But I'm more interested in a replacement for conventional displays, not a new AR-based gaming system. I'd love to see this thing running the Meta 2 Workspace.
Ah, you're one of THOSE Bitcoin weirdoes. The kind who think that the economy will dive so badly that government-backed currency will be worthless, but the Internet will still exist and you'll still be able to afford to access it and thus your precious eternal blockchain.
In an economic apocalypse, you'd still be better off with government money. Even under rampant inflation, it would have SOME value. In a bad enough scenario, you can burn it for fuel or wipe your ass with it. Bitcoin, not so much.
>Bitcoin's rise may reflect, for better or worse, a monumental transfer of social trust: away from human institutions backed by government and to systems reliant on well-tested computer code.
No. It represents the dreams of foolish cryptoanarchists, libertarians, gamblers, and scam artists. The mainstream financial involvement currently underway is the industry safely siphoning some money from the bubble.
Any techie who is a proponent of a cryptocurrency is one who should not be employed in any capacity beyond desktop support.
>I saw quite a few errors at the commercial maps too. What is worse, I could not correct them quickly or at all. An edit review takes weeks.
Been there, done that. Worse, I've been standing right next to the street sign while on the phone with the map data vendor, with them telling me I'm wrong and the map data is correct!
>, I could edit the OSM map and correct almost any error in real time.
The problem is this is corrective action, not preventative. When you're going somewhere out of the way for the first time, OSM is not a dataset you should use without double-checking before departing.
I also use OSM (and I recommend the OSMAND app on my Android devices).
I have also done some GIS work and poured over the OSM data in excruciating detail (covering all road segments in an area over a million square kilometers).
DO NOT rely on OSM data, especially anywhere outside a major urban center - the data quality is extremely poor in places. I've seen incorrect street names, and even worse I've seen the correct street name but on the wrong street (I'd rather know there's a problem by being unable to find a place than by being routed to the wrong location). I've seen township / municipality incorrectly assigned as well.
That's actually how I frequently did it with my BlackBerry - I had a microSD to SD adapter and an SD slot in my old laptop. And then a USB peripheral that had a microSD slot.
I recently picked up the greatest little toy since the dawn of time itself - a microSD peripheral in the form of a USB flash memory stick.
While I understand direct USB had issues with sharing (that never really bothered me much), if I can't tolerate the new protocol in Android, I'll just physically pop out the card. Again, something I can't do with my current iPhone...
>If the options are to live in a self contained large structure on a planet that's otherwise inhospitable, or to live in one that wanders and every century or two sees something new, I'm sure there are people that would choose the second.
Once you can build a generation ship, you no longer need planets. In fact, planets become undesirable because their gravity wells make accessing resources more difficult.
If you want to find intelligent, space-faring aliens... look in the Oort cloud. Not that we'd be able to see anything of the anticipated size that far out, but that's where I'd expect them to be found.
> the UI changes that keep coming along are terrible
For me, the whole point of Windows was that it provided a consistent, unified interface across multiple applications, something that didn't really exist on the PC platform prior to that. I didn't have to relearn the interface for every program I wanted to use.
Then Microsoft got the bright idea of moving everything around with every new version, and that just destroys the fundamental advantage of Windows.
> So far, I'm 3 for 3 in the past two weeks of trying to get an app I really wanted and the Play Store saying "Your device isn't compatible with this app".
I'm more interested in being able to access my phone's available storage without having to load iTunes on a computer first. Every other smart phone I've owned just plugged in to a USB port and presented itself as a flash drive. Sure, my BlackBerry (tried) to limit which folders I could access, but I still could do it.
As long as I can access my email, load a GPS nav app, take some snapshots, browse the Internet, and access the available storage... that's pretty much all I am concerned with beyond the primary use as an actual phone. I might occasionally load a video or game on it, but if it doesn't work I won't get upset about it.
I really do expect to be quite happy with the device.
Personally I'm 'in line' to dump my Apple phone in just a week or so. And I wouldn't have had it in the first place except that my employer was willing to subsidize the purchase.
I'm missing some of the functionality of my old BlackBerry, though that company has it's own issues so this time I'm going with an Android device. All mine, to do with as I please, without Apple's stupid restrictions.
>If a model of, say, the likelihood of recidivism or the probability of loan default results in disparate results for different races, yet can be shown to be accurate in terms of ability to predict, is that discriminatory?
