- The Extreme Vetting Initiative seeks to predict whether an individual will become a positively contributing member of society and will contribute to the national interests. As far as we know, no one has ever defined or quantified these characteristics, so machine learning won't help.
- Since this is guaranteed fail, the people running the show will invariably turn to proxies that are better-known, such as Facebook posts criticizing the US. That sucks, because then you'll unintentionally keep some good -- but opinionated -- people out.
Don't you hate it when someone uses an analogy to illustrate a point, and then someone in the audience treats it as a claim and runs down 12 bunny holes critiquing it?
This isn't that hard. The key to both security and testing is independent, parallel validation. That's why I like the idea of taking paper ballots from one election and running them through an entirely different set of scanners for a recount.
I am a volunteer poll worker in Virginia. NO vote-tallying equipment is connected to the Internet, anywhere in the U.S. We are not idiots. We have about 230+ years' worth of experience with people trying to throw an election, and we understand -- and mitigate -- the risks.
This server in Georgia did NOT hold vote counts. It held voter registration records, instructions, and voting equipment passwords.
Each precinct tallying the votes keeps an independent record of their machines. There are paper backups of voting totals in the form of printed counts and hand-copied summary sheets.
In my state, we have switched over to machine-counted paper ballots in all precincts. Those scanners do not even have wireless hardware in them, they can only be accessed via ethernet cable. Once a machine is tested and certified for voting, a cover is placed over the ethernet socket and it is sealed with a plastic band.
I do advocate the use of paper ballots, but not because then humans could do a hand-count of them. Humans are lousy at repetitive tasks. A hand-count of millions of votes would have a margin of error 10x the size of the margin of error of machine-counted votes. In Virginia, when there is a recount, we bring in a completely different set of scanners than were used to originally count the votes, and run the same paper ballots through them. That is a excellent independent count.
Out of every 10 new ideas I have, at least 1 will be "wha?", 6 will be "meh", 2 will be "well, maybe if you combine it with something else", and 1 will be "ok, that might work." The best thing you can do to improve the quality of your work is to recognize when that work sucks and to speak the truth about it.
See, we all think those commies are soo much smarter than we are, they have devised a sonic "weapon" that even our best experts can't explain.
Here, let me try.
This is the sound of jury-rigging. If you've got not parts, and no money, and no normal source for repairs, you just put stuff together as best you can. This particular noise is the sound of a fan scraping a trash-can lid that washed up on shore 20 years ago./sarc
"Most notably, in 2017 Google will reach 100 percent renewable energy for our global operations—including both our data c"enters and offices. That means that we will directly purchase enough wind and solar electricity annually to account for every unit of electricity we consume, globally. This shift in our energy strategy didn’t just significantly reduce our environmental impact. By pioneering new energy purchasing models that others can follow, we’ve helped drive widescale global adoption of clean energy."
A better headline would have been, "Google will Repurpose Enough Renewable Power To Cover 100% of Its Non-Renewable Usage", but just trying running that one past the PR guy.
Please stick to the topic at hand, which is the geologic record of the earth.
Not Venus.
For as far back as we can directly observe, the earth has exhibited cycles of cooling and warming. If your argument is now that mankind has reversed this nearly 1 million-year-old trend, I would say that is not just an extraordinary claim, it is perhaps the most extraordinary claim in all of the history of science. And I would like to see the mountain of extraordinary evidence you have that proves your claim.
I just don't like sloppy science, period. Do a back of the envelope calculation of the amount of heating and cooling we are talking about to change an entire world's temperature from ice 2 miles thick to the wonderfully warm climate we have today, and then compare that to the total energy that would ever be trapped in a chaotic feedback system by a century-long use of fossil fuels. It's a pittance.
If you want to make wild claims, show me the science.
I have no idea what you mean by "restoring" forces, sorry. What I meant to say is that the geologic record going back nearly 1 million years shows a cycle of cooling and heating. Everyone in this debate wants to focus on warming, but for some odd reason no one ever brings up the other side of the cycle. I find such cherry-picking very odd.
If the argument is that humankind has reversed a 1 million-year-old trend (!), I would say that is an extraordinary claim and would want extraordinary evidence.
