Slashdot Mirror


User: Falos

Falos's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
1,041
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 1,041

  1. Re:Wasnt an inside leak on Large Amount of Star Citizen Art Assets Leaked · · Score: 1

    Knowledge is a contagion, then.

    Thoughtproperty doesn't need "desire" in the equation to populate.

  2. $commentsubject on Student Photographer Threatened With Suspension For Sports Photos · · Score: 1

    One more reminder that thoughtproperty, for right or wrong, simply isn't sustainable.

    This reality will only become more evident as time passes, not counting the leaps that new techs cause.

  3. comment subject goes here on The Brainteaser Elon Musk Asks New SpaceX Engineers · · Score: 1

    Trivia != Mental processing
    /thread

  4. comment subject here on Survey: 2/3 of Public Sector Workers Wouldn't Report a Security Breach · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do we give out points on evaluations for "fully complies with security policy every time"? No, we slam plebs with metrics and quotas, after a childhood revolving around GPAs and diploma checkboxes and life-story-in-one-page application rodeos. We've trained society to game the system and if they're giving fucks in a certain, limited fashion, it's because the world only gives fucks in a certain, limited fashion.

    Of-fucking-course they game the system. "Fear of reprisal" isn't even a core symptom.

  5. comment subject goes here on Los Angeles Raises Minimum Wage To $15 an Hour · · Score: 1

    Smaller businesses trying to American Dream might struggle. Yes, plebs will be able to buy more, but it might not cut it.

    Big businesses can soak it, but they're also better poised to just outsource/automate as we inch one more tick on "Human labor costs too much."

    And it'll keep ticking. I won't waste emotions lamenting it, it's inevitable. We can't uninvent automation. I also accept that businesses are meant to act in their own interest, but meanwhile the money circulates less and less.

    Much less. Your paycheck doesn't go to plebs, it flows upwards. You pay bills to phone companies, you pay car dealerships and bank mortages, you pay insurance/hospitals, and nothing flows down. You think the walmart portion trickles down to Joe? Nope. His job exists because it's an upward flow as well. Wealth is concentrating harder than diamonds and it's going to get worse before it gets worser.

    I don't recommend trying to resculpt immutable facts (eg businesses will never hire money sinks); we'll need to adapt our world around them. But no one seems to know how, not plausibly.

  6. Re:imagine that. on Schools That Ban Mobile Phones See Better Academic Results · · Score: 1

    The X factor of sheer chance/chaos is significant. If I posit a mediocre, obnoxious riddle to a group of 1,000 people, those who solve it may exhibit a pattern of slightly higher "interest" or higher "intellect" or whatever, but repeated trials will show it's also largely a roll of the dice. I suppose in your frame it'd equate to some line about "opportunity meets effort".

    Nothing contrary here, just highlighting a thought not mentioned yet. To me (local district's IT dept) the takeaway is that whatever the tastes or capabilities of 1,000 students, it's only a matter of time 'till someone finds a workaround. And because knowledge is a contagion (looking at you, thoughtpurchases) everyone is quickly infected and everyone knows. If the workaround is slow, difficult, tedious, harmless, ignore it. Otherwise, tick one more point on your Whackamole card and do a fix.

  7. Re:Great story! on Decoding the Enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto · · Score: 1
    Dibs! I'll get a screenplay out of the clusterfuck below that occurred to me while discussing Grooveshark's mystery figurehead over at Ars:

    Remember the Satoshi Nakamoto story? It felt straight out of fiction, almost trope: A well-tuned, global, controversial technology is developed by an unknown genius, a reclusive hermit. All we need is some kid to stumble upon a series of events that start revealing The Hidden Secret of Nakamoto's creation.

    The Truth of BTC would probably involve supercomputer architecture built on human brain mapping. Or it's powered by brain jars. I dunno. There will be a girl in a box (see trope) at some point. Or possibly a bio-pod-cylinder-tank thing. The villain's Order will also be following the same trail (his banking companies are dying as the UN or whatever start switching to BTC). There will be guns and tacticool black OPs armor and at some point a lab will explode. The hero's parents are dead - no wait, missing for reasons unknown! - and s/he lives with an unc- no, an aunt. Passive, uninteresting aunt with little story pertinence. Allows exposition to warm up at Anyschool High in sleepy Anytown, which has That Weird Science-Building Complex owned by Undisclosed Person on the edge of town.

  8. Re:Also in the news... on Drone Flying Near White House Causes Lockdown · · Score: 1

    Samantha's internet and phone logs suggest she's a pedophile and is also exploiting a local addiction to cheese sticks. Financial analysis links her activity to drug lords and the Disney store. Satellite imagery shows she's either privatized a military force or likes to jump-rope.

