In the west, Google can only gather (and monetize) user data so much, before there starts to be public outcry, pushback, and Congressional hearings about them invading privacy to an unacceptable degree. In China, Google can gather user data as much as it wants, and gathering more leads to ambivalence from the public (because they're used to it) and praise from the local government. They get to play out their dream of having every search be tied to a person; and of course every site that includes code from google analytics, doubleclick etc. is tied to that, so they'll know many sites that each person goes to (all, if they use Chrome or Android). The proven most-effective pieces of personal data to harvest will be back-ported to Google's services around the rest of the world.
I hadn't heard of it, so for those interested, here's a decent writeup on the 'NPC meme'. I'm surprised the article didn't make the comparison to philosophical zombies, as it's a similar concept.
such as by telling certain users they could vote by text, a hoax that has been used to reduce turnout in the past. Someone who would fall for that is someone I probably wouldn't want voting in the first place. Voting via text is so insecure on so many levels it boggles the mind.
The CDC is scarily good at preventing pandemics, so not likely. Even if that failed, it'd have to be caused by a prion, because vaccines and antibiotics are too effective. And no, a mythical superbacterium won't work because there are so darn many antibiotics, and avenues of research for new ones. If financial incentive (plague threatening western civilization) were to appear, lots of new antibiotics would come out in time.
FYI this is called Front Running and is illegal. Market specialists were accused of doing this back in the 70s IIRC. High-speed trading scenarios aren't required if the brokerage only makes loose guarantees of how long it'll be before your trade executes.
Also, humanity is overrated. I'm just waiting for better VR tech, then I can spend some quality time with my Waifu. People chuckle about sexbots, but virtual significant others will come before even that. An AI that can accurately simulate every facet of an SO is difficult; one that can simulate only enough to be the best lover you've ever had is FAR easier, just like how drawing an ugly person takes far more effort and skill than drawing an impossibly beautiful one.
Not like the financial industry is a paragon of morality or intellectual integrity. Usury has had a bad name for millennia, and the proliferation of questionable economic theory (that just happens to benefit the rich), and bank bailouts, should drive the final nails in that coffin.
I'm surprised the investment companies aren't more of a confusopoly, considering related financial services (banks, credit cards) are. Might be down to better competition.
The problem with tragedies of the commons is that it's trivially easy to say "I didn't do it, not my fault, someone else was responsible" and the vast majority of businessmen/politicians/industrialists are going to do this in the case of climate change. More specifically "it wasn't solely my fault" therefore won't be held responsible which is the only thing they care about. The ones causing the problem will be dead and/or have beachfront property in Appalachia that's worth WAY more than it was before the flooding. The little people dying off en-masse is considered a feature, not a bug. Read the Slashdot comments on any article tangentially related to human overpopulation and there's no shortage of people suggesting that the human population halving would be great. The powers that be have the same view.
After eating your 17th hamburger in a row, your marginal utility for hamburgers was probably negative since it'd just make you feel more nauseous. Eventually you have enough Playstations that you'd rather not have any more spares taking up space in your house/garage. Excluding 'hoarding to sell', there's only so many of something you can make use of, i.e. not unlimited.
If you think of Capitalism as a sandglass, where the capitalists are on the bottom and the plebes are on the top, then UBI is like a tube with a motor that shoots sand back into the top of the glass. See, the sand DOES 'trickle down', they just lied about who was at the bottom.
Have to agree that 'universal basic assets' is a better foundation, though, otherwise too many people will blow their money and still be in defacto poverty. OTOH, giving money to someone responsible is more likely to lead to resources being spent on what that person needs, than if you try to give them what you suppose they need. So the ideal solution is probably to give people healthcare, food stamps + housing, and some spending money for entertainment etc.
There have been a few attempts at 'projection keyboards' that project an image of a virtual keyboard onto a surface, with a camera that tries to detect which keys you're pressing. Unfortunately the camera POV is usually parallel to the projector, so it has a difficult time telling when you're touching the surface; also, you can't rest your fingers on the virtual keys, leading to finger fatigue as you hold them in midair. I predict the proliferation of Augmented Reality keyboards, which use an AR display to show a virtual keyboard anywhere, not just on real surfaces. Your hands will be wearing haptic gloves which resist movement of your fingers, giving tactile feedback and avoiding fatigue. Want it to feel like you're typing on a Model M? Easily configured to do that. If you want a split/ergonomic keyboard, or customized function keys, you can configure that too. You can even have keypress sounds piped into your ears, so only you can hear your noisy 'keyboard'.