"In a decision that was later affirmed by the Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the foreign national ban “does not restrain foreign nationals from speaking out about issues or spending money to advocate their views about issues. It restrains them only from a certain form of expressive activity closely tied to the voting process—providing money for a candidate or political party or spending money in order to expressly advocate for or against the election of a candidate.” Bluman v. FEC, 800 F. Supp. 2d 281, 290 (D.D.C. 2011), aff’d 132 S. Ct. 1087 (2012)."
So, depends on the nature of the advertisement. If it's issues-oriented, it's probably fine.
An extremely positive development for FB. I'm a little surprised they went all the way back to MIT. Even Apache has a claw-back provision, but its scope is limited to lawsuits over the product itself, not lawsuits against the entire company. Maybe they didn't feel they could limit the scope in practice, so they just opened it all up.
> Is the coming sensor wave genuinely more convenient?
Do you use your smartphone to take photos? If yes, then you've answered your own question, I think.
> What about people preferring texting to phone calls?
There, the issue is multiplexing, I think. You can multiplex text messages easily, but not phone calls, at least not at the moment. Once one can control A/V streams by voice control, texting will die out.
> Fighting progress is what makes capitalism work.
That's just a silly observation, and not even worth comment, except to note that you probably made it using a computing device which has been doubling in capacity and features every year for more than a decade.
I've been thinking about the coming sensor wave for some time, and what I've concluded is this: give people something genuinely more convenient, and they will trade it for slightly more risk, every time. It won't even be close.
Why? Because people intuitively want to use ALL their senses to control their environment. It's something they've been doing their entire lives, and your typical computer interface really stinks by comparison. Heck, even something mundane like driving a car provides a hugely richer control experience than using any smartphone app you can name.
Computer-human interfaces suck. You can't fight progress in this area.
Not a lawer obviously, but my read is that both Apache and FB have a provision that says one's grant to use its software is revoked if you sue them for patent infringement. The difference is that Apache's revocation is limited to the work itself, whereas FB's revocation is unlimited: if you sue FB for the infringement of *any* patent, then your grant to React is revoked.
So: both have a poison pill. But if you incorporate React into a product that is going to be used by a lot of downstream people, then you are putting them all at risk of losing permission to use React, just because they use your product. Not nice.
The solution is to claw back the scope. FB can still get all the protection it needs, but it has to limit that protection to one specific product at a time. It can't use React as the trojan horse to win patent protection across the board.
The problem is not with malspeech, but malhearing. Anyone who listens to you just _waiting_ for you to say something bad so they can pounce on it is not, in fact, listening. They are stalking you.
It doesn't even matter what specific fault the malhearer is waiting for -- liberal, conservative, culture, relationships, whatever. It is impossible to have a conversation with anyone who is waiting to be offended.
America's entire food supply is simply awash in carbohydrates, especially sugars and refined grains. I walk into a grocery store, run my eyes across the shelves, and mentally tick off the items I can consume: no, no, hell no, no, maybe, no, no, ok, no, no, are you kidding, no, and no. And restaurant food? Don't make me laugh. Carbs piled on top of carbs on a bed of sugared fat topped with sugar sauce.
I took an undergraduate degree in History solely for the opportunity to study the Code of Hammruabi, which, along with the Pentateuch of the Bible, is one of the earliest systems of law ever recorded. Only later as a much older man was I able to afford going to Paris to see one of the actual steles on which the Code was inscribed, which was an unforgettable experience (it's a solid piece of obsidian over 7 feet high, with deeply-cut symbols that look like they were made about a year ago. These were people who didn't believe in Agile, not even for a moment!)
I am not terribly strong in mathematics, but I was able to follow the gist of the paper, and I do think their interpretations about the Babylonians preference for exactitude and integer divisions aligns quite well with the precision of their legal work.
From a purely academic perspective, it was an enormously sophisticated and skilled culture for its time.
Slashdot Mirror
- The Extreme Vetting Initiative seeks to predict whether an individual will become a positively contributing member of society and will contribute to the national interests. As far as we know, no one has ever defined or quantified these characteristics, so machine learning won't help.
- Since this is guaranteed fail, the people running the show will invariably turn to proxies that are better-known, such as Facebook posts criticizing the US. That sucks, because then you'll unintentionally keep some good -- but opinionated -- people out.
You'll know that President Trump is no longer bringing semi-trailers full of advertising cash to Twitter when they remove his check-mark.
Follow the money, people.
