And, this would make astroturfing astronomically more expensive than it is today - which it should be.
Time was, major networks might refuse to air a false, libelous, or overly inflammatory ad (maybe not so much anymore), they acted as a filter for the worst of the misinformation.
Today's social networks seem to rank a step below old yellow journalism in the integrity dimensions.
Google continuously battles this with pagerank, and it is an arms race, but the major sites are currently back at the flinging rocks stage, they haven't even advanced to carrying shields.
The social media sites need to start giving more visibility to a poster's reputation... not just the number of digits in their UID, but something that visibly shows the depth of their posting history, general consensus of the validity of their old posts, etc. I think the visibility for new/unproven members is fine the way it is, but a comment should readily show when the poster is new, or has an astroturfy history.
If you want to give him some benefit of the doubt, his position at Alphabet (I guess that's where they stuck him???) may actually be a valid position of research leadership. Still big with the hot air, but he might also be directing budgets and occasionally visiting the worker ants that are making real stuff happen.
Old guys, especially successful old guys, often evolve away from handling the soldering irons themselves.
Ray did stuff, significant stuff, a long time ago. He's mostly hot air lately, but it's not entirely out of character from his earlier life when he was actually doing stuff.
Those larger boondoggles employ millions of people. Unfortunately, they disrupt the economy, force retraining onto the working class - migration to find employment, mass consumption of natural resources, and piss off the rest of the world in the process, but there are some jobs for awhile.
And the sad part is that it's not just drug companies that do this, give away the razor, sell the blades. Printer/toner-ink, cars that tell you to take them to the dealer for service, etc. etc. etc.
Lame, and good, lawyers work regularly, and command those stupidly exhorbitant hourly rates throughout decades of their career. It's an established market rate that large numbers of people are willing to pay.
"Really really good hackers" are sniffing around for a major payday, and many eat Ramen noodles in their parents' basement while they wait for the "big one" to hit, while others work day jobs no more glamorous than average people. As others mentioned above, if that mega-payday comes from the private sector - people spending their own money, then fine - that's value for money. I don't think my government should be splashing out lottery payouts any time they want to make a point.
In the 60s, Anarchy was the best apparent alternative to being drafted and sent to die in a war that nobody believed in.
Today, I think Transparency is the better revolution - attainable with our technology, and worth trying. If only we could get people to believe in and vote for a Transparency party that could gain real traction in the Legislature and Courts.
Universal Basic Income for 350 million people is many orders of magnitude more expensive than a one-time boondoggle for $2M. Every three letter agency in the Federal government can go out and blow $2M a week on stupid stuff, and that doesn't amount to UBI for more than about 100,000 people: less than 0.03% of the population (assuming 10 TLAs).
Assuming these guys are really, really good, and worth a billable rate of $250/hr - if they pulled off the job in under 90 days, were there 10+ of them on the job, or did the FBI just pay a super premium for a high profile case to make a political statement?
He's made millions inventing and selling stuff, and has a prestigious post at one of the most prestigious tech companies ever seen... I think he's done a fair job of selling his thinking, successfully.
After he's dead, he'll probably resemble Atkins - but if he doesn't, he'll be hailed as a visionary.
Google voice search on my phone has increased my integration to the net by an order of magnitude - I can make queries from most locations with simple speech and often get accurate voice replies (in a fraction of the time it would take to tap in the query on a mobile keyboard, and with a fraction of the attention required to focus on and read a mobile screen.)
Everything moves based on economic support - if you can't fire the imaginations of the people with money, you don't get any money. Without people like Kurzweil helping the rich and bored to see an exciting future, they will continue to invest in yachts, mansions and all the other traditional wealth sinks.
If you get rich old men excited about developing better viagra, immortality, etc. they will fund research in those directions. Succeed or fail in their actual aims, that research will add to our knowledge and abilities to do cool stuff in the future.
The counter-argument is that you increase the number of stimulus pictures until you regain the desired accuracy.
The counter-counter arguments are manifold: pictures -> blind subjects? Auditory responses are likely much more problematic to read and distinguish (audible signal response swamping any individual cognitive responses). 500 pictures, really? Who has time for that? How accurately do the electrodes need to be placed every time the test is run? Don't you have better things to do with your time and ANOVA software?
Also, if you ever try to watch the feed in question: http://www.ustream.tv/embed/17... it goes down about 25 times per hour, especially when approaching populated areas. There's nothing suspicious in the coincidence that the feed went down when this image appeared - I'd be more surprised if we got 5 minutes of continuous coverage, of anything, from the ISS feed.
Slashdot Mirror
And, this would make astroturfing astronomically more expensive than it is today - which it should be.
Time was, major networks might refuse to air a false, libelous, or overly inflammatory ad (maybe not so much anymore), they acted as a filter for the worst of the misinformation.
Today's social networks seem to rank a step below old yellow journalism in the integrity dimensions.
Google continuously battles this with pagerank, and it is an arms race, but the major sites are currently back at the flinging rocks stage, they haven't even advanced to carrying shields.
