Donald Trump isn't interested in knowing everything every American does every second of every single day
Then I guess we can expect him to refuse to sign such a law and protect our freedoms and liberties. Which is, by the way, pretty much part of his job...
The law isn't even necessarily the issue, except that it doesn't set up adequate 4th amendment protections and appears to be far too open ended... An open ended law isn't a problem if we (and Congress and the President) had greater transparency into how many Americans were being targeted and also how many Americans were being incidentally collected and also where those communications were originating or being received then it would go a long way towards either dispelling what we all suspect is mass abuse of a mass surveillance loophole or it would confirm those suspicions and require further reform to scale back the surveillance.
It is important to understand that Trump and every other elected president has an intentionally limited view into surveillance and if there is abuse going on then the spy agencies are going to drag their feet in responding to the president even. The idea being to prevent abuse of surveillance by politicians, but it also means that politicians can't exercise effective oversight.
At the very least he and Congress should both be demanding accountability and get real numbers overview to allow them and the public to ascertain the scope of mass surveillance. Because last time anyone checked it appeared that the Federal government was just sucking up every communication and sorting it out later which would be a massive violation of the constitution which undermines the rule of law and the safety of all Americans.
Ok, let's be clear about this. This "debate" is about what we suspect is still going on and about what Congress refuses to even ask of what is being done under FISA or the Patriot Act.
Most Americans including myself don't give a damn whether or not the Federal government is spying on the communications in and out of the US if it were actually being targeted at communications with terrorists, certain foreign institutions and foreign governments as part of legitimate national security and international criminal investigations... However the understanding of people that follow how this has been evolving is that this is merely a pretext for mass surveillance of internal communications and sending it over a wire to ease dropping facilities outside the US. Which would be blatantly a violation of the US Constitution if it were ever fully revealed... which is exactly the type of program that has been long rumored and based on leaks seems to have been what has been developed by US spy agencies.
And there are absolutely NO PROTECTIONS for preventing that or for Congress to even know if that is happening as they rubber stamp levels of spending on infrastructure that could and has been rumored to be doing exactly that.
At the very least the reporting requirements could be required to say how many "incidental" collections there are of Americans communications originating or terminating inside the US... I suspect that pretty much that number would be tens of millions of Americans or hundreds of millions of Americans which is exactly why Congress is afraid to ask because they know they would need to shut down mass surveillance if it were ever revealed to them.
For all the talk about how spying on Americans communications with foreigners is wrong... maybe it is. And I think it would be great if the world got together and really worked out how to prohibit mass surveillance in the rest of the world. Ultimately we should hope for a world were civil rights are respected around the world... but at the very least, here at home we need to step back from the police state mass surveillance infrastructure that has been built ready made for mass abuse and then start worrying about how this could infringe on Americans rights abroad.
To do that we need Congress to start by asking the question about how many Americans are having their communications hoovered up by mass surveillance under FISA orders.
How about instead of allowing telecoms to make business arrangements to speed up or slow down communications, let the FCC establish minimum standards of bandwidth and latency as well as minimum standards of interconnectivity with other networks based on averages of network traffic generated by users. And regulating peering technicalities should also represent the public interest in maintaining a reliable communication network.
And then give the telecoms options to provide so called "fast lanes" or faster service to customers that want to pay for it. Customers should be given the choice if they want to pay more for lower latency. And eventually minimum standards should be increased, in the way that the FCC eventually required higher quality TV broadcasts once the technology caught up.
For this fast lane approach to work to move the technology forward then it has to represent people paying for service that is actually faster and better and not just paying not to get throttled back.
Good points. It was really the whole shakedown of content providers like Netflix and others for daring to make money selling content to Verizon and Comcast customers that was the impetus... as-if those customers that were paying Verizon, Comcast and Netflix somehow needed to be protected by the ISPs from accessing the content they paid for without paying for bandwidth twice.
Many forums ask users not to "cut and paste" more than a few lines from a story and to provide a link to the original site. Otherwise that runs into copyright issues if users just summarize the whole article. That's the problem. If the original news site doesn't get clicks they don't get advertisers.
Sure and Google has been pretty good about linking to the original articles and providing no more than the first line or headline. This ruling would seem to indicate that anyone linking to a news article (or any website) would owe the destination address some money. Unless this is just about the pictures... I could see that the pictures they use are a bit on the large size of thumbnail, but still I would think the news organizations would want the traffic. Sorry EU, looks like you won't be getting clicks from across the pond... newspapers are going to need to do a lot more advertising.
"News" should be paid for by the marketers and governments that are the ones most interested in getting it out there in the public eye. News doesn't usually serve the broader public interest or provide value to the readers. The value proposition is upside down.
Stop linking to any news from the group(s) that don't want them "making billions" by linking news articles.
Wonder how long those news agencies will take to change their minds?
Therein lies the rub... Simple to link indexing terms of service to agreement to allow Google to provide links and first lines of text. Do news organizations really not want Google to link to them?
So let's discuss the why before we just start regulating stuff that 99.999% of the time will not need any regulation for any public safety, or even ethical purpose.
What is the purpose of regulating computer software? AI in most cases these days means computer software that has been trained with examples to process a data set rather than programmed to process one. It is just more efficient than figuring it out and programming an algorithm directly for more variable input. And once the training is over and optimized the algorithm is usually frozen so that it can be applied in a tested and predictable way. So AI is rarely about algorithms that are trained during production use.
