When I look at Facebook, I see an entry labeled "Trending stories". It doesn't say "All trending stories" or "trending stories as determined by an algorithm". I assume that these stories are "trending", but nothing seems to tell me they're not selected to appeal to me and try to get my eyeballs on a few more ads.
According to a friend who has studied the issue, Jesus didn't just give blanket advice, but tailored it to people. The rich guy was told to sell all he had and give the money to the poor, and walked away unwilling to do that. He was more attached to his money than to what Jesus was saying, and that (according to my friend) was bad. He talked to a LOT of people, and didn't repeat that advice.
On the other hand, he was about as clear about paying taxes as he got about anything, and the Christian right seems determined to ignore that.
None of the leftists I know are even slightly in favor of Sharia law. They are in favor of treating Muslims like people.
The paradox of Muslim politics is that they can get accepted by the Left, but their values tend to align with the Right. The first Muslim in Congress is a leftist, despite the political leanings of most Muslims, since he had to run in a leftist district to get elected, and we don't elect anything similar to right-wing politicians.
I know some very devout Christian leftists. They don't want Christianity itself to be in government, but want it run on Christian values like "whatever you do to the least of these, you do to Me".
If a criminal law is ambiguous (at least with respect to the particular case), "case dismissed" is the proper remedy, yes. However, a large part of the legal system is civil disputes, and throwing out lawsuits because a judge determines a law to be ambiguous is at least as bad as the judge applying the law as best he or she can.
In the current situation, there's more to the law than what's in the statute books. This isn't real desirable, but a good lawyer will know the relevant precedents, and they can be relied on. In the case where ambiguous laws are tossed out, along with lawsuits, lawyers would be even more in demand to figure out what of the statute law is going to be upheld in court. When the law is unclear on something and there might be case law, someone writing a contract can accept the ambiguity if the results will be acceptable with any reasonable ruling. When the law might be unclear on something, and might be thrown out, it's a lot harder to write a contract that does what people want it to do.
It's very hard to quantify the costs of global warming. If you read the IPCC report, you'll notice lots of things listed with various degrees of confidence. Many of those will have costs that are extremely hard to quantify. We do know that they're going to be significantly greater than zero, and we can come up with some sort of reasonable guess of about what a reasonable carbon tax would be. Then we let the market sort it out. The market CANNOT evaluate externalities, by definition.
Cheap energy is not an externality. It's a desirable thing to have in the market, which is something completely different. Raise the price of energy, and the market will adapt efficiently (well, much more efficiently than any other way I know). This will have some unpleasant effects, which we can alleviate in the worse cases with the money collected from the carbon tax. Obviously there's a tradeoff between using lots of fossil fuels to make things better now and worse over time and using little, and with a halfway intelligent value of the carbon tax the market can decide that.
I'm saying that you are arbitrarily assuming that the automation will be too expensive, almost certainly without good reason. Computrons are cheap. Limited-purpose sensors in quantity are cheap. Heck, general-purpose sensors in quantity are pretty cheap nowadays.
Sure, but the result of moving when it looks like there's room usually doesn't result in deadlock. Not in the congested areas I'm familiar with, anyway.
I don't see anything here about how much funding a Kickstarter should get.
In this case, a supervisory agency would have checked and found that the resources were OK, the design was OK, and likely the preparations for production were OK. What they would not have found was that somebody was going to embezzle the money, and that's a danger in any endeavor that handles enough money. It could have looked at the business arrangements, found them wanting, and asked them to set up something better (where it would take extra effort to embezzle).
If there's demand for such an agency, somebody can make it. and Kickstarter projects can bring it in or not as they choose, and potential backers can pay attention to it or not as they choose. As you point out, it isn't in Kickstarter's financial interest to restrict projects, but if they see it as adding credibility they might well cooperate.
It detects things on the ground, like feet. Humans are not normally suspended at a level where this could happen.
It moves very slowly, giving a human plenty of time to react.
Any very-low-speed impact would hit the dangling and helpless human with a large, smooth, surface. A dangling human just rides over the top, no harm done.
I guess that if you tied someone up at exactly the right height so that they couldn't move and had a hard object above and behind them so the car could crush them, there might be an injury. How do you manage to do that without intending bodily harm to the victim?
