I've never bought a new 4-wheeled vehicle (motorcycle, yes, car/truck, no). The newest I've owned is a 2007 Tacoma. No touchscreen(s), wireless connectivity to anything, etc., and it's a good truck. First thing I'd ask if I was looking at a new one? "Can I get one without all these extra accessories? I have no use for them, they're just distractions; the most basic model you have, please? I'll wait for the factory to make it for me, if I have to". I'd buy a stripped-down fleet version if I had to, with manual everything. I'd walk out if all they could offer me is a bunch of bells and whistles I don't want or need. I imagine before I'm too old and beat up to drive anymore that I'll end up refurbishing really old/antique vehicles just to avoid all the unnecessary 'accessories' that I have no use for. All I want is a heater/air conditioner that works, maybe cruise control, and a stereo with decent FM sensitivity/selectivity and enough station presets. I don't even really need electric windows or doorlocks. Think of it this way: Focus on The Car Being Good At Being A Car. I don't need it to be a Lifestyle.
It's not 'unavoidable' in any way shape or form and this whole story is complete and utter BULLSHIT. You do not have to BUY ANY 'IoT' things AT ALL to start with, and you do not HAVE to use them, either.
I -- and everyone else -- don't know how HUMAN cognition/consciousness/self-awareness/actual THOUGHT/creativity works. Don't confuse the two. We know how this fake AI works: Poorly, by comparison.
I can think of no better way than by monitoring what adults are willfully inhaling and reporting the results.
The guy in the vaping store tells you "Oh, sure, it's perfectly safe, and all the Cool Kids are doing it -- you want to be one of the Cool Kids, don't you? Here, the first one is free"
I don't really want a 'nanny state' as you call it; I still have some bumper stickers I had made up years ago that say "I DON'T WANT TO LIVE IN A CHILDPROOFED WORLD!", but at the same time things such as e-cigs/vaping are under the purview of the FDA, and as such I'd like them to do their job.
The other problem I have is another version of the same tactics that the tobacco industry has used many decades ago: Convincing the unwary that 'e-cigs' and 'vaping' are healthier somehow, when that's clearly not the case, never has been, and you can still get addicted. As I said to someone else in this thread: There are people (usually young and dumb) who aren't smokers, get convinced 'vaping' is harmless, and go do that thinking there's no harm -- when it's a drug delivery device and they're getting addicted to nicotine anyway. Not good. Then there's the fools who know it's a drug-delivery device, one that looks more innocent and plausible as 'harmless' to the uninformed, who are intentionally using it for any number of substances; why give them an easier path to substance abuse/addiction? Especially when they're being spoon-fed by an industry that demonstrably doesn't care about their health and well-being or whether they live or die, just how much money they can make off them before they go?
Tell that to the people I know who went from smoking 1-2 packs a day of cigarettes, to e-cigs/vaping, and now don't even smoke at all.
I'd be fine with that statement if that's all this was about, but it's not: There are people who are going from being non-smokers to 'vaping' thinking it's somehow healthier than smoking, which is just plain not true. Also do you really think the tobacco companies are interested in anything other than perpetuating their own industry regardless of what it does to people's health? It's been shown over and over and over again that they just don't care how many peoples' health are affected or die, they rely on the addictive qualities of nicotine to ensure repeat business (up until their customers die, that is), and have clandestinely tried to get kids started smoking at an early age so they have 'lifelong customers'. In every way shape or form you could imagine the tobacco industry resembles any other drug-dealing operation you could imagine. They don't need any help in the form of the FDA turning a blind eye to vaping.
'E-cigarrettes' are just a blatant drug delivery device (for nicotine, a highly addictive and poisonous substance), plain and simple, and that was blindingly obvious the first time I ever heard about them. I was surprised the FDA didn't ban them outright.
