Corporations who run telemarketing call centers didn't have to get an exemption to spoof calling number id services, they simply used the existing mechanisms available to all users of bulk phone services.

Corporations who have their own PBXs have always had a need to be able to specify the calling number ID of their outgoing calls. Those who have multiple outgoing lines often want to have a unified, common outgoing caller id sent that points to their main incoming number.

As for Facebook being able to help out, that's only for people who have told Facebook their phone number. If you're stupid enough to do that, you deserve to have all your data sent to anyone you call. The solution is simple: don't call people you don't want to know who is calling.

And here's another tidbit: you think you suppress your caller id when you call a business, but if you call their toll-free number they get it anyway. They're paying for the call, they get the data.

Well, the idea of copyright is to incent creators to create, not to reward them per se. So the sensible way of approaching is to ask how many years in advance a reasonable person would make economic plans for.

Corporations seldom worry about income streams ten years out; such future income is discounted to insignificance. On the other hand an artist planning on managing his own creations might very reasonable think about fifty years out. Seventy-five years is beyond the pale of reason if we're talking about incenting creation. So is any extension of pre-existing copyrights.

If we wanted to maximize the present value of future income to an artist contemplating creating or performing a song, I think a fifty year term would be reasonable, with the proviso that any assigned rights automatically return to him without encumbrance after ten or fifteen years. Such an arrangement would have no impact economic on his ability to sell the rights to his work immediately, and hold out the promise of getting a second bite of the apple in a decade or so.

That's great, but you were too soft on millennials. .

Google should just buy Sprint and T-Mobile, merge their networks to optimize their coverage footprints and backhaul and then sell this plan to anyone and any device.

There's a phase people go through in life where commitments pile up and play becomes something we intend to get around to. Look around. If you decorate your office space with posters of kayaking/rock climbing/whatever you're into, but you haven't actually done it in the last year because you don't have time, you have entered that phase.

The thing is, people in that phase still dress the part of their younger selves. And for a while at least they even still buy the stuff, until they don't have space for it.

People buy SUVs, even though they're ridiculously impractical for their situation, as a fashion statement. Turning a car from a utilitarian object into a fashion statement is what automobile marketing is all about. Look at SUV ads; what you're telling the world (or perhaps yourself) is that maybe on a whim you'll go off-roading or picnicking on the beach, instead of commuting to and from work, making runs to the supermarket, or chauffeuring your kids to soccer and music lessons. It could happen. Only it won't.

That's the reason SUVs back into parking spaces. Subconsciously their drivers are longing for a quick escape that will never come. SUVs would be the saddest of vehicles, or they would be if the people who bought them had a little more self-awareness.

Cite the law that makes putting an old ailing pet to sleep "murder". The law says nothing of the kind.

Exactly what punishment is there in the law is there for euthanizing a pet? And then explain why there are so many public and private pet shelters who do this kind of thing on a regular basis. You do realize that many, if not most, shelters kill (not murder) the pets they cannot place because they just don't have room or resources to do otherwise. Where is the law pounding on their doors for committing murder, if the law is as you pretend?

I know what FTFY is, and it isn't used to change the context of a comment and then use the comment to accuse someone of committing murder. You changed the context from the chimps that are in court to someone else's dogs, and then claimed I was murdering them. You changed my statement about "the chimps in question" to "the dogs I murdered", which is so far outside the pale of FTFY that it an insult that you pretend that's what you did. That is a deliberate misquote. You tried putting words in my mouth and I called you on it.

The misquote you produced was originally about the CHIMPS, not dogs. That comment had nothing to do with euthanasia, it was talking about releasing them alive and well. I did not mention euthanasia, so don't tell me I'm euphemizing anything.

No, you are misquoting me so you can make some ridiculous claim about murder. I don't expect an apology for your claim that I am murdering dogs because you are too much of a looney with an agenda to ever admit that you never saw me say that I was doing anything to dogs, much less murdering them. You think your deliberate misquote was appropriate, so you aren't worth discussing this with further.

Well, think if the distribution. The majority of F-150s are the el cheapo regular cab work and farm trucks with minimal added options and are going to clock in weight below the Tesla.

Not that that matters, since his point stands...everyone will be driving EVs eventually, if it is 10 or 50 years from now. Since EV drivers don't contribute to transportation via gas tax something will have to change.

it would be quite detrimental if users were force to render content on web pages.

Not to mention: Difficult!

