I was talking more about gang-bangers than mass shooters; no psychopathy is required. Insisting that psychopathy IS required, and normal psychology means someone is nonviolent, contributes to the problem. Indeed violence has gone down, but that's apparently a regression to the mean, with a prior outlier created by TEL pollution. Presumably, intelligence improved in the lowest percentiles, which I suspect led to increased resistance to the culture of violence. If the culture creates an impulse to commit violence, then impulse control would be the mitigating factor, and higher intelligence means better impulse control.
Pointing the finger at violent video games/media is really shorthand for a broader concern: a culture which excuses or promotes violence. This culture is so pervasive in the USA (even outside of media) that a little extra exposure likely makes no significant difference, particularly since most violent games have little or nothing to say on the value of violence in society.
I suspect a larger effect would be found if subjects were made to either listen to NRA Radio for 30 minutes every day for two months, or to listen to a comparable anti-violence media source (sorry can't think of a good one right now) the same amount. I'm not putting the blame solely on the NRA, it's just a good example of a steady drip of new info that can be consumed for 30 minutes each day; a gangsta rap Spotify playlist might have the same effect.
Amazon's core competency is logistics. They're the ultimate middle-man. If you're a middle-man of any sort, then you're likely to fear Amazon entering your industry. I'm just waiting for them to get into brokering finance and real estate, then the economy will REALLY freak out. Once machine learning gets better, the same software can be redeployed into ANY market, to outcompete humans (think AlphaGo learning Chess recently). Sure, you may not have a robo-realtor better than the best 5% of human realtors. But you don't need to beat the fifth percentile, you only need to beat the 50th percentile. At that point, no human-based operation will be able to compete.
The Senate is explicitly designed to NOT scale with population. Now if you wanted to complain that some states have a much higher citizen-to-representative ratio than others (which some do), then you'd have a point.
I'm fine with this. It's not like there are absolutely no legitimate arguments against representative democracy. If a video makes an argument, counter-arguments can be automatically linked to on the Youtube page. Stated facts can have sources automatically added; same for contradictory facts. I didn't say this would be done by humans, it'd obviously have to be automated. Look at Facebook's moves to combat 'fake news' and things are moving in this direction already.
What this move is really doing, is intentionally bursting people's bubbles of insularity that allows them to stay in an echo-chamber of ignoramuses. Even if someone has the 'right' views, more perspective is always a good thing. Of course, one has to guard against the "people think contradictory things, therefore nihilism" trap, then.
Right now Firefox blocks popup windows with a message that the site wanted to open a popup, with an 'open anyway?' prompt and 'ok' button. The same functionality could be reused for in-page popups, with an option to permanently whitelist the site.
Yeah I read about 9/11 conspiracy theories on Digg for a couple years before a friend linked me to a debunking site. It cleared up pretty much every incongruity that looked suspicious.
I'm in the firm belief that it's very difficult to change anyone's mind immediately, on a subject they care about. People will be biased to be skeptical of your claims that are counter to their held beliefs. This makes some sense, as someone could easily be quickly manipulated if this wasn't the case. It is the mental equivalent of 'circling the wagons' and is a similar defense mechanism. I imagine (but haven't done any research on this) that the experiments done that found a Backfire Effect were all done so that a subject's beliefs were challenged and then surveyed later the same day. If the survey were issued the next day, after a night of mental processing, then I suspect the Effect would be less prominent. Personally, I'd want to do my own independent research on the presented claims (at least an Internet search) before I accept and act upon them.
That said, some answers (evolution by natural selection is a good one) are so elegant and answer so many things, that it's easy to accept them. Of course, the 'elegant answer that solves so many things' is usually a variation on 'invisible man in the sky made it happen', and good luck overturning THOSE beliefs unless you have an even more elegant solution. A solution that reads like quantum mechanics (if it makes sense, you don't understand it) isn't elegant enough to win against that, to a non-rationalist.
I'm all in favor of this, so long as it's expanded to creationism, fundamentalism, or any other extremist video predicated on a faulty premise. Heck, take it further and add opposing viewpoints to ANY video presenting only one side to a contentious issue, like abortion or gun control/rights.