If I knew that I'd be richer than Bill Gates right now from the patents I'd own, and I wouldn't have to spend any time at all arguing with fools like you, I'd have my fully conscious, sentient, human-level AI do it for me, LOL. You don't have to know how something DOES work in order to identify that something else isn't equivalent to it. Now STFU and actually go educate yourself on the subject, using sources other than the media.
You might have had my attention for a moment, then you quoted something from a television show, which just reinforces an opinion I already had: People don't know the difference between actual 'artificial intelligence' and the fantasy of television and movies; not even necessarily ostensibly educated, professional people. Then to make matters worse you misspelled 'conscious' (although I could give you a pass on that, could be you're on a phone and the autocorrect did that). I'm far from impressed by 'machine learning algorithms' because they cannot THINK. Full consciousness and self-awareness? Not necessarily, although I'd prefer that, too. But something that can think at least as well as a smart dog would be better than what I've seen so far. Also everyone talks about 'robots taking everyones jobs', but they can't even get a robot to fold laundry in any reasonable amount of time. General memo to everyone: Stop conflating 'robots' with 'automated machinery' because they're not the same thing. Otherwise you're calling something like the machinery in a Coca Cola bottling facility a 'robot', for instance.
Is this moss robust? Does it require much maintenance, or does it take care of itself fairly well, given the basics it needs? Could you cultivate it in large grid-like structures, which you also ventilate, for maximum air-renovating effects? Given a properly designed structure/framework and the basics it needs to live and grow, would it propagate itself across the structure/framework you provide for it? What I'm getting at is, building 'air recycling plants' (pun unintentional) in locations around the world, containing this moss. The scale required would probably make the idea a non-starter though.
That AC you're responding to is far from being a 'fuckwit', they actually understand what's going on. You on the other hand keep sipping the media hype-supplied Kool-Aid and don't know the difference between the ersatz and the real thing when it comes to so-called 'AI'. Go educate yourself.
I've been using Tor quite a bit for the last month, in an attempt to piss off Comcast, preventing them from collecting browsing data from me.
Tor has been more or less deprecated. You're solving captchas constantly because of Cloudflare, and everyone uses Cloudflare. Some sites deny you access of any kind, citing 'abuse', because you're on ANY Tor exit node. Some sites just plain won't work at all if you're on Tor (try ordering a pizza from Dominos; it redirects you endlessly back to their corporate site, you can't get to where you order a pizza, ever). Banking sites and utilities sites still work over Tor, but how long before they, too, start using Cloudflare, or just plain deny access because you're on a Tor exit node? I can't see paying for VPN as a viable alternative for privacy protection, because they'll all either end up treated like Tor, or they'll be the ones logging all your data instead of nosy ISPs, which defeats the entire purpose of it. Using anonymous proxy servers is a non-starter, because who knows who the hell is running those, and what sort of MitM attacks they might be perpetrating while you're using them?
Then there's what other commentors in this discussion are saying about so-called 'social media', mainly Facebook: it's the Leviathan of the Internet, and just as evil, sucking up all the data that people willingly provide it, and 'controlling the narrative' as much as it can get away with, meanwhile the world increasingly sees nothing wrong with 'requiring' you to have a Facebook account to do anything, and as one pointed out: Try convincing Immigration that you *don't* have any social media accounts, and see where THAT gets you..
I agree with Sunde; the Internet is horribly, fundamentally broken, because of what the corporate world and some governments have allowed to be done with it. It may in fact not be repairable and may need to be abandoned entirely. For at least a couple years now I've been slowly contemplating and devising an Exit Strategy from the Internet, as it becomes more and more a complete clusterfuck of a surveillance platform rather than a communication and data retrieval system. Tough, but leaving it behind could be done. The one problem you can't solve however is societal; you leave the Internet behind, you're going to be judged as a 'luddite' or 'anti-social', or in the case of people from my generation, 'too old to understand the Internet' or 'suffering from dementia' or somesuch nonsense, regardless of the fact that my work helps create the devices that everyone else is using to tether themselves to this worldwide surveillance platform. Meanwhile the vast majority of people are not only oblivious to what's going on, they're not capable of even comprehending it on a technical level if you try to explain it to them, their eyes glaze over, and at some point they just start talking to you like you're 'off your meds' and need to go see a shrink because you 'think everyone is out to get you'. What they don't realize is that the Internet *IS* out to get them -- and in fact already HAS them; they're stuck in the Matrix, and in many cases that's all they've ever known, so they don't even know the difference.
