Way to (intentionally?) misread what I said.
I said that the regulations you're calling for, for Facebook, would be feel-good band-aids; regulations in general, though, aren't necessarily bad, and can be good if well planned. That's a difference between a specific case, and a general case. Really, that's a pretty obvious point from the context, and it's no more contradictory than saying something like, 'cars driven recklessly are deadly, but cars don't have to be dangerous if used properly.'
As for certainty in how regulations would actually be applied, I obviously cannot determine the future, and it's possible that regulations could apply to Facebook well. It's also possible, though, -- and I would argue, most probable -- that regulations would have unintended consequences that effectively backfire. That's why the 'just regulate them' approach isn't a good one: regulations take care to plan, but knee-jerk calls to regulate basically invite pandering in place of planning. Since you've not provided any insights into how Facebook would be regulated, you seem to fall into the knee-jerker's camp, hence the "feel-good band-aid" comment. At best, that's all you'll get.
Finally, yeah... why would I consider US regulations for a company founded in the US, headquartered in the US, and employing majority US employees? That's just strange, right? I guess you would suggest they be hit hardest in satellite offices? Do you think that'd remove their TLD, or access to it? I guess those network effects I saw you arguing for elsewhere would magically vanish once you slapped on, say, Egyptian regulations.
You seem to be approaching regulation with the understanding that it will force Facebook to correct its privacy issues. It won't.
Regulating Facebook and other social media sites will provide feel-good band-aids that address immediate -- and by the time regulations are enforceable, outdated -- concerns, but those regulations certainly will not curtail Facebook's collection and sale of user-supplied data, as long as that practice remains profitable. Facebook is powerful enough, now, to ensure that any proposed regulations will be flexible enough, or toothless enough, to allow for a continuation, in some form, of its business model.
Actually, it's in Facebook's interests to support the passage of social media regulations, as such regulations will undoubtedly be easy for Facebook to overcome, but damn near impossible for startups, that might threaten Facebook's dominance, to overcome. That's why it isn't the least bit surprising to me that Zuckerberg's been saying, "I actually think the question is more 'What is the right regulation?' rather than 'Yes or no, should it be regulated?'"
This isn't to say that regulations are inherently bad; they certainly aren't a cure-all, though. Before clamoring for regulation, it'd be worth pondering exactly what that regulation should look like, how it would be implemented, who it would effect, and how it could be twisted to benefit entrenched powers that be. If you can't take that step, it'd probably be worth considering if you can just make do with existing (or new) alternatives to the thing you're trying to regulate.
Can't recall off the top of my head, but I think Spectre is an Intel-specific variant of the generic Meltdown vulnerability, which basically impacts all speculative processors (so everything currently in use). In other words, the vulnerability isn't just Intel's problem.
Also, I very much doubt that Intel had anything to do with this security firm's announcement, or the investment journal's "obituary." I'd suspect that that's more just run-of-the-mill profiteering from basically worthless outlets looking to make a quick buck at someone else's (AMD's) expense. This isn't to suggest that Intel doesn't engage in shady practices, but I highly doubt that they're behind this particular issue.
That's how organizational cuts always work, though: The call comes from on-high for an organization to meet budget constraints, for example by reducing open head count. It's on managers within that organization, though, to determine how the headcount reduction actually manifests.
Perhaps some managers do just randomly choose employees to let go, but if they do, they'll probably not be managing for very long. More likely, managers will rely upon metrics to assess employee value, and remove those employees deemed least valuable. It's not like the call for a general reduction in headcount impacts all workers uniformly, nor is that ever the intent.
Well, you provided an actual response, so thank you for that; still, you're arguing a point that I didn't make: Can you tell me where I said that the cut would improve NWS forecasting?
What I said was that I doubted that the cut would break the NWS. Actually, I doubt it will have much of an impact at all, much like cutting back on essentially useless people, in the fire department example I gave, wouldn't really impact the performance of the fire department. From a performance point of view, such people would be benign, neither detracting from nor adding to overall performance, but from a budgetary point of view, they're basically parasites that suck up resources. That's a problem because that means that resources directed to support them aren't going elsewhere, where those resources might actually provide a tangible benefit.
Aside from that, your assertion that staffing cuts cannot improve an organization is pretty specious as well:
As already mentioned, if resources are used to support benign employees, that can actually be a net negative because it means that they're pulling resources from better uses, and it likely means that better alternatives, like technological alternatives, for example, aren't being explored. If you force the removal of benign workers, you may promote the use of technological alternatives which are both cheaper, and more accurate. Think, just as a *not necessarily* toy example, of using a script in place of someone who really only gathers data, and pastes it into an Excel spreadsheet. If that worker performed their task with basically 100% accuracy, then you perhaps didn't improve organizational performance with their replacement, but you certainly improved organizational efficiency, which is actually a good thing. On the other hand, if that worker performed their task less accurately than the script that replaced them, then you have actually improved organizational performance along with organizational efficiency.
