Anyone holding a Turing Test isn't really holding a true Turing Test. Turing didn't define a duration but it's pretty obvious that five minutes isn't long enough to hold a conversation, it's only long enough to ask a series of questions.

To hold an actual conversation you'd need an hour, maybe more. To last that long the bot would need to learn things about the interrogator just like we learn things when we talk to eachother. A bot that could do that could obviously do a lot more as well.

That's not to say the current Turing Test isn't useful. A successful bot could be applied to customer support systems and give insights into language. But it's misleading to indicate that the current incarnation of the Turing Test is testing what Turing intended.

Well I had a long established routine of using running as my method of commuting. I definitely lost my recreational runs when the depression really hit but I maintained a level of ~6km of daily running just going to school and back.

I think that's brings up an educational/environmental aspect of weight loss that gets underrated. If I had ice cream in my freezer it would be partially eaten. If there were doughnuts in easy reach right now I would be eating one. We choose the path of least resistance so it's prudent to make that path a healthy one.

On my worst days I could barely get out of bed, but once I was out of bed I'd run into campus without thinking because it was just an effort free part of my commute. It would actually have taken more effort to take a bus because I'd be breaking the routine. Similarly with food I kept fairly healthy food around, so despite the fact I'd overeat, I'd only overeat rice or pasta instead of ice cream and cookies.

If it's a mental condition it's one with a strong genetic component.

“Obesity is one of the strongest genetically influenced traits that we have,” says O'Rahilly. Classic twin studies in the 1980s and 1990s, which relied on pairs of identical and fraternal twins, suggest that 40–70% of variation in body size is due to genetic factors.

Mental health can be an issue, I know I put on ~5 kg over two years when dealing with depression, but fat-shaming has always struck me as a failure of theory of mind.

If you're thin it's convenient to assume that it's just a matter of your willpower, you eat healthy because you're disciplined, you eat less because you're responsible. But it's also possible that fatty sugary food is just that much more appealing to other people, that hunger is a much stronger force, that their metabolism is slower so they gain fat much more easily.

I don't dispute for a moment that any of them could lose weight if they tried hard enough. But some people have to try a heck of a lot harder than others.

What was in those caverns beforehand? Did God kill the Morlocks after he killed the humans?

I continue to believe the madness of the Tea Party is due to the lack of party discipline. Can you imagine the Republican Party running on a unified Tea Party platform?

What's the solution to health care? Vote against Obamacare hundreds of times and then shutdown the government.

What's the solution to illegal immigration? Build a fence then maybe deport everyone?

What to do about global warming? All the scientists are wrong so dig more coal.

The problem with the system is they don't have to deal with reality. Their Obamacare shenanigans are a perfect example. An obvious question to their current approach is "ok, you somehow accomplish a repeal, then what?". But because the party couldn't lock into an alternative plan even if they wanted to, there's no alternative approach to evaluate. As a result they never have to answer the question and can just claim the alternative will fix everything. The AGW denialism is a side effect of this. They're so used to bad populist arguments that an elite opinion from scientists is hard to swallow.

Without party discipline only hyper-partisans bother with the individual arguments and they're the ones who choose the candidates. If you want the parties to reflect voters then you need to enforce strong discipline. When that happens the Democrats and Republicans will need to choose one cohesive platform to market to the country as a whole. Do that and you'll have a platform that's reasonable and well thought out. Keep the current system and they still vote as a block, the block just ends up being run by nuts like the Tea Party and Fox News.

The first amendment is irrelevant in this case as it's the NBA's rules he violated. You can argue it violates free speech on broader grounds but that's not synonymous with the first amendment.

I agree that the punishment exceeds the crime, but I also think there wasn't a lot of choice. You can't have someone who holds and repeatedly espouses racist views own a basketball team comprising largely of black people. Before he said anything it could be kept under the rug, but now his view are public everyone knows he's racist and he continues to re-affirm the fact.

