Let's hope the stink this revelation will create gives the new administration the incentive to eliminate one of our most hated three-letter agencies.
Say what? I'm sure the new administration will cut the DEA even more slack and give them more power. Then the DEA may come after you, 'cause it's obvious that you're smoking something you didn't buy at the local convenience store.
... So just what has the DEA done that benefits the US?
Well, they've contributed massively to jobs and the economy. Just think of all those private prisons whose sole purpose is pretty much to house people who either used and/or sold drugs, or were railroaded - that's a massive boost to the construction industry, and to the guards and administrators who might not otherwise get jobs. And don't forget all those law enforcement officers and administrators - major jobs there. Then there's civil forfeiture - it's difficult to justify stealing people's money and stuff unless you can falsely accuse them of some spurious drug-related 'crime' that they probably didn't commit anyway. Hell, some police departments' budgets rely heavily on civil forfeiture - they base revenue projections on it, for Christ's sake...
What's that you say? All of this is actually a net drain on the economy? The social cost is huge? It violates both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution? Well, citizen, I don't like your tone, so it's time to fork over some of YOUR assets, and maybe spend a night in jail. We have a voodoo-based Ponzi-scheme-inspired economy to maintain; we can't let people like you stand in our way, regardless of how logical and factual your arguments may be.
...I mean shit, the article says the FTC 'release a report with measures the carriers could take to prevent unauthorized charges from appearing on customers bills'...SERIOUSLY...here's a simple measure DO NOT BILL FOR SERVICES THE CUSTOMER DIDN'T ASK FOR & YOU DIDN'T PROVIDE! If AT&T isn't providing the service & I didn't order it from them then why are they charging me ANYTHING. Just fine them the $20B & I guarantee you every carrier on the planet will figure out for themselves how to make sure this never happens again, no advice from the FTC needed.
I came here to say that the figure should be $880 million instead of the chump-change fine levied by the FTC. But I like your approach much better. Even a billion is only a (slightly steep) COB for a company like AT&T, but 20 gigabucks would seriously get their attention. The fact that agencies like the FTC don't levy meaningful fines is just more evidence of the ever-increasing levels of control that corporations exert over the government.
Even at that, the situation might be better if Joe and Jane Average bothered to get out a calculator and discover that although $88 million would be a sweet Powerball win, to a big corporation it's the budgetary equivalent of a Happy Meal. Then maybe they'd pressure the people they elected to do the right thing.
Heck, I would even pay more than the current ticket price. But unless they get rid of ALL advertisements for anything other than new movies, (as well as getting rid of those craptacular trivia quizzes), then I'll continue going only to movies that I really want to see on a BIG screen - which is probably about 10 percent of what I would watch in the cinema if it wasn't for the adverts. I really hate paying for the 'privilege' of being advertised to.
As for being able to watch a movie at home as soon as it's released, it's rare for me to want to see a flick that urgently. The delay between theatrical release and Blu-Ray doesn't usually bother me - I have lots of other movies to watch, and lots of other stuff to do.
Great! So I have had a subordinate entering all the relevant data into our system to make the right business decisions and you have intentionally withheld critical data? Security, please escort this man from the building.
An interesting and insightful comment - I have no clue why you were modded down. Sadly, I have no mod points right now..
As Techcrunch mentions, "Sony doesn't play nice with anyone else's standards". They never met a standard they couldn't ignore in favour of their own proprietary approaches unless said standard was already too well entrenched to ignore. Sony was doing the 'all your interface are belong to us' thing long before Apple adopted it, and I find it hard to believe that they can ever be a viable member of a standards organization.
I get that people want terrorist content to be censored. There are obvious moral, ethical, and political problems with such censorship, and they are being thoroughly debated in other threads here. But I think we need to ask some deeper questions. Why are citizens of ostensibly free nations, (such as America), so drawn to becoming fundamentalist terrorists that we have to try to 'cover their eyes' with censorship? And why are fundamentalists in Muslim countries SO angry with the 'infidels' that they are willing to take the lives of others, and kill themselves, just to make their point?
Deep and wide-spread currents of dissatisfaction run at the root of terrorism's growth. We need to acknowledge the tremendous psychological pressures that lead to terrorism, and we need to begin healing the social, political, and spiritual disenfranchisement that our societies create. A good place to start would be in our schools, with promoting the principles of individualism, autonomy, open-mindedness, compassion, and the Golden Rule. A generation raised on these values just might stop pissing off other nations so much that they fly airplanes into our skyscrapers. Sadly, the public schools are in fact religious schools, and the high priests of corporatism will never let this happen. They have too much invested in the powerlessness of the citizenry - their Ponzi scheme of an economic structure relies on it.
