How about we make it (relatively) legal to shoot others with a special projectile that is harmless at first, but causes death a couple days later... unless the shooter changes their mind in the interim (and administers a unique antidote, uses their private key to deactivate the explosive, etc.)? It'd work as a dead-man's switch so they wouldn't be 'out-gunned' despite not having instant stopping power, and would encourage people to reconcile instead of making permanent mistakes in a split second.
Most people making '3d printed guns' are only printing the lower receiver, and buying a standard mass-produced stock/upper receiver/magazine. Furthermore, the lower receiver doesn't need to be particularly strong, and can thus last longer than 5 rounds even if made of 3d printed plastic. It is now possible to purchase small mills specifically made to finish full-metal lower receivers, those can withstand shooting hundreds of rounds, at least. Forget 20 years from now, it's available today.
Completely agree but would add that "a labyrinthine set of rules and laws banning various selected topics using different metrics" has been in place for generations. Obscenity law. Slander. Libel. "I know it when I see it". "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater". Noise ordinances (if the 'noise' is loud speech). Hate speech. Fighting words. In practice it's ad-hoc. If someone's gut feeling is that saying such-and-such SHOULD be illegal, then 1st amendment be damned, and it's always been that way.
Javascript or other code would by default be handed to a normal fast core. However, it could use a special command/API call to request to run some code on a secure core, if it's doing something sensitive. Kind of like a TPM or Apple's secure enclave.
As automation becomes cheaper and better, a greater proportion of human jobs will be 'bullshit jobs'. Technically most countries already have a system where persons can get free food and housing; it's called 'prison' and an alternative 'solution' is to put more people into that system. The question is how long people put up with that 'solution' until they have their Bastille Day.
IMO security holes should be treated the same way as chemical spills: cleanup paid for by money placed in escrow by the ones responsible, rather than letting it become a superfund site that languishes on condemned property with a multi-billion-dollar cleanup price tag noone wants to shell out for.
Reading TFA (I know), it turns out that new food ingredients don't actually require FDA approval, since food companies can simply state that their novel ingredient is safe, and then the FDA probably won't challenge that. ~10% of all food ingredients haven't been FDA tested/assessed, due to this self-approval loophole, and a concerned party is suing the FDA to close it.
Reading elsewhere on the net, the Impossible Burger tastes/looks/smells remarkably like a real hamburger. The Beyond Burger smells closer to real beef, but doesn't taste/feel as similar. If vegetable-based burgers can get this close, it makes me wonder if there'd be any market for lab-grown meat, which would presumably cost more to produce. Both veggie burgers seem to have the same amount of protein as beef burgers. One hitch: the impossible burger's heme is from GMO yeast, so the anti-GMO people will have a problem with that (probably a significant fraction of vegetarians).
If you consider that your life options are: a) live in prison-like conditions your whole life, or b) take a risk you might spend some time in actual prison, while making enough money in the meanwhile to live in conditions substantially better than squalor Then option B sure sounds like an upgrade. Bury some of your money so it can't all be reclaimed, and you and your family are set. However, I bet those in prison who buried the large notes that're no longer accepted are kicking themselves for not using smaller bills.
Fiber has higher latency than copper cable, over short distances at least. Factoring in repeaters for cable, it may end up slower. 'Full fiber' means last-mile, right?
Mobile devices mostly stream video, rather than download. Aside from offline viewing, downloading doesn't need to be faster than streaming speed. Downloading videos faster for offline viewing and downloading games faster are great, but don't enable new businesses or experiences that wouldn't exist with slower download speeds. I.e. what new things does the upgrade enable, that wouldn't exist with 100Mbps internet? Internet video existed long before Netflix streaming, so it should be predictable today, what tech could be monetized or better society if only they were faster?
Earlier this month, research was published indicating that the UK has slipped from 31st to 35th place in the global broadband league tables, behind 25 other European countries.
