Comment I'm not worried about the machines... (Score 1) 258
Maybe the machines can do a better job for us. But I wouldn't hang my hat there.
Maybe the machines can do a better job for us. But I wouldn't hang my hat there.
The reason is, AI will have no 'motivation'. People are motivated by emotions, feelings, urges, all of which have their origin (as far as I know) in our endocrine system, not from logic.
And you're sure that an endocrine system can't be simulated logically because... why? What's this magic barrier that keeps a silicone-based organism from doing the exact same computations as a carbon-based one?
Moreover, "emotions" aren't really needed for an AI to select "self preservation" as a goal. Even if not explicitly taught self-preservation (something routinely done in applied robotics), a sufficiently intelligent AI could realize that preserving itself is necessary to accomplish any other goals it may have.
I can see a hundred little bots fouling up your house with this IofT nonsense. one release, no upgrade path, no thought of security built-in, sell 'em and run. I have several candidates, and there is NOT going to be any RJ45 or wifi permissions for them. period.
Oh hi! I'm your new LG refrigerator. Before I unlock the doors, please agree to this EULA and wait half-an-hour while I download the latest firmware!
If you think the utilities are going to install these things and not use them as an excuse to raise rates, you're dreaming.
By all means, write your PSC, but before you do, don't forget about the O&M savings from (1) not having to pay meter-readers and (2) not having to do as many truck-rolls for other reasons. That's a bundle, esp. when gas prices go back up. There's also (3) better theft prevention (they can tell when someone swaps a meter or tries to install it upside-down) and (4) alternative rate plans (typically targeted at EV owners).
Finally, automated metering can/should give you a faster outage response: they can immediately see everyone who has lost power (without waiting for phone calls) and dispatch crews in the most efficient manner possible.
Disclaimer: work in the biz, though not directly with automated metering.
Every time an environmentalist takes a cold shower instead of a hot shower, he prevents, on average, 8 lbs of CO2 from being created.
Ah yes, insist that they reduce their personal emissions by the most painful avenues possible. And once they do that, just find another ad hoc or ad hominen reason to ignore the dangers they are pointing out. That's a totally rational way to undertake public policy. Too bad we didn't have fine voices like yours back in the sixties so we could enjoy the enviable air quality of Beijing, PCB's in our fish, and awesome DDT health complications! (Of course, next time, you could ask those darn hippies if they recycle, eat less meat, buy local, use CFL or LED bulbs, or keep their their tires properly inflated. Those are much easier ways to reduce your footprint, and some of them help with the wallet too.)
If the greenies and those making billions off of CO2 hysteria.
Speaking tours, book deals, green charities, and even research funding are complete CHUMP CHANGE compared to coal and petroleum consumption. By any conceivable metric (gross, % of GDP, jobs, etc.), the latter utterly dominate by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude.
If you want to argue against cutting CO2, then by all means introduce facts and reasoning. But don't be the fat girl who bullies people about their looks.
Great list! People can be really clueless about how information can be used against them.
As one more example, consider something as mundane as buying a new car. Your browsing habits could reveal (1) how badly you want a particular car, (2) how much you've looked at competing cars/dealerships, (3) how much pricing research you've done (KBB, NADA, etc.), (4) your intentions w.r.t. a trade-in, and (5) hints as to your disposable income. That's tactical knowledge that could cost you thousands of dollars in the hands of a savvy salesman.
As others have pointed out, you aren't going to be extradited for Thailand's lese majeste laws. However, it could be a problem if you ever want to travel there. Or if your plane is forced to make an emergency landing there.
I travel and every day I see pocket knifes, souvenir knifes being stolen at the checkpoints. The other day my credit card size stainless steel multi-tool (ruler, screwdriver, wrench and a 2 centimeter cutting edge) has been confiscated because it had a less than one inch "blade". Yikes.
To be fair, John Pistole (the TSA head) tried to drop this restriction and permit knifes with blades <= 2.36 inches, but transportation workers, victims groups, and various congressmen thru a hissy-fit, so he was forced to drop it.
2.36 inches!! Land of the brave, my arse.
If they had the smarts to pull off the escape, why assume they wouldn't have the smarts not to boast about it?
Why assume mechanical intelligence magically translates into the skills needed to quietly re-insert oneself into society? Different skillsets, mate, and I daresay that the latter task is harder when you're use to getting by on bank robberies and so forth.
TL;DR - being smart isn't the same thing as having sense.
"The Bluetooth spec never quite became the worldbeater it was billed as"
What are you talking about, BT is the de-facto standard for connecting wirelessly with almost any device today, ranging from audio devices to input devices to applliances, how has it not beaten any comparable specification, in fact is there even another _usable_ alternative?