FTS: "... 44 percent of the CEOs surveyed agreed that robotics, automation and AI would reshape the future of many work places by making people "largely irrelevant."
Well, you flaming fucktards, when they become largely irrelevant as your employees, then they will also become largely irrelevant as your customers. Then who's going to buy all that shit you sell? And if you're counting on sales from the rest of your point-one-percenter circle jerk, you'd best remember that there will ultimately be a similar point-one-percent among your kind. Are you so laughably certain that you'll continue to be a member of the 'one in a thousand' club? I know you'll find this impossible to even contemplate, but I'll throw it out there anyway: your good fortune has MUCH more to do with luck than it does with your brilliance, charm, hard work, or whatever. Luck can and does run out.
If it's like the suggestions that Google puts up when I'm typing a search query, then it's useless and annoying to me, and I'd turn it off, just as I've turned Google's inept attempts at reading my mind. The problem is, the suggestions are almost always either wrong, or incomplete. It would be useful sometimes, if it allowed me to populate the search field with one of their suggestions and add text to the suggestion BEFORE they do the search.
In the case of Opera, what they consider 'obvious' has a good chance of NOT being what the user desires. People often type in a URL that points to something other than the main page of the site they plan to visit. Unless Opera can figure that out, (and that's pretty unlikely), then it will waste time and resources loading a page that the user may have no intention of visiting.
... and forge ahead not on a new course but on the course that set America apart and above.
The "course that set America apart and above" is not the course that America is currently following. Arguably, America's path has been quite different from that set by the Founding Fathers for at least several decades, and perhaps for a couple of centuries or thereabouts.
Why, does "Fuck off, fucktard. You're such a stupid fuck" qualify as a hate speech?
It doesn't. But there IS stuff on Slashdot that qualifies, although IMHO there's not a lot. But if you browse at -1 as I always do, you'll see it.
Arguably, the moderation system here already takes care of the problem. Users who aren't logged in won't see much if any hate speech; it almost never makes it higher than +3, and if it does then it drops below that threshold pretty quickly. So they actually have to drill down to find it - it's not immediately obvious. Users who ARE logged in are unlikely to see it if they browse at +1 or higher, (again, unless they drill down), because most of it is posted by AC's whose comments start at 0. People who browse at lower than +1 soon know what to expect and can determine if they want to see that stuff or not.
Godwin time: Mein Kampf is still available for anyone to read, but it isn't unexpectedly waved in front of anyone's face - people have to seek it out. Hate speech on Slashdot is similar to that. And this kind of speech SHOULDN'T be banned; we need to maintain an ongoing awareness that those attitudes exist and are actively shaping our world. People should be able to easily avoid most of it if they so desire, but hiding it entirely and driving it totally underground is dangerous.
Brits, why did you let them do this? You're letting them take your freedom and letting them grant themselves powers that will keep you out of the loop and perpetuate their own power, preventing you from being able to do anything about it in the future...
I could as easily ask "Yanks, why did you let them do this?" about any number of assaults on freedom and privacy committed by the US government. The US has been running headlong down the same road for 15 years and change, with nary a peep from Joe and Jane Average.
Every time the government of a supposed 'free' country pulls shit like this, two things happen. First, the fact that the terrorists have already won their war against free countries becomes more and more obvious. Second, the differences between the 'free' nations and the terrorist states becomes harder and harder to discern.
Every program that invades the privacy of anyone other than known or suspected criminals and their associates, should fail in a similarly spectacular fashion.
Every other artificial sweetener tastes... artificial. I can't taste anything but unpleasant chemicals.
I suspect what you're tasting isn't 'artficiality'. For example, if you taste glucose, sucrose, and stevia, they taste remarkably different, even though they are natural sweeteners. On the other hand, if you compare items sweetened with Aspartame and those sweetened with stevia, you'll find that they taste similar. It seems that the 'very sweet' sweeteners have that kind of cloying sweetness that you can taste all down your throat and that leaves an unpleasant aftertaste, even when they are diluted so the sweetness is equivalent to that of sucrose.
There's a whole science and a lot of experimentation behind sweetness profiles in things like soft drinks. Whatever Coca-Cola did with Coke Zero makes it enjoyable for me to drink, although I can still immediately tell that it's not sweetened with regular sugar. But I still can't drink Diet Coke - the taste makes me wince, and the aftertaste is worse.
