You don't seriously think it's because of all the warning labels, do you? The link you gave indicated it's likely the lower rates of obesity and smoking in California, which is kind of known for being a more health-conscious state in general. And I'm pretty sure we know about the risks of those two factors nation-wide.
Hard to say, but why is it any of the USA's business about how the EU and UK deal with this? As an American, I'd rather not be caught in the middle of such international squabbles.
No one is saying life isn't difficult for most people in various ways, regardless of sex, age, ethnicity / skin color, etc. But maybe it's not a bad thing to do what we collectively can to make it a little less unpleasant where the opportunity presents itself. Yes, the Universe eventually kills us all. That's why we should try to make the most of our brief existence, bringing joy, happiness, and hope to both ourselves AND others, rather than trying to tear others down.
I see nothing wrong with a private platform deciding that they don't want to spread hateful messages. That being said, I'd probably oppose the government demanding the same actions of a private entity on 1st amendment grounds.
I'd call myself an admirer of his, but I certainly don't think he's infallible, nor do I treat him like a cult leader. I think his views about living in a computer simulation are borderline nuts, and the sky-is-falling AI doomsday warnings are ignorant paranoia.
But there's little doubt he's doing great work with his rockets and electric car companies. We'll see about the Boring Company. The man certainly has the charisma and vision for inspiring others to make great products.
I don't think I'm necessarily unique in these views.
I'm not saying Amazon is necessarily wrong to do this, but it would probably make things much more palatable to at least send an e-mail to those authors explaining why they're re-categorizing their books, instead of just doing so silently. It makes for bad press when they do things like this arbitrarily.
Again, I'm not saying they don't have the right or a good reason for doing this, but I think they should try to communicate a bit better, given that they have such a dominating position.
No one is claiming it's a 2nd amendment or free speech issue. The issue here is that Amazon is such a dominant force for modern literature that authors are now pretty much beholden to whatever whims they decide to act upon.
Author Jenny Trout had every book in her contemporary erotic romance series The Boss (written under the pen name Abigail Barnette) stripped of its rank and reclassified to remove it from the Romance category. She told me in an email that Amazon is “the bread and butter of every indie out there.” She says she sold half a million copies through Amazon in a three-year period, compared to 35,000 at every other retailer combined. Her series was de-ranked without warning or explanation.
“There's no way for an indie author to make a living without Amazon, so whatever nonsense they decide they're pulling this month is just one other thing we've got to put up with,” Trout said. “And that sucks, but they're a private business and they get to do what they want, so we can only really complain from a consumer standpoint. It's not censorship, it's just a big bullshit hassle, so there's really no recourse for us.”
I'm not some anti-Amazon crusader by any means, but it's always a little worrisome for a single entity to become as dominant as they've become in so many areas, because when this sort of thing happens, there's literally no recourse for people, and no real way for market forces to make corrections.
What exactly is a "tech worker" defined as? Obviously, this answer really depends on the job.
I program videogames for a living. No matter how important an issue at work is, there's absolutely nothing that would be so important that it can't be handled tomorrow.
If I was a tech ensuring Amazon.com stayed online and operational, I'd expect that being available 24/7/365 would be part of the job.
I guess you're not aware that the governor of Arizona is a Republican? I don't know much about him, but I'd presume that means he leans conservative, not liberal. Self-driving cars are being tested in California as well, and now perhaps you see why you can't always trust a corporation to self-regulate in the absence of government oversight. This is, sadly, how government regulations tend to come about.
The pedestrian was technically in the wrong, but we've heard a lot of rumors recently that Uber's self-driving software was being pushed forward recklessly. And given the wonderful people at Uber and their stellar track record, this isn't exactly hard to believe. A competently programmed car with a properly functioning lider probably should have seen that woman on the bike and reacted to it by braking far earlier than it did.
Yes, deaths will inevitably occur, but let's at least try to make sure there are as few as possibly going forward. This is a good reminder that machines can be just as fallible as the humans who create them.
