You do know that the USA spends the most per capita on health insurance & has the worst healthcare outcomes, e.g. highest infant mortality rates in the developed world, don't you?
And you do know that the leading cause of bankruptcy in the USA is medical bills from getting sick & losing job/health insurance, don't you?
That's what a privatised healthcare system looks like: Predatory, brutal, & dysfunctional. People shouldn't have their lives & their families' lives ruined because they got sick.
Even semi-privatised healthcare, e.g. Canada's which offers universal healthcare but privatised insurance, is a poor comparison to nationalised services like in the UK & Germany, which look after *all* their citizens, have good healthcare outcomes, & low costs.
Any corporation that gets so big that it becomes a monopoly/duopoly becomes politically influential, e.g. lobbying, pressure on individual states for tax breaks, & shaping political campaigns, & effectively becomes a participant in government, e.g. billionaire's setting education agendas & redirecting public funds towards their own pet projects such as teaching software development in public K-12 schools.
At that point, rather than break them up, acknowledge that that particular industry/sector has matured & consolidated, & bring it in under democratic control, i.e. either nationalise it or convert it into a democratic worker-owned cooperative (independent from government). One of the most important areas of citizen life, i.e. the workplace, is still mostly run under a medieval/feudal system. How can we call ourselves democratic if we aren't working towards democratising the workplace?
How about telecoms, Google, Amazon, et. al. as public utilities? What if Facebook's policies & strategies were actually publicly accountable & the public could vote for change with transparency & oversight? What if their CEOs & executives were either elected by the public or appointed by their workers? Could you imagine working for a corporation like that & what it'd be like?
Agreed. What general is going to let soldiers under his command die & possibly lose decisive battles by strictly adhering to the RoE? The reality is that war itself is unethical & immoral. In any given conflict, civilian casualties always outnumber military (WWII & Korean War = 2:1, & probably a higher ratio these days) & yet we're told targeting civilians or indiscriminate use of weapons is a war crime deserving of a trial at the Hague.
No magic. 3% of GAFA et. al.'s profits in France would decline. How difficult is that to understand? And their profits are so obscene that they can afford to lobby the US govt. (and others) into letting them do whatever they want. I, for one, would like to see 3% less of that.
Me: "How about an impoverished mother of a starving baby stealing food for her/him?"
BTW, if you intend to manage employees in the manner your attitude suggests, please let everyone know so that they can avoid you. Then again, your attitude also leads me to believe that it's unlikely that you're in management.
One anecdote doesn't negate a line of reasoning supported by empirical evidence.
You think I can't justify theft? How about an impoverished mother of a starving baby stealing food for her/him? Is that not justifiable in your personal moral code?In the world where we haven't gone from barbarism to decadence & skipped civilisation, life & well-being trumps property every time.
You can come back when you've got a reasonable, rational argument to make.
BTW, a VPN won't hide you from Google, Facebook, etc.. They're pretty good at digitally fingerprinting whichever device you're using & tracking your web activities pretty well that way.
VPNs may be more privacy-focused than big, corporate ISPs, but they're also smaller, more opaque, and less publicly accountable.
"All governments lie." -- I. F. Stone
VPNs are more accountable than the NSA, CIA, DEA, DHS, & FBI with their "National Security Letters." And those guys are just as untrustworthy as the Chinese security agencies. The main advantage is that the Chinese agencies have far less power over US citizens than the US ones.
How you hide your IP address depends on why you're doing it. If you don't want US corporations to monitor your web traffic, then a VPN in any country that is non-compliant with US corporations & has a privacy reputation to maintain, e.g. Switzerland, is probably a safe bet. If you think you might be interesting to a government security agency from any country, a VPN won't help you at all: You'll need a whole new level of evasive tactics to hide yourself & cover your tracks.
...pay them a living wage & stop stealing their labour/wages. Wage theft is in an order of magnitude a bigger problem & generates a lot of ill-will between employers & employees: https://www.datamaticsinc.com/...
How about an agreement: We won't steal a few $s worth of stationery from you if you don't steal $1000s in wages you owe us? No? Didn't think so.
Also, nothing new about awnings in streets. Seville & Malaga, in southern Spain, have awnings/sails anchored between buildings to keep the midday sun off people's heads. They've been there for decades.