Because they're thieves. They're like pirates who were offered Letters of Marque; they're still scum, but they're legitimatized scum, but that doesn't mean they won't rob you blind.
You can't collect surveillance data on people with older computers if you aren't offering them an OS that will run on it that can collect surveillance data for you, that's why.
Someone needs to present people with the minute-by-minute transcripts of everything they do and say on the Internet, then they'll see how much they care about being surveilled 24/7/365.
Where do you think I got the idea from? it's the backdoor way of instituting an authoritarian/dictatorship government. Constant state of emergency. Police state. Later, curfews, and shootings if you're out when you're not allowed to be. Doors kicked in. Black bags over peoples' heads. Police in full jackbooted-thug mode. Go watch V For Vendetta again for a full explanation.
In the current socio-political climate, it's going to end up being Option A. Only fools and the tragically uninformed will use the Internet for anything important.
Currently, it's basically impossible to conduct your lifes' business using the Internet and have any reasonable modicum of privacy. I've tried using Tor, and while the Captchas all over the place (usually because of Cloudfront) are annoying but negotiable, there are sites that flat-out won't allow you access of any kind if you're on Tor; wanting to order a pizza online from Dominos is something you could work around (walk around the corner, order it in person, pay cash) there were a few others that aren't necessarily physically accessible that just plain wouldn't work with Tor. I considered a VPN, but that's one more thing to pay for every month, and there's ZERO guarantee of your privacy there, either. So no matter what you do, one way or another anymore, someone is storing data on you -- which means your government, sooner or later, will strong-arm someone into giving up the data they have on you. Kind of like Wargames, the only way to win this game is to not play.:-( That's what I think will eventually kill the Internet: too many people get too pissed off about too much invasion of their lives, and they'll just stop using it. It would be hard at first to go back to not using it, but it can be done.
Now all you need is to declare a never-ending 'state of emergency' and you can take whatever you want from whomsoever you want, whenever you want, and shoot anyone in the face who gets in your way.
Just might be. As fucked-up as it is here in the U.S., I'm SO glad I don't live in the UK, and I feel SO much sympathy for the good people who have to live in that mess.
Sadly, I think you're right. It's a more than a little Machiavellian of the GOP if true, though, which is scary enough in and of itself; they knew Pence by himself wouldn't have a snowballs' chance in Hell, so he rides Trumps' coattails into the Whitehouse. Then give Trump enough rope to hang himself. If all the above is true then I wouldn't put it past them to have turned a blind eye to any inappropriate/illegal/treasonous Russian involvement with the Trump cabinet -- until the appropriate time to 'discover' it all, and get Trump removed from office. Of course the whole thing is a Hail Mary play if you ask me, by the time the dust settles they'll have the entire country so thoroughly polarized, that by 2020 we'll be back to a Democratic Administration and a Democratic Congress -- or more interestingly, maybe more Independents or third-party? Who knows?
No matter. Can't plan too far ahead. I'm going with the assumption that Trump will be discredited, disgraced, and run out of D.C. on a rail, leaving Pence in charge. Too much to hope for that the entire Cabinet could be run out with him, so Job One at that point will be to prevent Pence from turning the U.S. from a Democratic Republic into a 'Christian' Theocracy.