Don't you hate it when someone uses an analogy to illustrate a point, and then someone in the audience treats it as a claim and runs down 12 bunny holes critiquing it?
I do.
We have our proof at last that global warming IS melting the ice caps.
How can you know software is working?
By black box, double-blind testing, of course.
This isn't that hard. The key to both security and testing is independent, parallel validation. That's why I like the idea of taking paper ballots from one election and running them through an entirely different set of scanners for a recount.
Hey, stop harshing on good 'ol P.T. His essay on The Art of Money-Getting; Or, Golden Rules for Making Money" is a classic. And no, it's not what you think. One of the soundest essays on business you will ever read, I promise.
I am a volunteer poll worker in Virginia. NO vote-tallying equipment is connected to the Internet, anywhere in the U.S. We are not idiots. We have about 230+ years' worth of experience with people trying to throw an election, and we understand -- and mitigate -- the risks.
This server in Georgia did NOT hold vote counts. It held voter registration records, instructions, and voting equipment passwords.
Each precinct tallying the votes keeps an independent record of their machines. There are paper backups of voting totals in the form of printed counts and hand-copied summary sheets.
In my state, we have switched over to machine-counted paper ballots in all precincts. Those scanners do not even have wireless hardware in them, they can only be accessed via ethernet cable. Once a machine is tested and certified for voting, a cover is placed over the ethernet socket and it is sealed with a plastic band.
I do advocate the use of paper ballots, but not because then humans could do a hand-count of them. Humans are lousy at repetitive tasks. A hand-count of millions of votes would have a margin of error 10x the size of the margin of error of machine-counted votes. In Virginia, when there is a recount, we bring in a completely different set of scanners than were used to originally count the votes, and run the same paper ballots through them. That is a excellent independent count.
Out of every 10 new ideas I have, at least 1 will be "wha?", 6 will be "meh", 2 will be "well, maybe if you combine it with something else", and 1 will be "ok, that might work." The best thing you can do to improve the quality of your work is to recognize when that work sucks and to speak the truth about it.
See, we all think those commies are soo much smarter than we are, they have devised a sonic "weapon" that even our best experts can't explain.
Here, let me try.
This is the sound of jury-rigging. If you've got not parts, and no money, and no normal source for repairs, you just put stuff together as best you can. This particular noise is the sound of a fan scraping a trash-can lid that washed up on shore 20 years ago. /sarc
Haven't you heard? The real attack vector for those evil Russkies was Pokemon Go.
I swear I'm not making this stuff up. You couldn't, it's just too funny and outre.
From the Report:
"Most notably, in 2017 Google will reach 100 percent renewable energy for our global operations—including both our data c"enters and offices. That means that we will directly purchase enough wind and solar electricity annually to account for every unit of electricity we consume, globally. This shift in our energy strategy didn’t just significantly reduce our environmental impact. By pioneering new energy purchasing models that others can follow, we’ve helped drive widescale global adoption of clean energy."
A better headline would have been, "Google will Repurpose Enough Renewable Power To Cover 100% of Its Non-Renewable Usage", but just trying running that one past the PR guy.
Please stick to the topic at hand, which is the geologic record of the earth.
Not Venus.
For as far back as we can directly observe, the earth has exhibited cycles of cooling and warming. If your argument is now that mankind has reversed this nearly 1 million-year-old trend, I would say that is not just an extraordinary claim, it is perhaps the most extraordinary claim in all of the history of science. And I would like to see the mountain of extraordinary evidence you have that proves your claim.
I just don't like sloppy science, period. Do a back of the envelope calculation of the amount of heating and cooling we are talking about to change an entire world's temperature from ice 2 miles thick to the wonderfully warm climate we have today, and then compare that to the total energy that would ever be trapped in a chaotic feedback system by a century-long use of fossil fuels. It's a pittance.
If you want to make wild claims, show me the science.
I have no idea what you mean by "restoring" forces, sorry. What I meant to say is that the geologic record going back nearly 1 million years shows a cycle of cooling and heating. Everyone in this debate wants to focus on warming, but for some odd reason no one ever brings up the other side of the cycle. I find such cherry-picking very odd.
If the argument is that humankind has reversed a 1 million-year-old trend (!), I would say that is an extraordinary claim and would want extraordinary evidence.