Yes. Because as an intelligent human, you know there are likely other factors at play for which racial identity is a weak proxy, and you should be using those factors rather than skin colour. So you can get a result that applies to that individual rather than a more or less arbitrary group they can be assigned to.
An 'AI' black box won't even see that possibility, and some human will take the output like it is from an all-knowing Oracle because doing so removes responsibility for the decision from their shoulders, and then you'll get discrimination.
> This sounds way easier for the cops than setting up their own surveillance and face recognition systems
Easier but not necessarily more effective. By building a federal law enforcement system they can do things like require municipal CCTV systems to do local scanning and forwarding of results as well. And airports, bus stations, customs, maybe major malls or amusement parks, maybe cameras at critical choke points on interstate highways, etc.. Then the feds let local law enforcement query against that system while keeping the data under their control.
After that, they get a law passed (probably a secret order with a gag order bonus) to force entities like Facebook to provide a feed as well, the icing on the Big Brother cake.
>well I much prefer having the water resistance that has saved my phone a few times than a removable battery
You know this is a solved problem, right? It's called a 'gasket'. It means your battery probably needs a screwdriver to swap out instead of just popping open the case, but it's still trivial from a design perspective.
Your iPhone battery is non-swappable because Apple wants more control over the device, not because it's a good design choice for the consumer.
>my photos! (which they won't find because I'm not on facebook)
You probably are. Someone else uploads a picture with you in it, your face gets tagged, then it gets linked to the shadow profile of you they already have. Maybe it's an out of date photo - an old school class photo or something.
It's extremely evil from a privacy perspective and there is no will in the USA to do anything about it.
Yeah, I hear Trump used that argument once in support of violent racists... so I guess it's not surprising to see it used in defence of Trump.
The thing is, not every disagreement has perfectly balanced sides to be considered. Both sides have issues, but the scales are touching bottom on Trump's side.
If you're dealing with medicine, noting ethnic differences is important. Doctors understand probabilities and knowing when certain probabilities are elevated can significantly alter diagnostics and treatment to the benefit of the patient.
Unfortunately, when you're dealing with most other things... you get discrimination. Maybe - to use your example - your algorithm thinks African Americans are a worse lending risk. That's a problem all on its own because that result will be used not to be more cautious financially with the group over all, but to discriminate against individuals and deny them loans based on skin colour.
And yes, that's actually a problem with the people (mis)using the algorithms, but that's not an excuse for failing to take preventative measures against such misuse.
However, these risks (from my perspective, not the state's) remain the same regardless of where the device is manufactured.
Do I care whether it's USA or China that has the original back door on my device? If I trusted one more than the other not to compromise my device at the factory, I'd preferentially buy from them. I trust neither.
From a North Korean perspective, they're still at war but in a ceasefire, surrounded by enemies, and under siege. Given that perspective, this is a perfectly legitimate action and not even particularly provocative.
Now, that perspective comes from a bunch of batshit craziness leading to current circumstances, but with that caveat it's perfectly rational.
>in this day in age Citing the White House is like Citing a You Tube comment.
Considering Trump spewed Birther conspiracies prior to being POTUS and more or less his first official act in office was to have Spicer deliver bald-faced lies about crowd sizes... yeah.
I'm continually surprised that the press even bothers to attend White House press briefings, since there's nothing newsworthy about reporting the lies any longer (which is sad in and of itself). Any real reporting would require sources from outside that room.
>Intelligent management...as in communism, responsible for over 100 millions deaths globally?
Ask an old Russian how they felt about Communism compared to the state of Russia shortly after Communism fell. Or anybody who survived a state in 'transition'.
Order is better than chaos for the majority, even when that order is pretty grim.
>How about fascism, where the Nazi party as "intelligent management"
How about the overall order of the world that brought that under control? In a more chaotic world there would have been nothing to stop the only organized force present.
Yes. The Chinese have no interest in spying on the average consumer in the West. If I held a security-sensitive position in government, I'd be more concerned, but I don't so I'm not.
And ultimately if I buy a domestic product I have to be concerned about domestic spying, which is more likely to directly affect me.
Slashdot Mirror
But I'm more interested in a replacement for conventional displays, not a new AR-based gaming system. I'd love to see this thing running the Meta 2 Workspace.
>bitcoin is the new gold
No, it isn't.
>When the day of financial reckoning comes
Ah, you're one of THOSE Bitcoin weirdoes. The kind who think that the economy will dive so badly that government-backed currency will be worthless, but the Internet will still exist and you'll still be able to afford to access it and thus your precious eternal blockchain.