Spending money to surpass others is pointless if there's no benefit to doing so. Eventually rural consumers will have 100Mbps or higher. Sure, faster downloads and peak usage throughput are great, but the benefits for consumers fall off pretty quick. Can 'accessing online educational resources' justify more bandwidth than this? Even assuming hi-def video chat with tutors/business associates, with modern codecs (AV1) do you really need much more than that? Sure, VR video will use even more bandwidth, but does that really open any qualitatively different educational experiences, or businesses even? I have a feeling that today's video companies will be primarily responsible for VR videos in the future, so it won't necessarily enable many new jobs that weren't already being done with 2d cameras. Businesses already have access to fiber, in the places they want to put data centers, so do consumers really need faster speeds at home once they have ~100Mbps? Sure, a few power-users who download VM containers/linux beta ISOs daily would make use of it, but does that justify $billions in government subsidies?
Look forward a few years, and the situation could easily be reversed. You know those cameras that are pointing at every cash register in your average store? Soon (if not already) they'll be high-res enough to read the serial numbers on every dollar bill you hand over or flash in your wallet/money roll. Just like automated facial recognition, this'll be done automatically; suddenly, cash can be followed from one transaction to another, and connected to people thanks to said facial recognition. Expect the ATM to record serials, and the cameras at your bank. This'll be done in the name of 'tracking money stolen in robberies' but will be used for other purposes. Expect a 'serial number blacklist' that causes a flag to be raised if you use flagged cash, too many flags and the cops are shown the tapes or the facial recognition blacklists you. You also get blacklisted if the facial recognition determines you're a known retail thief/robber. Expect Walmart greeters to be notified not to allow someone in because the facial recognition recognized someone who was blacklisted. With facial recognition, your cash purchases can still be correlated into a profile and shared/sold, like supposedly happens with credit cards.
Now look at open-source end-to-end encrypted communication software like Signal. And the cryptocurrencies that happen to be defacto decentralized. One can easily imagine (in the unlikely event it doesn't already exist) a situation where digital exchanges of currency are anonymous, unblacklistable, and decentralized. Also, since it's decentralized you don't have to worry about a single point of failure... failing. As opposed to a computerized cash register that crashes and is unable to accept cash, and the employees are forbidden from selling items not sold through the register.
I've seen people who are reticent to break a large bill because once they break it, they'll spend it because they treat small bills as worthless. Others treat cash as 'free money' that they blow whereas numbers in an account are 'important money' that they don't touch. If these people went full cash, they wouldn't save enough to pay their bills. Also, is your annoying relative or whatever hitting you up for money regularly? "Sorry, no cash on me", problem solved. If you always carry cash on you then it's an ongoing problem. Credit cards often have points or other rewards/cash back programs, with cash you get nothing like that.
Institutions want to get rid of cash because handling cash is difficult to automate, and cash has higher marginal cost to guard, particularly from the handlers. Cash also tends to get stolen, despite all the money spent on guarding it. It also gets counterfeited, lost, destroyed, and requires quite a lot of money to produce (for the treasury). Forget ATMs, if society goes cashless, banks can get rid of many of their branches. Loan applications can be done via Skype video calls or whatever. Kill checks and money orders and branches wouldn't really be needed for much.
The key question is if this process can be done cheaply enough that it's cheaper to recycle lithium-ion batteries than to just make new ones. Of course the process could be government-subsidized/mandated for environmental reasons. Ideally, a way to achieve this process inside the battery itself would be possible (without causing it to explode).
Obviously Judge Holder wanted to show he held the power in that situation, so he held the defendant in contempt, leading to him being held in a cell for six months and beholding being beheld to the law despite holding onto his passwords, leading to a holding pattern to see if the appeals hold up, holding America in a state of held breath until the man's constitutional rights are upheld.
A plumberbot that can do 100% of what a human plumber can, I agree completely. However, a plumberbot that can only unclog drains could put half the plumbers in a city out of business.
Slashdot Mirror
How about we make it (relatively) legal to shoot others with a special projectile that is harmless at first, but causes death a couple days later... unless the shooter changes their mind in the interim (and administers a unique antidote, uses their private key to deactivate the explosive, etc.)? It'd work as a dead-man's switch so they wouldn't be 'out-gunned' despite not having instant stopping power, and would encourage people to reconcile instead of making permanent mistakes in a split second.