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I've never bought a new 4-wheeled vehicle (motorcycle, yes, car/truck, no). The newest I've owned is a 2007 Tacoma. No touchscreen(s), wireless connectivity to anything, etc., and it's a good truck. First thing I'd ask if I was looking at a new one? "Can I get one without all these extra accessories? I have no use for them, they're just distractions; the most basic model you have, please? I'll wait for the factory to make it for me, if I have to". I'd buy a stripped-down fleet version if I had to, with manual everything. I'd walk out if all they could offer me is a bunch of bells and whistles I don't want or need. I imagine before I'm too old and beat up to drive anymore that I'll end up refurbishing really old/antique vehicles just to avoid all the unnecessary 'accessories' that I have no use for. All I want is a heater/air conditioner that works, maybe cruise control, and a stereo with decent FM sensitivity/selectivity and enough station presets. I don't even really need electric windows or doorlocks. Think of it this way: Focus on The Car Being Good At Being A Car. I don't need it to be a Lifestyle.
It's not 'unavoidable' in any way shape or form and this whole story is complete and utter BULLSHIT. You do not have to BUY ANY 'IoT' things AT ALL to start with, and you do not HAVE to use them, either.
I -- and everyone else -- don't know how HUMAN cognition/consciousness/self-awareness/actual THOUGHT/creativity works. Don't confuse the two. We know how this fake AI works: Poorly, by comparison.
I can think of no better way than by monitoring what adults are willfully inhaling and reporting the results.
The guy in the vaping store tells you "Oh, sure, it's perfectly safe, and all the Cool Kids are doing it -- you want to be one of the Cool Kids, don't you? Here, the first one is free"
I don't really want a 'nanny state' as you call it; I still have some bumper stickers I had made up years ago that say "I DON'T WANT TO LIVE IN A CHILDPROOFED WORLD!", but at the same time things such as e-cigs/vaping are under the purview of the FDA, and as such I'd like them to do their job.
The other problem I have is another version of the same tactics that the tobacco industry has used many decades ago: Convincing the unwary that 'e-cigs' and 'vaping' are healthier somehow, when that's clearly not the case, never has been, and you can still get addicted. As I said to someone else in this thread: There are people (usually young and dumb) who aren't smokers, get convinced 'vaping' is harmless, and go do that thinking there's no harm -- when it's a drug delivery device and they're getting addicted to nicotine anyway. Not good. Then there's the fools who know it's a drug-delivery device, one that looks more innocent and plausible as 'harmless' to the uninformed, who are intentionally using it for any number of substances; why give them an easier path to substance abuse/addiction? Especially when they're being spoon-fed by an industry that demonstrably doesn't care about their health and well-being or whether they live or die, just how much money they can make off them before they go?
Tell that to the people I know who went from smoking 1-2 packs a day of cigarettes, to e-cigs/vaping, and now don't even smoke at all.
I'd be fine with that statement if that's all this was about, but it's not: There are people who are going from being non-smokers to 'vaping' thinking it's somehow healthier than smoking, which is just plain not true. Also do you really think the tobacco companies are interested in anything other than perpetuating their own industry regardless of what it does to people's health? It's been shown over and over and over again that they just don't care how many peoples' health are affected or die, they rely on the addictive qualities of nicotine to ensure repeat business (up until their customers die, that is), and have clandestinely tried to get kids started smoking at an early age so they have 'lifelong customers'. In every way shape or form you could imagine the tobacco industry resembles any other drug-dealing operation you could imagine. They don't need any help in the form of the FDA turning a blind eye to vaping.
'E-cigarrettes' are just a blatant drug delivery device (for nicotine, a highly addictive and poisonous substance), plain and simple, and that was blindingly obvious the first time I ever heard about them. I was surprised the FDA didn't ban them outright.
Mod Luthair up, he knows what he's talking about. I can't, I've already commented on this thread.
If I knew that I'd be richer than Bill Gates right now from the patents I'd own, and I wouldn't have to spend any time at all arguing with fools like you, I'd have my fully conscious, sentient, human-level AI do it for me, LOL. You don't have to know how something DOES work in order to identify that something else isn't equivalent to it. Now STFU and actually go educate yourself on the subject, using sources other than the media.