Don't we already have a method of using existing aggregate in concrete? Is there some advantage to using pre-fab blocks instead of simply pouring on-site into existing molds?
Not pretending to be knowledgeable in this area at all, but just a bit confused about how this is somehow more desirable than more traditional building materials. Maybe less expensive in bulk, since they really just have to negate some disposal costs.
I wouldn't use the word "hero" or "inspiration", but the dude has some balls. I'll admit I didn't think he'd actually pull the trigger, lever, button, or whatever device he used to launch himself. He did, though, and I'll give him props for that.
As to everyone who pooh-poohs the height his device achieved, I'd like you to tell me how far off the ground YOUR homemade rocket got you. The point is not about how high he got. Who the hell cares? We all know the earth is flat. The awesome part is that he actually successfully flew in his own homemade steam-powered rocket.
For example, I frequently use my Bluetooth keyboard with my tablet. The tablet still does everything I need (for certain use cases). The keyboard just makes some things much easier. Like typing this comment.:)
Fair enough. At some point, the differences are more about convention. By convention, I tend to think of tablets as mostly a media consumption device, and a laptop as a production device, but if that's really only because of the lack of a keyboard.
But maybe you're right -- maybe it's not feasible to have a good touch interface and a good mouse interface on a single device. I'm not really sure.
A mouse has greater precision, can hover, use multiple buttons, and has independent scrolling. So as long as you're willing to forgo those capabilities, you can certainly create an interface that uses both. But the catch is, I think, that you'll always need to optimize your interface for one of those input methods. They seem similar superficially, but are different enough that you can't quite use a common UI and still have it feel right for both. That's what really killed Windows 8.
I think this may be why Apple doesn't add mouse support. I'll bet they've tried it experimentally. It could very well be that it just felt tacked-on. Just a guess, of course.
Ugh, I know. Those two used to be among my favorite channels. Now, literally nothing they show holds any interest for me. I certainly acknowledge that they're probably better off financially, but it's a shame it came at the expense of intellectually stimulating programming.
Maybe the History Channel of 15 years ago. These days, I'd recommend CuriosityStream, or BBC programming on Netflix or Amazon Prime. The History Channel long ago realized it was more profitable to show trashy reality or pseudo-science shows.
I guess people who are in a weaker bargaining position, or who have a tougher time standing up for their own rights?
Saying things like that is a bit easier when you have more experience (both life and work experience). I'm not sure I approve of handing this over to the government to regulate, but there are definitely employers who will try to take advantage of their workers. I'm in the videogame industry, so naturally I know of plenty of examples of people being forced to work very long hours for no additional pay. I've even seen examples where people were forced to stay extra hours even when they were keeping up with their work, because otherwise the bosses thought it might hurt team morale if some people went home on time while others worked late. Insanity.
But while painful to watch, things like that have a way of self-balancing. Time and time again I've seen companies with abusive practices either go out of business, or transform themselves simply out of necessity or bad publicity. Abusing your employees is a great way to lose people who want a life of their own, like me.
I'm currently working as an independent contractor, but if I ever go back full time, I'll likely choose an employer not based on salary alone, but on whether or not they'll guarantee me a reasonable work-life balance. I'm willing to work very hard for 40 hours, but I want the rest of my time to belong to me.
That's just a matter of software, not hardware capabilities. That being said...
If you're attaching a keyboard and mouse to a tablet, aren't you pretty much acknowledging that what you really need is a laptop and not a tablet? We've seen several well-publicized, failed attempts at merging mouse and touch paradigms. I'm not sure why you have such faith that Apple could pull this off where everyone else so far has failed miserably.
Now that there's nothing more these tablets need to do, technologically speaking, they really need to start coming down in price.