And this part of the proposed definition makes it a blanket definition for all computer software not just AI: "Any artificial systems that perform tasks under varying and unpredictable circumstances, without significant human oversight".
So really hard to see how you regulate "AI" without a blanket regulation on all software development.
If we are talking about simulating complete multi-functional animal brains, especially human, then I think ethics do come into play. Perhaps our discussion should focus on that as something that should be regulated.
I think we have an societal interest in working to prevent the abuse of animals and people. And it could be that at some point, maybe very soon, we can effectively simulate a human or large animal brain and even good people might fail to realize the real perception of suffering, real suffering, they are causing in a thinking being stuffed into a computer.
That said, do we really want regulations preventing AI from becoming more like us? Is this inherently wrong? As every parent is acutely aware suffering is part of life and learning and we feel for our children because we have been there and understand how hard it can be. It is hard to imagine the human brain learning without negative feedback, without at least some bare minimum of physical and emotional pain.
Is the greater good in preventing any suffering or just limiting it to what is absolutely necessary for us to learn? It seems preventing all suffering is no different than preventing life. And allowing suffering more than what is necessary for life is also wrong.
Is there a golden mean between these extremes? And can that be regulated through the force of government?
Hiding good news from people to see if it made them feel bad... just fucking with people because you can. Facebook having so much influence and control over people's personal relationships is a threat. It isn't just marketing.
A good parallel is Uber and Lyft. They both use the same infrastructure (roads). Should they be required to support each other's services? No. They're competitors. Similarly, Google and Amazon use the same infrastructure (the Internet). Net neutrality should allow them to compete on the shared infrastructure, just as others compete on their shared infrastructure.
Agreed. There is a difference between a level playing field and having players from the other team on your team.
That said, yes this sucks for customers and customer choice and is anti-competitive for companies to be using their market position in one area to be restraining other goods and services.
I would fault both companies... where if Google have not retaliated and acted in the best interest of consumer choice I would have laid the blame squarely on Amazon.
Another reminder of why it can be bad when companies get this big.
Interoperable communications networks with sufficient bandwidth to meet demand are a public good and increasingly have become a public necessity. The FCC should play its role in making sure there are at least minimum standards of connectivity and bandwidth between Internet provider networks. And if they are going to hand off business aspects of the regulation, then they should work hand in hand with the FTC to ensure that paid prioritization and peering agreements between companies are in the best interest of a free market.
We need a robust, resilient and reliable communications network that creates a well regulated free market to maximize consumer choice.
We may not own the Verizon, Comcast, AT&T etc networks, but we do collectively own much of the land their wires cross and the wireless spectrum they also rely on. The US, the states, and localities each have a right to impose conditions for the use of public lands. Those conditions should be as simple as possible and targeted so they create a free market.
And more importantly the US has a responsibility to ensure that we have a robust, resilient and reliable communications network necessary for our national security. National Security isn't just about military communications, but about having a society that has infrastructure that works to keep us strong. A strong military is pointless if critical communication infrastructure becomes so fragmented that it becomes too expensive or fragmented to keep us unified.
A well regulated free market is the most valuable tool for ensuring the most efficient allocation of resources in a free society, where competition and consumer choice create a dynamic marketplace that gives us more and better choices, but without sensible regulations there is no free market. A free market is only free as long as there are plentiful choices and transparency about those choices.
The natural tendencies of monopoly, fraud, theft and coercion all need to be regulated in a free market. The government has a clear role in what kinds of contracts we as a society are willing to enforce... property rights have limits because we as a society are the ones tasked with using force to settle disputes.
I agree that there are good reasons to allow companies to have some paid prioritization and that strict net neutrality is probably counterproductive when introducing newer and better networks that give people more bandwidth at lower latency, but that doesn't mean that we want to go back to walled off networks like AOL and BBN or continue to be dominated by services like Facetime where people can only communicate when they are on the same network or buy into the same devices...
At the very least, the FCC should be looking to make sure that network providers are providing sufficient connections to the networks that their customers are accessing. That is very much a free market regulation. Looking for the bottlenecks is a traditional FCC regulatory role... no different in principle than making sure that companies that license spectrum are using it efficiently and effectively and not interfering with other spectrum uses. These Internet providers are making use of a limited public resource in providing their services.
It is about making sure that the technical aspect of the regulatory role of the FCC is fulfilled without stepping on the role of the FTC in regulating against anti-competitive anti-free market business practices. Something that I hope will come back into balance.
What is the problem they are trying to fix by repealing Net Neutrality? I don't get it...
I will bite. I hope this is going to be one step back and two steps forward and not just one step back. But being skeptical is likely the wisest response.
Though I don't agree with lifting net neutrality in this fashion without the FCC actually addressing at least the technical aspects of what minimum standard levels of inter-connectivity we want and need for our telecoms to provide to the country. But I do and did disagree with the blanket approach to Net Neutrality which appeared to focus too much on content and business arrangements rather than the technical aspects that are needed to ensure the robust, resilient and reliable communication system that the Internet is intended to be.