I think it's pretty interesting to have a comment where one merely links to a scientific study modded as "Troll". Boy, does that speak volumes.
There have been 11 inter-glacial periods over the past 800,000 years. We have this by direct observation of ice core samples.
The geologic record completely contradicts the entire notion of "tipping points" or "runaway" heating from which there is no return.
Here's a summary of the FEC regs: https://www.fec.gov/updates/fo...
"In a decision that was later affirmed by the Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the foreign national ban “does not restrain foreign nationals from speaking out about issues or spending money to advocate their views about issues. It restrains them only from a certain form of expressive activity closely tied to the voting process—providing money for a candidate or political party or spending money in order to expressly advocate for or against the election of a candidate.” Bluman v. FEC, 800 F. Supp. 2d 281, 290 (D.D.C. 2011), aff’d 132 S. Ct. 1087 (2012)."
So, depends on the nature of the advertisement. If it's issues-oriented, it's probably fine.
An extremely positive development for FB. I'm a little surprised they went all the way back to MIT. Even Apache has a claw-back provision, but its scope is limited to lawsuits over the product itself, not lawsuits against the entire company. Maybe they didn't feel they could limit the scope in practice, so they just opened it all up.
> Is the coming sensor wave genuinely more convenient?
Do you use your smartphone to take photos? If yes, then you've answered your own question, I think.
> What about people preferring texting to phone calls?
There, the issue is multiplexing, I think. You can multiplex text messages easily, but not phone calls, at least not at the moment. Once one can control A/V streams by voice control, texting will die out.
> Fighting progress is what makes capitalism work.
That's just a silly observation, and not even worth comment, except to note that you probably made it using a computing device which has been doubling in capacity and features every year for more than a decade.
I've been thinking about the coming sensor wave for some time, and what I've concluded is this: give people something genuinely more convenient, and they will trade it for slightly more risk, every time. It won't even be close.
Why? Because people intuitively want to use ALL their senses to control their environment. It's something they've been doing their entire lives, and your typical computer interface really stinks by comparison. Heck, even something mundane like driving a car provides a hugely richer control experience than using any smartphone app you can name.
Computer-human interfaces suck. You can't fight progress in this area.
Not a lawer obviously, but my read is that both Apache and FB have a provision that says one's grant to use its software is revoked if you sue them for patent infringement. The difference is that Apache's revocation is limited to the work itself, whereas FB's revocation is unlimited: if you sue FB for the infringement of *any* patent, then your grant to React is revoked.
So: both have a poison pill. But if you incorporate React into a product that is going to be used by a lot of downstream people, then you are putting them all at risk of losing permission to use React, just because they use your product. Not nice.
The solution is to claw back the scope. FB can still get all the protection it needs, but it has to limit that protection to one specific product at a time. It can't use React as the trojan horse to win patent protection across the board.
Good call, WordPress.
The problem is not with malspeech, but malhearing. Anyone who listens to you just _waiting_ for you to say something bad so they can pounce on it is not, in fact, listening. They are stalking you.
It doesn't even matter what specific fault the malhearer is waiting for -- liberal, conservative, culture, relationships, whatever. It is impossible to have a conversation with anyone who is waiting to be offended.
Really?
America's entire food supply is simply awash in carbohydrates, especially sugars and refined grains. I walk into a grocery store, run my eyes across the shelves, and mentally tick off the items I can consume: no, no, hell no, no, maybe, no, no, ok, no, no, are you kidding, no, and no. And restaurant food? Don't make me laugh. Carbs piled on top of carbs on a bed of sugared fat topped with sugar sauce.
I took an undergraduate degree in History solely for the opportunity to study the Code of Hammruabi, which, along with the Pentateuch of the Bible, is one of the earliest systems of law ever recorded. Only later as a much older man was I able to afford going to Paris to see one of the actual steles on which the Code was inscribed, which was an unforgettable experience (it's a solid piece of obsidian over 7 feet high, with deeply-cut symbols that look like they were made about a year ago. These were people who didn't believe in Agile, not even for a moment!)
I am not terribly strong in mathematics, but I was able to follow the gist of the paper, and I do think their interpretations about the Babylonians preference for exactitude and integer divisions aligns quite well with the precision of their legal work.
From a purely academic perspective, it was an enormously sophisticated and skilled culture for its time.
They will discover they they STILL don't have the right "universal" USB cable connectors.