Algorithms, like Google's, that trawl through historical data & make predictions based on that work fine, as long as everything continues as before & nothing changes. It's a complex equivalent of continuing a straight line on a graph & calling it a prediction. It's completely useless & can even be destructive if you use it in combination with exerting influence on the system itself because biased or wrong predictions (which is always the case) create positive feedback loops that are self-reinforcing. A prime example of this abuse of data is so called predictive policing, which suffers from a negative form of the "Matthew Effect."
In contrast, a theoretical model makes predictions based on the properties, forces, & constraints on a system, be it complex (probabilities) or simple (rules). Even if conditions change, anomalies appear, etc., the model is more likely to remain reasonably predictive.
BTW, looking for patterns, regularities, etc. in data without testable hypotheses or research questions is a form of scientific malpractice called p-hacking.
Conclusions: AI is only predictive as long as nothing changes. Models or more reliable & flexible. We shouldn't stop thinking about how the world works & give it all over to mindless algorithms.
...Amazon isn't a major contributor to consumerism, whereby we measure our success by how quickly we can dig stuff up out of the ground & turn it into pollution, is it? Never has it been so easy to buy & sell so much crappy stuff that people don't need & makes no difference to their sad little isolated, hyper-individualistic lives. Consumerism is a sickness that needs a cure, not ways to sustain it & make it more efficient.
Well, it might be all & well for the staff at that company to be happier, less stressed, healthier, & more productive but what about their souls? If those workers are denied the opportunity & support they need in order to toil relentlessly & arduously so that they can be better people, aren't they being condemned to an afterlife of eternal damnation? God will surely smite this evil company!
P.S. I'm reliably informed (Poe's Law) that humour must be accompanied by a smiley face in case someone thinks I'm an extremist nut-job:)
...as the European Union & some states in the USA. All they're doing is putting some protections on Indian citizens' personal data. Why should the Indian government let Silicon Valley collect, store, & exploit that much data on its citizens, including whichever Indian politicians & business people might use Silicon Valley services like Facebook, Google, & Twitter? Surely that would be a matter of national security & competitiveness in international politics & trade?
Google's track record with managing data related to healthcare is about as bad as it can get. Remember Google's epic failure to predict flu outbreaks? Remember Google's violations of patient privacy & breach of contract with the UK's National Health Service? This is nothing more than a time-wasting distraction from an important issue.
How about prosecuting & jailing the executive board of Purdue Pharma for their role in creating the epidemic of prescription opioid addiction & abuse? We're supposed to put people who enact dangerous, harmful, criminal behaviour in jail, right?
Vaping by minors was declared an epidemic by the US Surgeon General.
Juul is being investigated for this by the FDA & has already found multiple violations.
I'm guessing from your offensive language & incoherent speculation that these facts have hit a nerve & you've lost control of your feelings. Is that correct?
...that's not the American way. Anyone who buys food & goods in reusable packaging is a traitor & a failure as an American. Consumerism means that we measure our success by how fast we can dig stuff up out of the ground & turn it into pollution. No country comes close to the success that the USA has achieved to date.
The authors are just claiming that there's a correlation, so the cause may be deeper, but it was an interesting take that I hadn't seen before.
But the article says:
...which might cause despair over how getting an education does not necessarily lead to finding a job.
Which is a conjecture but, since it offers no alternatives, functions as a claim. Also, they've chosen to plot the graph, which shows a weak-moderate correlation at best, over only 2 1/2 decades. What happened before that?
Re: school shootings in the USA, they go back to at least the 1800s & they've been increasing steadily in recent years.
And a bias towards making anything that makes "g.g.g.g.guns!!!" look bad.
Are you saying that the constant stream of films & TV shows that depict "good guys" portrayed by attractive actors, running around with guns in their hands & shooting at people is media bias against guns?
The GP's point isn't whether school shootings may, or may not, now be more common in the USA. It's the fact that it's even an issue. It's an anomaly not only in the developed world, but the world as a whole. It's an indicator that something in its society is really quite fucked up.
Slashdot Mirror
You do know that the USA spends the most per capita on health insurance & has the worst healthcare outcomes, e.g. highest infant mortality rates in the developed world, don't you?
And you do know that the leading cause of bankruptcy in the USA is medical bills from getting sick & losing job/health insurance, don't you?
That's what a privatised healthcare system looks like: Predatory, brutal, & dysfunctional. People shouldn't have their lives & their families' lives ruined because they got sick.