Differentiation of services has been built right into the protocols. One reason there are QoS bits in the header on an IPv6 packet is so the networks can prioritize traffic. And yes, even to charge more for higher priority traffic. Now that was more so envisioned for things like emergency calls or things that needed less latency or putting lower priority on packets that could be delivered at a higher latency at a later time. But as I understand it, paid prioritization for a better QoS or paying less for deliver later QoS was considered right from the beginning of IPv6... In many cases there is a higher cost to hardware and networks that deliver packets faster, though to some extent delivering faster is less expensive from a hardware, electricity and memory caching perspective.
However, that doesn't mean we want telecoms making decisions about peering with other networks (or not peering) based on content and business arrangements that harm consumer choice. But I do see some real use cases where end users themselves might want all the networks from point A to point B to get a little something extra for prioritizing certain packets and delivering a better overall experience. And it has benefited technology in general to establish a virtuous cycle where early adopters can pay more early on for improved services that are rolled out to everyone else at affordable prices later. So, a blanket prohibition doesn't make sense either.
The devil is in the details of the regulation and what comes next. We really should want to see a more equitable society where we aren't metered at every turn for bandwidth and quality of service. And charged hundreds of times over for bandwidth and service we are already paying for. Or throttled so that only the top paid tier of services can actually make good use of the full Internet. The playing field is far too rigged as it is.
But probably some of those details should come from the Federal Trade Commission and are more about lack of options and what it means to have local monopolies where people don't have meaningful choices of Internet access providers where the rules of a free market would otherwise help weed out bad business practices and choices that customers don't want. The government interest is in fostering a free market. If local monopolies are the only Internet option, then regulation must prevent extension of anti-competitive practices.
And probably the FCC should really be getting down to the technical details of exactly how telecoms connect up their networks and regulating them to make sure that they are providing the necessary connections for the communications their customers want. Just as they do with spectrum to maximize the usefulness of limited spectrum to the public.
For simplicity, "Net Neutrality" has been an easier way to regulate, but it probably isn't the best possible way. That said, I don't see the FCC moving towards the more hands on technical approach of regulating the Internet like they regulate spectrum. I think you could get to a net neutrality like approach under the regulatory framework of minimum standards for ensuring a robust, resilient and reliable national communication system rather than with
Unfortunately socialists and communists have pushed to define a "free market" as pretty much the opposite of what it is supposed to mean.
Is that what they're calling republicans these days?
Yes, Republican and Democrats alike seem so entangled in various special interests that they define the "free market" in both positive and negative ways however they find convenient to make political hay without regard to what it actually means to try and have a free market and police it effectively.
Democrats largely seem to focus on what they perceive as lack of regulation in the market today... while Republicans focus on over regulation. In reality the market in the US is highly regulated by Federal, State, Local and even psuedo-Independent groups that have some delegated government powers. So Democrats are mistaken when they call for "more regulation" and Republicans are mistaken when they call for "less regulation"... what we need is better regulation and consistent enforcement to create a more free market.
Many of the ills and imbalances of the market are due to poorly crafted regulations, and poor enforcement of those regulations that undermine it being an effective free market. One one side people see these as the fault of "the free market", on the other they see the problems as being the result of regulations and to one extreme they don't see the need for policing of any rules.
In some ways both sides are right and both sides are wrong, but still, the point should be that an idealized free market is one where goods, services and currency are traded freely with the simplest possible sets of rules that can actually be enforced in a fair and equitable way. An ideal free market is the ideal way that goods, services and money are traded in a society that values freedom and free will. A free market is based on informed free will and choice and not coercion, fraud and manipulation.
We see some of the problems... Lack of effective and fair anti-Trust regulations where for some goods and services that are necessities and there is no choice in the marketplace due to anti-competitive collusion and market manipulation. Corporations given legal structure and standing by the government allowed to grow in size and scope such that they control too large a portion of the market. Court enforcement of fraudulent contracts such as those with Terms of Service that require arbitration using arbitrators hired by the service provider outside the courts without any effective court oversight of the obvious conflict of interests. Enforcement of ambiguous contracts that provide prices after the service is rendered like those of providers of medical services that charge prices double or triple what other customers are paying without providing those prices up front before non-emergency services are rendered. You can't have a free market without at least some price transparency, at the very least disclosure of prices to the person you are selling some good or service to.
It isn't lack of regulations or over regulation that causes these issues, it is poorly constructed regulations and lack of enforcement.
In a well functioning free market capitalist system where money is widely dispersed among the population...
Actually, the free market capitalist system favors the concentration of wealth. Only strict regulation can impede this outcome. What I don't understand is how so many people don't understand this basic conclusion and instead follow an ideology that presents an illogical outcome. I suppose optimism bias has something to do with it.
Why would you assume a free market system is one that doesn't have strict regulation to prevent extreme concentrations of wealth? The "free" in free market doesn't mean free from regulation. A free market relies on rules and the policing of those rules. The "free" in free market means people are free to choose to enter into agreements to buy and sell goods and services with one another.
Bottom line is that the people that control the wealth and/or the financial system will decide what jobs there are via wealth distribution, investments and/or government spending.
In a well functioning free market capitalist system where money is widely dispersed among the population then individuals decide what work that people do for them has value. Competition normalizes prices and demand increases cost of labor. When you have concentration of wealth into government and/or an elite you have smaller numbers of people making decisions about how to distribute money to people... based on what merit or value they place on what people do or who they are... or how they look or what groups they are a part of.
Concentration of wealth is a problem because it distorts the economy based on the biases of a few regardless of automation, but if automation (combined with population growth) reduces the value of labor further it is going to increase the concentration of wealth by depressing people's earning potential and exacerbate systemic corruptions of the free market.