You might have had my attention for a moment, then you quoted something from a television show, which just reinforces an opinion I already had: People don't know the difference between actual 'artificial intelligence' and the fantasy of television and movies; not even necessarily ostensibly educated, professional people. Then to make matters worse you misspelled 'conscious' (although I could give you a pass on that, could be you're on a phone and the autocorrect did that). I'm far from impressed by 'machine learning algorithms' because they cannot THINK. Full consciousness and self-awareness? Not necessarily, although I'd prefer that, too. But something that can think at least as well as a smart dog would be better than what I've seen so far. Also everyone talks about 'robots taking everyones jobs', but they can't even get a robot to fold laundry in any reasonable amount of time. General memo to everyone: Stop conflating 'robots' with 'automated machinery' because they're not the same thing. Otherwise you're calling something like the machinery in a Coca Cola bottling facility a 'robot', for instance.
Is this moss robust? Does it require much maintenance, or does it take care of itself fairly well, given the basics it needs? Could you cultivate it in large grid-like structures, which you also ventilate, for maximum air-renovating effects? Given a properly designed structure/framework and the basics it needs to live and grow, would it propagate itself across the structure/framework you provide for it? What I'm getting at is, building 'air recycling plants' (pun unintentional) in locations around the world, containing this moss. The scale required would probably make the idea a non-starter though.
That AC you're responding to is far from being a 'fuckwit', they actually understand what's going on. You on the other hand keep sipping the media hype-supplied Kool-Aid and don't know the difference between the ersatz and the real thing when it comes to so-called 'AI'. Go educate yourself.
You could design a questionnaire that is just as accurate. Are we now going to call printed words on a piece of paper 'AI', too?
I've been using Tor quite a bit for the last month, in an attempt to piss off Comcast, preventing them from collecting browsing data from me.
Tor has been more or less deprecated. You're solving captchas constantly because of Cloudflare, and everyone uses Cloudflare. Some sites deny you access of any kind, citing 'abuse', because you're on ANY Tor exit node. Some sites just plain won't work at all if you're on Tor (try ordering a pizza from Dominos; it redirects you endlessly back to their corporate site, you can't get to where you order a pizza, ever). Banking sites and utilities sites still work over Tor, but how long before they, too, start using Cloudflare, or just plain deny access because you're on a Tor exit node? I can't see paying for VPN as a viable alternative for privacy protection, because they'll all either end up treated like Tor, or they'll be the ones logging all your data instead of nosy ISPs, which defeats the entire purpose of it. Using anonymous proxy servers is a non-starter, because who knows who the hell is running those, and what sort of MitM attacks they might be perpetrating while you're using them?
Then there's what other commentors in this discussion are saying about so-called 'social media', mainly Facebook: it's the Leviathan of the Internet, and just as evil, sucking up all the data that people willingly provide it, and 'controlling the narrative' as much as it can get away with, meanwhile the world increasingly sees nothing wrong with 'requiring' you to have a Facebook account to do anything, and as one pointed out: Try convincing Immigration that you *don't* have any social media accounts, and see where THAT gets you..
I agree with Sunde; the Internet is horribly, fundamentally broken, because of what the corporate world and some governments have allowed to be done with it. It may in fact not be repairable and may need to be abandoned entirely. For at least a couple years now I've been slowly contemplating and devising an Exit Strategy from the Internet, as it becomes more and more a complete clusterfuck of a surveillance platform rather than a communication and data retrieval system. Tough, but leaving it behind could be done. The one problem you can't solve however is societal; you leave the Internet behind, you're going to be judged as a 'luddite' or 'anti-social', or in the case of people from my generation, 'too old to understand the Internet' or 'suffering from dementia' or somesuch nonsense, regardless of the fact that my work helps create the devices that everyone else is using to tether themselves to this worldwide surveillance platform. Meanwhile the vast majority of people are not only oblivious to what's going on, they're not capable of even comprehending it on a technical level if you try to explain it to them, their eyes glaze over, and at some point they just start talking to you like you're 'off your meds' and need to go see a shrink because you 'think everyone is out to get you'. What they don't realize is that the Internet *IS* out to get them -- and in fact already HAS them; they're stuck in the Matrix, and in many cases that's all they've ever known, so they don't even know the difference.
