If you want to see the future of sexbots, you need to look at what is happening in Japan. They are clearly out in front technologically, but Japanese sexbots are mostly not exported. They have a big domestic market since in Japan marriage is a dying institution, and the Otaku culture makes sexbots and virtual GFs more acceptable.
The big future market will be in China and other countries with skewed gender ratios.
I give him 50%. He is unpopular, and the election is the Democrat's to lose, but the Dems have an immense capacity for squandering opportunities and self-destructing. If they nominate someone like Elizabeth Warren or Chuck Schumer, I don't see how they are going to carry a single southern state (maybe Virginia), or win much of the Midwest.They can't win with just the coasts. That have to flip either Pennsylvania or Florida. If they can flip both, they win. Otherwise they also need to flip either Michigan or Wisconsin. That will be very hard with a coastal lefty, and there are few moderate Democrats with national stature.
The funny thing about neo-Luddites is they consider all productivity improvements from the stone age until yesterday to be GOOD. But starting TODAY, all new productivity improvements are BAD.
The GPP is a perfect example of this. He criticizes people as "lazy" because they don't want to manually load their dishwasher. Yet the dishwasher itself is a labor saving device. The only difference is that we already have it.
How about I give up my flush toilet, and you prove you are not lazy by coming over to my house everyday to wash out my chamber pot?
My only reservation is that I had the impression that the Real Dolls were dolls rather than robots - not particularly interactive?
This is correct. They are not very interactive. The "real thing" is definitely better (but also more time consuming, with all the foreplay before and snuggling afterwards).
They are putting a lot of resources into R&D, so the technology should improve rapidly.
They are also not cheap. My wife spent about $7k on mine. The "intimate" parts are removable, which makes them easy to clean, but also easy to swap out. So you could share a sexbot with friends and each have private "privates".
Given the market potential, and the huge environmental benefit of reduced population growth, it amazes me that we aren't doing more to develop good sexbots. In the long run, good affordable sexbots could do more to reduce global warming than solar panels on ten million rooftops.
It's not the situation in Italy, it's not the situation anywhere in the EU in fact, and it's not the situation in the USA either.
Actually, it is the situation in the USA. Unemployment in America is at 4.1% while 5% is considered "full employment". Anyone capable of working can find a job, although they may need to move.
The unemployment rate in Italy is 11.3%. That is worse that America at the very bottom of the 2007-2009 financial crisis.
Looking at the attitude of these Italian workers and given a choice, would you open your business in Italy? I don't think so.
Unless something changes, Italy will be the next Greece.
Well, not everyone is so hard up in getting a date/spouse as are/.ers.
I have a spouse. I also have a sexbot. They are not mutually exclusive. So why do I have a sexbot? My wife bought it for me before she went on a 4 month business trip overseas. I told her it wasn't necessary, and that I could stay on the porch without any technological help, but she insisted. She picked out the Sai model, which actually looks similar to her.
She is back from her trip, but the sexbot is still nice for when she isn't "in the mood". She has an appetite for about 3 times per week, and I prefer about twice that. So the doll makes up the difference.
The U.S. Census Bureau defines the ethnonym Hispanic to refer to "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race", and that is how it is generally used in America.
Wiktionary defines "Hispanic" as an adjective meaning "relating to Spain or to Spanish-speaking countries, especially those of Latin America." or a noun meaning "a Spanish-speaking person living in the US, especially one of Latin American descent."
Few Americans would claim that Mexicans were non-Hispanic if they had no Spanish blood (as many do not). Every online definition that indicates an origin emphasizes "Latin America" rather than "Spain".
The original Roman province of "Hispania" included Portugal as well as Spain. So even the Latin term "Hispanic" doesn't mean "from Spain".
Some are white. Many are native American. Many are black. There aren't many Hispanic blacks in America because most are from Mexico, and Mexico didn't have the right climate for plantation slavery. But Latin countries that grew sugar cane have large black populations that speak Spanish.
There is no question that Tencent has plenty of eyeballs, but they are still struggling for market share in many areas that are likely be very profitable in the future. When your laolao whips out her cellphone to buy some baozi from a street vendor, does she use Wechat Wallet, or Alipay? Tencent would be foolish to surrender market share to "cash in" on a rapidly growing opportunity.
People said the same thing about Google and Facebook, which both went for years without generating profits. Yet look at them today. Amazon has a PE of 265, which is reasonable since they are rapidly expanding into new markets, such a groceries, same day delivery, and new cloud services.