For at least the duration of Trump's presidency, it seems almost certain that 'net neutrality is done like dinner, government surveillance will increase unchecked, and attempts to cripple encryption will continue unabated. It might be best to spend the money in countries where they have a better chance of getting some traction, at least until some sanity returns to Washington. Or should I have said "New York"? It's so hard to tell these days.
With the sensational leftist tabloid boogeyman headlines and clickbait articles, this isn't the site for me anymore. You've jumped the shark/. kindly go fuckoff and join all the other extremist sites while I go search for tech news that matters.
Your shrill little tirade would be worth discussing if you hadn't posted as an AC; but since you couldn't be bothered to log in first, or were so embarrassed that even pseudonymity wouldn't do, then good luck, and good riddance to you.
I agree with everything you said, but recommend caution with regard to the following:
... If you want actual research on pot you have to leave the US. You'll find a different view in any country outside the US, so you have to approach any study in the US with very very high skepticism. I'm not saying its wrong, but you know its biased from the start, so you have to be careful to pick out the facts from the implications...
I would say that you have to approach any study ANYWHERE in the world with high skepticism. Yes, the US has a huge economic stake, (and the concomitant ideological stake), in proving the evils of pot. On the other hand, other jurisdictions have ideological stakes in proving pot's harmlessness. They also have economic stakes; for example, here in Canada where we're about to legalize pot, the government stands to make a lot of money from its controlled sale and distribution.
I would say that the American government's position on marijuana has the same level of ignorance, fear, and fervor as the typical fundamentalist religion. That doesn't mean that other more liberal, more moderate countries are neutral and without agendas on this issue.
Let me guess: you work for the government now in a cushy IT contracting job because that is all you could get?
... I'm in my 22nd year of my technical career doing computer security in government IT, making 50% less money than my Silicon Valley peers because I serve the taxpayers.
I'm impressed by your CV, but I'm sorry you felt you had to justify yourself to the fuckwit troll you were replying to. I already knew you were a better man than he based on your previous posts in this thread.
You might note that as the drone "returns to home"...
You seem to have missed the part where Mister Binary said "ISIS Drone 2.0 now contains differential antennas and will, when losing all communication, follow the source of the jamming signal". The drone could be modified and re-programmed to seek the jammer and drop a bomb when the signal strength maxes out. The operator would have to turn the jammer off to save his own ass from the drone he's trying to bring down. Of course, if that happens, deployment of decoy jammers will soon follow.
I bought three Nike Golf polos on Kohl's website yesterday for $50. I'm not a big Nike guy, but those shirts are awesome for work, and normally cost about three times that price.
#buycott
So let me get this right - you paid ONLY one-third the normal price for the 'privilege' of allowing Nike to use your body as a walking billboard? Good for you my man - way to grab a bargain! I suppose it never occurred to you that if you were advertising for Nike on a building you own or a magazine you publish, THEY would pay YOU for advertising for them.
Why should plastering a company's logo on your body cost YOU money?
He may not fully understand why it seems bad, but it is part of a trend to value human life as well as almost everything else in terms of money alone.
Complaining about people measuring value in money is like complaining about measuring sound volume in decibels. The sound's not going to get any louder or quieter just because you''re squeamish about assigning a numeric value to it's current volume.
Complaining about people measuring the value of human life in money is like complaining about measuring temperature rise in decibels. FTFY.
Different things have different units of measure; some of us understand that money is a wholly inappropriate metric for the value of human life.
As I was reading TFA, it occurred to me that the ability of a machine to lip-read does indeed qualify as artificial intelligence. I then thought about all the posts I expect to read that say "No, this isn't AI". So maybe it's time to create a new term, "Artificial Sentience". This would distinguish between machines simply doing very complex tasks that used to be exclusively human endeavours, (such as lip reading), and machines that have self awareness and can independently, and with purpose, initiate actions toward goals defined entirely by and within the machine. I know that this rather goes against Turing's definition of AI, but I think it would add both clarity and granularity to the discussion.
Further, I would add that Artificial Intelligence is a necessary-but-not-sufficient condition for Artificial Sentience. I don't know that Artificial Sentience will ever exist, but I'm pretty sure in my own mind that Artificial Intelligence has already arrived.
Then there's the matter of whether anything truly sentient can be regarded as 'artificial' - but that's a whole 'nother question.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's hope the stink this revelation will create gives the new administration the incentive to eliminate one of our most hated three-letter agencies.