Actually, I think it will be the same with smartphones reasonably soon. We've probably hit a technological peak of sorts, where there are literally no more substantial gains to be had by making smartphones more powerful. My prediction is that we'll see the high-end phones hover at the $1000 mark for a while, but they'll start sliding back down, as people simply don't see any added value for the minor improvements with each new model.
Oh, the phone makers will fight this kicking and screaming, of course, but I think competitive pressure will probably win out over the next five to ten years, especially as the novelty factor wears off for most people.
You can't transport through shields - not just enemy shields, but even your own. That's been a pretty consistent rule in the Star Trek universe. Otherwise, there are literally no defenses against enemy attacks, and that doesn't make for very fun storytelling.
We need to stop referring to these things are "artificial intelligence"; they're "pseudo-intelligence", at best.
There's no intelligence at all. Not even pseudo. "Machine learning" seems like a better fit for these algorithms. They're really more about fuzzy pattern matching than any sort of logical deduction or reasoning, as expected of "intelligence."
The Internet simply isn't as searchable as it once was.
Seriously? I seem to recall that search services before Google absolutely stunk, with pages and pages of completely irrelevant result. Trying to find what you're actually looking for was a complete PITA. The reason Google became the giant it is now is because they were the first to figure out a truly effective internet search algorithm. And despite showing sponsored results (clearly marked), Google still has highly relevant results for most of what I search for, and presumably most other people, given their current market share.
Am I happy that Google dominates search the way Microsoft dominates desktop OSes? No, of course not. But to claim the internet is "less searchable" smacks of hyperbole, especially with high quality competitors like Bing and DuckDuckGo. It's just that everyone has gotten used to using Google by now, and their competitors aren't really any better*, so why switch?
* DDG has better privacy, but I'm talking about quality of search results.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't seriously think it's because of all the warning labels, do you? The link you gave indicated it's likely the lower rates of obesity and smoking in California, which is kind of known for being a more health-conscious state in general. And I'm pretty sure we know about the risks of those two factors nation-wide.
Hard to say, but why is it any of the USA's business about how the EU and UK deal with this? As an American, I'd rather not be caught in the middle of such international squabbles.
Just fyi, it's ceded.
No one is saying life isn't difficult for most people in various ways, regardless of sex, age, ethnicity / skin color, etc. But maybe it's not a bad thing to do what we collectively can to make it a little less unpleasant where the opportunity presents itself. Yes, the Universe eventually kills us all. That's why we should try to make the most of our brief existence, bringing joy, happiness, and hope to both ourselves AND others, rather than trying to tear others down.
I see nothing wrong with a private platform deciding that they don't want to spread hateful messages. That being said, I'd probably oppose the government demanding the same actions of a private entity on 1st amendment grounds.
I'd call myself an admirer of his, but I certainly don't think he's infallible, nor do I treat him like a cult leader. I think his views about living in a computer simulation are borderline nuts, and the sky-is-falling AI doomsday warnings are ignorant paranoia.
But there's little doubt he's doing great work with his rockets and electric car companies. We'll see about the Boring Company. The man certainly has the charisma and vision for inspiring others to make great products.
I don't think I'm necessarily unique in these views.
I'm not saying Amazon is necessarily wrong to do this, but it would probably make things much more palatable to at least send an e-mail to those authors explaining why they're re-categorizing their books, instead of just doing so silently. It makes for bad press when they do things like this arbitrarily.
Again, I'm not saying they don't have the right or a good reason for doing this, but I think they should try to communicate a bit better, given that they have such a dominating position.
Um.. the second amendment is guns. Free speech is the first amendment.
Doh, of course. I guess it would be weird indeed if someone complained that this was a 2nd amendment issue after all.
No one is claiming it's a 2nd amendment or free speech issue. The issue here is that Amazon is such a dominant force for modern literature that authors are now pretty much beholden to whatever whims they decide to act upon.
Author Jenny Trout had every book in her contemporary erotic romance series The Boss (written under the pen name Abigail Barnette) stripped of its rank and reclassified to remove it from the Romance category. She told me in an email that Amazon is “the bread and butter of every indie out there.” She says she sold half a million copies through Amazon in a three-year period, compared to 35,000 at every other retailer combined. Her series was de-ranked without warning or explanation.
“There's no way for an indie author to make a living without Amazon, so whatever nonsense they decide they're pulling this month is just one other thing we've got to put up with,” Trout said. “And that sucks, but they're a private business and they get to do what they want, so we can only really complain from a consumer standpoint. It's not censorship, it's just a big bullshit hassle, so there's really no recourse for us.”
I'm not some anti-Amazon crusader by any means, but it's always a little worrisome for a single entity to become as dominant as they've become in so many areas, because when this sort of thing happens, there's literally no recourse for people, and no real way for market forces to make corrections.
Organized crime reach into normal society is pretty overrated. Seriously... I dare them toaksj alkj;a kalwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
What exactly is a "tech worker" defined as? Obviously, this answer really depends on the job.
I program videogames for a living. No matter how important an issue at work is, there's absolutely nothing that would be so important that it can't be handled tomorrow.
If I was a tech ensuring Amazon.com stayed online and operational, I'd expect that being available 24/7/365 would be part of the job.
I guess you're not aware that the governor of Arizona is a Republican? I don't know much about him, but I'd presume that means he leans conservative, not liberal. Self-driving cars are being tested in California as well, and now perhaps you see why you can't always trust a corporation to self-regulate in the absence of government oversight. This is, sadly, how government regulations tend to come about.
The pedestrian was technically in the wrong, but we've heard a lot of rumors recently that Uber's self-driving software was being pushed forward recklessly. And given the wonderful people at Uber and their stellar track record, this isn't exactly hard to believe. A competently programmed car with a properly functioning lider probably should have seen that woman on the bike and reacted to it by braking far earlier than it did.
Yes, deaths will inevitably occur, but let's at least try to make sure there are as few as possibly going forward. This is a good reminder that machines can be just as fallible as the humans who create them.
Don't we already have a method of using existing aggregate in concrete? Is there some advantage to using pre-fab blocks instead of simply pouring on-site into existing molds?
Not pretending to be knowledgeable in this area at all, but just a bit confused about how this is somehow more desirable than more traditional building materials. Maybe less expensive in bulk, since they really just have to negate some disposal costs.
Is Yugo the Chinese version of the Hugo award?
I'm guessing Yugo > Hugo in the same way that Yuge > Huge?
Maybe.
I wouldn't use the word "hero" or "inspiration", but the dude has some balls. I'll admit I didn't think he'd actually pull the trigger, lever, button, or whatever device he used to launch himself. He did, though, and I'll give him props for that.
As to everyone who pooh-poohs the height his device achieved, I'd like you to tell me how far off the ground YOUR homemade rocket got you. The point is not about how high he got. Who the hell cares? We all know the earth is flat. The awesome part is that he actually successfully flew in his own homemade steam-powered rocket.
For example, I frequently use my Bluetooth keyboard with my tablet. The tablet still does everything I need (for certain use cases). The keyboard just makes some things much easier. Like typing this comment. :)
Fair enough. At some point, the differences are more about convention. By convention, I tend to think of tablets as mostly a media consumption device, and a laptop as a production device, but if that's really only because of the lack of a keyboard.
But maybe you're right -- maybe it's not feasible to have a good touch interface and a good mouse interface on a single device. I'm not really sure.
A mouse has greater precision, can hover, use multiple buttons, and has independent scrolling. So as long as you're willing to forgo those capabilities, you can certainly create an interface that uses both. But the catch is, I think, that you'll always need to optimize your interface for one of those input methods. They seem similar superficially, but are different enough that you can't quite use a common UI and still have it feel right for both. That's what really killed Windows 8.
I think this may be why Apple doesn't add mouse support. I'll bet they've tried it experimentally. It could very well be that it just felt tacked-on. Just a guess, of course.