There is a time to plant seeds, a time to grow, and a time to harvest.
If an accountant needs to extract values from a column of data using a certain criteria these are the alternatives:
1. Write an Excel macro. Elapsed time: 5 minutes.
2. Go talk to the DBA. The DBA declines the request, and tells the accountant to go through his manager. The accountant then schedules a meeting with his manager for next Tuesday to discuss the issue. The meeting lasts 40 minutes, and the manager approves the request. The request is then written up as a formal spec, taking about a hour. The spec is then forwarded to the DBA's manager, and sits in her inbox. After a week, the accountant checks on the status, and finds out that no one is working on his request, and asks the DBA's manager to forward the request. The request is finally forwarded to the DBA, where it is placed at the back of his work queue. Finally, after two months, the accountant has his request... except is isn't actually what he needed because the DBA implemented what the spec said rather than what it was meant to say. The frustrated accountant then extracts the entire DB into an Excel file and writes a macro in 5 minutes.
This is about accountants and marketing people. They know how to write Excel macros. They do NOT know how to write SQL queries, nor how to integrate SQL into their applications, nor do they have permission to directly access the SQL database on the server.
If you know how to use SQL, then you are not who TFA is talking about.
Tencent's latest earnings (I can find) are 2.7 billion.
PE ratio of 185!
Tencent is a growth stock. They are reinvesting their cashflow into expanding their market share. Investors should prefer a high PE as long as the company is growing faster than alternative investments, and Tencent certainly is.
Have you ever grown apple trees? By the second or third year, they will start to produce blossoms, and if you leave those blossoms alone, you may even get a handful of apples. But if you are smart, you pluck off the blossoms, so the tree can put its resources into stronger roots, a bigger trunk and more branches instead. That way instead of a handful of apples today, you will get bushels of apples in the future.
There is no legal requirement that every tenant be treated equally. The laws bans certain forms of discrimination based on a specific list of criteria. If you want to discriminate on other criteria, such as refusing to rent to people with nose rings, then you can do so.
I would think those two points are pretty clear that Facebook is doing something illegal.
Unlikely. The FHA restricts what landlords can do. It does not restrict what publishers can do. If a landlord places a discriminatory ad in a newspaper, it is the landlord that broke the law, not the newspaper.
Selective advertising can definitely be considered illegal discrimination. It can be hard to prove, but in this case it's pretty easy to demonstrate.
Discrimination in housing was banned by the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibits discriminatory language in ads, but does not specifically prohibit targeted advertising. There may be case law that makes it effectively illegal. It certainly goes on all the time: The Chinese and Vietnamese newspapers in my city (San Jose) have plenty of housing ads written in those languages. But there is nothing in the act that puts the onus on publishers to enforce the law. Facebook may be violating their own stated policies, but they are not doing anything illegal.
Bullcrap. Corn, whether GMO or not, does not contain gluten.
(easy to google - GMO corn taco bell).
I googled it, and came up with... nothing. There was not a single reference to GMO corn containing gluten.
I imagine anything with nut genes or shellfish genes inserted would also be pretty bad
You can imagine anything you want, but unless you can cite an example of a real (non-imaginary) GMO product available to the public that actually contains those genes, then your imagination is irrelevant.
I know for a fact that the Sun is the center of our solar system
You are wrong. The barycenter of the solar system is outside the sun.
Please tell me how knowing this means I have no clue how science works.
Science is not about "knowing" things, it is about evidence. The preponderance of the evidence says that climate change is real, and that GMOs are safe. But we don't "know" these things.
Slashdot Mirror
So you're fucking a doll, while your wife is around?
I presume you are not married, and never had a GF. Otherwise you would know that "around" is not the same as "available".
What happened to good ol' jacking off to internet porn ?
The bot is way better than that. If real sex is a ten, then online porn is maybe a two. The bot is a five.
From the site: Price: $6098
Ouch...
That is the base price. There are mods and options that cost extra.
If you want to see the future of sexbots, you need to look at what is happening in Japan. They are clearly out in front technologically, but Japanese sexbots are mostly not exported. They have a big domestic market since in Japan marriage is a dying institution, and the Otaku culture makes sexbots and virtual GFs more acceptable.
The big future market will be in China and other countries with skewed gender ratios.
I'd actually put reelection at 25% personally.
