But the fitbit stuff, I could see occurring - 10% reduction if you wear one 24/day and qualify. Not that different from what we do with cars today. Most importantly, unlike the DNA stuff, a fitbit monitor would theoretically encourage better behavior, which makes political sense, while dna mapping has tons of political issues.

The real problem we are having is not the loss of privacy per se, it's the abuse of private information. Most people are fine letting Onstar know their current location. We are not fine with Onstar telling anyone that information - not the police, not our wife, not our boss.

What we really need are a bunch of punitive laws that punish people/corporations for 'accidental' release of information. It doesn't have to be severe, but monetary compensation seems reasonable. They make X dollars selling the stuff, so we should have the right to get Y if they sell it or give it away without our permission (and Y should be far in excess of X).

I think it's more a matter of that the phone was in a particular cell than that the call was made.

I would like to see cell-tracking technology whereby a phone never reports its ID when idle and pinging tower. I'd like to see the tower push three bloom filters on ping, one of all predicted to be in the cell, one of all predicted to be in the area (surrounding cells), and one of all in the system.

For a flat assumption of 10^12 phone numbers CC-AAA-RRR-XXXX including country codes, assume nearly 100% of all numbers are being dialed at the exact same time. You can gain a 1% probability of error on if a number is being dialed in about 116GB. In any situation of over 50% saturation, you'd invert: list what numbers aren't being dialed, hence the size of the worldwide packet is 58GB. That's the theoretical bound in an insane situation. (Besides, you can only dial half the phones in the world at once...)

In reality, we don't have 100 country codes, and not all countries have 10 digit phone numbers. In America, there are only really 800 possible area codes, 269 in service in the USA, and 26 in Canada. Not all areas saturate the exchange; most exchanges aren't saturated. The number of phone numbers world-wide isn't 142 times the size of the number of people.

So let's assume 10 billion numbers instead, not all of which are cell phones. You're looking at 580MB for the packet to express near 50% saturation of numbers being dialed *right now* for the whole world. That's much better.

Phones ring for approximately 10 seconds. They're answered or taken to voice mail by then. In addition, most phones aren't being dialed at any given time. If we assume 1 in 7000 cell phones is currently ringing, the worldwide packet is 174kB for a 1% margin of error.

So let's call the regional a 10 million phone coverage area, and the local a 1 million phone coverage area. Assuming 1 in 7000 phones is currently ringing, the packet sizes are 174kB worldwide, 178 bytes regional, and 17.8 bytes local, for a 1% margin of error. That is: you have a 1 in 100 chance of the phone deciding it's probably in the bloom filter when it's not. If we double the sizes here, then the false positive rate is 0.01%, or 1 in 10,000--almost never.

We can further reduce these by scaling them dynamically, and by delaying the ring if you're out of known area. I'll use the double-size numbers for a 0.01% false positive chance.

Let's say somebody calls your phone. The cell system predicts, based on prior data (i.e. you're usually in this city, your home address on file is here, whatever), that you're in the 1 million person coverage area contained by some cells. In Baltimore City, we have 660,000 people; 1 million coverage is bigger than my city. So the system adds you only to the 35.6 byte local dialing filter for a 1 second cycle.

If your phone fails to respond to the tower, the system leaves your number in the 36 byte local dialing filter. It begins including it in the regional dialing area. The regional dialing area excludes any phone dialed for less than 1 second, any phone found in a local dialing area, or any phone included in the local dialing area filter. More than 95% of phones should be excluded: there's better than a 95% chance that you're currently in your local area. The filter is about 89 bytes on average, assuming 1 in 7000 phones in the 5,000,000 phone region is ringing.

The worldwide filter is different. If in 1 more second you don't answer, the cell system adds you to the bloom list for the whole world. Assuming a 95% chance of someone being in the region if not in the local area, that's 95% of 5%, or 0.25%. Assuming 10 billion phones, the worldwide list of numbers currently being dialed is 9 bytes.

For a 1 in 10,000 false positive rate, you'd have to push 134 bytes of dialing filters. If you're outside of your normal region, there's a 2 second delay. We can further step this with a 100 million phone region to net whole countries in the last list, but we'd introduce a 3 second delay for people who are outside their country.

In this system, no phone would tell the tower its identity until it wanted service. Of course, most phones are sucking down data, so this is all pointless; but, if you shut data off and are on straight receiving calls, your phone doesn't actually tell the towers where you are--it doesn't identify itself. The towers say, "Here is a bloom filter of phone numbers. If your number hits the bloom filter, it's 99.99% likely you're being dialed right now." If you're in any of the three filters, you ping the tower and tell it you're ready to answer, and in this cell.

You're ready to receive calls, and yet the tower doesn't know where you are unless someone calls you.

Fine. McDonald's for you.

This

The current 60 hours is a median statistic for how many driving hours are required to develop adequate skill at driving. 100 hours is longer, and develops further skill. My "long-winded tirade" explained that, AS PER SCIENCE, PARTICULARLY NEUROSCIENCE, the brain has a physical structure that stores and refines these skills until they take little to no energy to access. Once you've done it a while, your brain automatically recalls those skills without your conscious effort and without the expenditure of much energy at all; new, complex situations draw up similar situations and adjust them with minimal additional energy.