This is a case where, if something goes way wrong, the car might bump into something. Ever left a manual in neutral without setting the parking brake while on a slight slope? Same effect, except that the Tesla is safer because it won't hit anything on the ground.
I don't understand why KS campaigns shouldn't be over-pledged. The ones I've participated in have been basically advance sales, with the money gathered used to design and produce the whatever, and I don't see why more backers can't be accommodated. Some of them also have "stretch goals", so that if they can get $X over the funding amount they can provide better art, or other one-time expenses.
As you describe the brokerage, its main function would be to report on whether the KS campaign worked or not. That's usually pretty obvious for the backers - it's $DATE; am I holding an $ITEM in my hands? There's still the gap between the collection of the money and the planned completion of the project in which anything, including embezzlement, can happen. It's not clear to me that the brokerage adds value, and it will cost money.
You appear to be suggesting that each car stop at a green light until there is a clear carlength on the other side of the intersection, because that's the only way to make sure that you can proceed across the intersection (and even then somebody might turn into it). Do you have any idea how slow that's going to be in stop-and-go traffic?
The self-driving car is also likely to be programmed with the correct response to more situations than the human knows, and will be able to adapt those responses to the vehicle being driven. For any situation the car can properly detect, it's likely to be better than a human.
Classic Soviet-style central planning decided exactly what factories should produce. Changing the economic environment to be better for the desirable stuff works much better, and is exactly what the Five-Year Plans didn't do. Since, with all costs internalized, the desirable stuff wins anyway, this is mostly a matter of accounting for the full price of things. Coal power imposes sizable costs on the community in general that solar and wind do not, and solar and wind subsidies more or less compensate for that.
Slashdot Mirror
When I look at Facebook, I see an entry labeled "Trending stories". It doesn't say "All trending stories" or "trending stories as determined by an algorithm". I assume that these stories are "trending", but nothing seems to tell me they're not selected to appeal to me and try to get my eyeballs on a few more ads.
According to a friend who has studied the issue, Jesus didn't just give blanket advice, but tailored it to people. The rich guy was told to sell all he had and give the money to the poor, and walked away unwilling to do that. He was more attached to his money than to what Jesus was saying, and that (according to my friend) was bad. He talked to a LOT of people, and didn't repeat that advice.
On the other hand, he was about as clear about paying taxes as he got about anything, and the Christian right seems determined to ignore that.
The MSM is owned by Republicans, for the most part. Journalists tend to be left-wing, but they report to right-wingers. Make of that what you will.
The evidence for election fraud is much stronger than that for vote fraud.
None of the leftists I know are even slightly in favor of Sharia law. They are in favor of treating Muslims like people.
The paradox of Muslim politics is that they can get accepted by the Left, but their values tend to align with the Right. The first Muslim in Congress is a leftist, despite the political leanings of most Muslims, since he had to run in a leftist district to get elected, and we don't elect anything similar to right-wing politicians.
I know some very devout Christian leftists. They don't want Christianity itself to be in government, but want it run on Christian values like "whatever you do to the least of these, you do to Me".
If a criminal law is ambiguous (at least with respect to the particular case), "case dismissed" is the proper remedy, yes. However, a large part of the legal system is civil disputes, and throwing out lawsuits because a judge determines a law to be ambiguous is at least as bad as the judge applying the law as best he or she can.
In the current situation, there's more to the law than what's in the statute books. This isn't real desirable, but a good lawyer will know the relevant precedents, and they can be relied on. In the case where ambiguous laws are tossed out, along with lawsuits, lawyers would be even more in demand to figure out what of the statute law is going to be upheld in court. When the law is unclear on something and there might be case law, someone writing a contract can accept the ambiguity if the results will be acceptable with any reasonable ruling. When the law might be unclear on something, and might be thrown out, it's a lot harder to write a contract that does what people want it to do.
It's very hard to quantify the costs of global warming. If you read the IPCC report, you'll notice lots of things listed with various degrees of confidence. Many of those will have costs that are extremely hard to quantify. We do know that they're going to be significantly greater than zero, and we can come up with some sort of reasonable guess of about what a reasonable carbon tax would be. Then we let the market sort it out. The market CANNOT evaluate externalities, by definition.