It seems the retailer inputs driver's license number and address, or scans the barcode if it has one. That's how one is tracked. Retail return policies generally have a catch-all "we can refuse any refund for any or no reason at our discretion" clause, which is used in this case. It seems The Retail Equation (TRE) presumably uses machine learning fraud-detection systems, like a credit or debit card company uses, only you can't call them to force the transaction through, so you're just stuck with no way out. Given that returns are a cost-center for retailers, this is a 'feature' rather than a bug. Getting flagged means no returns to that store for 365 days, and you only find out after you've bought your merchandise; so if you bought clothes unsure if your spouse likes how they look, or if they'll be comfortable, then you're SOL if not. TRE has been around for several years, their website says 1999, and I found complaints about them online dating back to at least 2011.
TFA gives an anecdote of a guy who was blacklisted from his first return... before he even made it. So he was allowed zero returns from Best Buy before being banned from returns. Apparently, it triggers so rarely that there haven't been enough complaints about false positives to cause retailers to ditch the system. In my experience, customer complaints can cause a company to loosen its return policies to the point of letting pretty-obvious fraud through, although larger companies are probably less likely to care. I guess the moral is, shop at smaller stores if you're not certain you want something, and check the return policy.
It's not as bad as it was in the first days of the 10.0 release. I actually had scripts fully enabled for a few days before I realized I had it configured wrong. But I agree it still needs work, and is missing a bunch of options 5.0 had which improved privacy and security.
I was referring to the publishing of Audio Device Class 3.0, which made it energy-efficient enough to be a feasible 3.5mm jack replacement. This was published in September 2016.
Alternate headline: Apple creeping towards a USB-C future. This move sounds suspiciously like the lead-up to a surprise announcement that they're courageously killing Lightning and replacing it with USB-C. Long overdue, IMO. Lightning is still limited to USB 2.0 speeds, and the latest revision of Thunderbolt uses the USB-C connector. Macbooks use USB-C as well, so iDevices are the only Apple things not yet using that connector... and would have much to gain by doing so. One of the last pieces of the puzzle was digital audio over USB... which had an official protocol finalized in the past year or so. Now that 3rd party manufacturers can produce licensed iDevice compatible gadgets with USB-C ports, everything is in place. Sure they'd have to include a USB-C to 3.5mm dongle instead of the Lightning one, but switching over sooner would be pulling the band-aid off quickly. People who bought those Lightning headphones would have to get a USB-C to Lightning adapter, as well.
I expect that we'll never actually see headsets with panels this high-resolution. By the time video cards can drive VR software at this resolution, we'll have laser retinal displays. The main problem holding these back in the past were rainbow artifacts appearing during fast eye saccades, but waveguides have recently been devised which should prevent this (can't find a source ATM).
HDMI 2.1 was just released last November, and supports 10k at 120Hz. Video cards will have trouble driving those resolutions at high frame rates for a while I expect.
If you're talking to people in LA and London from New York, and you say '2pm' without specifying a time zone, then you have the exact same problem. WHICH time zone you pick doesn't matter, so long as everyone coordinates to the same one. People will be expected to figure out for themselves what time they should make the call, and chances are every electronic device they own will have a function to do so. Or you can consult a paper chart. Hey, that's exactly how things work now with our current time zones. Why would people want to memorize the difference between time zones? Or the geographical map of exactly what area each time zone covers? Hope you have an eidetic memory for that. Just set an electronic alarm. Misremembering the time zone difference, or forgetting which time zone you're in, means you're off by hours, under the current system.
How about, instead of time zones swerving around certain cities (causing a jagged vertical 'line'), and being in discrete 1-hour increments, we have continual time adjustments based on one's coordinates? As one moves, the time gradually changes by seconds, adding to minutes, eventually hours; it can be calculated down to Planck seconds if you wish; but there's no sudden jump.
Or, ya know, we could all use UST for anything involving a network, like the Internet, or financial markets, or phone-based activities. Everything else would go back to approximate times like 'sunrise', 'high noon', 'sunset', 'night' etc. So the NYSE might open at 06:00 UST, but the local grocery store might open 'an hour past sunrise'. Wanna know if it's sunrise? Don't look at your mobile device, look at the sky.
Slashdot Mirror
I think Uber's rushing to have a successful IPO
Initial Pedestrian Offing?