In an economic apocalypse, you'd still be better off with government money. Even under rampant inflation, it would have SOME value. In a bad enough scenario, you can burn it for fuel or wipe your ass with it. Bitcoin, not so much.
>Bitcoin's rise may reflect, for better or worse, a monumental transfer of social trust: away from human institutions backed by government and to systems reliant on well-tested computer code.
No. It represents the dreams of foolish cryptoanarchists, libertarians, gamblers, and scam artists. The mainstream financial involvement currently underway is the industry safely siphoning some money from the bubble.
Any techie who is a proponent of a cryptocurrency is one who should not be employed in any capacity beyond desktop support.
>I saw quite a few errors at the commercial maps too. What is worse, I could not correct them quickly or at all. An edit review takes weeks.
Been there, done that. Worse, I've been standing right next to the street sign while on the phone with the map data vendor, with them telling me I'm wrong and the map data is correct!
>, I could edit the OSM map and correct almost any error in real time.
The problem is this is corrective action, not preventative. When you're going somewhere out of the way for the first time, OSM is not a dataset you should use without double-checking before departing.
I'm an amorphous life form, you insensitive clod!
I also use OSM (and I recommend the OSMAND app on my Android devices).
I have also done some GIS work and poured over the OSM data in excruciating detail (covering all road segments in an area over a million square kilometers).
DO NOT rely on OSM data, especially anywhere outside a major urban center - the data quality is extremely poor in places. I've seen incorrect street names, and even worse I've seen the correct street name but on the wrong street (I'd rather know there's a problem by being unable to find a place than by being routed to the wrong location). I've seen township / municipality incorrectly assigned as well.
By 2039, maybe they'll be growing grape cells in a vat and skipping the whole field part of the process.
That's actually how I frequently did it with my BlackBerry - I had a microSD to SD adapter and an SD slot in my old laptop. And then a USB peripheral that had a microSD slot.
I recently picked up the greatest little toy since the dawn of time itself - a microSD peripheral in the form of a USB flash memory stick.
While I understand direct USB had issues with sharing (that never really bothered me much), if I can't tolerate the new protocol in Android, I'll just physically pop out the card. Again, something I can't do with my current iPhone...
>If the options are to live in a self contained large structure on a planet that's otherwise inhospitable, or to live in one that wanders and every century or two sees something new, I'm sure there are people that would choose the second.
Once you can build a generation ship, you no longer need planets. In fact, planets become undesirable because their gravity wells make accessing resources more difficult.
If you want to find intelligent, space-faring aliens... look in the Oort cloud. Not that we'd be able to see anything of the anticipated size that far out, but that's where I'd expect them to be found.
> the UI changes that keep coming along are terrible
For me, the whole point of Windows was that it provided a consistent, unified interface across multiple applications, something that didn't really exist on the PC platform prior to that. I didn't have to relearn the interface for every program I wanted to use.
Then Microsoft got the bright idea of moving everything around with every new version, and that just destroys the fundamental advantage of Windows.
> So far, I'm 3 for 3 in the past two weeks of trying to get an app I really wanted and the Play Store saying "Your device isn't compatible with this app".
I'm more interested in being able to access my phone's available storage without having to load iTunes on a computer first. Every other smart phone I've owned just plugged in to a USB port and presented itself as a flash drive. Sure, my BlackBerry (tried) to limit which folders I could access, but I still could do it.
As long as I can access my email, load a GPS nav app, take some snapshots, browse the Internet, and access the available storage... that's pretty much all I am concerned with beyond the primary use as an actual phone. I might occasionally load a video or game on it, but if it doesn't work I won't get upset about it.
I really do expect to be quite happy with the device.
Personally I'm 'in line' to dump my Apple phone in just a week or so. And I wouldn't have had it in the first place except that my employer was willing to subsidize the purchase.
I'm missing some of the functionality of my old BlackBerry, though that company has it's own issues so this time I'm going with an Android device. All mine, to do with as I please, without Apple's stupid restrictions.
>If a model of, say, the likelihood of recidivism or the probability of loan default results in disparate results for different races, yet can be shown to be accurate in terms of ability to predict, is that discriminatory?
Yes. Because as an intelligent human, you know there are likely other factors at play for which racial identity is a weak proxy, and you should be using those factors rather than skin colour. So you can get a result that applies to that individual rather than a more or less arbitrary group they can be assigned to.