It could come to a point where the only way to ensure a free market works efficiently will be to provide a UBI or universal basic income to ensure decision making in the market is sufficiently driven by people's needs and requirements versus top down driven perceptions. So decisions about what goods and services have value can be made individually in the free market place rather than via central planning by the government or via the whims of a few rich and powerful people.
There will always be inequity in society. Parents will always want more fulfilling lives for their children even if that means that other children... without wealth, without parents, without adequate food, or housing are disadvantaged. The choice we have to make as a society is how big we are going to let that difference get between a basic level of subsistence and the ability to achieve a rich fulfilling life. And what kind of dignity are people going to have in a society where a select few have real perceivable value to others and the rest of us do not.
It is news because 50 years ago doing this was hard, today it is very easy.
Quite the opposite. Doing it 50 years ago meant controlling a few newspapers, a few radio stations and TV networks. Today's propaganda requires that same level of control/influence and also a distributed campaign on social media. Much harder to keep a unified message with more people spreading that message.
The problem is, as said in TFS: "32,6 million children of primary-school age and 25,7 million adolescents are not going to school". Step one: get them in school, where a teacher has access to them.
Then this: "ICT in education...offers a number of possible benefits...these include access to low-cost teaching resources"
Um, no. Low cost is chalk and a blackboard. Pencil and paper. Using digital technology, especially for primary school children, is an idiotic idea. The kind of idea dreamed up by technology fans who haven't got the slightest clue about the actual challenges facing the kids there.
Do the math on that... I don't have numbers, but do the math on that... chalk and a blackboard are inexpensive, but they also are without content and without value for anything other than stick figures and smiley faces unless there is a really really good teacher to go along with them.
If you are talking about digital content it is relatively cheap to distribute versus the cost of either books or the cost to educate teachers and move them into a community... also even if you do get a teacher (even a good teacher) into a community you are then stuck with teaching whatever they know unless they also have access to the Internet for downloading new information or have a good transportation system which allows regular interactions with other towns and cities.
Technology should be sustainable either locally or with practical and affordable access to outside replacements. Meaning that if the computer gets dropped you don't end up without a curriculum for months or years...
And that curriculum should be locally relevant. Even in the West we often seem to have curriculum that are almost completely irrelevant to 80% of what people are actually going to be doing for work and even the skills they need to manage their own lives. Intellectualism isn't its own reward if you can't provide for yourself and your family.
But if you are talking about introducing outside information that could be relevant and helpful into a community then don't dismiss the potential cost benefits of digital technology just because it seems like it could be too expensive. Do the math and see.
For the cost of a dozen static possibly out dated books perhaps the cost of a laptop loaded with information and able to load new information is trade well worth it.
That's how engineering is supposed to work. Incremental changes leading to improvements in reliability and capability, and hopefully reduction in cost.
It takes a disciplined approach and good systems engineering to make that happen. And I would say it is also quite a bit more than just engineering, it is about putting together the right resources, the right timing, the right amount of money, the right amount of competition or incentive to make something better and ultimately a product that people are willing to invest their money into.
And sometimes a really great idea is delayed for years and years or decades even while the enabling technology that could make it happen is developed.
I think that is where Elon Musk is really great at putting together all the great ideas, some of which have previously failed time and time again (electric cars, solar panels, reusable rockets, trains in tubes have been ideas decades in the making) and rethinking them to see how they might actually be made more viable using today's tools, resources and technology.
Other investors and CEOs would look at the failures of the past and see those failures as lessons learned to stay away from those dead end products and technologies... Elon Musk sees some of those failures from the past as opportunities to build on and get them right.
Puerto Rico is part of the United States, the richest countries in the world.
Maybe... if you look at median wealth per adult we are 13th in the world right behind Spain. Or in 2014 it looks like the median wealth put the US at 25 right between Greece and Slovenia at $53,352. These numbers are tricky, but the US has a lot of wealth... concentrated in certain areas and in certain segments of the population, but there are many smaller countries that on average have much more wealth per person.
to the extent that the US is an effective single market for internal trade there is a lot of opportunity, but the US is more like 15 wealthy countries (states) combined with 35 other countries and some territories that aren't so wealthy. Though in some ways the EU has more of a single market than the US with many US states having effectively set up layers of protectionist laws and regulations to protect local businesses against interstate trade and commerce.
I...wouldn't exactly...want to be Puerto Rico trying to float the bonds required
It will take a massive debt write off for Puerto Rico to be in any position to float any new bonds for infrastructure. At least not unless they link those bonds to specific project revenue and under some separate new authority.
It would be better for Tesla to propose private projects on specific parcels of private land, using private financing and only interact with the government for necessary permitting and coordination of the rebuilding of the grid along public right of ways.
Slashdot Mirror
Donald Trump isn't interested in knowing everything every American does every second of every single day
Then I guess we can expect him to refuse to sign such a law and protect our freedoms and liberties. Which is, by the way, pretty much part of his job...
The law isn't even necessarily the issue, except that it doesn't set up adequate 4th amendment protections and appears to be far too open ended... An open ended law isn't a problem if we (and Congress and the President) had greater transparency into how many Americans were being targeted and also how many Americans were being incidentally collected and also where those communications were originating or being received then it would go a long way towards either dispelling what we all suspect is mass abuse of a mass surveillance loophole or it would confirm those suspicions and require further reform to scale back the surveillance.
