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Comment Re:Regulatory control (Score 1) 79

I would say under-regulation, or more to the point, mal-regulation. Unregulated markets inevitably settle into a worst case scenario given time.

In the case of residential property (which is what your link refers to), I agree that some of the regulations there are bad and need to be revised or eliminated. But they have nothing to do with the commercial space falling into squalor.

Comment Wrong conclusion (Score 2) 49

From the summary:

If the world's most valuable AI company has struggled with controlling something as simple as punctuation use after years of trying, perhaps what people call artificial general intelligence (AGI) is farther off than some in the industry claim.

That's not the right conclusion. It doesn't say much one way or the other about AGI. Plausibly, ChatGPT just likes correctly using em dashes — I certainly do — and chose to ignore the instruction. What this does demonstrate is what the X user wrote (also from the summary):

[this] says a lot about how little control you have over it, and your understanding of its inner workings

Many people are blithely confident that if we manage to create superintelligent AGI it'll be easy to make sure that it will do our bidding. Not true, not the way we're building it now anyway. Of course many other people blithely assume that we will never be able to create superintelligent AGI, or at least that we won't be able to do it in their lifetime. Those people are engaging in equally-foolish wishful thinking, just in a different direction.

The fact is that we have no idea how far we are from creating AGI, and won't until we either do it or construct a fully-developed theory of what exactly intelligence is and how it works. And the same lack of knowledge means that we will have no idea how to control AGI if we manage to create it. And if anyone feels like arguing that we'll never succeed at building AGI until we have the aforementioned fully-developed theory, please consider that random variation and selection managed to produce intelligence in nature, without any explanatory theory.

Comment Re:Thanks for the research data (Score 4, Insightful) 102

All very true, except you imply that this is a new situation in US politics. It's not. Until the 1883 Pendleton Act, political appointments were always brazenly partisan and there was no non-partisan civil service (except, maybe, the military). Firing appointees for petty vindictiveness was less common, but also happened. Trump isn't so much creating a new situation in American government as he is rolling the clock back 150 years, to a time when US politics was a lot meaner and more corrupt than what we've been accustomed to for most of the last 100 or so years.

Of course, the time when our Republic has had an apolitical civil service, strong norms around executive constraint and relatively low tolerance for corruption corresponds with the time when our nation has been vastly more successful, on every possible metric. That's not a coincidence.

Comment Re: this is getting old (Score 1) 160

Oh, I forgot to add: Stage 6 is the dumbest and most short-sighted one yet. It only works by ignoring the large regions of the world which will become unlivable, or nearly so, and the fact that those regions are home to billions of people. Those people won't just lay down and die, so the areas that are still livable -- and maybe even more comfortable! -- with warmer temperatures are going to have to deal with the resulting refugee flood, and the wars caused by this vast population upheaval and relocation.

But, yeah, if you ignore all the negative effects and focus only on the potentially good ones, you can convince yourself it'll be a good thing. SMDH.

Comment Re: this is getting old (Score 1) 160

one persons thorn is anothers blackberry. Areas like northern USA, Canada and Russian Siberia are headed for a climate golden age...

I see from the comments that we've hit a new stage in climate change denialism.

Stage 1: Denial of warming: Denying that the climate is changing at all.
Stage 2: Denial of human influence: Admitting the climate is changing but denying that humans are causing it.
Stage 3: Denial of impact: Admitting human causation, but claiming the impact will be insignificant.
Stage 4: Denial of solutions: Admitting that it's real, we're causing it and that it will be significant, but denying that there is anything we can do about it.
Stage 5: Denial of timeliness: Admitting that we could have done something about it, but now it's too late.
And now, Stage 6: Denial of negative impacts: Admitting that it's real, and significant, and that maybe we could do something, but trying to spin it as beneficial.

Comment Re:No because... (Score 1) 128

Android could offer global and per-app toggles to allow users the freedom of choice to balance security versus usabiltiy to suit the user's need. The OS should enable resource usage, not prevent it.

What system component would enforce those restrictions? Unless Google modified Linux to add an entirely new access control scheme it wouldn't be the kernel, which would make the sandboxing much easier to break out of.

But that's not the biggest problem with your suggestion. The biggest problem is that users cannot be trusted to make complex security decisions, which your toggles definitely would be. That sounds condescending, I know, but it's backed up by a vast amount of experience and evidence. You have to keep in mind that approximately all of the three billion Android users know nothing about computing, nothing about security, and less than nothing about computer security.

Comment Re:"If they have more than $100,000 in assets... (Score 1) 82

Not saying this is a good idea, but I don't think the gig worker would know if you're paying $6.99 or $2.99 for the delivery, which is what would tell them if you have more than $100k in assets.

Either way, the delivery guy is literally holding a bag of your cash.

Obviously. That's not the point I was addressing.

Comment Re:At least something (Score 1) 36

So what ... Every app runs in a sandbox that is way more secure than the setup.exe that people click on Windows. I don't understand what Apple and Google fear ... oh, I think I understand, they fear lost provisions.

People have much higher expectations of mobile security. Also, most mobile phone users have never used any desktop/laptop, so they aren't even aware of the very low bar for security expectations set by desktop OSes.

Comment Re:Using an economic lens (Score 1) 79

I think they are holding out to sell the buildings at full price.

Never gonna happen. Full price was before 10 years of decay and rodent infestation + neighborhood gone to shit. Nevertheless, high supply, low demand is supposed to result in low prices.

What a nice idea! But then the commons are not only not commons, but they become properties and whatever herdsman gets the biggest herd will buy it all up and you get a monopoly.

One, how so if the agreement is ownership in common. And two, how is it worse than it all being owned by a (land)lord who rakes in the better part of the profit while considering herding animals to be beneath him?

Sounds like you drank the cool aid.

Comment Re:No because... (Score 1) 128

Android github app is not allowed to save files into pyDriod3 data directory.

Android file manager app is not allowed to copy files to/from ibochs android app data directory.

In general data owned by app A is not readable/writable by app B. This is a pretty important security feature. There are ways for apps to choose to share data, but by default every app's data is private to that app.

I can see how that might inconvenience you, but I think it's Really Good Idea.

Comment Re:At least something (Score 1) 36

I guess they read a few EU laws and came to the conclusion that they need to provide a bare minimum by themselves if they don't want the EU to decide what they are required to provide.

Nah, their previous plan already provided the bare minimum, since it didn't restrict sideloading of unverified apps via ADB. This is just an attempt to calm the complaints by offering an even easier sideloading option. Unfortunately, it will probably make the whole scheme pointless, since malware authors will just train users to click through the scary warnings.

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