Say what? I'm sure the new administration will cut the DEA even more slack and give them more power. Then the DEA may come after you, 'cause it's obvious that you're smoking something you didn't buy at the local convenience store.
... So just what has the DEA done that benefits the US?
Well, they've contributed massively to jobs and the economy. Just think of all those private prisons whose sole purpose is pretty much to house people who either used and/or sold drugs, or were railroaded - that's a massive boost to the construction industry, and to the guards and administrators who might not otherwise get jobs. And don't forget all those law enforcement officers and administrators - major jobs there. Then there's civil forfeiture - it's difficult to justify stealing people's money and stuff unless you can falsely accuse them of some spurious drug-related 'crime' that they probably didn't commit anyway. Hell, some police departments' budgets rely heavily on civil forfeiture - they base revenue projections on it, for Christ's sake...
What's that you say? All of this is actually a net drain on the economy? The social cost is huge? It violates both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution? Well, citizen, I don't like your tone, so it's time to fork over some of YOUR assets, and maybe spend a night in jail. We have a voodoo-based Ponzi-scheme-inspired economy to maintain; we can't let people like you stand in our way, regardless of how logical and factual your arguments may be.
...I mean shit, the article says the FTC 'release a report with measures the carriers could take to prevent unauthorized charges from appearing on customers bills'...SERIOUSLY...here's a simple measure DO NOT BILL FOR SERVICES THE CUSTOMER DIDN'T ASK FOR & YOU DIDN'T PROVIDE! If AT&T isn't providing the service & I didn't order it from them then why are they charging me ANYTHING. Just fine them the $20B & I guarantee you every carrier on the planet will figure out for themselves how to make sure this never happens again, no advice from the FTC needed.
I came here to say that the figure should be $880 million instead of the chump-change fine levied by the FTC. But I like your approach much better. Even a billion is only a (slightly steep) COB for a company like AT&T, but 20 gigabucks would seriously get their attention. The fact that agencies like the FTC don't levy meaningful fines is just more evidence of the ever-increasing levels of control that corporations exert over the government.
Even at that, the situation might be better if Joe and Jane Average bothered to get out a calculator and discover that although $88 million would be a sweet Powerball win, to a big corporation it's the budgetary equivalent of a Happy Meal. Then maybe they'd pressure the people they elected to do the right thing.
Heck, I would even pay more than the current ticket price. But unless they get rid of ALL advertisements for anything other than new movies, (as well as getting rid of those craptacular trivia quizzes), then I'll continue going only to movies that I really want to see on a BIG screen - which is probably about 10 percent of what I would watch in the cinema if it wasn't for the adverts. I really hate paying for the 'privilege' of being advertised to.
As for being able to watch a movie at home as soon as it's released, it's rare for me to want to see a flick that urgently. The delay between theatrical release and Blu-Ray doesn't usually bother me - I have lots of other movies to watch, and lots of other stuff to do.
Great! So I have had a subordinate entering all the relevant data into our system to make the right business decisions and you have intentionally withheld critical data? Security, please escort this man from the building.
An interesting and insightful comment - I have no clue why you were modded down. Sadly, I have no mod points right now..
As Techcrunch mentions, "Sony doesn't play nice with anyone else's standards". They never met a standard they couldn't ignore in favour of their own proprietary approaches unless said standard was already too well entrenched to ignore. Sony was doing the 'all your interface are belong to us' thing long before Apple adopted it, and I find it hard to believe that they can ever be a viable member of a standards organization.
... a complete and udder compromise ...
Were you the one who kept writing the "moo cows" posts that were so common here before the "app apps" posts took over?
I get that people want terrorist content to be censored. There are obvious moral, ethical, and political problems with such censorship, and they are being thoroughly debated in other threads here. But I think we need to ask some deeper questions. Why are citizens of ostensibly free nations, (such as America), so drawn to becoming fundamentalist terrorists that we have to try to 'cover their eyes' with censorship? And why are fundamentalists in Muslim countries SO angry with the 'infidels' that they are willing to take the lives of others, and kill themselves, just to make their point?
Deep and wide-spread currents of dissatisfaction run at the root of terrorism's growth. We need to acknowledge the tremendous psychological pressures that lead to terrorism, and we need to begin healing the social, political, and spiritual disenfranchisement that our societies create. A good place to start would be in our schools, with promoting the principles of individualism, autonomy, open-mindedness, compassion, and the Golden Rule. A generation raised on these values just might stop pissing off other nations so much that they fly airplanes into our skyscrapers. Sadly, the public schools are in fact religious schools, and the high priests of corporatism will never let this happen. They have too much invested in the powerlessness of the citizenry - their Ponzi scheme of an economic structure relies on it.