It is important to understand that Trump and every other elected president has an intentionally limited view into surveillance and if there is abuse going on then the spy agencies are going to drag their feet in responding to the president even. The idea being to prevent abuse of surveillance by politicians, but it also means that politicians can't exercise effective oversight.
At the very least he and Congress should both be demanding accountability and get real numbers overview to allow them and the public to ascertain the scope of mass surveillance. Because last time anyone checked it appeared that the Federal government was just sucking up every communication and sorting it out later which would be a massive violation of the constitution which undermines the rule of law and the safety of all Americans.
Ok, let's be clear about this. This "debate" is about what we suspect is still going on and about what Congress refuses to even ask of what is being done under FISA or the Patriot Act.
Most Americans including myself don't give a damn whether or not the Federal government is spying on the communications in and out of the US if it were actually being targeted at communications with terrorists, certain foreign institutions and foreign governments as part of legitimate national security and international criminal investigations... However the understanding of people that follow how this has been evolving is that this is merely a pretext for mass surveillance of internal communications and sending it over a wire to ease dropping facilities outside the US. Which would be blatantly a violation of the US Constitution if it were ever fully revealed... which is exactly the type of program that has been long rumored and based on leaks seems to have been what has been developed by US spy agencies.
And there are absolutely NO PROTECTIONS for preventing that or for Congress to even know if that is happening as they rubber stamp levels of spending on infrastructure that could and has been rumored to be doing exactly that.
At the very least the reporting requirements could be required to say how many "incidental" collections there are of Americans communications originating or terminating inside the US... I suspect that pretty much that number would be tens of millions of Americans or hundreds of millions of Americans which is exactly why Congress is afraid to ask because they know they would need to shut down mass surveillance if it were ever revealed to them.
For all the talk about how spying on Americans communications with foreigners is wrong... maybe it is. And I think it would be great if the world got together and really worked out how to prohibit mass surveillance in the rest of the world. Ultimately we should hope for a world were civil rights are respected around the world... but at the very least, here at home we need to step back from the police state mass surveillance infrastructure that has been built ready made for mass abuse and then start worrying about how this could infringe on Americans rights abroad.
To do that we need Congress to start by asking the question about how many Americans are having their communications hoovered up by mass surveillance under FISA orders.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". Benjamin Franklin.
Police states never ensure the safety of the people, Police states ensure the power of those who have it.
Yes, but does in run Linux?
Actually, the Falcon 9s apparently do run a version of Linux: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/...
How about instead of allowing telecoms to make business arrangements to speed up or slow down communications, let the FCC establish minimum standards of bandwidth and latency as well as minimum standards of interconnectivity with other networks based on averages of network traffic generated by users. And regulating peering technicalities should also represent the public interest in maintaining a reliable communication network.
And then give the telecoms options to provide so called "fast lanes" or faster service to customers that want to pay for it. Customers should be given the choice if they want to pay more for lower latency. And eventually minimum standards should be increased, in the way that the FCC eventually required higher quality TV broadcasts once the technology caught up.
For this fast lane approach to work to move the technology forward then it has to represent people paying for service that is actually faster and better and not just paying not to get throttled back.
Good points. It was really the whole shakedown of content providers like Netflix and others for daring to make money selling content to Verizon and Comcast customers that was the impetus... as-if those customers that were paying Verizon, Comcast and Netflix somehow needed to be protected by the ISPs from accessing the content they paid for without paying for bandwidth twice.
Many forums ask users not to "cut and paste" more than a few lines from a story and to provide a link to the original site. Otherwise that runs into copyright issues if users just summarize the whole article. That's the problem. If the original news site doesn't get clicks they don't get advertisers.
Sure and Google has been pretty good about linking to the original articles and providing no more than the first line or headline. This ruling would seem to indicate that anyone linking to a news article (or any website) would owe the destination address some money. Unless this is just about the pictures... I could see that the pictures they use are a bit on the large size of thumbnail, but still I would think the news organizations would want the traffic. Sorry EU, looks like you won't be getting clicks from across the pond... newspapers are going to need to do a lot more advertising.
I appreciate good journalism. I also understand that 99% of what is out there isn't.
"News" should be paid for by the marketers and governments that are the ones most interested in getting it out there in the public eye. News doesn't usually serve the broader public interest or provide value to the readers. The value proposition is upside down.
Stop linking to any news from the group(s) that don't want them "making billions" by linking news articles.
Wonder how long those news agencies will take to change their minds?
Therein lies the rub... Simple to link indexing terms of service to agreement to allow Google to provide links and first lines of text. Do news organizations really not want Google to link to them?
So let's discuss the why before we just start regulating stuff that 99.999% of the time will not need any regulation for any public safety, or even ethical purpose.
What is the purpose of regulating computer software? AI in most cases these days means computer software that has been trained with examples to process a data set rather than programmed to process one. It is just more efficient than figuring it out and programming an algorithm directly for more variable input. And once the training is over and optimized the algorithm is usually frozen so that it can be applied in a tested and predictable way. So AI is rarely about algorithms that are trained during production use.
And this part of the proposed definition makes it a blanket definition for all computer software not just AI: "Any artificial systems that perform tasks under varying and unpredictable circumstances, without significant human oversight".
So really hard to see how you regulate "AI" without a blanket regulation on all software development.
