I'm thinking they may have misplaced the decimal point... 2.07 Billion, really?
I could totally believe 83 million "real" Facebook users, people who live and breathe the app every day. 2+ Billion is counting people that haven't logged on in years, have no idea how to use "the Facebook" and otherwise holders of inactive accounts.
Just because there's a real person behind a zombie account doesn't mean that they'll be in any way influenced by advertising or other media pushed through Facebook.
I have a hard time believing we are out of accessible nickel in the crust - maybe it's not economically competitive at this time, like tar sands weren't 40 years ago, but I think it's still there.
However, as the cost of extracting high quality nickel from the crust increases, at some point it will be cost effective to source it from space rocks. Like solar power in the 1970s, we're not there... yet.
If you listen to Facebook long enough, you'll find that they claim to have over 8 billion members... 126 million "views" sounds like another number they feed their paying advertisers.
Surely Google, master of advertising, has promoted this to all the people that matter.... OTOH, I've been running my own website for 20 years, and this is the first I've heard of it, too. But, then, Alexa hasn't been ranking me for a few years now - not that I care, just how the world has been turning.
I suspect it's the technical problems that they don't feel like solving and the low uptake is just an excuse to ignore the hard problems.
But your copy has no monetary value, sure we can all share the wisdom for free, but if you want to exchange it for something else you'll find it has no fungible value.
The problem with getting serious government clearance is that it goes first to active military service... if you're over 30, it's harder to enlist both from the admission process and the life-situation realities that hit most people by that age.
Surprised it took this deep into the comments to come to the real explanation.
I graduated in 1990, and "programmers" were still really rare in school - lots of schools had zero support for computer software in the 1980s, most of the field was self-taught, and there wasn't that much field out there anyway.
The stupid part of doing this with a VTOL aircraft of any kind is the weight involved. Batteries sufficient to move your car to the next charging station would start around a pound:
Aren't these things meant to have high numbers of songs so that you can find out what that obscure song is, not just the latest taylor swift one?
Uh... no. The point is to ID that song that your friends were listening to and you are hearing it again and you want to know what to call it so you can impress your friends next time it comes on, or better still, sell you a $0.99 copy to download to your phone.
Obscure songs are... obscure. Use the online database if you want to ID obscure stuff.
Rachel Carson was concerned with the adorable songbirds and how DDT was not only killing insects but causing direct harm up the foodchain. Local scale problems, there were always more insects out there...
Now we are killing all insects, with less direct harm up the foodchain - except: there's no more food. Global scale problem, like the fish stocks in the oceans.
7B is just too many, no matter how we try to live. Everybody becoming vegetarian just won't cut it. I think if we could scale back to 2B, we'd be just fine. Next question: which 2B?
Those near extinction events were quite likely selection processes for intelligence. Sure, smart people died due to circumstances, but when the circumstances were bad enough that only the smart people lived...
Smart people and dumb people have remarkably similar looking brains under post-mortem dissection, fMRI scans, and all kinds of other analyses... how can we possibly infer anything about intelligence from fossilized remains?
Brain size isn't going to be directly correlated with intelligence, whatever intelligence is...
Evolutionary pressure for intelligence without matching pressure for small brain size may cause the brain to grow, as the quickest route to increased intelligence by chance mutation, but... if there is pressure on brain size and intelligence at the same time, that should eventually lead to brains that are simultaneously smaller and smarter.
Look at what the brain of a wasp can do... pound for pound, the brains of flying territorial insects with complex hunting and specific parasitic practices would seem to be far more intelligent than anything the mammals have come up with, pound for pound.
Anything of value is inherently monetizable, any time a law like this is passed - lessening the value of patents, except in certain circumstances, it would be very surprising if those circumstances were not monetized and exploited to preserve the existing value, or create new value, if that's a possibility.
Especially when dealing with entities with practically infinite resources, including legal teams larger than the Congress.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't used Facebook for 15 minutes in the last 2 years, but I'd wager they count me as an active account holder.
I'm thinking they may have misplaced the decimal point... 2.07 Billion, really?
I could totally believe 83 million "real" Facebook users, people who live and breathe the app every day. 2+ Billion is counting people that haven't logged on in years, have no idea how to use "the Facebook" and otherwise holders of inactive accounts.
Just because there's a real person behind a zombie account doesn't mean that they'll be in any way influenced by advertising or other media pushed through Facebook.
Awesome $22B - now, share that among all the citizens of the country and they can each pay for a month of cellphone service.
Physicists are proud of their new portable mountain scanning X-ray machine, let them have their moment.
I always thought that the Pyramids had all the architectural genius of a pile of dirt.
