a healthy market is supposed to drive price to approach the marginal cost of production.
That is only for commodity goods. Barbies and Fingerlings are trademarked goods, and are sold at a premium. I have a daughter, and I can guarantee you that "Barbie-like" is in no way a substitute for a real genuine Barbie.
Scalpers disrupt that function be creating an artificial scarcity and then taking advantage of it.
Nonsense. If Scalpers had no expectation of being able to resell at a higher price, there would be no profit for them. Properly priced products are not "scalped". There is no one buying milk and bread from the grocery store, and reselling it at a higher price.
Does anyone really NEED a plastic monkey-doll that fits on the fingers?
The "Fingerlings" come in a wide variety. Plenty of them sell for the "normal" price of around $15. It is only a few INTENTIONALLY RARE types that are selling for much higher prices because they have become collector's items.
The Democratic Party could be talking about the profound injustices of the Republican tax bill, or Trump's incompetent response to the North Korean missile launches. But instead they are focusing on federal regulatory policies for the sale of tiny toy monkeys.
The thing to remember is that weak AI has absolutely no understanding or concept of what it is doing.
That is a meaningless assertion. It depends entirely on how you define "understanding" and "concept". The chemicals and neurons that make up the human brain also don't "understand" what they are doing.
It just sums up details and gets a number.
That is also what biological neurons do.
but it is not intelligent.
Define "intelligent". Is a human intelligent? What about a monkey? A dog? An insect?
Hence it is better called by its traditional name "automation".
"Automation" is used to describe assembly lines, not systems that can learn and adapt.
Jeez. What do you get the kids if they are bad, a vial of mercury?
No. As a neurotoxin, it is likely that mercury would make their behavior even worse. Gallim is physically similar to mercury, but non-toxic. It is a lot of fun to play with. You can pour it into a mold, pop it into the refrigerator, and make metal parts. Then just hold it in your hand and it will "disappear" back into a liquid.
Of course, I get my kids the chemicals and other dork stuff in addition to the Barbie accessories, except when I can double dip by buying something that is both, such as Scientist Barbie.
There are plenty of solutions to these problems that do not require new federal laws.
1. They could change return policies on an item-by-item basis. Plenty of websites already do this. 2. They could require that scarce items be ordered as part of a larger order with a minimum purchase amount. 3. They could only display scarce items to online customers that have a qualified ordering history. 4. They could limit how many scarce items can be ordered by shipping address. 5. They could charge higher prices, and then adjust those prices downward on a daily or hourly basis until the inventory is cleared.
None of these solutions require help from Chuck Schumer.
Credit cards are not so easy for stupid people to acquire. Banks generally won't issue them unless you have someone (such as a parent) willing to co-sign, or a couple years of responsible behavior using a debit card backed by a bank balance.
Yes he is. Chuck Schumer is explicitly advocating that the power and authority of the federal government be used to control who can and can't sell... toys.
EDUCATION. HEALTH CARE. CLEAN WATER.
Poppycock. None of these things are sold at below market prices, bought by bots, and then resold at proper market clearing prices. That is not happening at all, and that is NOT what Chuck is talking about. He is talking about toys.
Democrats like Chuck Schumer are the reason that Trump will be reelected.
You can't guess what toys will be the ones that are loved.
My daughter's Barbie Dream House was, of course, her favorite. But otherwise I have had good luck giving kids dorky nerd stuff, which they almost always like. For one Christmas I gave her a bottle of heavy water (D2O). She won bets from her friends with ice cubes that sink, and with H2O ice cubes that will adhere to a finger wetted with D2O but not H2O (D2O freezes at about 39F or 4C). She loved it. The next year, I gave her 100g of gallium, a metal that melts at about 85F or 30C.
Wow. You and I must live in different universes. I presume you don't have a daughter between 4 and 10 years old. A Barbie Dream House is the sine qua non of girlhood. Parental refusal to buy one constitutes the worst form of child abuse. A girl without one simply has no reason to live.
anyone paying more than retail is exacerbating the problem.
What problem? I don't see that there is one. The toys are not going to fewer people, just different people.
More importantly, more money is being extracted from rich people who clearly have too much, and distributed throughout society to bot writers, etc. This reduces inequality and is a Good Thing.
Chuck Schumer seems to think that allocating limited goods randomly, or perhaps by rationing, is more "fair" than allocating them to whoever is willing to pay the most. That is backwards nonsense.
It can identify if something is a kitten or not with 83.4% accuracy.
No. It can look at an image and correctly classify it into THOUSANDS of categories, only one of which is "kitten". It was 82.7% accurate at this. If it was trained to only distinguish "kitten" from "not-kitten", it would, of course, be far more accurate.
a 3 year old can do this with 99.9% accuracy.
A 3 year old requires 3 years of training. This system can learn in hours.