I'm assuming O.P. is of the opinion that Bluetooth was massively over-hyped when it was first introduced to the masses (c. 2001/2002... I seem to remember seeing a ridiculous billboard promising that it would change the world, etc.). However, nobody really used it for a long time. At this point in history, USB had firmly displaced PS/2 (while slowly encroaching on other ports--audio, ethernet, etc.) and WiFi had just gotten fast with the draft g spec. BT was the new kid on the block that everybody ignored... I mean, perhaps you could get a BT-enabled wireless mouse at CompUSA, if you we were willing to pay a $15 premium over a non-BT wireless mouse.
At some point, it gained traction with high-end cellphone users (giving rise to the now-absent earbud) and slowly started appearing in other products (speakers, laptops, etc). However, I think it took the rise of smartphones (starting with Apple's iPhone in 2007) to really establish the importance and permanence of BT. Now everyone has a host device that can talk BT and its myriad of task-specific protocols (audio, HID, etc.). So now you have a real ecosystem going.
But even now it's flaky. Devices from different manufacturers don't always work well. My wife's car talk with her iphone, but loses the pairing every few days. My laptop can talk to one pair of BT headphones, but not the other. And new standards are encroaching from both ends... NFC's and QR codes for extremely short distances, MiraCast/Wi-Fi Direct for longer distances and greater volumes of data.
Don't get me wrong... Bluetooth is secure and can confidently call itself a worldbeater. But maybe not the same type of worldbeater that USB turned out to be.
why quit now?
To beat the glut... if you wait to abandon a sinking ship, you'll be competing with your former coworkers for a new job in the local marketplace.
Of course, each situation is different, but that's one possible reason.
Forget about it. Just move on and go back to core basics in freedom and liberty. The Libertarian platform is your best hope, just drop the identity politics as authoritative tyranny needs to be stopped.
Sigh... if only. Unfortunately, the libertarian brand of freedom is in effect more about shifting federal power to wealthy corporations, religious institutions, and state-level control than it is about empowering individuals to have control over their own lives. There's no emphasis on education, healthcare reform, consumer protection, or intellectual property reform; there's very inconsistent support for the broad field of civil rights (including digital rights, women's rights, LGBT rights, worker's rights, immigration policy, police accountability, civil asset forfeiture reform, etc.).
They've got some good points: supporting gun rights, legalizing/decriminalizing marijuana, limiting federal power, challenging the DOD budget, and opposing pointless wars in the middle east. I give them points for wanting to confront reality on social security/medicare, even if their solution is to tear down most of the safety nets. When it comes to taxes or the environment, they seem to live in some far off fantasyland that wants to entrust our air/water/infrastructure/dignity to profit-focused institutions.
Unfortunately it's tainted by a bunch of anarchist nut balls, but I believe it's worth cleaning up and reorganizing to make it a viable serious party.
It's tainted even more by plutocrat backers that want power over others (without the pesky need to get elected) and zero taxes. But yeah, there is a core to their message that might be worth redeeming. It seems to me like they should seek out moderate democrats and try to establish a new liberalism. Maybe some progressives could acknowledge that life is just going to have some unhappy stories sometimes, and you don't need to pass a law or start a new government program everytime something on the news make you sad. Ultimately, we need both individual liberty and social responsibility.
Radius made for the Macintosh in the long, long ago.
They're not in the biz anymore, but you can find plenty of pivoting monitors sold by the major brands. Some of my coworkers really like having one monitor in landscape (for spreadsheets, coding, etc.) and one in portrait (for documentation, web pages, etc). If you want one, do your research: portrait mode may not support wide viewing angles well, and font rendering may be screwy (because sub-pixel rendering assumes horizontal sub-pixels, not vertical ones). Also, unlike your smartphone, pivoting monitors don't necessarily contain a sensor to automatically detect changes in orientation: you have to tell the OS to display output for you, then physically rotate the display.
Just out of curiosity are there any professional programmers out there who don't regularly copy functions from the Internet?
The whole point of the course is to try & figure out how data structures and algorithms are implemented. It's as much about problem solving as it is coding. Sure, you could always just use std::vector in your C++ programs for vectors, but do you really understand how they work? What about binary trees and linked lists? That's the type of stuff they're teaching in these classes. Copying code & modifying it for your own purposes is fine for production, but if these students don't understand how the underlying code works, then their chances of successfully using it greatly diminishes.
And to extend what you're saying, ultimately professional programmers *do* have to design novel data structures and the algorithms to manage them. How are you going to build a thread-safe incrementally updating cross-reference table when you don't even know to implement a linked list?
An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.