If we are talking about simulating complete multi-functional animal brains, especially human, then I think ethics do come into play. Perhaps our discussion should focus on that as something that should be regulated.
I think we have an societal interest in working to prevent the abuse of animals and people. And it could be that at some point, maybe very soon, we can effectively simulate a human or large animal brain and even good people might fail to realize the real perception of suffering, real suffering, they are causing in a thinking being stuffed into a computer.
That said, do we really want regulations preventing AI from becoming more like us? Is this inherently wrong? As every parent is acutely aware suffering is part of life and learning and we feel for our children because we have been there and understand how hard it can be. It is hard to imagine the human brain learning without negative feedback, without at least some bare minimum of physical and emotional pain.
Is the greater good in preventing any suffering or just limiting it to what is absolutely necessary for us to learn? It seems preventing all suffering is no different than preventing life. And allowing suffering more than what is necessary for life is also wrong.
Is there a golden mean between these extremes? And can that be regulated through the force of government?
Doesn't seem like there was real accountability for the harm they apparently caused people during Facebook's unethical psychological experiments on people... "Facebook apologises for psychological experiments on users "
Hiding good news from people to see if it made them feel bad... just fucking with people because you can. Facebook having so much influence and control over people's personal relationships is a threat. It isn't just marketing.
A good parallel is Uber and Lyft. They both use the same infrastructure (roads). Should they be required to support each other's services? No. They're competitors. Similarly, Google and Amazon use the same infrastructure (the Internet). Net neutrality should allow them to compete on the shared infrastructure, just as others compete on their shared infrastructure.
Agreed. There is a difference between a level playing field and having players from the other team on your team.
That said, yes this sucks for customers and customer choice and is anti-competitive for companies to be using their market position in one area to be restraining other goods and services.
I would fault both companies... where if Google have not retaliated and acted in the best interest of consumer choice I would have laid the blame squarely on Amazon.
Another reminder of why it can be bad when companies get this big.
Interoperable communications networks with sufficient bandwidth to meet demand are a public good and increasingly have become a public necessity. The FCC should play its role in making sure there are at least minimum standards of connectivity and bandwidth between Internet provider networks. And if they are going to hand off business aspects of the regulation, then they should work hand in hand with the FTC to ensure that paid prioritization and peering agreements between companies are in the best interest of a free market.
We need a robust, resilient and reliable communications network that creates a well regulated free market to maximize consumer choice.
We may not own the Verizon, Comcast, AT&T etc networks, but we do collectively own much of the land their wires cross and the wireless spectrum they also rely on. The US, the states, and localities each have a right to impose conditions for the use of public lands. Those conditions should be as simple as possible and targeted so they create a free market.
And more importantly the US has a responsibility to ensure that we have a robust, resilient and reliable communications network necessary for our national security. National Security isn't just about military communications, but about having a society that has infrastructure that works to keep us strong. A strong military is pointless if critical communication infrastructure becomes so fragmented that it becomes too expensive or fragmented to keep us unified.
A well regulated free market is the most valuable tool for ensuring the most efficient allocation of resources in a free society, where competition and consumer choice create a dynamic marketplace that gives us more and better choices, but without sensible regulations there is no free market. A free market is only free as long as there are plentiful choices and transparency about those choices.
The natural tendencies of monopoly, fraud, theft and coercion all need to be regulated in a free market. The government has a clear role in what kinds of contracts we as a society are willing to enforce... property rights have limits because we as a society are the ones tasked with using force to settle disputes.
I agree that there are good reasons to allow companies to have some paid prioritization and that strict net neutrality is probably counterproductive when introducing newer and better networks that give people more bandwidth at lower latency, but that doesn't mean that we want to go back to walled off networks like AOL and BBN or continue to be dominated by services like Facetime where people can only communicate when they are on the same network or buy into the same devices...
At the very least, the FCC should be looking to make sure that network providers are providing sufficient connections to the networks that their customers are accessing. That is very much a free market regulation. Looking for the bottlenecks is a traditional FCC regulatory role... no different in principle than making sure that companies that license spectrum are using it efficiently and effectively and not interfering with other spectrum uses. These Internet providers are making use of a limited public resource in providing their services.
It is about making sure that the technical aspect of the regulatory role of the FCC is fulfilled without stepping on the role of the FTC in regulating against anti-competitive anti-free market business practices. Something that I hope will come back into balance.
What is the problem they are trying to fix by repealing Net Neutrality? I don't get it...
I will bite. I hope this is going to be one step back and two steps forward and not just one step back. But being skeptical is likely the wisest response.
Though I don't agree with lifting net neutrality in this fashion without the FCC actually addressing at least the technical aspects of what minimum standard levels of inter-connectivity we want and need for our telecoms to provide to the country. But I do and did disagree with the blanket approach to Net Neutrality which appeared to focus too much on content and business arrangements rather than the technical aspects that are needed to ensure the robust, resilient and reliable communication system that the Internet is intended to be.
Differentiation of services has been built right into the protocols. One reason there are QoS bits in the header on an IPv6 packet is so the networks can prioritize traffic. And yes, even to charge more for higher priority traffic. Now that was more so envisioned for things like emergency calls or things that needed less latency or putting lower priority on packets that could be delivered at a higher latency at a later time. But as I understand it, paid prioritization for a better QoS or paying less for deliver later QoS was considered right from the beginning of IPv6... In many cases there is a higher cost to hardware and networks that deliver packets faster, though to some extent delivering faster is less expensive from a hardware, electricity and memory caching perspective.
