There's something of a clampdown on prostitution going on here in the Netherlands. The laws have largely remained the same, but mayors can simply opt to withhold or rescind licenses for brothels or windows. I expect the new mayor of Amsterdam, appointed* earlier this month, to increase pressure on the sex industry in this manner. With the results usually being that sex workers are criminalized further (it is hard for them even to open a bank account to conduct business), and driven into the hands of actual human traffickers.
*) Yes, our mayors are appointed, not elected. The city Council draws up a job profile, the ministry publishes the vacancy. The King's Commissioner for the province does the first selection of candidates, after which the City Council will recommend a few candidates. Usually, the #1 recommended candidate is then appointed.
a solid implementation of a good idea over a weak attempt at a new one
That's basically what made the first iPhones such a success. And I like that.
Meamwhile however, a few high-end Chinese smart phones come with an all-screen front, yes, all-screen meaning no godawful "notch": the front facing camera slides up from the top of the phone when needed. That's solid implementation of a good idea (provided the mechanism holds up with prolonged use, and that you cared about all-screen fronts in the first place).
Now put a good fingerprint scanner (i.e. the one the iPhone uses) under that screen, and you got yourself a phone worthy of some excitement.
The value in this case is not the bike but its design. If you would have paid €10 for the design but instead copied his bike for free, he’s out €10. If the design isn’t worth anything to you, he’s out €0. But if you let 10 of your friends build bikes from your copy, he’s out a further €50 on average. That’s the reasoning of rights holders anyway (except in the US where they would claim those 10 copies represent €12 billion in lost revenue). I agree with that reasoning and I think that having some form of copyright is a good thing, but it needs to be changed to serve its purpose: not rewarding creativity, but fostering it. For starters: by capping the duration at the life of the author. He is the one that needs incentives to create and publish, but if he is dead, that need is gone.
The area in the cave they visited was apparently pretty easy to access. They fled to where they are now after they got trapped, to escape the rising water.
1) Have the bot identify itself as such
2) "Press 9 to talk to a person" Or rather, to enter a convoluted maze of exceedingly crappily designed touch tone menus, then, maybe, you get to talk to a human
There. Ethical concerns: solved. There was also some concern about recording customers' voices, but "this call may (=will) be recorded for training purposes", in this case training a neural network. So nothing new either.
The one in the video in that article does just that: it's narrow enough to only take up one slot. In order to plug it in he just needs to flip it around. Oh wait, he can't, because of the weirdly designed wall plug that only accepts one orientation...
One really doesn’t have to be a blackhat to spot at least some of the various issues of this feature. This isn’t security expert stuff, but “what the hell were they smoking” territory.
We wouldn’t need these shortcuts in the first place if MS kept the control panel at least somewhat consistent between versions, instead of rearranging the control panel and every damn thing in it on every release. Including Windows Server releases. IIRC some stuff (might have been Exchange related) went from a control panel item to something under the start menu to a double secret (separately downloadable) MMC snap-in (and who came up with that brilliant idea) to a web interface.
Refugees aren't being deported (unless they have been extraordinarily naughty). You get deported (maybe, sometimes, if officials can be bothered or if you drag out your appeal for so long that they give up, and if you do not make too much of a scene) when your asylum claim is rejected. And plenty of rejected applicants are not deported, they just hang around. Hoping for another mass pardon of illegal immigrants, perhaps.
Separating actual refugees from immigrants with other motivations is vitally important, to make sure we can financially, politically and socially afford to take in as many actual refugees as needed. It's not unreasonable to ask applicants to provide proof to support their claim, and that includes submitting mobile phone data. As long as it is treated as the highly sensitive data that it is, with only relevant portions being retained and only for as long as necessary.
Let them. Maybe in a couple of decades, after we figure out that wind and solar alone aren’t going to cut it and nukes are the only other carbon neutral option we have, we can buy cheaper, better plants from the Chinese. Perhaps even a viable thorium reactor from India.
And pretty much all statistics and research into the subject shows that the best ways to fight teen pregnancies are good sexual education and access to prophylactics and birth control, not repression, pretending sex doesn't exist, censoring porn, or preaching abstinence.
having to eat piles of shit in the process of submitting resumes by having to deal with the subcontracted, third-party resume ingestion services that everyone uses now
Pretty much this. I understand this streamlines the process for the box-tickers at HR, but from a job-seeker's point of view it is a bloody nightmare.
