The problem would be that this is a SWAT team, the 911 call already stated that someone is already dead or close to it (the callers dad), also the only other people in the house should be female, which leads to a situation where it is reasonable to assume the person I front of them is armed.
Some post mortem analysis says the police should have noticed that the person answering the door didn't have a phone in their hand while they were supposedly on the phone with 911, but I would be surprised if that kind of information would work it's way through to the field team if they believe the shooter has neutralized his primary threat (the supposed Dad, who was fighting with his mom).
But the field time should notice that that guy did NOT have a gun!
If it's money you'd be spending anyway on Dog-Food tissues and pizza, there is not much sucking involved as you're already spending that money. "funneling" would be a better word. But then, if their offer is "better" than what you get at a brick-and-mortar store, then it's competition and considered fair in a capitalist system. (or any system that puts more weight on the self-regulating power of market than the cases where that intrinsic balance tips over, the system runs away and becomes self destructive)
"Better" is not only defined as cheaper but also has some perceived (Brand X feels "better" than a store brand labeled but otherwise identical thing) and other components, as in ease of ordering, and logistics. And here it's less Alexa that is competition to the local toothpaste stores, but rather the Amazon Pantry. I wouldn't order toothpaste through Alexa if it would have shipping costs twice the price of the product.
Coca-Cola did an even more amazing trick here: They turned their vintage logos and designed into desired decoration items. I even can remember my parents at end 70s getting Coca-Cola glasses for their hobby room bar. (they are still there and still would sell better than any other merch throwarounds.)
And a rough version could be recreated from scratch, I mean: If all yardsticks or even all physical evidence of your civilization would be gone, Future archeologists could make exact replicas just from the description and a few scientific observations. Stranded on an island? if it's large enough, you could do the Erastothenes trick to measure the earth circumference, divide it by 400000000 and you HAVE ONE METER! Build a box 1x1x1 m, fill it with water, make 1000 equal portions, and you have recreated the kg.
The derivation from earth circumference would be the hardest part for meter and second, but you could write up instructions and send it as text-file to some green 6 headed aliens in the crab nebula and they could build anything where they have metric plans to in the correct size! (That's where - unlike in the dessert island example - the updated definitions would be helpfull like "take x million platin atoms and you have a kg" or "measure how far a laser beam travels while it's going through several billions electromagnetic oscillations"....)
But at what error margin? The age of that ox alone would probably the difference if it could be 3 or 5 furlongs per day. So yes, these make sense as units of comparisons like an whale weighing something like x-hunderd small cars or how many Libraries of Congress a USB Stick can hold. But not as actual measurement.
And here's the beauty of the metric system: Even if mm instead of cm should be used as a kind of "style guide" you still can use any other decimal fraction/multiple prefix (if you have a reason to do so) and converting is as easy as adding a 0 or slashing a decimal.
This is becoming even more absurd. So the airlines realize that people are sick of talking to callcenter script-monkeys instead of experiences customer service people who might know the company they are working for, and the result is NOT staffing the phone lines with them?
I never understood why instead of contacting a company directly through well established means of bi-directional communication, people post something on the equivalent of a huge public office corkboard and hope that a potential recipient picks it up from there from among those billions of tweets sent every minute.
Is it that the illusion of public interest from doing something public is more important than direct contact that could actually provide help?
Yes, I'm a smartphone addict, but not for mission critical things (besides communications).
I don't want to be denied a (paid) flight or admission to a (already paid for) event, just because my smartphone has a dead battery or no internet connection.
Please explain how an algorithm can be biased if you leave out ethnicity from the input data,
That's simple. Because replacing race in input data with some proxy for the same data is not leaving that data out. Not quite the opposite, but if you still can derive race from them. The problem is that any valid data point could become such a proxy.
Nope, you have been misinformed, even I can tell you that!
Neural networks make their decisions by using gradient descent to segment an N-dimensional hyperspace with N-1 dimensional hyperplanes.
Well, that is the knowledge how EVERY neural networks is making its decisions.
But you don't know why your trained network weighs that input in neuron #5 in layer 3 with.7 instead of.5. And you can not predict if changing it manually by.1 will make your results slightly worse or screw them up completly. You know that they WILL become worse as your training algorithm has already found a local minimum.
But I would have to imagine that you could at least start with training data that did NOT list race/sex categories and the just turn it loose and see what it finds on its own?
Check out the story behind that whole story about that racist algorithm that decided on jail sentences.
That is what they did. But you don't need sex/race/age data when e.g. income/education/prior convictions data lets you derive sex/race with a 99.9% result.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem would be that this is a SWAT team, the 911 call already stated that someone is already dead or close to it (the callers dad), also the only other people in the house should be female, which leads to a situation where it is reasonable to assume the person I front of them is armed.
Some post mortem analysis says the police should have noticed that the person answering the door didn't have a phone in their hand while they were supposedly on the phone with 911, but I would be surprised if that kind of information would work it's way through to the field team if they believe the shooter has neutralized his primary threat (the supposed Dad, who was fighting with his mom).
But the field time should notice that that guy did NOT have a gun!
And some of us prefer to use it for more interesting things.
There's probably a spray-on for that.....
Yes but I always forget to pack the whiteboard in the morning so if I decide to stop at the supermarket on my way home, I know what to get....
and unit conversion when cooking.