If the 'parent' AI kept telling the 'child' AI when it was right or wrong...
It doesn't work that way. Each NN learns on its own, using a combination of both labeled and unlabeled data. The parent NN sets "hyper-parameters", such as the number of layers, the size of each layer, the activation function, the convolution size, dropout rate, the learning rate damping factor, the batch size, etc. Then it turns the children NNs loose on the image dataset. It then sees which hyper-parameters lead to better/faster performance, and then applies ML techniques to learn better hyper-parameters.
None of this is new. What is new, is that Google is now applying this recursively, and using AutoML to design a better AutoML. This is another step toward the singularity.
but every time I research the raw data it becomes very clear these aren't all that smart of AIs.
Indeed they are not. This is Weak AI. They are programmed/trained for a specific task, and outside that area of expertise, they generally have no ability at all.
In fact, the term AI is very misleading.
Only if you watch too many movies. Hollywood uses the term very differently from actual practitioners.
They're more like smart scripts.;-)
They are absolutely nothing like "smart scripts", since they aren't smart, and they aren't scripts.
Second, I don't have to own a car, and thus don't have to buy auto insurance.
Or you can own a car and just not drive it on public roads.
Also, in some states you can put up a bond or submit a certified financial statement in lieu of buying insurance.
it's "we're required by law to buy their product whether we need it or not". Consider the possibilities inherent in requiring EVERYONE to buy auto insurance, even if they don't own a car, nor have a driver's license...
That is not a good analogy, because everyone would NOT be required to buy their electricity. You are only required to pay if you draw power from the public grid. So if you don't want to pay, you could live without electricity like the Amish, you could run a generator in your basement, or put a battery backed solar panel on your roof.
it was the politicians that screwed the people in the first place.
Bullcrap. The project was deeply unpopular with the people in the area, and the politicians were reflecting their will.
But as long as the voters remain largely poorly educated and gullible...
MV has some of the best schools in the nation. They are controlled by locally elected school boards, not some vast right-wing conspiracy to kill wind power and sell more coal.
Sadly, the people are unable to make the connection between their voting habits and their problems.
The problem was windmills that were perceived as an eyesore. They agitated and voted to ban them. They got exactly what they voted for: No windmills in view from the coastline.
If only MLK and his followers would stop their boycotts and protests and informed themselves of the political process they'd get so much more.
MLK's boycotts and protests always had clear and specific objectives. Integrate the buses in Montgomery. Raise the wages of garbagemen in Memphis. Etc. There was always a clear point where he could declare victory, and move on to the next objective.
He was also very skilled at working with politicians, especially Lyndon Johnson.
Contrast MLK with OWS or BLM, neither of which has any clear objectives or accomplishments.
Complaining to their politicians would never have made the front page of international newspapers to raise awareness about the issues surrounding the current tax laws.
There is already plenty of awareness. I have seen dozens of front page articles about Apple's tax dispute with the EU.
But awareness is not enough. It is important to take action, and to direct that action appropriately. A good example is the reaction on both the left and the right to America's financial bailout. The left reacted with "Occupy Wall Street", which focused on street protests against the companies that received the bailout. The right reacted with the "Tea Party" and focused on electoral politics, endorsing candidates that met their approval, and promoting challengers to those that did not.
OWS never articulated any clear objectives, has now faded away, and is mostly forgotten.
The Tea Party, meanwhile, has taken over the Republican Party and is now running the country.
Yes, it is much better to always accept things as they are and never complain.
There is a middle ground: They could educate themselves, and then direct their outrage more constructively. For instance, if the French don't like their tax laws, perhaps they should complain to their politicians rather than to a company that is behaving legally.
Of course the age is part of the issue. You cannot expect a child to read and understand a takedown notice.
Except that the kid effectively filed a counterclaim to the takedown notice. How could he have done that if he didn't understand it? He also posted a Youtube video where he discusses the case, and seems to have a pretty solid understanding of what is going on.
I hope he wins, but his age does not reduce the legitimacy of Epic's lawsuit. The law applies to everyone.
Also, why is an American legal case about an American law only being reported on by a British website?
But would he have been arrested for flying the drone if he had not dropped leaflets? It is likely that hundreds of people fly drones within 5 miles of SFO or OAK everyday. How many of them are arrested? Selective enforcement of the law can be a form of oppression.
Slashdot Mirror
a healthy market is supposed to drive price to approach the marginal cost of production.
That is only for commodity goods. Barbies and Fingerlings are trademarked goods, and are sold at a premium. I have a daughter, and I can guarantee you that "Barbie-like" is in no way a substitute for a real genuine Barbie.
Scalpers disrupt that function be creating an artificial scarcity and then taking advantage of it.
Nonsense. If Scalpers had no expectation of being able to resell at a higher price, there would be no profit for them. Properly priced products are not "scalped". There is no one buying milk and bread from the grocery store, and reselling it at a higher price.