    Samantha has three-hop ties to KNOWN TERRORIST GROUPS. Certain liberties must be compromised in order for us to protect you from the Samanthas out there.

  9. Re:Ungreatful Cunt on Harry Shearer Walks Away From "The Simpsons," and $14 Million · · Score: 1

    I doubt "having a go" is very free.

    Actually, isn't the area full of waiters and dishwashers having a go?

    That sounds like a much better way to spend his life.

  10. Re:That's cause we're cooler on What Happens To Our Musical Taste As We Age? · · Score: 1

    "What does metabolism have to do with anything? Have Earth's humans changed in the future??"

  11. Lots of semantic discussion at this tier. Subtiers. Some of the posts address AI as some linear strength metric that qualifies after some arbitrary point. That's a stupid definition. Better would be to pin it to some tipping point; not the singularity, but self-writing or something. AI isn't deterministic. Chess is deterministic. "Natural" voice navigation will be deterministic.

    AI isn't even deductive. AI means it builds new decision trees, adaptive to conditions. Most life forms do it. In this context, humans boil down to execution of instinct code, all the way up to "love (and the expression of) is chemicals in the brain".

    Now, we already have code that does this, at a crude level. At the time, Black & White set some niche records for the amount of behavioral code your Creature pet would build for itself. We have programs that don't know how to play chess, but can write a chess-playing decision tree that optimizes over iterations. It will reach a shitty roof well below current, human-written layouts. Programs that "learn" to play Space Invaders (or anything) play like shit.

    So, seeing as you read this far, I'll concede that we hit a familiar snag - either we already have AI (of this definition) or we're pegging AI to some arbitrary strength of original, generated thought. But the code equivalent to the instincts of even simple life forms would be a mess, so it'll be a while before self-preserving, self-sustaining, "self-aware" (enjoy ur semaniks.) AI.

  12. comment subject goes here on How Responsible Are App Developers For Decisions Their Users Make? · · Score: 1

    This is imaginary thoughtcrime again. Good luck prosecuting (sorry, "holding responsible") someone who's been long dead.

    The culprit obtained, kept, and operated the tool, device, machination, etc. that's pertinent. MAYBE the operator caused the events unknowingly, in cases where they were unaware of a strange or faulty capacity (the latter is pre-t-t-y hard to predict the first time), but that affects the measure of intent, which some areas of law are rational enough to outright forgive.

    What it doesn't affect is blame shifting up some abstract chain of causation leading from the inventor's guilty parents to the guilty Big Bang.

  13. Re:More hoops before travelling through USA on Judge: Warrantless Airport Seizure of Laptop 'Cannot Be Justified' · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "You'll be harassed for it." is a bad symptom.

    "If we can't use justice, we'll just use bullshit. We don't need to be 'right'." kind of demands to be contested on sheer principle. No, not everyone can afford to do so, but we can be aware.

  14. Re:Well duh... on Anonymous Accused of Running a Botnet Using Thousands of Hacked Home Routers · · Score: 1

    I'm actually amused by the idea of my refrigerator being the majestic warhorse of destruction against some prolife/choice* website (depends which Anonymous you get - remember, it's a banner before it's a group).

    It'd be quietly chilling in the corner and suddenly (the pump?) would start humming with the strain, the effort of my valiant fridge clashing horns across the cyberspace! Rawrrrrrrgh! Taste this, heathens!

    *gun control, samesex whatever, health insurance, $hot_button, etc

  15. comment subject here on California Gets Past the Yuck Factor With "Toilet To Tap" Water Recycling · · Score: 1

    - I thought lots of municipalities already did this stuff. For ages. Bunch of physical, chemical, mechanical filters/treatments. We simply avoid thinking about it, like with many things we do/ingest. Including the affluents. "Everyone poops."

    - Poop ain't shit. It's an infectious slurry at first, but the components under that aren't particularly important. Bunch of carbon. Fibers, fats. Carbon, hydrogen. Organic material - as in, what you eat. The point (as seen above repeatedly) is we should be far more concerned about chemicals that get dumped (flushed) into the water. And I even reckon one guy flushing a pill or two will be diluted to homeopathic (lol) tier - it's an office or factory dumping a bottle of something every week, all year round, that I'd be nervous about.

    > beaten back by entitled, squeamish whiners who denounced
    - FTFY. See above point. Sell them bottled water at gouge rates. We've already observed that (1) people don't know or care about what it actually is so long as it has a picture of mountains or fields or glaciers on the tin (must not have a bear next to a river); and (2) they can't judge which contents matter anyway.

  16. Re:Why are we asking this... on Will Robot Cars Need Windows? · · Score: 1

    I think I'm on this page, maybe with less hyperbole. For an article this is pretty narrow and speculative for something still relatively distant. It'll be an inconsequential concern someday, sure, but the bridge will pretty much cross itself, so to speak.