"It won't work because people won't do it."

This is the same argument as "eating healthy doesn't help because people won't eat healthy," or "Laws against murder don't help because people still kill people".

I gave you the solution. Don't tell me it's not a solution because people will cheat. It works. Vaccinations work, too; but if you forge documents saying your kid is vaccinated, well... don't bitch at me when he gets smallpox.

I'm basing my opinions on the current scientific state-of-the-art. It's the same thing brain surgeons and top-level researchers and all that kind of brass use.

"I don't like this, so I'm going to pretend it's not a thing, and claim that as fact."

You can bring all the statistics you want on how people react TO NEW STIMULUS, but we already know that you can beat those times if you practice for several hours. In sports, consistent reaction times of nearly 150mS are common, and trained athletes hit close to 100mS when they get lucky.

My reactions don't rely on me consciously acknowledging what's in front of me. I've done this so much, so my brain bypasses all those slow processes that make your basic reaction time so fucking long, and just kicks in the correct action. When an obstacle moves in front of me, I judge how it's moving and take appropriate action. For anything I can't get a good pattern for immediately, I'm on the brakes before I realize shit's in my way. For mainly-stationary objects that come into my driving path, I'm in the next lane if there's nothing next to me.

The reaction's as quick as the one you have when you prick your finger while sewing, or knick yourself shaving--you know, that immediate removal of the sharp object so you don't shove a needle a half inch into your finger, or peel your face like a potato.

Do you also understand that you can drive just as well mildly drunk as you can on 2-4 hours of sleep? Because most people miss that. Lack of sleep will quickly degrade your reflexes.

The correct question, assuming the story is factual, would be something along the lines of "What do want us to put in the lab we're going to give you for free, sonny?"

eyes open, unresponsive to stimuli (can't be woken up), no memory of entering the state

Yes, but this isn't sleep. This is more like watching Fox News.

The claustrum has a phylogenetic background appearing predominantly in insectivores, Prosimians, and Marsupials.

Hmmm. A hint as to where to look for consciousness most similar to humans?

They will probably always remain inherently beyond the reach of scientific evidence.

Yes. that's because they are 100% made-up. Just as Santa Claus is inherently beyond the reach of scientific evidence.

You will never find evidence, that is, anything manifesting as objective reality, for a wholly illusory concept. You can, of course, drown yourself in delusion. We appear to be well designed for exactly that exercise, we even practice it most nights during REM sleep. And it's perfectly acceptable, socially speaking. Imagine away.

grave. Good grief. :)

It's a grace situation. Revolting, in fact.

Sounds nice, but without explicit control over what American companies are allowed to do at/across the border, (and foreign companies the other way) it's not going to happen. Right now, the door is wide open in every way: Hire offshore and have the hires work here *or* there, keep your money offshore and avoid taxes with blissful ease, manufacture elsewhere, all the while you're paying off congress and whatever agencies are involved.

Sure, corporations are people. Sociopaths. Psychopaths. Those kinds of people. Evil slimeballs, primarily. Exceptions are very rare, and will remain so, as long as being competitive means one company has to take advantage of the same things the next one over does.

That's the way it works now. And unless you can forward larger envelopes to congress (directly, indirectly, or metaphorically) than big business can, or somehow make congress actually ethical and focused on the betterment of the country, this is only going to become more so. Money for election chests. Sweet land deals for cousin George. Fully paid fact finding junkets. Post-congress speaking deals. Guaranteed book advances, complete with ghostwriter, sales irrelevant. Well paid lobbyist positions, commentator positions, corporate vice presidential or other high paid positions... or money... or a sweet deal on a boat, or a house, or whatever, all for 2nd cousins of course. It's so corrupt and ingrained you can't possibly picture it until you've had an inside view (yes, I have.)

Today, you want a great job? Start your own business. Are you really great at programming? Write a great program. Are you really great at electronics? Create a great device. The internet of things is rising, your opportunity is knocking. Real AI needs done (oooo, hard.) Are you really great at mechanicals? Create a wonderful mechanical thing. These are the *only* doors that remain open to technical people in general. Easy? Hell no. But there it is. Otherwise, change career tracks while you still can. Finance. Lawyers (it's the dark side, all right, but it's also a license to print money, especially with the extremely deep collection of bad law we have now.) Nursing -- medicine looks good right now, but doctors... not so sure.

Otherwise, prepare to be lowballed, then fall (or be thrown) from the workforce segment you're qualified for as you age. Also, just as a PS, you'll note that above, the apologists consistently talk about who is learning what in school. The underlying message is clear: Once you're out of school and if you manage to improve yourself, you're not particularly hirable. They're not even looking at/for you.

That's just the way it is. Be proactive and possibly suffer, or just definitely suffer. Choose.

This. It was stupid.

Nonsense. Emoticons are pop culture detritus, not formal grammatical entities. But by all means, you let me know when they pop up in Strunk and White's.