That's if workers are benign... Workers may also be an organizational burden, though. After all, not every worker will perform their task as they're supposed to, and such workers, whether intentioned or not, may actually effectively sabotage other workers, thus degrading organizational performance. If you think that removing such workers cannot be a benefit, well, I guess you've either had the privilege of never working in an environment where someone really needs to be fired, or you are the person that needs to be fired.
Now, do I think that only benign or malignant workers will be impacted by the budgetary cuts? No, probably other, useful people will be impacted as well. However, that doesn't mean that those beneficial workers can't be hired back or replaced. Trump is instituting a business-like approach (shocking, I know), where you basically cut until you bleed, then hire back. Is that tough to go through if you're an employee? Yes, absolutely, and it's probably even tougher if you've been working for a governmental organization for which this type of practice is unheard of. From a mile-high view, though, it allows you to determine what the actual resource requirements of an organization truly are, and once you know that, you can better determine how to maintain an organization at it's current organizational output, or improve an organization by hiring into areas that actually promise real benefits.
Well I can see that the moderators didn't like actual direct sources. Surprise, surprise.
In any event, you seemed to gloss over a key portion which contradicts, well, basically your entire dismissal (so easily predicted, by the way), which I'll quote:
Oh, and just so you don't dismiss me as a Trumpkin (even though you or someone else probably will), I'm not a supporter, and there's a lot to despise in Trump's budgetary plans. Calling for more military bloat for an already bloated military, for example, is pretty cringe-worthy to me. Still, even if substantial budgetary increases to the military are the wrong call, minor decreases to the weather service may in fact be the correct call to make. It's a major, really unsupportable, leap to suggest that the weather service decrease is a shortcut to 3rd world status, and it just makes you look, well, childish.
Really, great job illustrating my point. It's almost as if you're a stimulus-response engine.
Hyperbole much?
Just so we're clear, the actual budget for forecasting proposed calls for a 4% reduction in forecasting services, not the 8% suggested by a careless reading of the Washington Post's article, though that may have been their intention for readers. As an aside, the Washington Post is just about as much a joke as Fox News... I can't believe anyone takes their articles at face value.
Anyway, here's the actual budget. You'll want to look at Chapter 5 for the National Weather Service:
http://www.corporateservices.noaa.gov/nbo/fy19_bluebook/FY19-BlueBook.pdf
Key take away: the budget for "ANALYZE, FORECAST, AND SUPPORT" services was $492,014,000 but now it's $471,792,000. Will that reduction break forecasting? Perhaps, but I strongly doubt it. More likely, it'll result in cuts to people who have been there for a while, but hardly do anything (legacy folks), yet cost a lot, and/or cuts to open recs that have yet to be filled, or were just recently filled. In other words, people who, despite all of the yammering, are actually expendable with regard to the services they're supposed to provide.
Still, it's easy for partisans, such as yourself, to observe a 4% cut, and babble, "[the US is] transforming itself into a 3rd world country." After all, Trump's suggestion is a bit like suggesting cuts to a fire department: regardless of how much deadweight is involved, there are always going to be fires, and only an 1ns4n3 politician would suggest cutting any of the fat, right?
Oh, and just so you don't dismiss me as a Trumpkin (even though you or someone else probably will), I'm not a supporter, and there's a lot to despise in Trump's budgetary plans. Calling for more military bloat for an already bloated military, for example, is pretty cringe-worthy to me. Still, even if substantial budgetary increases to the military are the wrong call, minor decreases to the weather service may in fact be the correct call to make. It's a major, really unsupportable, leap to suggest that the weather service decrease is a shortcut to 3rd world status, and it just makes you look, well, childish.
Nice. Make a bullshit assertion. Someone rebuts your bullshit with factual counterpoints. Cry "Triggerreed! Guilltay! Snawflarke!"
By the way, where did you see a dig at women? The use of a gender studies (not even women's studies) example, illustrating how your ilk are eager to assign bigoted motivations -- without any evidence -- to genuine technical challenges, simply because such challenges may not impact everyone identically? Hmm, that seems very related to the topic being discussed... almost as if it's a recurring theme with you idiots.
By the way, it's illustrative how you think I made a dig at women because I said that the assertion that early engine cranks were designed to be too tough for women to turn, is a bullshit claim. Why do you even accept that women had difficulty turning the crank, and men didn't, as the assertion requires? Isn't that an implicit dig on women on your part? After all, you're essentially saying that women lack whatever attribute is required to turn an engine crank while men don't. Seems kinda sexist to me... you sexist, you.