    If we /must/ indulge, I expect even larger (bus) vehicles will have at least one window. For all our "perfecting" airplanes allow fly-by-wire failsafe, only some IoTard would let a derped machine (not just can't-phone-home, full failure, maybe EMP) become so full-retard that the passenger can't even open the electronic hatch to get out.

  17. comment subject here on Technology and Ever-Falling Attention Spans · · Score: 1

    FTA, > Being surrounded by noisy co-workers and office machinery probably doesn't help either
    How about the demands? Interruptions, "hey can you do this too", "we need you for [meeting/explanation/event]" and all the constant "This is now also on your plate, deal with it.", which appending "whenever" doesn't make much better re: attention span.

    It's not even the most painful of iterations among the increasing expectations of workers.

  18. Re:Standard Law on Defense Distributed Sues State Department Over 3-D Gun Censorship · · Score: 1

    > once they try to give their idea away it is illegal
    Be careful, this edges across the line into thoughtcrime. There's nothing illegal about me describing shiv-building steps to you in a Starbucks. It CAN be illegal if it's a substep of conspiracy for me/you to operate said shiv (in an illegal manner). If they're trying to own/sell the design as imaginary property, SALES of the design, now a commercial item, may mean openings for intervention.

    If it's free, they still might find an illegality ("Fire!" in a theater endangers humans) in there somewhere that allows for intervention, but the 1stA makes it hard to prevent a mere recitation of knowledge in a vacuum.

    Printing one is a physical process that's easier to draw fences around, though messy to enforce. Sales are a physical process, and more conducive to enforcement. Laws on those two will probably vary by state.

  19. Re:I see what you did there on Centimeter-Resolution GPS For Smartphones, VR, Drones · · Score: 1

    Oh relax ya sissies, I'm sure the roof has waist-height guards, right?

    *loads up VR Mirror's Edge and/or Assassin's Creed*

  20. Re:Planetary magnetic field generator on NASA Will Award You $5,000 For Your Finest Mars City Idea · · Score: 1

    In older movies and cartoons, inheritance of haunted estates was often held pending On One Condition as a plot device to get people inside spooky mansions for ghostly shenanigans (ie the second-in-line trying to scare protagonists away and claim the inheritance). You may have seen it parodied more recently in, say, Futurama/Simpsons.

    Or maybe your post was just a roundabout crack at the linguistic ties my handle will exhibit in various languages. Believe it or not, I had no idea it did when I picked it for an SNES RPG. But it amuses me now, if not as much as actually seeing someone make a penis in minecraft blocks, custom decals, spray tags, guild logos, spaceships, Spore creatures, etc etc etc

  21. Re:Planetary magnetic field generator on NASA Will Award You $5,000 For Your Finest Mars City Idea · · Score: 1

    To receive it, you have to spend at least one night in the manor!

  22. Re:Dosbox in a browser? on Twitter Stops Users From Playing DOS Games Inside Tweets · · Score: 1

    Biters show up to say it's just a javascript sandbox. Counters point out vulnerabilities. Counters are countered. We bitterly bitch, we derail into pepsi vs coke, and someone Godwins.

    If I could advocate parent, s/he exhibited instincts we've been trying to teach. Our security guy slapped together a little phising/soc-engineering training video that a few of our departments got added to their training, including IT. I realized you could boil the thing, and all it was really saying is Be Skeptical, over and over.

    The other instinct I noticed is the one that wants to downloading something you can control and manipulate, run it on a proper loader. Not saying that one should be universal like the Caution above, just observing it.

  23. Re:Forensic on Single Verizon IP Address Used For Hundreds of Windows 7 Activations · · Score: 1

    I can't, the perp must have a cryptoscrambler. They're going to get away... unless the field agent goes stealth op and sneaks in close enough to hack their wifi!

  24. comment subject on The Programming Talent Myth · · Score: 1

    Maybe it's because rockstar ninja is the only tier anyone wants to pay, hire, circulate. I could hire Alice and get 40 hours of standard results, or I could pay Bob slightly more. He's not "addicted" to coding but he gets workaholic sometimes. He can be obsessive and thorough if something flips the wrong switch in him. He can easily be manipulated into overtime, side projects, etc.

    Why hire a moderate-effective, moderate-paid, moderate-jobsatisfaction Meh drone when you can hire a sucker?

  25. Re:One word: Cloud on Unable To Hack Into Grading System, Georgia Student Torches Computer Lab · · Score: 2

    "I don't wanna deal with this shit today. It's late, I got off half an hour ago, "

    The takeaway isn't that cops are colorblind (statistically, some must be) but that enforcement is arbitrary.

    And guess what arbitrary enforcement is conducive to? Hint: Arbitrary means the individual gets to decide case-by-case. Person-by-person.