4th with a 6-7% share (behind either IE or a Chinese mobile browser I had never heard of), depending on whose numbers you use. And regardless of whose numbers you use, Chrome + Safari account for about 2/3 of all browser usage (with Chrome alone accounting for about 1/2).
I think it relates more to the prices of their shares. They offered to buy them out at $X/ea., which just happened to come out to $103B.
So, a few thoughts:
1) Most people in retail aren’t doing it as a career. They’re doing it as a way to make supplemental income, as something to do over the summer, as something to put themselves through college, or as something to hold them over between jobs. All of those people will likely find better jobs later, regardless of retail being around, but having that retail job in the meantime allows them to avoid student loans, avoid having to scramble to put food on the table, and avoid being left behind by friends who can afford the new Xbox. Having easy access to low-skill jobs is a good thing.
2) The “unemployment rate” calculation has been modified over the years, with the new methodology tending to produce significantly better looking values. I’m fine with either methodology, so long as you stick to just one when making comparisons to previous years, since that’s the only way to have an apples-to apples comaprison. When you actually do so, you’ll see that, no, we’re not at a historic low.
3) There isn’t evidence that these jobs are being replaced by others. Rather, these people are simply not working (since the pay was supplemental to begin with, the loans were easier to find than the work, or they could stretch their emergency fund out longer to cover job loss), which in most of those cases doesn’t get reported as unemployment according to the new methodology, hence why you may have thought as you did. While I’m fine with the new methodology, that is one of the ways that it has the potential to mislead people.
Mind you, I’m fine with malls going bust and most of retail dying out, but let’s not stick our heads in the sand and pretend that there are no downsides should that occur. Nor should we lie to ourselves about the benefits retail provides to people, particularly people in transitional phases of life.
It was 6800 stores, not 6800 people, and many of the ones being mentioned were department stores (e.g. Macy’s, J.C. Penny, etc.) that could easily be employing hundreds of people apiece, so we’re not talking about just 6000 people. Even places like American Apparel, which is closing all 110 of its remaining stores, averaged about 22 employees per store. The Mom & Pop place my wife works (which is thankfully doing quite well, since they depend more on service than sales) only has two people in the front at any given time, but between people in the back, support staff, and people not scheduled to work on any given day, they actually employ around 10 people, which you’d never realize by just walking in.
And the trend towards closures has been rising in recent years. The linked Wikipedia article mentions that between 25% and 50% of America’s 1200 malls are expected to close within the next five to six years. Sears has closed nearly 2000 stores in the last few years. Kmart has closed about 1500 in the last decade, with more to go.
Suggesting it’s just 6000 people is a gross underestimation.
Please stop modding my comment up. I was incorrect in saying it was India (it was actually Pakistan), so please mod my comment down and mod up one of the responses that corrects me.
Darned if I know. It’s pretty clear I got it wrong, and the corrections are immediately under my post, so I don’t know why mine keeps getting modded up. I’d retract it if I could.
Thanks for the correction, rude as it may have been. I actually did search for it, but finding nothing (since I was apparently barking up the wrong tree with my searches), I went ahead and posted a quick response, figuring that if I was mistaken someone would be along to correct me. So, again, thank you for the correction.