I never knew that had a name, thanks. I think everyone has seen their local government threaten funding cuts to firefighters, emergency service (911, etc), parks, schools, and other popular services unless special bonds are passed.

It certainly could be that, although another possibility is that Wikipedia and other online resources have essentially supplanted the need for such a service.

Seriously, is there any doubt that a computer can easily defeat a human at a computer game that involves 95% pure reflexes and 5% strategy?

The article shows a picture of Breakout, and tends to focus on the wrong things entirely... especially the title, trumping that "computers can beat humans". It's fairly impressive that computers can learn the rules of a simple videogame on their own and perform well, but beating humans is not exactly an apples to apples comparison, because while we can formulate strategies to maximize points, we're also prone to making simple mistakes due to our much poorer reflexes and coordination. So AI has a massive advantage with precision reflexes and calculations that it can make much faster than humans.

Some of my previous jobs involved programmed AI game opponents for action games. As anyone who's faced an aim-bot knows, there's no real challenge for computers to perform many of the tasks humans find difficult, like putting a bullet through a moving target's forehead. I actually had do a lot of extra work to programmatically replicate the difficulties humans face when aiming at a moving target. However, collecting and processing global environmental knowledge and formulating complex strategies based on that knowledge is extremely difficult. That's why we typically build a lot of invisible hints into the environment itself for the benefit of AI, such as pathfinding-specific structures, or dynamic flags that signal potential rewards or danger. Even today, in many strategy games that involve complex ruleset (meaning brute force calculations can't work as well), the computer opponents inevitably have to cheat in order to compete with even modestly skilled players.

Early videogames have very few of these sorts of challenges because of their largely static environments and the basic nature of the games. For the most part, you just need to formulate a few simple rules for an optimal victory condition, and when combined with a computer's incredible performance, you can easily trounce the best human players, simply because a computer never gets distracted, tired, or makes silly mistakes in judgement.

Again, I'm not dissing the work the researchers did, which I found to be impressive, but the article and summary seem to be missing the point entirely by comparing them to human scores. It's fairly obvious that once a computer learns how to play with an optimal strategy, it's an absolute given that they'll score better than humans ever could.

It's already happening.

That's a good point. However, an argument can be made is that there's no longer a bureaucratic "wall" between agencies, so there's no reason not to make more extensive use of fieldwork by more appropriate resources. If I'm not mistaken, it would probably be the FBI to do that fieldwork inside the US, and the CIA outside, right? The NSA should be working with them to make better use of that HUMINT and follow up with targeted interceptions.

Part of what Snowden revealed in documents was technology that did, in fact, allow much more targeted surveillance, such as electronic eavesdropping (I thought he shouldn't have released those documents, frankly). Believe it or not, I actually have no problem with that, because it means they've likely gotten a warrant from a judge, and have suspicions about a single person, and are tracking down leads. That's exactly what we both want and expect them to do.

Putting a back door in standardized encryption systems on phones and other devices is worthless anyhow. All it means is that if someone has something to hide, they'd use their own strong encryption. And if you make such encryption illegal, they'll simply break the law and use strong encryption anyhow because they're criminals.

Seriously? Yes, that's learning! Please tell me you're not calling a dictionary a "crutch". My 8th grade English teacher would weep.

I'm guessing you haven't actually used this feature in a modern e-reader, right? You press and hold a word on the screen, and the definition pops up over the text. You've now learned a new word, and it's taken about five or ten seconds, and you continue reading, now slightly more knowledgeable.

You're reading the book's content to broaden your mind, and trying to puzzle out a new word by context is much more of a distraction than actually learning a new word when it's right there and instantly available. There's nothing noble about taking a harder path to easily obtained knowledge. There are plenty of ways in which a person will need to struggle in order to learn new things. Looking up a the definition of a word shouldn't be one of those.

This quote is priceless:

Too late, I'm afraid. You've lost any sense of credibility you may have had after essentially being caught spying on the entire internet, and especially US citizens. The only reason you're going public is because private individuals and companies are taking the ability to read data at will out of your hands by using state-of-the-art encryption.

He still can't even answer questions that would logically come up about other countries wanting backdoors, of course:

There are other ways to find and investigate suspicious individuals - more targeted methods. Yes, they're more time consuming and more difficult. Why don't you use some of those billions of dollars used to build those mega data centers and spend them on more undercover agents and actual investigation, instead of simply sifting through everyone's e-mail looking for interesting keywords? Bulk-scanning the internet is a dinosaur of a solution, as eventually everything will be encrypted. I'm sorry you wasted so many of our tax dollars on a short-term solution instead of building up a better, more effective, long-term intelligence network.

When I was researching my earlier answer, even those Korea is stated as an exception to our policy, I read:

I took that statement to mean that the US had probably turned over management of those minefields to the Koreans. This blog on the wsj says the same thing, but doesn't give sources.

So, yes, actually. It looks like those minefields are maintained by the Korean forces - they manufacture their own mines now, and we no longer manufacture nor export them. It could very well be that it's just a convenient technicality so the US can make such a statement, of course.

The South Koreans have a bat-shit-insane northern neighbor that still occasionally declares to the world that it's going to conquer them, so I don't think South Korea cares much about what the world thinks of landmines. It's sort of hard to blame them, honestly.

I did a very brief bit of research on this... As it turns out, we haven't actually deployed any landmines after 1991, apparently except for *one* single munition used in Afghanistan. I can't help but wonder what the hell one single landmine would be used for.

We also don't currently have any deployed minefields anywhere in the world. So, it's certainly not a case of "continual use". While we haven't signed the Ottowa Treaty banning the use of landmines, the US is the single largest donor in helping to decontaminate regions and providing assistance for victim's medical care, to the tune of 2.3 billion dollars since 1993.