I give him 50%. He is unpopular, and the election is the Democrat's to lose, but the Dems have an immense capacity for squandering opportunities and self-destructing. If they nominate someone like Elizabeth Warren or Chuck Schumer, I don't see how they are going to carry a single southern state (maybe Virginia), or win much of the Midwest.They can't win with just the coasts. That have to flip either Pennsylvania or Florida. If they can flip both, they win. Otherwise they also need to flip either Michigan or Wisconsin. That will be very hard with a coastal lefty, and there are few moderate Democrats with national stature.
The funny thing about neo-Luddites is they consider all productivity improvements from the stone age until yesterday to be GOOD. But starting TODAY, all new productivity improvements are BAD.
The GPP is a perfect example of this. He criticizes people as "lazy" because they don't want to manually load their dishwasher. Yet the dishwasher itself is a labor saving device. The only difference is that we already have it.
How about I give up my flush toilet, and you prove you are not lazy by coming over to my house everyday to wash out my chamber pot?
My only reservation is that I had the impression that the Real Dolls were dolls rather than robots - not particularly interactive?
This is correct. They are not very interactive. The "real thing" is definitely better (but also more time consuming, with all the foreplay before and snuggling afterwards).
They are putting a lot of resources into R&D, so the technology should improve rapidly.
They are also not cheap. My wife spent about $7k on mine. The "intimate" parts are removable, which makes them easy to clean, but also easy to swap out. So you could share a sexbot with friends and each have private "privates".
Given the market potential, and the huge environmental benefit of reduced population growth, it amazes me that we aren't doing more to develop good sexbots. In the long run, good affordable sexbots could do more to reduce global warming than solar panels on ten million rooftops.
I don't disagree
In that case, just say "I agree, but"
Agreement and disagreement are not the only alternatives. It is also possible to have no opinion.
It's not the situation in Italy, it's not the situation anywhere in the EU in fact, and it's not the situation in the USA either.
Actually, it is the situation in the USA. Unemployment in America is at 4.1% while 5% is considered "full employment". Anyone capable of working can find a job, although they may need to move.
The unemployment rate in Italy is 11.3%. That is worse that America at the very bottom of the 2007-2009 financial crisis.
Looking at the attitude of these Italian workers and given a choice, would you open your business in Italy? I don't think so.
Unless something changes, Italy will be the next Greece.
Well, not everyone is so hard up in getting a date/spouse as are /.ers.
I have a spouse. I also have a sexbot. They are not mutually exclusive. So why do I have a sexbot? My wife bought it for me before she went on a 4 month business trip overseas. I told her it wasn't necessary, and that I could stay on the porch without any technological help, but she insisted. She picked out the Sai model, which actually looks similar to her.
She is back from her trip, but the sexbot is still nice for when she isn't "in the mood". She has an appetite for about 3 times per week, and I prefer about twice that. So the doll makes up the difference.
What's the world coming to when people are just too fucking lazy to put the dishes in the dishwasher and turn it on?
It all started when some lazy guy started planting seeds rather than gathering wild roots and berries.
Lazy people, searching for better and easier solutions, are the reason for progress in the world.
What would be really cool is a Lisp interpreter implemented as an Excel macro.
Is Excel Turing complete?
The U.S. Census Bureau defines the ethnonym Hispanic to refer to "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race", and that is how it is generally used in America.
Wiktionary defines "Hispanic" as an adjective meaning "relating to Spain or to Spanish-speaking countries, especially those of Latin America." or a noun meaning "a Spanish-speaking person living in the US, especially one of Latin American descent."
Few Americans would claim that Mexicans were non-Hispanic if they had no Spanish blood (as many do not). Every online definition that indicates an origin emphasizes "Latin America" rather than "Spain".
The original Roman province of "Hispania" included Portugal as well as Spain. So even the Latin term "Hispanic" doesn't mean "from Spain".
Hispanics are white
Some are white. Many are native American. Many are black. There aren't many Hispanic blacks in America because most are from Mexico, and Mexico didn't have the right climate for plantation slavery. But Latin countries that grew sugar cane have large black populations that speak Spanish.
Adobe has DBAs, but none of them (or any of their employees, for that matter) have an IQ of at least 90.
If you build a tool that requires all its users to have a high IQ, then you are a bad tool builder.
Learn to design for the world as it is, not for how you wish it to be.
1 billion current users.
There is no question that Tencent has plenty of eyeballs, but they are still struggling for market share in many areas that are likely be very profitable in the future. When your laolao whips out her cellphone to buy some baozi from a street vendor, does she use Wechat Wallet, or Alipay? Tencent would be foolish to surrender market share to "cash in" on a rapidly growing opportunity.