Most people making '3d printed guns' are only printing the lower receiver, and buying a standard mass-produced stock/upper receiver/magazine. Furthermore, the lower receiver doesn't need to be particularly strong, and can thus last longer than 5 rounds even if made of 3d printed plastic.
It is now possible to purchase small mills specifically made to finish full-metal lower receivers, those can withstand shooting hundreds of rounds, at least. Forget 20 years from now, it's available today.
Completely agree but would add that "a labyrinthine set of rules and laws banning various selected topics using different metrics" has been in place for generations. Obscenity law. Slander. Libel. "I know it when I see it". "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater". Noise ordinances (if the 'noise' is loud speech). Hate speech. Fighting words.
In practice it's ad-hoc. If someone's gut feeling is that saying such-and-such SHOULD be illegal, then 1st amendment be damned, and it's always been that way.
It's all fun and games until you get hauled in front of Congress to testify about usage of Performance Enhancing Algorithms.
"I know kung fu..." - Terminator
Javascript or other code would by default be handed to a normal fast core. However, it could use a special command/API call to request to run some code on a secure core, if it's doing something sensitive. Kind of like a TPM or Apple's secure enclave.
As automation becomes cheaper and better, a greater proportion of human jobs will be 'bullshit jobs'. Technically most countries already have a system where persons can get free food and housing; it's called 'prison' and an alternative 'solution' is to put more people into that system. The question is how long people put up with that 'solution' until they have their Bastille Day.
IMO security holes should be treated the same way as chemical spills: cleanup paid for by money placed in escrow by the ones responsible, rather than letting it become a superfund site that languishes on condemned property with a multi-billion-dollar cleanup price tag noone wants to shell out for.
An entity can only be tricked/subverted/exploited so many times before one has to stop calling it 'smart'.
here
Reading TFA (I know), it turns out that new food ingredients don't actually require FDA approval, since food companies can simply state that their novel ingredient is safe, and then the FDA probably won't challenge that. ~10% of all food ingredients haven't been FDA tested/assessed, due to this self-approval loophole, and a concerned party is suing the FDA to close it.
Reading elsewhere on the net, the Impossible Burger tastes/looks/smells remarkably like a real hamburger. The Beyond Burger smells closer to real beef, but doesn't taste/feel as similar. If vegetable-based burgers can get this close, it makes me wonder if there'd be any market for lab-grown meat, which would presumably cost more to produce. Both veggie burgers seem to have the same amount of protein as beef burgers. One hitch: the impossible burger's heme is from GMO yeast, so the anti-GMO people will have a problem with that (probably a significant fraction of vegetarians).
Advertisers want to know which side of the door your dog wants to be on at any given moment. Marketers want your dog to pay to be on the other side.
If you consider that your life options are:
a) live in prison-like conditions your whole life, or
b) take a risk you might spend some time in actual prison, while making enough money in the meanwhile to live in conditions substantially better than squalor
Then option B sure sounds like an upgrade. Bury some of your money so it can't all be reclaimed, and you and your family are set. However, I bet those in prison who buried the large notes that're no longer accepted are kicking themselves for not using smaller bills.
Fiber has higher latency than copper cable, over short distances at least. Factoring in repeaters for cable, it may end up slower. 'Full fiber' means last-mile, right?
Mobile devices mostly stream video, rather than download. Aside from offline viewing, downloading doesn't need to be faster than streaming speed. Downloading videos faster for offline viewing and downloading games faster are great, but don't enable new businesses or experiences that wouldn't exist with slower download speeds. I.e. what new things does the upgrade enable, that wouldn't exist with 100Mbps internet? Internet video existed long before Netflix streaming, so it should be predictable today, what tech could be monetized or better society if only they were faster?
Earlier this month, research was published indicating that the UK has slipped from 31st to 35th place in the global broadband league tables, behind 25 other European countries.