Mission accomplished.
while jaywalking is certainly not a capital offense
It was in her case. /snark
I was talking more about gang-bangers than mass shooters; no psychopathy is required. Insisting that psychopathy IS required, and normal psychology means someone is nonviolent, contributes to the problem. Indeed violence has gone down, but that's apparently a regression to the mean, with a prior outlier created by TEL pollution. Presumably, intelligence improved in the lowest percentiles, which I suspect led to increased resistance to the culture of violence. If the culture creates an impulse to commit violence, then impulse control would be the mitigating factor, and higher intelligence means better impulse control.
Pointing the finger at violent video games/media is really shorthand for a broader concern: a culture which excuses or promotes violence. This culture is so pervasive in the USA (even outside of media) that a little extra exposure likely makes no significant difference, particularly since most violent games have little or nothing to say on the value of violence in society.
I suspect a larger effect would be found if subjects were made to either listen to NRA Radio for 30 minutes every day for two months, or to listen to a comparable anti-violence media source (sorry can't think of a good one right now) the same amount. I'm not putting the blame solely on the NRA, it's just a good example of a steady drip of new info that can be consumed for 30 minutes each day; a gangsta rap Spotify playlist might have the same effect.
I went to where the AI told me the subs were, but it was just two whales humping.
How about commenters that pass the quiz get an automatic +1 mod? That could work. Not positive it'd be a good idea, though.
There's a difference?
Amazon's core competency is logistics. They're the ultimate middle-man. If you're a middle-man of any sort, then you're likely to fear Amazon entering your industry. I'm just waiting for them to get into brokering finance and real estate, then the economy will REALLY freak out.
Once machine learning gets better, the same software can be redeployed into ANY market, to outcompete humans (think AlphaGo learning Chess recently). Sure, you may not have a robo-realtor better than the best 5% of human realtors. But you don't need to beat the fifth percentile, you only need to beat the 50th percentile. At that point, no human-based operation will be able to compete.
The Senate is explicitly designed to NOT scale with population. Now if you wanted to complain that some states have a much higher citizen-to-representative ratio than others (which some do), then you'd have a point.
I'm fine with this. It's not like there are absolutely no legitimate arguments against representative democracy. If a video makes an argument, counter-arguments can be automatically linked to on the Youtube page. Stated facts can have sources automatically added; same for contradictory facts.
I didn't say this would be done by humans, it'd obviously have to be automated. Look at Facebook's moves to combat 'fake news' and things are moving in this direction already.
What this move is really doing, is intentionally bursting people's bubbles of insularity that allows them to stay in an echo-chamber of ignoramuses. Even if someone has the 'right' views, more perspective is always a good thing. Of course, one has to guard against the "people think contradictory things, therefore nihilism" trap, then.
I've read this comic already. Superman throws the waste into the Sun, right?
Right now Firefox blocks popup windows with a message that the site wanted to open a popup, with an 'open anyway?' prompt and 'ok' button. The same functionality could be reused for in-page popups, with an option to permanently whitelist the site.
Yeah I read about 9/11 conspiracy theories on Digg for a couple years before a friend linked me to a debunking site. It cleared up pretty much every incongruity that looked suspicious.
I'm in the firm belief that it's very difficult to change anyone's mind immediately, on a subject they care about. People will be biased to be skeptical of your claims that are counter to their held beliefs. This makes some sense, as someone could easily be quickly manipulated if this wasn't the case. It is the mental equivalent of 'circling the wagons' and is a similar defense mechanism. I imagine (but haven't done any research on this) that the experiments done that found a Backfire Effect were all done so that a subject's beliefs were challenged and then surveyed later the same day. If the survey were issued the next day, after a night of mental processing, then I suspect the Effect would be less prominent. Personally, I'd want to do my own independent research on the presented claims (at least an Internet search) before I accept and act upon them.
That said, some answers (evolution by natural selection is a good one) are so elegant and answer so many things, that it's easy to accept them. Of course, the 'elegant answer that solves so many things' is usually a variation on 'invisible man in the sky made it happen', and good luck overturning THOSE beliefs unless you have an even more elegant solution. A solution that reads like quantum mechanics (if it makes sense, you don't understand it) isn't elegant enough to win against that, to a non-rationalist.
I'm all in favor of this, so long as it's expanded to creationism, fundamentalism, or any other extremist video predicated on a faulty premise. Heck, take it further and add opposing viewpoints to ANY video presenting only one side to a contentious issue, like abortion or gun control/rights.