People said the same thing about Google and Facebook, which both went for years without generating profits. Yet look at them today. Amazon has a PE of 265, which is reasonable since they are rapidly expanding into new markets, such a groceries, same day delivery, and new cloud services.
There is a time to plant seeds, a time to grow, and a time to harvest.
My city, San Jose, is 35% white, and has an Apple Store. There is a retail store at Apple's HQ in Cupertino. Cupertino is 29% white.
Then they should hire a DBA, problem solved
Adobe has DBAs. The problem is not solved.
If an accountant needs to extract values from a column of data using a certain criteria these are the alternatives:
1. Write an Excel macro. Elapsed time: 5 minutes.
2. Go talk to the DBA. The DBA declines the request, and tells the accountant to go through his manager. The accountant then schedules a meeting with his manager for next Tuesday to discuss the issue. The meeting lasts 40 minutes, and the manager approves the request. The request is then written up as a formal spec, taking about a hour. The spec is then forwarded to the DBA's manager, and sits in her inbox. After a week, the accountant checks on the status, and finds out that no one is working on his request, and asks the DBA's manager to forward the request. The request is finally forwarded to the DBA, where it is placed at the back of his work queue. Finally, after two months, the accountant has his request ... except is isn't actually what he needed because the DBA implemented what the spec said rather than what it was meant to say. The frustrated accountant then extracts the entire DB into an Excel file and writes a macro in 5 minutes.
Then I might as well do it all in SQL
This is about accountants and marketing people. They know how to write Excel macros. They do NOT know how to write SQL queries, nor how to integrate SQL into their applications, nor do they have permission to directly access the SQL database on the server.
If you know how to use SQL, then you are not who TFA is talking about.
Tencent's latest earnings (I can find) are 2.7 billion.
PE ratio of 185!
Tencent is a growth stock. They are reinvesting their cashflow into expanding their market share. Investors should prefer a high PE as long as the company is growing faster than alternative investments, and Tencent certainly is.
Have you ever grown apple trees? By the second or third year, they will start to produce blossoms, and if you leave those blossoms alone, you may even get a handful of apples. But if you are smart, you pluck off the blossoms, so the tree can put its resources into stronger roots, a bigger trunk and more branches instead. That way instead of a handful of apples today, you will get bushels of apples in the future.
A landlord must treat every tenant equally.
There is no legal requirement that every tenant be treated equally. The laws bans certain forms of discrimination based on a specific list of criteria. If you want to discriminate on other criteria, such as refusing to rent to people with nose rings, then you can do so.
I would think those two points are pretty clear that Facebook is doing something illegal.
Unlikely. The FHA restricts what landlords can do. It does not restrict what publishers can do. If a landlord places a discriminatory ad in a newspaper, it is the landlord that broke the law, not the newspaper.
I'm pretty certain you can discriminate on the basis of religious beliefs.
No. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 specifically prohibits discrimination in housing based on religion.
There is an exemption for housing administered by religious organizations.
It very clearly covers the contents of that advertising.
... and even then, it is the person placing the ad that is breaking the law, not the newspaper or website publishing it.
Selective advertising can definitely be considered illegal discrimination. It can be hard to prove, but in this case it's pretty easy to demonstrate.
Discrimination in housing was banned by the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibits discriminatory language in ads, but does not specifically prohibit targeted advertising. There may be case law that makes it effectively illegal. It certainly goes on all the time: The Chinese and Vietnamese newspapers in my city (San Jose) have plenty of housing ads written in those languages. But there is nothing in the act that puts the onus on publishers to enforce the law. Facebook may be violating their own stated policies, but they are not doing anything illegal.
Like corn that contains gluten.
Bullcrap. Corn, whether GMO or not, does not contain gluten.
(easy to google - GMO corn taco bell).
I googled it, and came up with ... nothing. There was not a single reference to GMO corn containing gluten.
I imagine anything with nut genes or shellfish genes inserted would also be pretty bad
You can imagine anything you want, but unless you can cite an example of a real (non-imaginary) GMO product available to the public that actually contains those genes, then your imagination is irrelevant.
I know for a fact that the Sun is the center of our solar system
You are wrong. The barycenter of the solar system is outside the sun.
Please tell me how knowing this means I have no clue how science works.
Science is not about "knowing" things, it is about evidence. The preponderance of the evidence says that climate change is real, and that GMOs are safe. But we don't "know" these things.