Or, keyboards will be replaced with subvocalized dictation/voice control for non-programming tasks.
Now if only they can avoid filling it with bloatware, and not charge >$500 for it, I might consider it to replace my phone AND tablet. If you think of it as being usable as a phone and a tablet, then it makes sense.
So if this information is encircling the event horizon, is it retrievable or is it permanently lost? If not lost, then that could provide some very interesting cosmological data.
Worse, it's logically impossible to prove something doesn't exist. At best we can be reasonably certain that life isn't widespread on Mars, there could always be an isolated underground pocket of frozen microbes. So far the best we've done is vaporize some soil from a few inches below the surface, and those results can't even conclusively rule out the possibility of life. We've literally only scratched the surface.
Swear I read about something like this on Slashdot a year or two ago. Although I don't recall gene editing being involved. TFA says the mice created from the DNA of two females lived long enough to reproduce, but the ones created from two males died shortly after birth (presumably due to genomic imprinting errors). It's in doubt that even the ones with two mothers were fully healthy/normal.
Japan won't even rule out building nuclear weapons if they feel the need; trying to convince a military not to develop a certain weapon is bound to fail if that weapon is considered to give themselves an advantage. When one weighs rules, ethics, and survival, the latter ALWAYS wins (on the average). We'd need to end war on the political/economic side before the world powers would seriously consider giving up on killbots. How far away do you think 'solving politics and economics' is? Further away than killbots, in my estimation.
OTOH if people were really worried about killbots, then where's the sabotage and the threats against researchers?
Slashdot Mirror
In the west, Google can only gather (and monetize) user data so much, before there starts to be public outcry, pushback, and Congressional hearings about them invading privacy to an unacceptable degree.
In China, Google can gather user data as much as it wants, and gathering more leads to ambivalence from the public (because they're used to it) and praise from the local government. They get to play out their dream of having every search be tied to a person; and of course every site that includes code from google analytics, doubleclick etc. is tied to that, so they'll know many sites that each person goes to (all, if they use Chrome or Android).
The proven most-effective pieces of personal data to harvest will be back-ported to Google's services around the rest of the world.
I hadn't heard of it, so for those interested, here's a decent writeup on the 'NPC meme'. I'm surprised the article didn't make the comparison to philosophical zombies, as it's a similar concept.
The great Azure, even.
Now he's living In The Cloud.
such as by telling certain users they could vote by text, a hoax that has been used to reduce turnout in the past.
Someone who would fall for that is someone I probably wouldn't want voting in the first place. Voting via text is so insecure on so many levels it boggles the mind.
How else are you going to get that space elevator into orbit?
The CDC is scarily good at preventing pandemics, so not likely. Even if that failed, it'd have to be caused by a prion, because vaccines and antibiotics are too effective. And no, a mythical superbacterium won't work because there are so darn many antibiotics, and avenues of research for new ones. If financial incentive (plague threatening western civilization) were to appear, lots of new antibiotics would come out in time.
FYI this is called Front Running and is illegal. Market specialists were accused of doing this back in the 70s IIRC. High-speed trading scenarios aren't required if the brokerage only makes loose guarantees of how long it'll be before your trade executes.
Also, humanity is overrated. I'm just waiting for better VR tech, then I can spend some quality time with my Waifu.
People chuckle about sexbots, but virtual significant others will come before even that. An AI that can accurately simulate every facet of an SO is difficult; one that can simulate only enough to be the best lover you've ever had is FAR easier, just like how drawing an ugly person takes far more effort and skill than drawing an impossibly beautiful one.
Not like the financial industry is a paragon of morality or intellectual integrity. Usury has had a bad name for millennia, and the proliferation of questionable economic theory (that just happens to benefit the rich), and bank bailouts, should drive the final nails in that coffin.
I'm surprised the investment companies aren't more of a confusopoly, considering related financial services (banks, credit cards) are. Might be down to better competition.