Well I guess you better get off your ass and implement a better algorithm, then. After all, light reflectivity isn't a problem for you.
Also, what is the problem, in the summary, with recognizing women vs. men? This statement?
more errors arise -- up to nearly 35 percent for images of darker skinned women
Oh, wait... it's darker skinned women, not just women in general, that the summary references. Perhaps the technical detail referenced by the parent isn't irrelevant after all?
No, I'm sure you're right, and will roll out that politically correct recognition algorithm of yours in no time at all.
set lighting for white people has to be carefully designed and set up. One of the reasons colour film took so long to become practical was the difficulty of getting [white] skin tones right.
I assume you've got a reputable source for this assertion, right? I mean, surely you didn't just pull it out of your ass (or the ass of a gender-studies course*).
Pertaining to older movies, which ones are designed to be slanted in their color representations? I watched Spartacus, for example, which came out in 1960, and while the cast is certainly overwhelmingly white, there's a notable scene with Kirk Douglas and Woody Strode which hardly appears to be slanted against Woody in the color balance/saturation department. Is 1960 just too mature for the film-making era you're talking about? While color films certainly existed prior to 1960, keep in mind that color broadcasts weren't officially a thing in the US until 1953, and that color TV sets only really started to sell in the mid-1960's (only overtaking black-and-white sets in sales in the 1970's).
In other words, Spartacus debuted when color motion pictures were still very much a novelty in daily life, and thus subjected to little scrutiny when technical details such as color balance or saturation weren't quite right. It also came out when racial sentiments were still decidedly anti anything not white, so I find it difficult to believe that the filmmakers would have ignored technical decisions informed by pro-white aesthetics, knowing that they could a) get away with it due to the novelty of the process and b) likely benefit with sales/reviews if they could make Kirk appear all that more appealing, even at the expense of Woody.
* Yes, gender studies courses do pull things out the ass. I would know; I took one last year. The "professor" actually said that engine turn cranks were designed to be difficult to turn so that only men would be able to operate early vehicles... it wasn't a technical limitation or anything; no no, it was a conscious decision on the part of the patriarchy to restrict the movement of women.
You use the word incriminate... I don't think that means what you think it means.
Page was indeed a bumbling mess in that interview you cited, but nowhere did he say anything that would link him to any crime. Perhaps he was on the cusp of incriminating himself, or perhaps he isn't all that aware that, rather than giving responses with wiggle room and muddled clarifications, which give the appearance of having something to hide, he should instead answer clearly and concisely*.
*Note that clear, concise answers in a press interview have no relation to actual truth: an interviewee has no legal obligation to respond to the press truthfully. Such responses would seem less shady, though, which is really what you seem to object to.
I'm sorry, but people are correct to claim censorship: according to the summary, pages have been removed, yes for spreading falsehoods and propaganda, but they're gone all the same. That is censorship on the part of Facebook.
Is that censorship justified? According to Facebook's TOS, sure, but it still strikes me as a worrisome strategy. Rather than remove the pages, I'd think it'd be more sensible to label them as known propaganda sources, and provide references that contradict detected falsehoods. Since the detection is supposedly done algorithmically, it should be relatively straightforward for Facebook to take that approach.
Instead of exposing fallacies to the light, Facebook instead opted for censorship, relying on rather opaque (to end users) processes. Facebook is essentially saying, "trust us, you shouldn't look at this stuff." Is it really any wonder that people are skeptical of Facebook's claims and motives? Even if Facebook is 100% correct to remove the pages that it has, it establishes a precedent for removal with little -- if any -- oversight... and the crowd here is cheering for that closed process.
This sort of process just begs for abuse, and as already shown, it leads others to suspect abuse -- even if entirely unwarranted -- leading such people to cling to conspiracies. I'd be surprised if the strategy ultimately has the effect people here seem to think it will have, but hey, this crowd already surprised me with their embrace of closed, censorious tactics of a mega-corporation. Anything to stick a thumb in the eye of "people who think that they can establish what's true based on faith and feelings," aka, "Republicans," though, right?
Why not just open news (or whatever) sites in a new tab, mute the tab (context menu on the tab -> mute tab), then view when ready? Videos don't start playing in a tab until it's activated, so you don't run the risk of hearing anything until you first give focus to the tab, offering plenty of time to mute it. You can always just unmute the tab if you want to hear a specific video (you can also stop/mute any other unwanted videos on the site before you unmute the tab at your leisure).
Really, this approach has worked really well for me, and it's very fine grained, which is something that this new feature doesn't seem to be (no need to always permit video on a site if you just want to hear one of their videos).
I mean, it doesn't sound like a bad feature or anything, just doesn't really seem that it adds all that much benefit over what was already available out of the box. Or maybe I'm just missing something.
You will have many recoverable tape errors.