FTS: "... 44 percent of the CEOs surveyed agreed that robotics, automation and AI would reshape the future of many work places by making people "largely irrelevant."
Well, you flaming fucktards, when they become largely irrelevant as your employees, then they will also become largely irrelevant as your customers. Then who's going to buy all that shit you sell? And if you're counting on sales from the rest of your point-one-percenter circle jerk, you'd best remember that there will ultimately be a similar point-one-percent among your kind. Are you so laughably certain that you'll continue to be a member of the 'one in a thousand' club? I know you'll find this impossible to even contemplate, but I'll throw it out there anyway: your good fortune has MUCH more to do with luck than it does with your brilliance, charm, hard work, or whatever. Luck can and does run out.
Can I share trusted info with "close friends and family members" without sharing it with YOU? No? That's what I thought.
No thanks. I'm not interested in volunteering still more data about myself to add to the already humongous pile you already possess.
If it's like the suggestions that Google puts up when I'm typing a search query, then it's useless and annoying to me, and I'd turn it off, just as I've turned Google's inept attempts at reading my mind. The problem is, the suggestions are almost always either wrong, or incomplete. It would be useful sometimes, if it allowed me to populate the search field with one of their suggestions and add text to the suggestion BEFORE they do the search.
In the case of Opera, what they consider 'obvious' has a good chance of NOT being what the user desires. People often type in a URL that points to something other than the main page of the site they plan to visit. Unless Opera can figure that out, (and that's pretty unlikely), then it will waste time and resources loading a page that the user may have no intention of visiting.
... and forge ahead not on a new course but on the course that set America apart and above.
The "course that set America apart and above" is not the course that America is currently following. Arguably, America's path has been quite different from that set by the Founding Fathers for at least several decades, and perhaps for a couple of centuries or thereabouts.
Why, does "Fuck off, fucktard. You're such a stupid fuck" qualify as a hate speech?
It doesn't. But there IS stuff on Slashdot that qualifies, although IMHO there's not a lot. But if you browse at -1 as I always do, you'll see it.
Arguably, the moderation system here already takes care of the problem. Users who aren't logged in won't see much if any hate speech; it almost never makes it higher than +3, and if it does then it drops below that threshold pretty quickly. So they actually have to drill down to find it - it's not immediately obvious. Users who ARE logged in are unlikely to see it if they browse at +1 or higher, (again, unless they drill down), because most of it is posted by AC's whose comments start at 0. People who browse at lower than +1 soon know what to expect and can determine if they want to see that stuff or not.
Godwin time: Mein Kampf is still available for anyone to read, but it isn't unexpectedly waved in front of anyone's face - people have to seek it out. Hate speech on Slashdot is similar to that. And this kind of speech SHOULDN'T be banned; we need to maintain an ongoing awareness that those attitudes exist and are actively shaping our world. People should be able to easily avoid most of it if they so desire, but hiding it entirely and driving it totally underground is dangerous.
Brits, why did you let them do this? You're letting them take your freedom and letting them grant themselves powers that will keep you out of the loop and perpetuate their own power, preventing you from being able to do anything about it in the future...
I could as easily ask "Yanks, why did you let them do this?" about any number of assaults on freedom and privacy committed by the US government. The US has been running headlong down the same road for 15 years and change, with nary a peep from Joe and Jane Average.
Every time the government of a supposed 'free' country pulls shit like this, two things happen. First, the fact that the terrorists have already won their war against free countries becomes more and more obvious. Second, the differences between the 'free' nations and the terrorist states becomes harder and harder to discern.
Every program that invades the privacy of anyone other than known or suspected criminals and their associates, should fail in a similarly spectacular fashion.
Every other artificial sweetener tastes ... artificial. I can't taste anything but unpleasant chemicals.
I suspect what you're tasting isn't 'artficiality'. For example, if you taste glucose, sucrose, and stevia, they taste remarkably different, even though they are natural sweeteners. On the other hand, if you compare items sweetened with Aspartame and those sweetened with stevia, you'll find that they taste similar. It seems that the 'very sweet' sweeteners have that kind of cloying sweetness that you can taste all down your throat and that leaves an unpleasant aftertaste, even when they are diluted so the sweetness is equivalent to that of sucrose.