By the way, a company could do worse than just fire the lot in charge of centralized vetting of job applicants. I once advised a colleague who was recruiting people for his team, to ask HR for the resumes they rejected. I can't say the resumes passed by HR were that much better than those in the reject pile, and the latter had some good candidates in it. When I asked HR myself to post some job openings, the questions they asked me about the requirements were inane at best. I struggle to see what actual value they (or those resume ingestion services) add in this process.
Not this again. You can rest assured that they are already making such investments in addition to their space program. ISRO's budget isn't huge (about 1% of India's rural development budget), and it's money well spent on providing inspiration as well as jobs in a high tech industry, directly and indirectly. You could add ISRO's budget to the pile being spent on sanitation, but it probably realizes a much higher return on investment where it's being spent now.
Actually, for most of our history, such content actually was everyone's for the taking. Copyright was invented not for the benefit of creators but for the benefit of the public. Creators are granted a temporary monopoly on their work so they can sell it and derive an income from it, but that is the means rather than the goal. The goal was to encourage creators to create and publish so we can all enjoy their stuff. The goal was abundance, not artificial scarcity.
If creators or rights holders choose to not publish their works under "reasonable" terms, they violate their end of the deal. Funny you should mention New Zealand, there's a country used to afraid to be stuck in the arse end of DVD region coding where lots of stuff would never be published, and that fear was not unfounded. Here in the Netherlands, the government's position - before they caved in to publishers' lobbyists - was that if content wasn't available legally under "reasonable" terms, they wouldn't prosecute someone who availed himself of the material illegally. In other words, they sent a message to the rights holders: "Sort out your damn licenses and sales channels, or be content with your stuff being pirated". And that was a good law; it is high time the public claws back some of the rights we have lost over the years.
Sure, you can argue about what those "reasonable terms" should be, and over here that meaning changed over time. You can't expect to get a movie on Netflix 1 week after it hits the cinemas. But where before it took DVDs 6 months to a year to hit the shelves, nowadays we expect that to be sooner. In the old days bundling songs on an album was the norm, nowadays people expect to be able to buy individual songs. And at last the EU is gearing up to enforce licenses for all of the region, so no more content that is available in one country but not the other. Buying DVDs used to be the norm, nowadays people expect downloads or streaming options. And at least the music industry has followed up on this: there are tons of legal ways to get music, and there's no reason to pirate it at all. But if you won't sell me that e-book even though you're happy to send me a hardcopy, just because of the country I am in and whatever screwed up licensing deal you made, then screw you; the Pirate Bay has what I need. I am more than happy to pay you for your work, but if you won't sell it to me, then I have zero moral remorse over getting it by other means.
Then name some. And be sure to include a couple that won’t display those all important words: “We’re sorry, but that item is not available in your country”, even though they are willing to ship me a physical DVD (region locked and DRMed)
Good on you, Google! I am sure that you will at the same time promote the sites where I can legally purchase movies that are download-to-own, and can be format shifted so they play on all my devices, right? Oh wait...
A "science book" should contain research (or the results of research) that follows the scientific method: falsifiable hypotheses that are tested through experimentation and observation. The bible is just a bunch of facts given by some guy-in-the-sky. Even if those facts are correct, that doesn't make the book a scientific one.
The EU does not want to implement censorship. They want to scare online platforms into doing it for them. Once upload filters are in place, their scope will be increased to include not only copyrighted material but also undesirable opinions (a.k.a. "fake news")
But yeah, it's fun even though I don't like the cartoonish look and feel. I also tried PUBG (which was not free, but sadly the devs really dropped the ball on that one. What a seriously frustrating buggy mess of rampant cheating that was...
Slashdot Mirror
There's something of a clampdown on prostitution going on here in the Netherlands. The laws have largely remained the same, but mayors can simply opt to withhold or rescind licenses for brothels or windows. I expect the new mayor of Amsterdam, appointed* earlier this month, to increase pressure on the sex industry in this manner. With the results usually being that sex workers are criminalized further (it is hard for them even to open a bank account to conduct business), and driven into the hands of actual human traffickers.