Spending money to surpass others is pointless if there's no benefit to doing so. Eventually rural consumers will have 100Mbps or higher. Sure, faster downloads and peak usage throughput are great, but the benefits for consumers fall off pretty quick. Can 'accessing online educational resources' justify more bandwidth than this? Even assuming hi-def video chat with tutors/business associates, with modern codecs (AV1) do you really need much more than that? Sure, VR video will use even more bandwidth, but does that really open any qualitatively different educational experiences, or businesses even? I have a feeling that today's video companies will be primarily responsible for VR videos in the future, so it won't necessarily enable many new jobs that weren't already being done with 2d cameras. Businesses already have access to fiber, in the places they want to put data centers, so do consumers really need faster speeds at home once they have ~100Mbps? Sure, a few power-users who download VM containers/linux beta ISOs daily would make use of it, but does that justify $billions in government subsidies?
Burying beetles feast on chaos butterflies. Do you really want to cause tsunamis in the pacific?! Think of the poor Asian children!
I have a feeling 'gasoline' can be added to 'bread and circuses'.
Look forward a few years, and the situation could easily be reversed. You know those cameras that are pointing at every cash register in your average store? Soon (if not already) they'll be high-res enough to read the serial numbers on every dollar bill you hand over or flash in your wallet/money roll. Just like automated facial recognition, this'll be done automatically; suddenly, cash can be followed from one transaction to another, and connected to people thanks to said facial recognition. Expect the ATM to record serials, and the cameras at your bank. This'll be done in the name of 'tracking money stolen in robberies' but will be used for other purposes. Expect a 'serial number blacklist' that causes a flag to be raised if you use flagged cash, too many flags and the cops are shown the tapes or the facial recognition blacklists you. You also get blacklisted if the facial recognition determines you're a known retail thief/robber. Expect Walmart greeters to be notified not to allow someone in because the facial recognition recognized someone who was blacklisted. With facial recognition, your cash purchases can still be correlated into a profile and shared/sold, like supposedly happens with credit cards.
Now look at open-source end-to-end encrypted communication software like Signal. And the cryptocurrencies that happen to be defacto decentralized. One can easily imagine (in the unlikely event it doesn't already exist) a situation where digital exchanges of currency are anonymous, unblacklistable, and decentralized. Also, since it's decentralized you don't have to worry about a single point of failure... failing. As opposed to a computerized cash register that crashes and is unable to accept cash, and the employees are forbidden from selling items not sold through the register.
I've seen people who are reticent to break a large bill because once they break it, they'll spend it because they treat small bills as worthless. Others treat cash as 'free money' that they blow whereas numbers in an account are 'important money' that they don't touch. If these people went full cash, they wouldn't save enough to pay their bills. Also, is your annoying relative or whatever hitting you up for money regularly? "Sorry, no cash on me", problem solved. If you always carry cash on you then it's an ongoing problem. Credit cards often have points or other rewards/cash back programs, with cash you get nothing like that.
Institutions want to get rid of cash because handling cash is difficult to automate, and cash has higher marginal cost to guard, particularly from the handlers. Cash also tends to get stolen, despite all the money spent on guarding it. It also gets counterfeited, lost, destroyed, and requires quite a lot of money to produce (for the treasury). Forget ATMs, if society goes cashless, banks can get rid of many of their branches. Loan applications can be done via Skype video calls or whatever. Kill checks and money orders and branches wouldn't really be needed for much.
The key question is if this process can be done cheaply enough that it's cheaper to recycle lithium-ion batteries than to just make new ones. Of course the process could be government-subsidized/mandated for environmental reasons. Ideally, a way to achieve this process inside the battery itself would be possible (without causing it to explode).
I'm planning on being a pet for our killbot overlords. I've had a fuzzy collar fitted and everything!
Obviously Judge Holder wanted to show he held the power in that situation, so he held the defendant in contempt, leading to him being held in a cell for six months and beholding being beheld to the law despite holding onto his passwords, leading to a holding pattern to see if the appeals hold up, holding America in a state of held breath until the man's constitutional rights are upheld.
the SKA telescope will inevitably revive the debate
No Doubt.
Geneticists Learn to Code in Java
A plumberbot that can do 100% of what a human plumber can, I agree completely. However, a plumberbot that can only unclog drains could put half the plumbers in a city out of business.