Cheap energy is not an externality. It's a desirable thing to have in the market, which is something completely different. Raise the price of energy, and the market will adapt efficiently (well, much more efficiently than any other way I know). This will have some unpleasant effects, which we can alleviate in the worse cases with the money collected from the carbon tax. Obviously there's a tradeoff between using lots of fossil fuels to make things better now and worse over time and using little, and with a halfway intelligent value of the carbon tax the market can decide that.
Maybe. We'll have to see how it shakes out. As the only human in the operation, I'm responsible for the decision to go to X at time Y in conditions Z.
I'm saying that you are arbitrarily assuming that the automation will be too expensive, almost certainly without good reason. Computrons are cheap. Limited-purpose sensors in quantity are cheap. Heck, general-purpose sensors in quantity are pretty cheap nowadays.
Sure, but the result of moving when it looks like there's room usually doesn't result in deadlock. Not in the congested areas I'm familiar with, anyway.
I don't see anything here about how much funding a Kickstarter should get.
In this case, a supervisory agency would have checked and found that the resources were OK, the design was OK, and likely the preparations for production were OK. What they would not have found was that somebody was going to embezzle the money, and that's a danger in any endeavor that handles enough money. It could have looked at the business arrangements, found them wanting, and asked them to set up something better (where it would take extra effort to embezzle).
If there's demand for such an agency, somebody can make it. and Kickstarter projects can bring it in or not as they choose, and potential backers can pay attention to it or not as they choose. As you point out, it isn't in Kickstarter's financial interest to restrict projects, but if they see it as adding credibility they might well cooperate.
How's the car supposed to do that?
It detects things on the ground, like feet. Humans are not normally suspended at a level where this could happen.
It moves very slowly, giving a human plenty of time to react.
Any very-low-speed impact would hit the dangling and helpless human with a large, smooth, surface. A dangling human just rides over the top, no harm done.
I guess that if you tied someone up at exactly the right height so that they couldn't move and had a hard object above and behind them so the car could crush them, there might be an injury. How do you manage to do that without intending bodily harm to the victim?
This is a case where, if something goes way wrong, the car might bump into something. Ever left a manual in neutral without setting the parking brake while on a slight slope? Same effect, except that the Tesla is safer because it won't hit anything on the ground.
I don't understand why KS campaigns shouldn't be over-pledged. The ones I've participated in have been basically advance sales, with the money gathered used to design and produce the whatever, and I don't see why more backers can't be accommodated. Some of them also have "stretch goals", so that if they can get $X over the funding amount they can provide better art, or other one-time expenses.
As you describe the brokerage, its main function would be to report on whether the KS campaign worked or not. That's usually pretty obvious for the backers - it's $DATE; am I holding an $ITEM in my hands? There's still the gap between the collection of the money and the planned completion of the project in which anything, including embezzlement, can happen. It's not clear to me that the brokerage adds value, and it will cost money.
You appear to be suggesting that each car stop at a green light until there is a clear carlength on the other side of the intersection, because that's the only way to make sure that you can proceed across the intersection (and even then somebody might turn into it). Do you have any idea how slow that's going to be in stop-and-go traffic?
There's already a lot of stuff that's legally required to be on your car. The catalytic converter requirement didn't destroy the new car market.
You're already on the hook for possible liability if one or more car systems fails, and you can get into an accident at 25mph and be liable.
The self-driving car is also likely to be programmed with the correct response to more situations than the human knows, and will be able to adapt those responses to the vehicle being driven. For any situation the car can properly detect, it's likely to be better than a human.
I didn't notice - I've been using PuTTY for so long, I no longer care about native SSH.
Windows has been notorious for allowing focus-stealing for a long time.
And, after whatever we do to it, Earth will be the most hospitable place in the Solar System, and it won't be close.
And, of course, the naval jokes: the British sailor drinks rum, the US sailor likes whiskey, and the Italian sailor sticks to port.
Not to mention that the resistors will convert electrical energy to heat energy, and that heat has to go somewhere.
Classic Soviet-style central planning decided exactly what factories should produce. Changing the economic environment to be better for the desirable stuff works much better, and is exactly what the Five-Year Plans didn't do. Since, with all costs internalized, the desirable stuff wins anyway, this is mostly a matter of accounting for the full price of things. Coal power imposes sizable costs on the community in general that solar and wind do not, and solar and wind subsidies more or less compensate for that.