The social media sites need to start giving more visibility to a poster's reputation... not just the number of digits in their UID, but something that visibly shows the depth of their posting history, general consensus of the validity of their old posts, etc. I think the visibility for new/unproven members is fine the way it is, but a comment should readily show when the poster is new, or has an astroturfy history.
As they say: "It ain't perfect, but there are plenty of worse examples to study - and few better."
If you want to give him some benefit of the doubt, his position at Alphabet (I guess that's where they stuck him???) may actually be a valid position of research leadership. Still big with the hot air, but he might also be directing budgets and occasionally visiting the worker ants that are making real stuff happen.
Old guys, especially successful old guys, often evolve away from handling the soldering irons themselves.
Ray did stuff, significant stuff, a long time ago. He's mostly hot air lately, but it's not entirely out of character from his earlier life when he was actually doing stuff.
Those larger boondoggles employ millions of people. Unfortunately, they disrupt the economy, force retraining onto the working class - migration to find employment, mass consumption of natural resources, and piss off the rest of the world in the process, but there are some jobs for awhile.
And the sad part is that it's not just drug companies that do this, give away the razor, sell the blades. Printer/toner-ink, cars that tell you to take them to the dealer for service, etc. etc. etc.
Not none, less. And in the old days, it wasn't a vasectomy, it was total removal which dramatically reduced circulating testosterone (sex drive.)
Lame, and good, lawyers work regularly, and command those stupidly exhorbitant hourly rates throughout decades of their career. It's an established market rate that large numbers of people are willing to pay.
"Really really good hackers" are sniffing around for a major payday, and many eat Ramen noodles in their parents' basement while they wait for the "big one" to hit, while others work day jobs no more glamorous than average people. As others mentioned above, if that mega-payday comes from the private sector - people spending their own money, then fine - that's value for money. I don't think my government should be splashing out lottery payouts any time they want to make a point.
In the 60s, Anarchy was the best apparent alternative to being drafted and sent to die in a war that nobody believed in.
Today, I think Transparency is the better revolution - attainable with our technology, and worth trying. If only we could get people to believe in and vote for a Transparency party that could gain real traction in the Legislature and Courts.
Universal Basic Income for 350 million people is many orders of magnitude more expensive than a one-time boondoggle for $2M. Every three letter agency in the Federal government can go out and blow $2M a week on stupid stuff, and that doesn't amount to UBI for more than about 100,000 people: less than 0.03% of the population (assuming 10 TLAs).
Assuming these guys are really, really good, and worth a billable rate of $250/hr - if they pulled off the job in under 90 days, were there 10+ of them on the job, or did the FBI just pay a super premium for a high profile case to make a political statement?
He's made millions inventing and selling stuff, and has a prestigious post at one of the most prestigious tech companies ever seen... I think he's done a fair job of selling his thinking, successfully.
After he's dead, he'll probably resemble Atkins - but if he doesn't, he'll be hailed as a visionary.
This is a pretty tough room for RK, I'm sure he has more entertaining and lucrative things to do with his time these days.
Google voice search on my phone has increased my integration to the net by an order of magnitude - I can make queries from most locations with simple speech and often get accurate voice replies (in a fraction of the time it would take to tap in the query on a mobile keyboard, and with a fraction of the attention required to focus on and read a mobile screen.)
It's only dystopian if you're one of the 90% who get sterilized - for the surviving 700 million immortals it will be nirvana.
100 pills a day is lunacy in any analysis.
Millions of dollars a year funding health studies is, though, actually a positive thing.
Castratos had less V.D.
Everything moves based on economic support - if you can't fire the imaginations of the people with money, you don't get any money. Without people like Kurzweil helping the rich and bored to see an exciting future, they will continue to invest in yachts, mansions and all the other traditional wealth sinks.
If you get rich old men excited about developing better viagra, immortality, etc. they will fund research in those directions. Succeed or fail in their actual aims, that research will add to our knowledge and abilities to do cool stuff in the future.
So, the "we'll be sexier" comment probably doesn't apply to the first generation of people with nanobots wiring a 2nd neocortex into their brain...
I have a T-Mo Nexus 5, for 2 years now, and I think I've only received 5 or 6 OS patches in that time (last one just today).
The counter-argument is that you increase the number of stimulus pictures until you regain the desired accuracy.
The counter-counter arguments are manifold: pictures -> blind subjects? Auditory responses are likely much more problematic to read and distinguish (audible signal response swamping any individual cognitive responses). 500 pictures, really? Who has time for that? How accurately do the electrodes need to be placed every time the test is run? Don't you have better things to do with your time and ANOVA software?
Also, if you ever try to watch the feed in question: http://www.ustream.tv/embed/17... it goes down about 25 times per hour, especially when approaching populated areas. There's nothing suspicious in the coincidence that the feed went down when this image appeared - I'd be more surprised if we got 5 minutes of continuous coverage, of anything, from the ISS feed.
Clowns have proven their ability to garner 49% of the popular vote, and more on occasion.