For as long as he owned an NBA team there would be a narrative of a racist white owner owning a team of black people. That would definitely hurt the NBA, they didn't have much choice but to force him out.

Rich people get a lot of privileges we don't get, particularly the rich people who own sports teams. The tradeoff is they sometimes need to be more careful about what they say. If he didn't want to be held to account for his racist beliefs he shouldn't have bought an NBA team.

More to the point he's 80 (and possibly suffering from dementia).

It's not like he can take the $2 billion and buy another team with it, the money might not mean anything to him at this point.

It's not disinformation it's a PSA.

The clue is at the end of the summary:
"without additional expertise and the right type of ammunition, anyone attempting to fire one would probably maim or even kill themselves."

I.e. you've seen all those cool videos about printing 3D guns? Well here's what happens if you try to make one without really knowing what you're doing.

And the media shouldn't freak out because they're of no use to criminals. Any criminal with the expertise to make one of these would have a much easier time making a much more reliable and effective zip gun or buying a gun on the black market.

I was curious about this so checked out the homicide rates.

First hit was a pro-gun site with a really damning looking set of graphs. Knowing how easy it is to play with numbers I dug a little deeper.

This site looks a little more unbiased. Long story short the homicide rate had been increasing for decades, after guns were banned the rate continued to increase. Maybe the increase is slowing down but there's too much noise in the data.

He's obscenely rich. You have money so you can buy toys, but now he has to sell one of his favourite toys and he can't buy another to replace it, that's punishment. Moreover he's just went from obscenely rich owner of an NBA franchise to obscenely rich person who was so repugnant he had his franchise taken away, that level of condemnation has to sting.

It probably wouldn't work.

Owning a sports franchise is basically a vanity project. Hire a GM to handle the drafts, trades, and contracts, other folks to handle the marketing, then you basically get to be a super fan who has a legit stake in the team. You don't need to evaluate whether your basketball team should open up a hockey team as well, or if you should only start four players to save on costs. You don't even really need to make money because you're a fan and doing it for fun.

Owning a company is something else entirely, mergers, product lines, etc. You can buy stock and own some in a non-decision making capacity, but to have any input you need a lot more business skills than you would for a franchise.

Without the scandal it wouldn't have been sold until after his death.

Almost certainly the scandal would have depressed the price if it changed it at all, I don't see how it made the Clippers more valuable. The longer Sterling held onto the Clippers the more they became associated with racism and the more the brand was damaged. Sterling had to sell quick and that meant the pool of potential buyers were whomever could scrape the cash on short notice. I don't expect it made a big dent in the final price but it probably depressed it a bit.

Both.

This article is talking about the increased sea ice extent. Basically the amount of the ocean that's covered ice. It affects the albedo a bit, but mostly it's an interesting mystery because you'd expect it to shrink in a warmer climate.

The other article is talking about the decreasing ice volume. The thickness of multiyear ice on both land and sea is shrinking. This is expected given the warming climate, it's also worrying because it causes sea levels to rise.

That's like saying you understand the Linux kernel if you can understand a simple math equation.

Our brains are more than a random assortment of neurons. Even if you assume it's fully explained by the neuron connections and firing properties it's a ridiculously complex organ.

So you're claiming the only two possible paths for humanity are either the fall of civilization, or inventing everything that it is possible to invent. At some point society will achieve steady state, knowledge will be so extensive that the greatest minds minds will be busy understanding the achievements of previous eras. What if we haven't reached the singularity at this point?

Can you teach a dog relativity? If not, then you accept that some species simply do not have the intellectual capacity to understand some concepts. The fact that we are the smartest species on the planet does not exempt us from that rule. I have no doubt it is possible to create an artificial consciousness, but I don't know the obstacles to this goal. Maybe it would require a species with an average IQ of 300 instead of 100, and even with genetic engineering we could only reach 220. In that case the singularity won't come.