Even semi-privatised healthcare, e.g. Canada's which offers universal healthcare but privatised insurance, is a poor comparison to nationalised services like in the UK & Germany, which look after *all* their citizens, have good healthcare outcomes, & low costs.
Any corporation that gets so big that it becomes a monopoly/duopoly becomes politically influential, e.g. lobbying, pressure on individual states for tax breaks, & shaping political campaigns, & effectively becomes a participant in government, e.g. billionaire's setting education agendas & redirecting public funds towards their own pet projects such as teaching software development in public K-12 schools.
At that point, rather than break them up, acknowledge that that particular industry/sector has matured & consolidated, & bring it in under democratic control, i.e. either nationalise it or convert it into a democratic worker-owned cooperative (independent from government). One of the most important areas of citizen life, i.e. the workplace, is still mostly run under a medieval/feudal system. How can we call ourselves democratic if we aren't working towards democratising the workplace?
How about telecoms, Google, Amazon, et. al. as public utilities? What if Facebook's policies & strategies were actually publicly accountable & the public could vote for change with transparency & oversight? What if their CEOs & executives were either elected by the public or appointed by their workers? Could you imagine working for a corporation like that & what it'd be like?
Agreed. What general is going to let soldiers under his command die & possibly lose decisive battles by strictly adhering to the RoE? The reality is that war itself is unethical & immoral. In any given conflict, civilian casualties always outnumber military (WWII & Korean War = 2:1, & probably a higher ratio these days) & yet we're told targeting civilians or indiscriminate use of weapons is a war crime deserving of a trial at the Hague.
No magic. 3% of GAFA et. al.'s profits in France would decline. How difficult is that to understand? And their profits are so obscene that they can afford to lobby the US govt. (and others) into letting them do whatever they want. I, for one, would like to see 3% less of that.
You: "You can't justify theft."
Me: "How about an impoverished mother of a starving baby stealing food for her/him?"
BTW, if you intend to manage employees in the manner your attitude suggests, please let everyone know so that they can avoid you. Then again, your attitude also leads me to believe that it's unlikely that you're in management.
I think I know what kind of manager you are/would be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
One anecdote doesn't negate a line of reasoning supported by empirical evidence.
You think I can't justify theft? How about an impoverished mother of a starving baby stealing food for her/him? Is that not justifiable in your personal moral code?In the world where we haven't gone from barbarism to decadence & skipped civilisation, life & well-being trumps property every time.
You can come back when you've got a reasonable, rational argument to make.
BTW, a VPN won't hide you from Google, Facebook, etc.. They're pretty good at digitally fingerprinting whichever device you're using & tracking your web activities pretty well that way.
VPNs may be more privacy-focused than big, corporate ISPs, but they're also smaller, more opaque, and less publicly accountable.
"All governments lie." -- I. F. Stone
VPNs are more accountable than the NSA, CIA, DEA, DHS, & FBI with their "National Security Letters." And those guys are just as untrustworthy as the Chinese security agencies. The main advantage is that the Chinese agencies have far less power over US citizens than the US ones.
How you hide your IP address depends on why you're doing it. If you don't want US corporations to monitor your web traffic, then a VPN in any country that is non-compliant with US corporations & has a privacy reputation to maintain, e.g. Switzerland, is probably a safe bet. If you think you might be interesting to a government security agency from any country, a VPN won't help you at all: You'll need a whole new level of evasive tactics to hide yourself & cover your tracks.
...pay them a living wage & stop stealing their labour/wages. Wage theft is in an order of magnitude a bigger problem & generates a lot of ill-will between employers & employees: https://www.datamaticsinc.com/...
How about an agreement: We won't steal a few $s worth of stationery from you if you don't steal $1000s in wages you owe us? No? Didn't think so.
Also, nothing new about awnings in streets. Seville & Malaga, in southern Spain, have awnings/sails anchored between buildings to keep the midday sun off people's heads. They've been there for decades.
A little lesson in scientific literacy:
Algorithms, like Google's, that trawl through historical data & make predictions based on that work fine, as long as everything continues as before & nothing changes. It's a complex equivalent of continuing a straight line on a graph & calling it a prediction. It's completely useless & can even be destructive if you use it in combination with exerting influence on the system itself because biased or wrong predictions (which is always the case) create positive feedback loops that are self-reinforcing. A prime example of this abuse of data is so called predictive policing, which suffers from a negative form of the "Matthew Effect."