The US does currently have a stockpile of them, but is no longer manufacturing, exporting, or importing them. The military is prohibited from deploying any mines that lack a self-deactivation mechanism. Our landmine stockpiles will likely be phased out with the development of viable alternatives... probably killer robots.

For what it's worth, I hope we can eventually get rid of the damned things as well.

From what I recall, the US uses landmines with electronic triggers, and are designed to automatically self-destruct or self-deactivate at a preset future time or by electronic signals. These mines use internal batteries and require active electronic triggering, and are designed with fixed battery lifetimes as a failsafe in the event of some electronic failure.

The reason we haven't stopped using them is because they're a very effective deterrent when faced in a defensive position against a numerically superior foe. That describes many of our positions across the world, like in South Korea. Remember, that war never actually ended, and NK verbally threatens to flatten South Korean cities on a pretty regular basis. This is likely one of the primary reasons we didn't ratify that treaty. A good case can be made that we should no longer be defending South Korea or many other regions around the world, but US troops are still there right now, and they need to be able to protect themselves.

Smarter weapons systems can actually save innocent lives - a lesson that many people seem to miss. We used to wage war rather indiscriminately, burning entire cities to the ground, or nuking them into oblivion. Nowadays, we'd just cruise missiles in, or drop deep penetrating ordinance to decapitate the leadership, or target critical war assets much more precisely. Autonomous weapons systems are the natural progression of this trend, and if anything, will probably be used mostly for peacekeeping missions.

It would be nice if banning weapons systems would prevent armed conflicts, but I think the real key to preventing wars and armed conflict is continued diplomacy and improved economic development throughout the world. Happy and well-fed democratic countries generally don't start wars. The "killer robots" are for when things don't work out as well as we'd hoped, and generally speaking, it's unlikely that the military would ever allow them to pull the trigger on their own anyhow.

"Drinking your own koolaid" definitely has to be on the list. People are, for whatever reason, often unable to see their own failings and mistakes, choosing instead to blame other factors or others around them. When presented with incontrovertible evidence, they'll start equivocating, blaming the messenger, or will simply refuse to accept the fact for any number of reasons.

I'd also say that "fear of risk" is on the list. Successful big gambles look incredibly obvious in hindsight, but failed gambles can also get you fired. As the old saying went in the 80's, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". In the 90's, it was "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft". For entertainment in particular, though, being too cautious can end up resulting in lukewarm products, which is nearly as bad as horrible products. Lukewarm or boring is fine for most business products. It's a killer in the entertainment industry.

You should totally write a book. You'll make millions!

It seems like a lot of people in upper management get so caught up in trying to figure out how to extract money for their customers rather than intently focusing on a product that people will willingly part with their money to obtain. Lenovo is a great recent example. Contrast that with Apple, who's customers often display an incredible amount of brand loyalty, despite the premium price of their products.

Not too surprisingly, the top leadership of Sega Japan was largely made up of old men who probably didn't actually play videogames themselves. I don't see how you can make good decisions for a game development company if you don't play videogames yourself, or at the very least, if you don't really listen to people within your company that do. It's pretty obvious that didn't happen enough.

Thanks for the interesting articles Sarah. I was familiar with many of the more commonly known facts, as I watch a lot of war documentaries, but I still learned quite a few things as well.

I suspect we largely agree on the generalities, but I'd have said "yes". Sega is on life support, but not quite dead. Atari has died, was buried, resurrected like a zombie, and is in the process of dying a second time. Both companies made bad decision after bad decision, causing the collapse of their companies. Sega seems to be following in Atari's footsteps quite handily, the only difference being that Atari had a nice head start on them.

I always wonder what it is about businesses that seem unable to do just about anything to turn themselves around versus more successful ones. Simply the guy at the helm? The corporate culture? A too-entrenched bureaucracy? How does a single company make bad decision after bad decision so persistently?

The article talks about how a brand like Atari can survive in a new home, but what's the point of that? It can be resurrected and slapped onto new products, but unless those new products actually reflect what made the brand successful in the first place, it will eventually wither and die again, just like before. It's a recipe for a short term fix and subsequent fall. If anything, a "new branding" simply indicates a company's lack of confidence in their ability to make their own name a recognized and successful brand.

Yep. I've also heard that there's essentially zero difference between a pesticide factory and one that produces chemical weapons. This was one of the problems the inspectors in Iraq had. Not sure of the veracity of that info, but given the historic link between pesticides and military chemical weapons, it doesn't sound all that far fetched.

I'm not usually one to celebrate lawsuits. And you're right, there's not a lot of individual damage per computer. Rather, I'm perfectly fine with a modest payout per users that punishes Lenovo for this, both monetarily and with bad press. This sort of behavior absolutely has to stop, and I'm willing to enrich a few lawyers to make it happen. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good, I suppose.

Maybe this will wake people up to the fact that we seriously need some stronger consumer privacy laws. I'm also typically one who prefers to let markets manage themselves until it's clear that government actually needs to step in. I'm afraid we're at that point, because it's abundantly clear that too many companies are willing to go to just about any lengths to extract personal data from people in unscrupulous ways (as well as the government itself, ironically, but we'll tackle that issue separately).

So, yeah, it is actually a BFD. In fact, not every business customer uses their own system image - especially smaller business. And just because a personal user chooses specific services like Google whom they may trust, it does not give another company the right to make those decisions on their behalf. Many of those customers may well have chosen to avoid such services for that very reason. That choice was taken away from them, and instead, the computer they paid for was made less secure by that adware which was forced on them unknowingly. Fine, it's a first world problem, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem.