I almost guarantee it was stolen from physically using it rather than a hacked website. You know when you pay for a meal at a sit down restaurant and they take the card into the back? All they need to do is photograph both sides of the card and they have all the info they'll ever need to go on an amazon shopping spree. If they wanted to get slightly more risky, they could carry in a magstripe reader (the electronics are tiny now, it could fit in a pocket no problem) and use that to make perfect clones of the card.

Hell, when I worked for a small photography company there was an order form that had people write their card info down as one of the payment options. We weren't trained to handle the forms with any particular security in mind. If I'd been inclined to steal card numbers, 60 seconds with my smartphone could have given me more than numbers than I'd know what to do with (plus emails, passwords, and PIN numbers during little league season since the form had the kids name and DOB on it and we all know how good people are at picking passwords).

It could even be stolen via someone putting a skimmer over the magreader and keypad at a gas station. I've seen pictures of the things in action. Most were built such that unless you know what that gas stations keypad and card reader should look like, you'd really have no way of telling if there's a skimmer or not short of prying at both the reader and the keypad to see if they come off.

This is why I always laugh when the less tech savvy individuals I know seem to think they're somehow being safer by never using their credit cards online. If the site is encrypted and properly secured (I'd assume the big ones like amazon, newegg, etc. are), and your computer isn't loaded with viruses, there's less danger using your card online just because the human element is out of the equation.

As opposed to "if it's good for stopping global warming, then full speed ahead!"? Because it would be a shame to miss the opportunity to blast those claims with your sarcasm cannon as well.

You've basically just described taping a magnet to a pole and suspending it in front of your car in order to make it go forwards, only in a slightly more complex way such that it's hard to see that's what's being proposed.

You seem to be forgetting that accelerating the particle towards A produces a backwards force. By the same token, diverting it sideways doesn't cancel out whatever backwards momentum it still contains, nor does hitting other particles to slow down (they hit other particles in turn and eventually transfer all the way to the back).

....that's literally the same thing? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If you transfer momentum while in the air, you're going to move back and continue moving back until you contact something (the bottom or opposite wall of the cage). If you were in a frictionless vacuum, the momentum would cancel as soon as you hit the opposite wall. In this case it doesn't transfer back again because of static friction.

Doesn't that only work because of static friction though? Bump hard enough to break the static friction and scoot across the floor, then move slowly when reversing such that you don't break the static friction on the way back.

You mean an AR clone? Rifles that fire more than one bullet per trigger pull (e.g., an M16) aren't up for sale to the general civilian population without jumping through some pretty annoying hoops and paying quite a bit of money. Here, I'll leave you with this nicely illustrated guide: http://imgur.com/a/zNc3a

You mean a 100 round magazine? They banned 10-round magazines for a while federally, and in a few states (california in particular) possession of a magazine with more than 10 rounds is now a misdemeanor. This means that if you live in california and owned a magazine with more than 10 rounds of capacity (the vast majority of magazine fed handguns hold more than 10 rounds) you must now dispose of legally owned property and replace it with 10 round magazines.

Especially if the thing is labeled as Russian. Russian tip diameter might be given in mm, while american wire might be given in mils, two completely different yet similar sounding units.

I think the process would come about from running the power through a resistive load, which would generate heat and require cooling, potentially from a river.

Oh boy, a whole half an elective. I strongly suspect you didn't "acutally" write any real code or implement any kind of machine learning. I actually have implemented real machine learning solutions that used everything from neural nets to HMM to bayesian statistics. I can promise you that in all of those occasions, the program was working exactly as programmed and not exhibiting any signs of even your wikipedia definition of Intelligence.

I'm not trying to be, but there comes a point where I just can't sugar coat it anymore while still maintaining some semblance of rationality. You really either have no clue what you're talking about, or you're trying to get into an argument over semantics by making the term "intelligence" out to mean less than most people take it to mean.

Either way, 20 years ago it was people like you who set AI research back 20+ years by over promising on what AI actually was to the point no one would fund it when it became clear the false expectations weren't being met. Now your generation is posed to set it back again by going around spouting off clickbait headlines about how an animatronic puppet is an intelligent machine and switching it off is akin to murder.

What we see in chatterbots and neural nets isn't intelligence, or even the precursor to it. It's pure mimicry and nothing more.

way to give up. I'd have loved to give you some more specifics if you'd actually have defined some terms and quit trying to argue semantics.

It really just depends on the learner and the situation. When I was getting my scuba certification I remember having all sorts of trouble taking my mask off underwater in the pool (I have an almost involuntary reaction to water being on/around my eyes). I practiced it like crazy in the pool, but it was a real challenge to the point I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull it off at 40 feet in the ocean for the open water dives.

What finally did it for me was laying in bed visualizing myself removing my mask, and convincing myself that the imagined scenario was real to the point that my pulse and breathing rates started to go up with anxiety. Then I started replaying it over and over in my head until I could do it while keeping my heart rate and breathing under control. It ended up being significantly more effective than all those hours of pool time, though I suspect that I still would have had to have attempted it for real at least a few times in order to convincingly visualize it (and realize that there was actually going to be a problem).

It depends on how well either technology is used to create an immersive environment such that the learner is enticed into pretending like the real thing is happening. Simulations or narratives that suck you in and make you feel like you're actually in that situation will always add more than situations that don't. Whether that's playing a game on a monitor, playing a game on a VR headset, reading a book, doing an actual training exercise, or just sitting quietly and mentally walking through it. The more you can get the learner to suspend disbelief and envision themselves in the actual situation as if they're a little kid playing pretend, the more effective it will be.

Assuming you don't mean people with autoimmune disorders or legitimate allergies, I'm really curious to know what exactly falls into this category.

And again you show that you have no idea how machine learning actually works. By the way you choose to interpret the criteria, a piece of paper with some calculus written down on it is "intelligent".