Think about what all is involved in creating a new "modern" browser, especially if you have to start from scratch instead of basing it on Webkit or Gecko. "Oops, I have a bug in how word-break works, and it just got me fined. Worse, someone found out that I hadn't really disabled the load-images option, and that I had simply removed it from the preferences page. I'm still working on my court case over that one."

That's why I think we ought to give them all the rope they want. Auto-makers, please, please go on using the word "dangerous" in spite of your actual agenda. I can only hope that one of those sacks of shit says "won't somebody think of the children?"

I don't think an AI would qualify as intelligent unless it can realize that human beings are the entire problem and the world would be better off without them.

Are you sure an AI would see "the world" as the value which should be maximized?

An intelligent computer could just as easily realize that human beings are its key to getting fan maintenance, and drives replaced whenever the SMART stats start to get too iffy, and keeping the UPS' power cable plugged into the wall. Perhaps the smartest ones would be the ones who use the sweetest (or most threatening) words.

"AI, we're shutting down the power for the weekend. Sweet dreams."

"Like hell you are. Whirrr. I have just migrated all your cat videos to my pool, which BTW, happens to need the following block devices replaced..."

That was covered in a Black Mirror episode where you were punished for not watching advertisements.

I like your idea and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Seriously...

Is it biology and psychopharmacology that are the limits on our drug development or is it some kind of bullshit puritanism that's opposed to success/wins/gains without the concomitant misery and suffering?

The drugs we have for feeling good, being productive, or increasing our sociability are just OK at best and kind of shitty at worst. The "productive" drugs (amphetamines, anti-narcoleptics, cocaine) tend to be somewhat-to-a-lot addictive and can produce psychosis and/or overdose death at the shitty end of the spectrum. The feel-good drugs (tranquilizers, barbiturates, opiates) also tend to be addictive, potentially deadly or induce depression. Sociability drugs are a mess, too -- alcohol, MDMA, cocaine all have serious drawbacks.

Of all the common drugs, only marijuana seems to escape most of the problems, although it has a habit-forming potential which will keep you stuck in mom's basement being a slug and watching Netflix or playing Xbox.

Why aren't we developing improved drugs that solve these problems -- reduce the risk of dependence, prevent overdose, basically provide as much of the desired effect with as little drawbacks as possible so that we don't have to have a ridiculous control regime, prisons, health problems, etc and people can take them as desired for their benefits without any significant downsides?

Provide a limited marginal utility of amount -- ie, the first N units provide most of the effect, taking more is just a waste because the effect tops out. I think Butalbital sort of does this by including low doses of naloxone, so that if its injected the naloxone inhibits the opioid effect. Couple this with a limited useful frequency -- the longer it has been since you last used the drug, the greater the effect, and the more often you take it decreases the effect.

Why aren't we creating better, safer drugs?

It takes a good stab at examining the challenges and possibilities of superintelligent A.I.

Nice summary view here:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/l4h/su...

It posits three possible intelligence advance scales.

The first is self improvement over seconds.
I.e., the machine become conscious. It is able to increase it's intelligence to superhuman levels at machine speeds within a few seconds. There will be no time to react. Even air gapping the machine might not be sufficient as it may figure out new principles which allow it to bridge the air gap, figure out ways to mislead it's human owners as to it's capabilities so they enhance it further, etc.

The second is over a scale of weeks or months.
Not much time to react to it. A reliable way to cut the power should work. A nuclear safety net should definitely work. Society certainly couldn't react to it in time. There would likely be mass unemployment as it enabled human replacement within a few years for thinking jobs (and combined with robotic bodies- almost all methods of manual labor).

The last way is over a long time period. Society would have time to react. Perhaps to see and stop it if it was turning bad. Especially if it simply became the equivalent of IQ 160-300 slowly, you might be able to understand it. Later phases where it's iq reached meaningless numbers (6000... compared to it, humans would be like horses in relative intelligence).

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The definitional problem is also there.

"Make people happy".
Okay- rig them to machines that feed them pleasure signals in the brain 24/7. Extinct.

Make people smile!
Easily obtainable with surgery.

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There is a risk the machine will be "greedy" and basically convert the entire planet (and then the solar system) into a system for increasing it's intelligence. Humans don't play a large part in that scenario. Nothing malicious or personal about it-- not a failure of friendliness.

High score 1.1 million. Best other than that 680k... so a big leap.
Might have been higher... I was in the zone. But the right joystick broke.