I saw the headline and thought to myself "what... again?"
Ugh, I know. Those two used to be among my favorite channels. Now, literally nothing they show holds any interest for me. I certainly acknowledge that they're probably better off financially, but it's a shame it came at the expense of intellectually stimulating programming.
Maybe the History Channel of 15 years ago. These days, I'd recommend CuriosityStream, or BBC programming on Netflix or Amazon Prime. The History Channel long ago realized it was more profitable to show trashy reality or pseudo-science shows.
I guess people who are in a weaker bargaining position, or who have a tougher time standing up for their own rights?
Saying things like that is a bit easier when you have more experience (both life and work experience). I'm not sure I approve of handing this over to the government to regulate, but there are definitely employers who will try to take advantage of their workers. I'm in the videogame industry, so naturally I know of plenty of examples of people being forced to work very long hours for no additional pay. I've even seen examples where people were forced to stay extra hours even when they were keeping up with their work, because otherwise the bosses thought it might hurt team morale if some people went home on time while others worked late. Insanity.
But while painful to watch, things like that have a way of self-balancing. Time and time again I've seen companies with abusive practices either go out of business, or transform themselves simply out of necessity or bad publicity. Abusing your employees is a great way to lose people who want a life of their own, like me.
I'm currently working as an independent contractor, but if I ever go back full time, I'll likely choose an employer not based on salary alone, but on whether or not they'll guarantee me a reasonable work-life balance. I'm willing to work very hard for 40 hours, but I want the rest of my time to belong to me.
That's just a matter of software, not hardware capabilities. That being said...
If you're attaching a keyboard and mouse to a tablet, aren't you pretty much acknowledging that what you really need is a laptop and not a tablet? We've seen several well-publicized, failed attempts at merging mouse and touch paradigms. I'm not sure why you have such faith that Apple could pull this off where everyone else so far has failed miserably.
Hahaha, right. I mean, what will all their UX artists on staff do if they can't constantly fiddle with the UI?
Now that there's nothing more these tablets need to do, technologically speaking, they really need to start coming down in price.
Actually, I think it will be the same with smartphones reasonably soon. We've probably hit a technological peak of sorts, where there are literally no more substantial gains to be had by making smartphones more powerful. My prediction is that we'll see the high-end phones hover at the $1000 mark for a while, but they'll start sliding back down, as people simply don't see any added value for the minor improvements with each new model.
Oh, the phone makers will fight this kicking and screaming, of course, but I think competitive pressure will probably win out over the next five to ten years, especially as the novelty factor wears off for most people.
You can't transport through shields - not just enemy shields, but even your own. That's been a pretty consistent rule in the Star Trek universe. Otherwise, there are literally no defenses against enemy attacks, and that doesn't make for very fun storytelling.
We need to stop referring to these things are "artificial intelligence"; they're "pseudo-intelligence", at best.
There's no intelligence at all. Not even pseudo. "Machine learning" seems like a better fit for these algorithms. They're really more about fuzzy pattern matching than any sort of logical deduction or reasoning, as expected of "intelligence."
The Internet simply isn't as searchable as it once was.
Seriously? I seem to recall that search services before Google absolutely stunk, with pages and pages of completely irrelevant result. Trying to find what you're actually looking for was a complete PITA. The reason Google became the giant it is now is because they were the first to figure out a truly effective internet search algorithm. And despite showing sponsored results (clearly marked), Google still has highly relevant results for most of what I search for, and presumably most other people, given their current market share.
Am I happy that Google dominates search the way Microsoft dominates desktop OSes? No, of course not. But to claim the internet is "less searchable" smacks of hyperbole, especially with high quality competitors like Bing and DuckDuckGo. It's just that everyone has gotten used to using Google by now, and their competitors aren't really any better*, so why switch?
* DDG has better privacy, but I'm talking about quality of search results.
Don't worry. Microsoft is working on making links in e-mail useless.