*) Yes, our mayors are appointed, not elected. The city Council draws up a job profile, the ministry publishes the vacancy. The King's Commissioner for the province does the first selection of candidates, after which the City Council will recommend a few candidates. Usually, the #1 recommended candidate is then appointed.
Quite the opposite I expect: data driven talent search will probably reinforce the similarity of new talent.
a solid implementation of a good idea over a weak attempt at a new one
That's basically what made the first iPhones such a success. And I like that.
Meamwhile however, a few high-end Chinese smart phones come with an all-screen front, yes, all-screen meaning no godawful "notch": the front facing camera slides up from the top of the phone when needed. That's solid implementation of a good idea (provided the mechanism holds up with prolonged use, and that you cared about all-screen fronts in the first place).
Now put a good fingerprint scanner (i.e. the one the iPhone uses) under that screen, and you got yourself a phone worthy of some excitement.
The value in this case is not the bike but its design. If you would have paid €10 for the design but instead copied his bike for free, he’s out €10. If the design isn’t worth anything to you, he’s out €0. But if you let 10 of your friends build bikes from your copy, he’s out a further €50 on average. That’s the reasoning of rights holders anyway (except in the US where they would claim those 10 copies represent €12 billion in lost revenue). I agree with that reasoning and I think that having some form of copyright is a good thing, but it needs to be changed to serve its purpose: not rewarding creativity, but fostering it. For starters: by capping the duration at the life of the author. He is the one that needs incentives to create and publish, but if he is dead, that need is gone.
The area in the cave they visited was apparently pretty easy to access. They fled to where they are now after they got trapped, to escape the rising water.
1) Have the bot identify itself as such
2) "Press 9 to talk to a person" Or rather, to enter a convoluted maze of exceedingly crappily designed touch tone menus, then, maybe, you get to talk to a human
There. Ethical concerns: solved. There was also some concern about recording customers' voices, but "this call may (=will) be recorded for training purposes", in this case training a neural network. So nothing new either.
Ultra is not a new tier, it’s the new Premium. You’ll have to pay more for what you have now, or get downgraded.
The one in the video in that article does just that: it's narrow enough to only take up one slot. In order to plug it in he just needs to flip it around. Oh wait, he can't, because of the weirdly designed wall plug that only accepts one orientation...
[....,,,,,;;:"/'] <--- Free punctuation kit! (Copy & paste as needed)
I'd rather work at a place where my performance matters, not bullshit superficial appearances.
One really doesn’t have to be a blackhat to spot at least some of the various issues of this feature. This isn’t security expert stuff, but “what the hell were they smoking” territory.
We wouldn’t need these shortcuts in the first place if MS kept the control panel at least somewhat consistent between versions, instead of rearranging the control panel and every damn thing in it on every release. Including Windows Server releases. IIRC some stuff (might have been Exchange related) went from a control panel item to something under the start menu to a double secret (separately downloadable) MMC snap-in (and who came up with that brilliant idea) to a web interface.
Refugees aren't being deported (unless they have been extraordinarily naughty). You get deported (maybe, sometimes, if officials can be bothered or if you drag out your appeal for so long that they give up, and if you do not make too much of a scene) when your asylum claim is rejected. And plenty of rejected applicants are not deported, they just hang around. Hoping for another mass pardon of illegal immigrants, perhaps.
Separating actual refugees from immigrants with other motivations is vitally important, to make sure we can financially, politically and socially afford to take in as many actual refugees as needed. It's not unreasonable to ask applicants to provide proof to support their claim, and that includes submitting mobile phone data. As long as it is treated as the highly sensitive data that it is, with only relevant portions being retained and only for as long as necessary.
Let them. Maybe in a couple of decades, after we figure out that wind and solar alone aren’t going to cut it and nukes are the only other carbon neutral option we have, we can buy cheaper, better plants from the Chinese. Perhaps even a viable thorium reactor from India.
And pretty much all statistics and research into the subject shows that the best ways to fight teen pregnancies are good sexual education and access to prophylactics and birth control, not repression, pretending sex doesn't exist, censoring porn, or preaching abstinence.
having to eat piles of shit in the process of submitting resumes by having to deal with the subcontracted, third-party resume ingestion services that everyone uses now
Pretty much this. I understand this streamlines the process for the box-tickers at HR, but from a job-seeker's point of view it is a bloody nightmare.