Does anyone really NEED a plastic monkey-doll that fits on the fingers?
The "Fingerlings" come in a wide variety. Plenty of them sell for the "normal" price of around $15. It is only a few INTENTIONALLY RARE types that are selling for much higher prices because they have become collector's items.
The Democratic Party could be talking about the profound injustices of the Republican tax bill, or Trump's incompetent response to the North Korean missile launches. But instead they are focusing on federal regulatory policies for the sale of tiny toy monkeys.
The thing to remember is that weak AI has absolutely no understanding or concept of what it is doing.
That is a meaningless assertion. It depends entirely on how you define "understanding" and "concept". The chemicals and neurons that make up the human brain also don't "understand" what they are doing.
It just sums up details and gets a number.
That is also what biological neurons do.
but it is not intelligent.
Define "intelligent". Is a human intelligent? What about a monkey? A dog? An insect?
Hence it is better called by its traditional name "automation".
"Automation" is used to describe assembly lines, not systems that can learn and adapt.
Jeez. What do you get the kids if they are bad, a vial of mercury?
No. As a neurotoxin, it is likely that mercury would make their behavior even worse. Gallim is physically similar to mercury, but non-toxic. It is a lot of fun to play with. You can pour it into a mold, pop it into the refrigerator, and make metal parts. Then just hold it in your hand and it will "disappear" back into a liquid.
Of course, I get my kids the chemicals and other dork stuff in addition to the Barbie accessories, except when I can double dip by buying something that is both, such as Scientist Barbie.
There are plenty of solutions to these problems that do not require new federal laws.
1. They could change return policies on an item-by-item basis. Plenty of websites already do this.
2. They could require that scarce items be ordered as part of a larger order with a minimum purchase amount.
3. They could only display scarce items to online customers that have a qualified ordering history.
4. They could limit how many scarce items can be ordered by shipping address.
5. They could charge higher prices, and then adjust those prices downward on a daily or hourly basis until the inventory is cleared.
None of these solutions require help from Chuck Schumer.
The flaw in your argument is "credit cards"
Credit cards are not so easy for stupid people to acquire. Banks generally won't issue them unless you have someone (such as a parent) willing to co-sign, or a couple years of responsible behavior using a debit card backed by a bank balance.
He's not talking about toys
Yes he is. Chuck Schumer is explicitly advocating that the power and authority of the federal government be used to control who can and can't sell ... toys.
EDUCATION. HEALTH CARE. CLEAN WATER.
Poppycock. None of these things are sold at below market prices, bought by bots, and then resold at proper market clearing prices. That is not happening at all, and that is NOT what Chuck is talking about. He is talking about toys.
Democrats like Chuck Schumer are the reason that Trump will be reelected.
You can't guess what toys will be the ones that are loved.
My daughter's Barbie Dream House was, of course, her favorite. But otherwise I have had good luck giving kids dorky nerd stuff, which they almost always like. For one Christmas I gave her a bottle of heavy water (D2O). She won bets from her friends with ice cubes that sink, and with H2O ice cubes that will adhere to a finger wetted with D2O but not H2O (D2O freezes at about 39F or 4C). She loved it. The next year, I gave her 100g of gallium, a metal that melts at about 85F or 30C.
I have no idea what a "Barbie Dreamhouse" is
Wow. You and I must live in different universes. I presume you don't have a daughter between 4 and 10 years old. A Barbie Dream House is the sine qua non of girlhood. Parental refusal to buy one constitutes the worst form of child abuse. A girl without one simply has no reason to live.
anyone paying more than retail is exacerbating the problem.
What problem? I don't see that there is one. The toys are not going to fewer people, just different people.
More importantly, more money is being extracted from rich people who clearly have too much, and distributed throughout society to bot writers, etc. This reduces inequality and is a Good Thing.
Chuck Schumer seems to think that allocating limited goods randomly, or perhaps by rationing, is more "fair" than allocating them to whoever is willing to pay the most. That is backwards nonsense.
It can identify if something is a kitten or not with 83.4% accuracy.
No. It can look at an image and correctly classify it into THOUSANDS of categories, only one of which is "kitten". It was 82.7% accurate at this. If it was trained to only distinguish "kitten" from "not-kitten", it would, of course, be far more accurate.
a 3 year old can do this with 99.9% accuracy.
A 3 year old requires 3 years of training. This system can learn in hours.
If the 'parent' AI kept telling the 'child' AI when it was right or wrong ...
It doesn't work that way. Each NN learns on its own, using a combination of both labeled and unlabeled data. The parent NN sets "hyper-parameters", such as the number of layers, the size of each layer, the activation function, the convolution size, dropout rate, the learning rate damping factor, the batch size, etc. Then it turns the children NNs loose on the image dataset. It then sees which hyper-parameters lead to better/faster performance, and then applies ML techniques to learn better hyper-parameters.