In contrast, a theoretical model makes predictions based on the properties, forces, & constraints on a system, be it complex (probabilities) or simple (rules). Even if conditions change, anomalies appear, etc., the model is more likely to remain reasonably predictive.
BTW, looking for patterns, regularities, etc. in data without testable hypotheses or research questions is a form of scientific malpractice called p-hacking.
Conclusions: AI is only predictive as long as nothing changes. Models or more reliable & flexible. We shouldn't stop thinking about how the world works & give it all over to mindless algorithms.
OMG! Does this spell the end of the road for the giant telcos' monopolies?
...Amazon isn't a major contributor to consumerism, whereby we measure our success by how quickly we can dig stuff up out of the ground & turn it into pollution, is it? Never has it been so easy to buy & sell so much crappy stuff that people don't need & makes no difference to their sad little isolated, hyper-individualistic lives. Consumerism is a sickness that needs a cure, not ways to sustain it & make it more efficient.
Well, it might be all & well for the staff at that company to be happier, less stressed, healthier, & more productive but what about their souls? If those workers are denied the opportunity & support they need in order to toil relentlessly & arduously so that they can be better people, aren't they being condemned to an afterlife of eternal damnation? God will surely smite this evil company!
P.S. I'm reliably informed (Poe's Law) that humour must be accompanied by a smiley face in case someone thinks I'm an extremist nut-job :)
...the Vril will take care of those gullible flat-earthers when they arise from their subterranean lair.
...as the European Union & some states in the USA. All they're doing is putting some protections on Indian citizens' personal data. Why should the Indian government let Silicon Valley collect, store, & exploit that much data on its citizens, including whichever Indian politicians & business people might use Silicon Valley services like Facebook, Google, & Twitter? Surely that would be a matter of national security & competitiveness in international politics & trade?
You are convinced that everything that is being put forward by the Surgeon General is objectively true.
Dude, it's the Surgeon General & the FDA.
You have no interest in having a honest discussion about this.
Man, if you're not gonna believe the Surgeon General & the FDA, who *are* you gonna believe?
Google's track record with managing data related to healthcare is about as bad as it can get. Remember Google's epic failure to predict flu outbreaks? Remember Google's violations of patient privacy & breach of contract with the UK's National Health Service? This is nothing more than a time-wasting distraction from an important issue.
How about prosecuting & jailing the executive board of Purdue Pharma for their role in creating the epidemic of prescription opioid addiction & abuse? We're supposed to put people who enact dangerous, harmful, criminal behaviour in jail, right?
China doesn't even come close.
Vaping by minors was declared an epidemic by the US Surgeon General.
Juul is being investigated for this by the FDA & has already found multiple violations.
I'm guessing from your offensive language & incoherent speculation that these facts have hit a nerve & you've lost control of your feelings. Is that correct?
...that's not the American way. Anyone who buys food & goods in reusable packaging is a traitor & a failure as an American. Consumerism means that we measure our success by how fast we can dig stuff up out of the ground & turn it into pollution. No country comes close to the success that the USA has achieved to date.
You say:
The authors are just claiming that there's a correlation, so the cause may be deeper, but it was an interesting take that I hadn't seen before.
But the article says:
...which might cause despair over how getting an education does not necessarily lead to finding a job.
Which is a conjecture but, since it offers no alternatives, functions as a claim. Also, they've chosen to plot the graph, which shows a weak-moderate correlation at best, over only 2 1/2 decades. What happened before that?
Re: school shootings in the USA, they go back to at least the 1800s & they've been increasing steadily in recent years.
And a bias towards making anything that makes "g.g.g.g.guns!!!" look bad.
Are you saying that the constant stream of films & TV shows that depict "good guys" portrayed by attractive actors, running around with guns in their hands & shooting at people is media bias against guns?
To quote Aristotle, "Whoooooooosh!"
The GP's point isn't whether school shootings may, or may not, now be more common in the USA. It's the fact that it's even an issue. It's an anomaly not only in the developed world, but the world as a whole. It's an indicator that something in its society is really quite fucked up.
Yes. This. This is what I meant.
Anywhere else in the developed world, "i want to shoot up..." would more likely be followed by something like "heroin" or "drugs."