However, that doesn't mean we want telecoms making decisions about peering with other networks (or not peering) based on content and business arrangements that harm consumer choice. But I do see some real use cases where end users themselves might want all the networks from point A to point B to get a little something extra for prioritizing certain packets and delivering a better overall experience. And it has benefited technology in general to establish a virtuous cycle where early adopters can pay more early on for improved services that are rolled out to everyone else at affordable prices later. So, a blanket prohibition doesn't make sense either.
The devil is in the details of the regulation and what comes next. We really should want to see a more equitable society where we aren't metered at every turn for bandwidth and quality of service. And charged hundreds of times over for bandwidth and service we are already paying for. Or throttled so that only the top paid tier of services can actually make good use of the full Internet. The playing field is far too rigged as it is.
But probably some of those details should come from the Federal Trade Commission and are more about lack of options and what it means to have local monopolies where people don't have meaningful choices of Internet access providers where the rules of a free market would otherwise help weed out bad business practices and choices that customers don't want. The government interest is in fostering a free market. If local monopolies are the only Internet option, then regulation must prevent extension of anti-competitive practices.
And probably the FCC should really be getting down to the technical details of exactly how telecoms connect up their networks and regulating them to make sure that they are providing the necessary connections for the communications their customers want. Just as they do with spectrum to maximize the usefulness of limited spectrum to the public.
For simplicity, "Net Neutrality" has been an easier way to regulate, but it probably isn't the best possible way. That said, I don't see the FCC moving towards the more hands on technical approach of regulating the Internet like they regulate spectrum. I think you could get to a net neutrality like approach under the regulatory framework of minimum standards for ensuring a robust, resilient and reliable national communication system rather than with
Unfortunately socialists and communists have pushed to define a "free market" as pretty much the opposite of what it is supposed to mean.
Is that what they're calling republicans these days?
Yes, Republican and Democrats alike seem so entangled in various special interests that they define the "free market" in both positive and negative ways however they find convenient to make political hay without regard to what it actually means to try and have a free market and police it effectively.
Democrats largely seem to focus on what they perceive as lack of regulation in the market today... while Republicans focus on over regulation. In reality the market in the US is highly regulated by Federal, State, Local and even psuedo-Independent groups that have some delegated government powers. So Democrats are mistaken when they call for "more regulation" and Republicans are mistaken when they call for "less regulation"... what we need is better regulation and consistent enforcement to create a more free market.
Many of the ills and imbalances of the market are due to poorly crafted regulations, and poor enforcement of those regulations that undermine it being an effective free market. One one side people see these as the fault of "the free market", on the other they see the problems as being the result of regulations and to one extreme they don't see the need for policing of any rules.
In some ways both sides are right and both sides are wrong, but still, the point should be that an idealized free market is one where goods, services and currency are traded freely with the simplest possible sets of rules that can actually be enforced in a fair and equitable way. An ideal free market is the ideal way that goods, services and money are traded in a society that values freedom and free will. A free market is based on informed free will and choice and not coercion, fraud and manipulation.
We see some of the problems... Lack of effective and fair anti-Trust regulations where for some goods and services that are necessities and there is no choice in the marketplace due to anti-competitive collusion and market manipulation. Corporations given legal structure and standing by the government allowed to grow in size and scope such that they control too large a portion of the market. Court enforcement of fraudulent contracts such as those with Terms of Service that require arbitration using arbitrators hired by the service provider outside the courts without any effective court oversight of the obvious conflict of interests. Enforcement of ambiguous contracts that provide prices after the service is rendered like those of providers of medical services that charge prices double or triple what other customers are paying without providing those prices up front before non-emergency services are rendered. You can't have a free market without at least some price transparency, at the very least disclosure of prices to the person you are selling some good or service to.
It isn't lack of regulations or over regulation that causes these issues, it is poorly constructed regulations and lack of enforcement.
Unfortunately socialists and communists have pushed to define a "free market" as pretty much the opposite of what it is supposed to mean.
A free market isn't a free market if labor costs are pushed to near zero and people are forced to work for someone for survival. That is slavery.
Or if either buyers or sellers get to essentially dictate the terms because kof monopoly of essential goods or services that is not a free market.
Fraud, theft, threat of force are all things that need regulation and policing in the market place.
Balanced with an understanding that regulation and use of force to enforce those regulations are a necessary evil.
In a well functioning free market capitalist system where money is widely dispersed among the population...
Actually, the free market capitalist system favors the concentration of wealth. Only strict regulation can impede this outcome. What I don't understand is how so many people don't understand this basic conclusion and instead follow an ideology that presents an illogical outcome. I suppose optimism bias has something to do with it.
Why would you assume a free market system is one that doesn't have strict regulation to prevent extreme concentrations of wealth? The "free" in free market doesn't mean free from regulation. A free market relies on rules and the policing of those rules. The "free" in free market means people are free to choose to enter into agreements to buy and sell goods and services with one another.
Bottom line is that the people that control the wealth and/or the financial system will decide what jobs there are via wealth distribution, investments and/or government spending.