Because they're thieves. They're like pirates who were offered Letters of Marque; they're still scum, but they're legitimatized scum, but that doesn't mean they won't rob you blind.
There is no 'AI field', it's still just computers running code. Nothing to see here, move along..
Oh look I angered the Microsoft shills, and they had mod points!
You can't collect surveillance data on people with older computers if you aren't offering them an OS that will run on it that can collect surveillance data for you, that's why.
Someone needs to present people with the minute-by-minute transcripts of everything they do and say on the Internet, then they'll see how much they care about being surveilled 24/7/365.
See: https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
Where do you think I got the idea from? it's the backdoor way of instituting an authoritarian/dictatorship government. Constant state of emergency. Police state. Later, curfews, and shootings if you're out when you're not allowed to be. Doors kicked in. Black bags over peoples' heads. Police in full jackbooted-thug mode. Go watch V For Vendetta again for a full explanation.
In the current socio-political climate, it's going to end up being Option A. Only fools and the tragically uninformed will use the Internet for anything important. :-( That's what I think will eventually kill the Internet: too many people get too pissed off about too much invasion of their lives, and they'll just stop using it. It would be hard at first to go back to not using it, but it can be done.
Currently, it's basically impossible to conduct your lifes' business using the Internet and have any reasonable modicum of privacy. I've tried using Tor, and while the Captchas all over the place (usually because of Cloudfront) are annoying but negotiable, there are sites that flat-out won't allow you access of any kind if you're on Tor; wanting to order a pizza online from Dominos is something you could work around (walk around the corner, order it in person, pay cash) there were a few others that aren't necessarily physically accessible that just plain wouldn't work with Tor. I considered a VPN, but that's one more thing to pay for every month, and there's ZERO guarantee of your privacy there, either. So no matter what you do, one way or another anymore, someone is storing data on you -- which means your government, sooner or later, will strong-arm someone into giving up the data they have on you. Kind of like Wargames, the only way to win this game is to not play.
Now all you need is to declare a never-ending 'state of emergency' and you can take whatever you want from whomsoever you want, whenever you want, and shoot anyone in the face who gets in your way.
Just might be. As fucked-up as it is here in the U.S., I'm SO glad I don't live in the UK, and I feel SO much sympathy for the good people who have to live in that mess.
Sadly, I think you're right. It's a more than a little Machiavellian of the GOP if true, though, which is scary enough in and of itself; they knew Pence by himself wouldn't have a snowballs' chance in Hell, so he rides Trumps' coattails into the Whitehouse. Then give Trump enough rope to hang himself. If all the above is true then I wouldn't put it past them to have turned a blind eye to any inappropriate/illegal/treasonous Russian involvement with the Trump cabinet -- until the appropriate time to 'discover' it all, and get Trump removed from office. Of course the whole thing is a Hail Mary play if you ask me, by the time the dust settles they'll have the entire country so thoroughly polarized, that by 2020 we'll be back to a Democratic Administration and a Democratic Congress -- or more interestingly, maybe more Independents or third-party? Who knows?
No matter. Can't plan too far ahead. I'm going with the assumption that Trump will be discredited, disgraced, and run out of D.C. on a rail, leaving Pence in charge. Too much to hope for that the entire Cabinet could be run out with him, so Job One at that point will be to prevent Pence from turning the U.S. from a Democratic Republic into a 'Christian' Theocracy.