That's either a personal little rebellion agains the system or another case of brands becoming a generic.... Like googleing on yahoo....
If it's money you'd be spending anyway on Dog-Food tissues and pizza, there is not much sucking involved as you're already spending that money. "funneling" would be a better word. But then, if their offer is "better" than what you get at a brick-and-mortar store, then it's competition and considered fair in a capitalist system. (or any system that puts more weight on the self-regulating power of market than the cases where that intrinsic balance tips over, the system runs away and becomes self destructive)
"Better" is not only defined as cheaper but also has some perceived (Brand X feels "better" than a store brand labeled but otherwise identical thing) and other components, as in ease of ordering, and logistics. And here it's less Alexa that is competition to the local toothpaste stores, but rather the Amazon Pantry. I wouldn't order toothpaste through Alexa if it would have shipping costs twice the price of the product.
Coca-Cola did an even more amazing trick here: They turned their vintage logos and designed into desired decoration items. I even can remember my parents at end 70s getting Coca-Cola glasses for their hobby room bar. (they are still there and still would sell better than any other merch throwarounds.)
And a rough version could be recreated from scratch, I mean: If all yardsticks or even all physical evidence of your civilization would be gone, Future archeologists could make exact replicas just from the description and a few scientific observations. Stranded on an island? if it's large enough, you could do the Erastothenes trick to measure the earth circumference, divide it by 400000000 and you HAVE ONE METER! Build a box 1x1x1 m, fill it with water, make 1000 equal portions, and you have recreated the kg.
The derivation from earth circumference would be the hardest part for meter and second, but you could write up instructions and send it as text-file to some green 6 headed aliens in the crab nebula and they could build anything where they have metric plans to in the correct size! (That's where - unlike in the dessert island example - the updated definitions would be helpfull like "take x million platin atoms and you have a kg" or "measure how far a laser beam travels while it's going through several billions electromagnetic oscillations"....)
But at what error margin? The age of that ox alone would probably the difference if it could be 3 or 5 furlongs per day. So yes, these make sense as units of comparisons like an whale weighing something like x-hunderd small cars or how many Libraries of Congress a USB Stick can hold. But not as actual measurement.
And here's the beauty of the metric system: Even if mm instead of cm should be used as a kind of "style guide" you still can use any other decimal fraction/multiple prefix (if you have a reason to do so) and converting is as easy as adding a 0 or slashing a decimal.
OK.. but to be fair, knotting another string to it could be done faster than setting up a Google Home...
I'd be more worried about people getting caught in dangling drawstrings.
And who decided that a drawstring is the end of perfection and progress should not continue to other assistant devices such as voice control?
But that opens a really interesting question:
If targeting a an ad to a certain age group is age discrimination, shouldn't that be independent from the media the ad is placed in?
But, on the other hand, wouldn't placing an add in a context targeted at young audience vs. an older audience be the same kind of discrimination?
So, for every job ad placed in a "Walking Dead"* episode, has a company to place an identical ad in a "Matlock" rerun?
* or whatever these youngsters are watching today
Oh yes... I remember the time when running a news show was a bit more work than broadcasting the latest viral tweets.
This is becoming even more absurd. So the airlines realize that people are sick of talking to callcenter script-monkeys instead of experiences customer service people who might know the company they are working for, and the result is NOT staffing the phone lines with them?
I never understood why instead of contacting a company directly through well established means of bi-directional communication, people post something on the equivalent of a huge public office corkboard and hope that a potential recipient picks it up from there from among those billions of tweets sent every minute.
Is it that the illusion of public interest from doing something public is more important than direct contact that could actually provide help?
Yes, I'm a smartphone addict, but not for mission critical things (besides communications).
I don't want to be denied a (paid) flight or admission to a (already paid for) event, just because my smartphone has a dead battery or no internet connection.
If it's about improving something existing it's called controlling, not testing.
Please explain how an algorithm can be biased if you leave out ethnicity from the input data,
That's simple. Because replacing race in input data with some proxy for the same data is not leaving that data out. Not quite the opposite, but if you still can derive race from them. The problem is that any valid data point could become such a proxy.
Nope, you have been misinformed, even I can tell you that!
Neural networks make their decisions by using gradient descent to segment an N-dimensional hyperspace with N-1 dimensional hyperplanes.
Well, that is the knowledge how EVERY neural networks is making its decisions.
But you don't know why your trained network weighs that input in neuron #5 in layer 3 with .7 instead of .5. And you can not predict if changing it manually by .1 will make your results slightly worse or screw them up completly. You know that they WILL become worse as your training algorithm has already found a local minimum.
Which Sweden? Has to be that Sweden where Trump saw something happening last night and not the northern European country...
But I would have to imagine that you could at least start with training data that did NOT list race/sex categories and the just turn it loose and see what it finds on its own?
Check out the story behind that whole story about that racist algorithm that decided on jail sentences.
That is what they did. But you don't need sex/race/age data when e.g. income/education/prior convictions data lets you derive sex/race with a 99.9% result.
Not neccessarily. Depends on who you blame of being "them".
Read this.
Or watch the movie if you don't have time for a childrens book.
Or die as "innocent bystander".
Does it matter? As long as you're having fun, who cares what side you're on.
No really guys: What kind of actionable would an"officer in danger" possible have to the average citizen?
And more important question: Why wold this be a better reason for a general alarm than anyone being in danger? Is someone more equal here?