There's a whole science and a lot of experimentation behind sweetness profiles in things like soft drinks. Whatever Coca-Cola did with Coke Zero makes it enjoyable for me to drink, although I can still immediately tell that it's not sweetened with regular sugar. But I still can't drink Diet Coke - the taste makes me wince, and the aftertaste is worse.
For at least the duration of Trump's presidency, it seems almost certain that 'net neutrality is done like dinner, government surveillance will increase unchecked, and attempts to cripple encryption will continue unabated. It might be best to spend the money in countries where they have a better chance of getting some traction, at least until some sanity returns to Washington. Or should I have said "New York"? It's so hard to tell these days.
With the sensational leftist tabloid boogeyman headlines and clickbait articles, this isn't the site for me anymore. You've jumped the shark /. kindly go fuckoff and join all the other extremist sites while I go search for tech news that matters.
Your shrill little tirade would be worth discussing if you hadn't posted as an AC; but since you couldn't be bothered to log in first, or were so embarrassed that even pseudonymity wouldn't do, then good luck, and good riddance to you.
I agree with everything you said, but recommend caution with regard to the following:
... If you want actual research on pot you have to leave the US. You'll find a different view in any country outside the US, so you have to approach any study in the US with very very high skepticism. I'm not saying its wrong, but you know its biased from the start, so you have to be careful to pick out the facts from the implications...
I would say that you have to approach any study ANYWHERE in the world with high skepticism. Yes, the US has a huge economic stake, (and the concomitant ideological stake), in proving the evils of pot. On the other hand, other jurisdictions have ideological stakes in proving pot's harmlessness. They also have economic stakes; for example, here in Canada where we're about to legalize pot, the government stands to make a lot of money from its controlled sale and distribution.
I would say that the American government's position on marijuana has the same level of ignorance, fear, and fervor as the typical fundamentalist religion. That doesn't mean that other more liberal, more moderate countries are neutral and without agendas on this issue.
Let me guess: you work for the government now in a cushy IT contracting job because that is all you could get?
... I'm in my 22nd year of my technical career doing computer security in government IT, making 50% less money than my Silicon Valley peers because I serve the taxpayers.
I'm impressed by your CV, but I'm sorry you felt you had to justify yourself to the fuckwit troll you were replying to. I already knew you were a better man than he based on your previous posts in this thread.
You might note that as the drone "returns to home"...
You seem to have missed the part where Mister Binary said "ISIS Drone 2.0 now contains differential antennas and will, when losing all communication, follow the source of the jamming signal". The drone could be modified and re-programmed to seek the jammer and drop a bomb when the signal strength maxes out. The operator would have to turn the jammer off to save his own ass from the drone he's trying to bring down. Of course, if that happens, deployment of decoy jammers will soon follow.
I bought three Nike Golf polos on Kohl's website yesterday for $50. I'm not a big Nike guy, but those shirts are awesome for work, and normally cost about three times that price.
#buycott
So let me get this right - you paid ONLY one-third the normal price for the 'privilege' of allowing Nike to use your body as a walking billboard? Good for you my man - way to grab a bargain! I suppose it never occurred to you that if you were advertising for Nike on a building you own or a magazine you publish, THEY would pay YOU for advertising for them.
Why should plastering a company's logo on your body cost YOU money?
He may not fully understand why it seems bad, but it is part of a trend to value human life as well as almost everything else in terms of money alone.
Complaining about people measuring value in money is like complaining about measuring sound volume in decibels. The sound's not going to get any louder or quieter just because you''re squeamish about assigning a numeric value to it's current volume.
Complaining about people measuring the value of human life in money is like complaining about measuring temperature rise in decibels. FTFY.
Different things have different units of measure; some of us understand that money is a wholly inappropriate metric for the value of human life.
'Nuff said.
As I was reading TFA, it occurred to me that the ability of a machine to lip-read does indeed qualify as artificial intelligence. I then thought about all the posts I expect to read that say "No, this isn't AI". So maybe it's time to create a new term, "Artificial Sentience". This would distinguish between machines simply doing very complex tasks that used to be exclusively human endeavours, (such as lip reading), and machines that have self awareness and can independently, and with purpose, initiate actions toward goals defined entirely by and within the machine. I know that this rather goes against Turing's definition of AI, but I think it would add both clarity and granularity to the discussion.
Further, I would add that Artificial Intelligence is a necessary-but-not-sufficient condition for Artificial Sentience. I don't know that Artificial Sentience will ever exist, but I'm pretty sure in my own mind that Artificial Intelligence has already arrived.
Then there's the matter of whether anything truly sentient can be regarded as 'artificial' - but that's a whole 'nother question.