An 'AI' black box won't even see that possibility, and some human will take the output like it is from an all-knowing Oracle because doing so removes responsibility for the decision from their shoulders, and then you'll get discrimination.
"It's thinner, whiter, and has a slightly more recessed Apple logo, and at twice the price you'll know you're better than everyone else."
The result will be a sales goldmine.
> This sounds way easier for the cops than setting up their own surveillance and face recognition systems
Easier but not necessarily more effective. By building a federal law enforcement system they can do things like require municipal CCTV systems to do local scanning and forwarding of results as well. And airports, bus stations, customs, maybe major malls or amusement parks, maybe cameras at critical choke points on interstate highways, etc.. Then the feds let local law enforcement query against that system while keeping the data under their control.
After that, they get a law passed (probably a secret order with a gag order bonus) to force entities like Facebook to provide a feed as well, the icing on the Big Brother cake.
At least, that's how I'd do it.
>well I much prefer having the water resistance that has saved my phone a few times than a removable battery
You know this is a solved problem, right? It's called a 'gasket'. It means your battery probably needs a screwdriver to swap out instead of just popping open the case, but it's still trivial from a design perspective.
Your iPhone battery is non-swappable because Apple wants more control over the device, not because it's a good design choice for the consumer.
>my photos! (which they won't find because I'm not on facebook)
You probably are. Someone else uploads a picture with you in it, your face gets tagged, then it gets linked to the shadow profile of you they already have. Maybe it's an out of date photo - an old school class photo or something.
It's extremely evil from a privacy perspective and there is no will in the USA to do anything about it.
>Both sides have issues here
Yeah, I hear Trump used that argument once in support of violent racists... so I guess it's not surprising to see it used in defence of Trump.
The thing is, not every disagreement has perfectly balanced sides to be considered. Both sides have issues, but the scales are touching bottom on Trump's side.
If you're dealing with medicine, noting ethnic differences is important. Doctors understand probabilities and knowing when certain probabilities are elevated can significantly alter diagnostics and treatment to the benefit of the patient.
Unfortunately, when you're dealing with most other things... you get discrimination. Maybe - to use your example - your algorithm thinks African Americans are a worse lending risk. That's a problem all on its own because that result will be used not to be more cautious financially with the group over all, but to discriminate against individuals and deny them loans based on skin colour.
And yes, that's actually a problem with the people (mis)using the algorithms, but that's not an excuse for failing to take preventative measures against such misuse.
However, these risks (from my perspective, not the state's) remain the same regardless of where the device is manufactured.
Do I care whether it's USA or China that has the original back door on my device? If I trusted one more than the other not to compromise my device at the factory, I'd preferentially buy from them. I trust neither.
From a North Korean perspective, they're still at war but in a ceasefire, surrounded by enemies, and under siege. Given that perspective, this is a perfectly legitimate action and not even particularly provocative.
Now, that perspective comes from a bunch of batshit craziness leading to current circumstances, but with that caveat it's perfectly rational.
>in this day in age Citing the White House is like Citing a You Tube comment.
Considering Trump spewed Birther conspiracies prior to being POTUS and more or less his first official act in office was to have Spicer deliver bald-faced lies about crowd sizes... yeah.
I'm continually surprised that the press even bothers to attend White House press briefings, since there's nothing newsworthy about reporting the lies any longer (which is sad in and of itself). Any real reporting would require sources from outside that room.
>Intelligent management...as in communism, responsible for over 100 millions deaths globally?
Ask an old Russian how they felt about Communism compared to the state of Russia shortly after Communism fell. Or anybody who survived a state in 'transition'.
Order is better than chaos for the majority, even when that order is pretty grim.
>How about fascism, where the Nazi party as "intelligent management"
How about the overall order of the world that brought that under control? In a more chaotic world there would have been nothing to stop the only organized force present.
>I make a recommendation to actually talk to some libertarians to find out what libertarian state would actually look like.
You're an idiot if you think privatized courts and policing wouldn't lead to chaos and ultimately local warlords.
>The difference between anarchy and libertarianism in a word is accountability.
The difference between anarchy and libertarianism is the philosophy. The inevitable conclusion is identical.
>Do you trust anything coming from China?
Yes. The Chinese have no interest in spying on the average consumer in the West. If I held a security-sensitive position in government, I'd be more concerned, but I don't so I'm not.
And ultimately if I buy a domestic product I have to be concerned about domestic spying, which is more likely to directly affect me.