None of this is new. What is new, is that Google is now applying this recursively, and using AutoML to design a better AutoML. This is another step toward the singularity.
You're hooking teachers in for profit
The teachers don't profit. They money goes toward classroom educational projects. For more information, read the summary.
possibly even pushing kids who don't want to perform this activity.
To qualify, the students have to complete the activity, and will likely learn something in the process.
but every time I research the raw data it becomes very clear these aren't all that smart of AIs.
Indeed they are not. This is Weak AI. They are programmed/trained for a specific task, and outside that area of expertise, they generally have no ability at all.
In fact, the term AI is very misleading.
Only if you watch too many movies. Hollywood uses the term very differently from actual practitioners.
They're more like smart scripts. ;-)
They are absolutely nothing like "smart scripts", since they aren't smart, and they aren't scripts.
Second, I don't have to own a car, and thus don't have to buy auto insurance.
Or you can own a car and just not drive it on public roads.
Also, in some states you can put up a bond or submit a certified financial statement in lieu of buying insurance.
it's "we're required by law to buy their product whether we need it or not". Consider the possibilities inherent in requiring EVERYONE to buy auto insurance, even if they don't own a car, nor have a driver's license...
That is not a good analogy, because everyone would NOT be required to buy their electricity. You are only required to pay if you draw power from the public grid. So if you don't want to pay, you could live without electricity like the Amish, you could run a generator in your basement, or put a battery backed solar panel on your roof.
it was the politicians that screwed the people in the first place.
Bullcrap. The project was deeply unpopular with the people in the area, and the politicians were reflecting their will.
But as long as the voters remain largely poorly educated and gullible ...
MV has some of the best schools in the nation. They are controlled by locally elected school boards, not some vast right-wing conspiracy to kill wind power and sell more coal.
Sadly, the people are unable to make the connection between their voting habits and their problems.
The problem was windmills that were perceived as an eyesore. They agitated and voted to ban them. They got exactly what they voted for: No windmills in view from the coastline.
If only MLK and his followers would stop their boycotts and protests and informed themselves of the political process they'd get so much more.
MLK's boycotts and protests always had clear and specific objectives. Integrate the buses in Montgomery. Raise the wages of garbagemen in Memphis. Etc. There was always a clear point where he could declare victory, and move on to the next objective.
He was also very skilled at working with politicians, especially Lyndon Johnson.
Contrast MLK with OWS or BLM, neither of which has any clear objectives or accomplishments.
Your employer can require you to have a smart phone, at your own expense, in every state but California.
On the bright side, an employer requirement makes your phone and cellular service a tax deductible expense.
Only if they supply the "deliverator" a phone.
Nobody does that. When you use Uber, do you think the driver's phone is supplied by Uber?
Complaining to their politicians would never have made the front page of international newspapers to raise awareness about the issues surrounding the current tax laws.
There is already plenty of awareness. I have seen dozens of front page articles about Apple's tax dispute with the EU.
But awareness is not enough. It is important to take action, and to direct that action appropriately. A good example is the reaction on both the left and the right to America's financial bailout. The left reacted with "Occupy Wall Street", which focused on street protests against the companies that received the bailout. The right reacted with the "Tea Party" and focused on electoral politics, endorsing candidates that met their approval, and promoting challengers to those that did not.
OWS never articulated any clear objectives, has now faded away, and is mostly forgotten.
The Tea Party, meanwhile, has taken over the Republican Party and is now running the country.
Lesson learned: Proper focus makes a difference.
Yes, it is much better to always accept things as they are and never complain.
There is a middle ground: They could educate themselves, and then direct their outrage more constructively. For instance, if the French don't like their tax laws, perhaps they should complain to their politicians rather than to a company that is behaving legally.
Of course the age is part of the issue. You cannot expect a child to read and understand a takedown notice.
Except that the kid effectively filed a counterclaim to the takedown notice. How could he have done that if he didn't understand it? He also posted a Youtube video where he discusses the case, and seems to have a pretty solid understanding of what is going on.
I hope he wins, but his age does not reduce the legitimacy of Epic's lawsuit. The law applies to everyone.
Also, why is an American legal case about an American law only being reported on by a British website?
Hitler was responsible for many millions of people dead. The DMCA is a law about copyright policy.
Yet millions of dead people still hold copyrights. The copyright to Mein Kamph just expired last year. So until then, the DMCA was protecting Hitler.
But would he have been arrested for flying the drone if he had not dropped leaflets? It is likely that hundreds of people fly drones within 5 miles of SFO or OAK everyday. How many of them are arrested? Selective enforcement of the law can be a form of oppression.
Mozilla needs something else to do instead of working on Firefox.
At least they are no longer spending donor dollars on sponsoring surfing contests.