A large, regularly shaped pile of dirt demonstrating some limited knowledge of astronomy.
It's like Soviet era construction, but more so: The bigger and thicker you build it, the longer it will stand.
I have a hard time believing we are out of accessible nickel in the crust - maybe it's not economically competitive at this time, like tar sands weren't 40 years ago, but I think it's still there.
However, as the cost of extracting high quality nickel from the crust increases, at some point it will be cost effective to source it from space rocks. Like solar power in the 1970s, we're not there... yet.
If you listen to Facebook long enough, you'll find that they claim to have over 8 billion members... 126 million "views" sounds like another number they feed their paying advertisers.
Surely Google, master of advertising, has promoted this to all the people that matter.... OTOH, I've been running my own website for 20 years, and this is the first I've heard of it, too. But, then, Alexa hasn't been ranking me for a few years now - not that I care, just how the world has been turning.
I suspect it's the technical problems that they don't feel like solving and the low uptake is just an excuse to ignore the hard problems.
444% every 17 months, 286% per year, in 5 years at that growth rate they will be up to 77%... patience ;-)
But your copy has no monetary value, sure we can all share the wisdom for free, but if you want to exchange it for something else you'll find it has no fungible value.
The problem with getting serious government clearance is that it goes first to active military service... if you're over 30, it's harder to enlist both from the admission process and the life-situation realities that hit most people by that age.
Surprised it took this deep into the comments to come to the real explanation.
I graduated in 1990, and "programmers" were still really rare in school - lots of schools had zero support for computer software in the 1980s, most of the field was self-taught, and there wasn't that much field out there anyway.
I don't think it's valuing youth over experience as much as it is valuing head count at the lowest possible salaries.
Most programmers in my bracket (50+ years old, 25+ years experience in field) won't work for the salaries that the Ruby jocks will.
I got out of using Microsoft development tools, now I don't feel like I'm fixing the same problems over and over again.
What could possibly go wrong?
https://www.google.com/search?...
The stupid part of doing this with a VTOL aircraft of any kind is the weight involved. Batteries sufficient to move your car to the next charging station would start around a pound:
https://www.amazon.com/WPS-Fea...
that's going to require a scary big drone to carry it and the drone's own power source.
Aren't these things meant to have high numbers of songs so that you can find out what that obscure song is, not just the latest taylor swift one?
Uh... no. The point is to ID that song that your friends were listening to and you are hearing it again and you want to know what to call it so you can impress your friends next time it comes on, or better still, sell you a $0.99 copy to download to your phone.
Obscure songs are... obscure. Use the online database if you want to ID obscure stuff.
It helps if you only listen to the top 40.
If you're listening to Ayurvedic by Ozric Tentacles, that might not be in the on-device fingerprint database.
And when we start emitting water vapor and heat inside this tube that has been cold vacuum for 3+Bn years, how's that gonna play? Could be fine...
Rachel Carson was concerned with the adorable songbirds and how DDT was not only killing insects but causing direct harm up the foodchain. Local scale problems, there were always more insects out there...
Now we are killing all insects, with less direct harm up the foodchain - except: there's no more food. Global scale problem, like the fish stocks in the oceans.
7B is just too many, no matter how we try to live. Everybody becoming vegetarian just won't cut it. I think if we could scale back to 2B, we'd be just fine. Next question: which 2B?
Sorry, I disagree.
Those near extinction events were quite likely selection processes for intelligence. Sure, smart people died due to circumstances, but when the circumstances were bad enough that only the smart people lived...
Smart people and dumb people have remarkably similar looking brains under post-mortem dissection, fMRI scans, and all kinds of other analyses... how can we possibly infer anything about intelligence from fossilized remains?
Brain size isn't going to be directly correlated with intelligence, whatever intelligence is...
Evolutionary pressure for intelligence without matching pressure for small brain size may cause the brain to grow, as the quickest route to increased intelligence by chance mutation, but... if there is pressure on brain size and intelligence at the same time, that should eventually lead to brains that are simultaneously smaller and smarter.
Look at what the brain of a wasp can do... pound for pound, the brains of flying territorial insects with complex hunting and specific parasitic practices would seem to be far more intelligent than anything the mammals have come up with, pound for pound.
Anything of value is inherently monetizable, any time a law like this is passed - lessening the value of patents, except in certain circumstances, it would be very surprising if those circumstances were not monetized and exploited to preserve the existing value, or create new value, if that's a possibility.
Especially when dealing with entities with practically infinite resources, including legal teams larger than the Congress.
EA is a great place to work, if you're into the bondage, submission and masochism side of BSDM.