By the way, a company could do worse than just fire the lot in charge of centralized vetting of job applicants. I once advised a colleague who was recruiting people for his team, to ask HR for the resumes they rejected. I can't say the resumes passed by HR were that much better than those in the reject pile, and the latter had some good candidates in it. When I asked HR myself to post some job openings, the questions they asked me about the requirements were inane at best. I struggle to see what actual value they (or those resume ingestion services) add in this process.
Who is "them"? in this case? The company or recruiter who treated you unprofessionally? Or any recruiter or company?
Not this again. You can rest assured that they are already making such investments in addition to their space program. ISRO's budget isn't huge (about 1% of India's rural development budget), and it's money well spent on providing inspiration as well as jobs in a high tech industry, directly and indirectly. You could add ISRO's budget to the pile being spent on sanitation, but it probably realizes a much higher return on investment where it's being spent now.
Actually, for most of our history, such content actually was everyone's for the taking. Copyright was invented not for the benefit of creators but for the benefit of the public. Creators are granted a temporary monopoly on their work so they can sell it and derive an income from it, but that is the means rather than the goal. The goal was to encourage creators to create and publish so we can all enjoy their stuff. The goal was abundance, not artificial scarcity.
If creators or rights holders choose to not publish their works under "reasonable" terms, they violate their end of the deal. Funny you should mention New Zealand, there's a country used to afraid to be stuck in the arse end of DVD region coding where lots of stuff would never be published, and that fear was not unfounded. Here in the Netherlands, the government's position - before they caved in to publishers' lobbyists - was that if content wasn't available legally under "reasonable" terms, they wouldn't prosecute someone who availed himself of the material illegally. In other words, they sent a message to the rights holders: "Sort out your damn licenses and sales channels, or be content with your stuff being pirated". And that was a good law; it is high time the public claws back some of the rights we have lost over the years.
Sure, you can argue about what those "reasonable terms" should be, and over here that meaning changed over time. You can't expect to get a movie on Netflix 1 week after it hits the cinemas. But where before it took DVDs 6 months to a year to hit the shelves, nowadays we expect that to be sooner. In the old days bundling songs on an album was the norm, nowadays people expect to be able to buy individual songs. And at last the EU is gearing up to enforce licenses for all of the region, so no more content that is available in one country but not the other. Buying DVDs used to be the norm, nowadays people expect downloads or streaming options. And at least the music industry has followed up on this: there are tons of legal ways to get music, and there's no reason to pirate it at all. But if you won't sell me that e-book even though you're happy to send me a hardcopy, just because of the country I am in and whatever screwed up licensing deal you made, then screw you; the Pirate Bay has what I need. I am more than happy to pay you for your work, but if you won't sell it to me, then I have zero moral remorse over getting it by other means.
Then name some. And be sure to include a couple that won’t display those all important words: “We’re sorry, but that item is not available in your country”, even though they are willing to ship me a physical DVD (region locked and DRMed)
Good on you, Google! I am sure that you will at the same time promote the sites where I can legally purchase movies that are download-to-own, and can be format shifted so they play on all my devices, right? Oh wait...
skewing the results.
Then, a "big data analyst" will conclude that issuing a birth certificate extends our life span.
A "science book" should contain research (or the results of research) that follows the scientific method: falsifiable hypotheses that are tested through experimentation and observation. The bible is just a bunch of facts given by some guy-in-the-sky. Even if those facts are correct, that doesn't make the book a scientific one.
What matters is cumulative net emissions. How much do we have to cut our emissions to achieve equilibrium with natural carbon sinks?
The EU does not want to implement censorship. They want to scare online platforms into doing it for them. Once upload filters are in place, their scope will be increased to include not only copyrighted material but also undesirable opinions (a.k.a. "fake news")
They sell gift cards for skins? Wow, just... wow.
But yeah, it's fun even though I don't like the cartoonish look and feel. I also tried PUBG (which was not free, but sadly the devs really dropped the ball on that one. What a seriously frustrating buggy mess of rampant cheating that was...