It seems the retailer inputs driver's license number and address, or scans the barcode if it has one. That's how one is tracked. Retail return policies generally have a catch-all "we can refuse any refund for any or no reason at our discretion" clause, which is used in this case. It seems The Retail Equation (TRE) presumably uses machine learning fraud-detection systems, like a credit or debit card company uses, only you can't call them to force the transaction through, so you're just stuck with no way out. Given that returns are a cost-center for retailers, this is a 'feature' rather than a bug. Getting flagged means no returns to that store for 365 days, and you only find out after you've bought your merchandise; so if you bought clothes unsure if your spouse likes how they look, or if they'll be comfortable, then you're SOL if not. TRE has been around for several years, their website says 1999, and I found complaints about them online dating back to at least 2011.
TFA gives an anecdote of a guy who was blacklisted from his first return... before he even made it. So he was allowed zero returns from Best Buy before being banned from returns. Apparently, it triggers so rarely that there haven't been enough complaints about false positives to cause retailers to ditch the system. In my experience, customer complaints can cause a company to loosen its return policies to the point of letting pretty-obvious fraud through, although larger companies are probably less likely to care. I guess the moral is, shop at smaller stores if you're not certain you want something, and check the return policy.
it will no doubt be difficult to detect the difference between helpful and not-helpful popups
There is No Such Difference! Kill 'em all, let FSM sort 'em out.
It's not as bad as it was in the first days of the 10.0 release. I actually had scripts fully enabled for a few days before I realized I had it configured wrong. But I agree it still needs work, and is missing a bunch of options 5.0 had which improved privacy and security.
I was referring to the publishing of Audio Device Class 3.0, which made it energy-efficient enough to be a feasible 3.5mm jack replacement. This was published in September 2016.
Alternate headline: Apple creeping towards a USB-C future. This move sounds suspiciously like the lead-up to a surprise announcement that they're courageously killing Lightning and replacing it with USB-C. Long overdue, IMO. Lightning is still limited to USB 2.0 speeds, and the latest revision of Thunderbolt uses the USB-C connector. Macbooks use USB-C as well, so iDevices are the only Apple things not yet using that connector... and would have much to gain by doing so. One of the last pieces of the puzzle was digital audio over USB... which had an official protocol finalized in the past year or so. Now that 3rd party manufacturers can produce licensed iDevice compatible gadgets with USB-C ports, everything is in place. Sure they'd have to include a USB-C to 3.5mm dongle instead of the Lightning one, but switching over sooner would be pulling the band-aid off quickly. People who bought those Lightning headphones would have to get a USB-C to Lightning adapter, as well.
I expect that we'll never actually see headsets with panels this high-resolution. By the time video cards can drive VR software at this resolution, we'll have laser retinal displays. The main problem holding these back in the past were rainbow artifacts appearing during fast eye saccades, but waveguides have recently been devised which should prevent this (can't find a source ATM).
HDMI 2.1 was just released last November, and supports 10k at 120Hz. Video cards will have trouble driving those resolutions at high frame rates for a while I expect.
It's impossible to overstate the value of Spotify playlists.
One Trillion Dollars
QED not impossible
If you're talking to people in LA and London from New York, and you say '2pm' without specifying a time zone, then you have the exact same problem. WHICH time zone you pick doesn't matter, so long as everyone coordinates to the same one. People will be expected to figure out for themselves what time they should make the call, and chances are every electronic device they own will have a function to do so. Or you can consult a paper chart. Hey, that's exactly how things work now with our current time zones.
Why would people want to memorize the difference between time zones? Or the geographical map of exactly what area each time zone covers? Hope you have an eidetic memory for that. Just set an electronic alarm. Misremembering the time zone difference, or forgetting which time zone you're in, means you're off by hours, under the current system.
How about, instead of time zones swerving around certain cities (causing a jagged vertical 'line'), and being in discrete 1-hour increments, we have continual time adjustments based on one's coordinates? As one moves, the time gradually changes by seconds, adding to minutes, eventually hours; it can be calculated down to Planck seconds if you wish; but there's no sudden jump.
Or, ya know, we could all use UST for anything involving a network, like the Internet, or financial markets, or phone-based activities. Everything else would go back to approximate times like 'sunrise', 'high noon', 'sunset', 'night' etc.
So the NYSE might open at 06:00 UST, but the local grocery store might open 'an hour past sunrise'. Wanna know if it's sunrise? Don't look at your mobile device, look at the sky.