In a well functioning free market capitalist system where money is widely dispersed among the population then individuals decide what work that people do for them has value. Competition normalizes prices and demand increases cost of labor. When you have concentration of wealth into government and/or an elite you have smaller numbers of people making decisions about how to distribute money to people... based on what merit or value they place on what people do or who they are ... or how they look or what groups they are a part of.
Concentration of wealth is a problem because it distorts the economy based on the biases of a few regardless of automation, but if automation (combined with population growth) reduces the value of labor further it is going to increase the concentration of wealth by depressing people's earning potential and exacerbate systemic corruptions of the free market.
It could come to a point where the only way to ensure a free market works efficiently will be to provide a UBI or universal basic income to ensure decision making in the market is sufficiently driven by people's needs and requirements versus top down driven perceptions. So decisions about what goods and services have value can be made individually in the free market place rather than via central planning by the government or via the whims of a few rich and powerful people.
There will always be inequity in society. Parents will always want more fulfilling lives for their children even if that means that other children... without wealth, without parents, without adequate food, or housing are disadvantaged. The choice we have to make as a society is how big we are going to let that difference get between a basic level of subsistence and the ability to achieve a rich fulfilling life. And what kind of dignity are people going to have in a society where a select few have real perceivable value to others and the rest of us do not.
It is news because 50 years ago doing this was hard, today it is very easy.
Quite the opposite. Doing it 50 years ago meant controlling a few newspapers, a few radio stations and TV networks. Today's propaganda requires that same level of control/influence and also a distributed campaign on social media. Much harder to keep a unified message with more people spreading that message.
The problem is, as said in TFS: "32,6 million children of primary-school age and 25,7 million adolescents are not going to school". Step one: get them in school, where a teacher has access to them.
Then this: "ICT in education...offers a number of possible benefits...these include access to low-cost teaching resources"
Um, no. Low cost is chalk and a blackboard. Pencil and paper. Using digital technology, especially for primary school children, is an idiotic idea. The kind of idea dreamed up by technology fans who haven't got the slightest clue about the actual challenges facing the kids there.
Do the math on that... I don't have numbers, but do the math on that... chalk and a blackboard are inexpensive, but they also are without content and without value for anything other than stick figures and smiley faces unless there is a really really good teacher to go along with them.
If you are talking about digital content it is relatively cheap to distribute versus the cost of either books or the cost to educate teachers and move them into a community... also even if you do get a teacher (even a good teacher) into a community you are then stuck with teaching whatever they know unless they also have access to the Internet for downloading new information or have a good transportation system which allows regular interactions with other towns and cities.
Technology should be sustainable either locally or with practical and affordable access to outside replacements. Meaning that if the computer gets dropped you don't end up without a curriculum for months or years...
And that curriculum should be locally relevant. Even in the West we often seem to have curriculum that are almost completely irrelevant to 80% of what people are actually going to be doing for work and even the skills they need to manage their own lives. Intellectualism isn't its own reward if you can't provide for yourself and your family.
But if you are talking about introducing outside information that could be relevant and helpful into a community then don't dismiss the potential cost benefits of digital technology just because it seems like it could be too expensive. Do the math and see.
For the cost of a dozen static possibly out dated books perhaps the cost of a laptop loaded with information and able to load new information is trade well worth it.
Agreed, let's vote to change it to Daylight Shifting Time.
If we can't eliminate daylight "savings time" might as well give it a name that isn't misleading.
+1 for "Daylight Shifting Time"
That's how engineering is supposed to work. Incremental changes leading to improvements in reliability and capability, and hopefully reduction in cost.
It takes a disciplined approach and good systems engineering to make that happen. And I would say it is also quite a bit more than just engineering, it is about putting together the right resources, the right timing, the right amount of money, the right amount of competition or incentive to make something better and ultimately a product that people are willing to invest their money into.
And sometimes a really great idea is delayed for years and years or decades even while the enabling technology that could make it happen is developed.
I think that is where Elon Musk is really great at putting together all the great ideas, some of which have previously failed time and time again (electric cars, solar panels, reusable rockets, trains in tubes have been ideas decades in the making) and rethinking them to see how they might actually be made more viable using today's tools, resources and technology.
Other investors and CEOs would look at the failures of the past and see those failures as lessons learned to stay away from those dead end products and technologies... Elon Musk sees some of those failures from the past as opportunities to build on and get them right.
Puerto Rico is part of the United States, the richest countries in the world.
Maybe... if you look at median wealth per adult we are 13th in the world right behind Spain. Or in 2014 it looks like the median wealth put the US at 25 right between Greece and Slovenia at $53,352. These numbers are tricky, but the US has a lot of wealth... concentrated in certain areas and in certain segments of the population, but there are many smaller countries that on average have much more wealth per person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
to the extent that the US is an effective single market for internal trade there is a lot of opportunity, but the US is more like 15 wealthy countries (states) combined with 35 other countries and some territories that aren't so wealthy. Though in some ways the EU has more of a single market than the US with many US states having effectively set up layers of protectionist laws and regulations to protect local businesses against interstate trade and commerce.
I...wouldn't exactly...want to be Puerto Rico trying to float the bonds required
It will take a massive debt write off for Puerto Rico to be in any position to float any new bonds for infrastructure. At least not unless they link those bonds to specific project revenue and under some separate new authority.
It would be better for Tesla to propose private projects on specific parcels of private land, using private financing and only interact with the government for necessary permitting and coordination of the rebuilding of the grid along public right of ways.