The problem with tragedies of the commons is that it's trivially easy to say "I didn't do it, not my fault, someone else was responsible" and the vast majority of businessmen/politicians/industrialists are going to do this in the case of climate change. More specifically "it wasn't solely my fault" therefore won't be held responsible which is the only thing they care about. The ones causing the problem will be dead and/or have beachfront property in Appalachia that's worth WAY more than it was before the flooding. The little people dying off en-masse is considered a feature, not a bug. Read the Slashdot comments on any article tangentially related to human overpopulation and there's no shortage of people suggesting that the human population halving would be great. The powers that be have the same view.
I suspect Guaranteed Minimum Income would have about the same benefits, for a much lower cost. I don't hear it mentioned very often though.
After eating your 17th hamburger in a row, your marginal utility for hamburgers was probably negative since it'd just make you feel more nauseous.
Eventually you have enough Playstations that you'd rather not have any more spares taking up space in your house/garage. Excluding 'hoarding to sell', there's only so many of something you can make use of, i.e. not unlimited.
If you think of Capitalism as a sandglass, where the capitalists are on the bottom and the plebes are on the top, then UBI is like a tube with a motor that shoots sand back into the top of the glass. See, the sand DOES 'trickle down', they just lied about who was at the bottom.
Have to agree that 'universal basic assets' is a better foundation, though, otherwise too many people will blow their money and still be in defacto poverty. OTOH, giving money to someone responsible is more likely to lead to resources being spent on what that person needs, than if you try to give them what you suppose they need. So the ideal solution is probably to give people healthcare, food stamps + housing, and some spending money for entertainment etc.
Iâ(TM)ve been using Dvorak for about 20 years now and thereâ(TM)s nothing better.
Apparently Slashcode hates Dvorak.
There have been a few attempts at 'projection keyboards' that project an image of a virtual keyboard onto a surface, with a camera that tries to detect which keys you're pressing. Unfortunately the camera POV is usually parallel to the projector, so it has a difficult time telling when you're touching the surface; also, you can't rest your fingers on the virtual keys, leading to finger fatigue as you hold them in midair.
I predict the proliferation of Augmented Reality keyboards, which use an AR display to show a virtual keyboard anywhere, not just on real surfaces. Your hands will be wearing haptic gloves which resist movement of your fingers, giving tactile feedback and avoiding fatigue. Want it to feel like you're typing on a Model M? Easily configured to do that. If you want a split/ergonomic keyboard, or customized function keys, you can configure that too. You can even have keypress sounds piped into your ears, so only you can hear your noisy 'keyboard'.
Or, keyboards will be replaced with subvocalized dictation/voice control for non-programming tasks.
Now if only they can avoid filling it with bloatware, and not charge >$500 for it, I might consider it to replace my phone AND tablet. If you think of it as being usable as a phone and a tablet, then it makes sense.
So if this information is encircling the event horizon, is it retrievable or is it permanently lost? If not lost, then that could provide some very interesting cosmological data.
Worse, it's logically impossible to prove something doesn't exist. At best we can be reasonably certain that life isn't widespread on Mars, there could always be an isolated underground pocket of frozen microbes. So far the best we've done is vaporize some soil from a few inches below the surface, and those results can't even conclusively rule out the possibility of life. We've literally only scratched the surface.
Don't thank me just yet. Another comment tipped me off that Softbank is Japanese, not Chinese. Mea culpa.
Damn middlemen stealing my nutrients! Well, I'll just have to eat THEM!
Swear I read about something like this on Slashdot a year or two ago. Although I don't recall gene editing being involved.
TFA says the mice created from the DNA of two females lived long enough to reproduce, but the ones created from two males died shortly after birth (presumably due to genomic imprinting errors). It's in doubt that even the ones with two mothers were fully healthy/normal.
Japan won't even rule out building nuclear weapons if they feel the need; trying to convince a military not to develop a certain weapon is bound to fail if that weapon is considered to give themselves an advantage. When one weighs rules, ethics, and survival, the latter ALWAYS wins (on the average). We'd need to end war on the political/economic side before the world powers would seriously consider giving up on killbots. How far away do you think 'solving politics and economics' is? Further away than killbots, in my estimation.
OTOH if people were really worried about killbots, then where's the sabotage and the threats against researchers?
Why would sexbots need to do backflips or jump over logs and up boxes?
Wouldn't work unless they were first given an imaging system that resembles a red eye sweeping back and forth.