Another name for HFT is "market maker".

Every single work environment I've seen allows for reasonable personal use of company computers (e.g. quickly opening your bank account and seeing if your paycheck was deposited, or checking lab results of your doctor visit, is "reasonable"; as stupid as that may sound, everyone has done something similar to that on a company computer). You don't expect privacy on the device, but there's a reasonable assumption that nobody else is viewing your bank or health record details.

Once they start taking screenshots that humans look at, they're violating those assumptions (and I'd imagine there are regulations regarding actively viewing someone's bank or health records without their explicit consent).

Consider the corp's perspective. A customer added something to their shopping cart. You have 2 choices: have that choice/decision easily disappear when they logout or switch devices/browsers (and potentially lose a sale), or... keep it persistent in case they logged in using another computer and want to continue shopping.

Most corps opt for: make it easy to add stuff to shopping cart, and ensure it's a conscious (and often elaborate) effort to remove stuff from it.

Then there's the whole data mining aspect of it (it's extraordinary valuable information---at least until bots start to regularly screw up the data).

"Alexa learns a new skill: Making money for Amazon"?

...or report a success: ``Alexa team learned a new skill: Making money from Amazon''.

They really have 10k people behind this thing, without profits to back that up???

What happens when matter and energy accelerate at faster than the speed of light?

paraphrasing Futurama: The ship doesn't move faster than light (that's impossible). It moves the universe around it.

I also heard green jelly beans cause acne! Here's proof: https://xkcd.com/882/

``participants signed up they were asked a number of questions about aspects of their lifestyle such as exercise, smoking and weight as well as diet and nutrition''...

In other words they were guaranteed to find *something*. If it wasn't soda drinks, it would've been something else... but soda seems sensational enough to publish about, so that's what it is...

What part about this is considered "self-driving" then, exactly?

The guy behind the wheel was "self" driving the car. Normally, for Uber, another driver drives the car, but in this case, the guy behind the wheel was self driving it.

Soon, in perhaps a decade, we'll have these self driving cars everywhere. Where you or I or anyone will be able to self drive our own car, without relying on Uber's driver.

regulating gene research just moved all such gene research underground (or to other less-regulation heavy nations). The same will happen with AI... assuming they could come up with a suitable definition that they could apply to stuff.

e.g. is binary search AI ? (it pretty intelligently eliminates potential places an item could be in... what if it did that to nuclear weapons? eh?! eh!? think of the children!!!)

the dominant culture in the USA - and hence one of the most popular cultures in most of the developed world - is strongly extravert.

No, they're just more outgoing about it :-)

Put it right next to the Mauna Loa Observatory. There's already a paved road leading all the way up, so it's not like a huge amount of infrastructure is required. Sure there might be an eruption in the next 100 years or so that could wipe it out, but... that's a problem for the next generation.

That's pretty clever!

I think I heard intelligence described as maintaining a certain average... for example, you're presented with a random variable, your task is to come up with an offset to maintain a certain average. You won't get it perfectly right, but if your average has lower variance than the original random variable, then you're doing well. In other words, you take input, and adjusting to it...

For example, a cell maintains it's state such that metabolism continues to happen. Environment gives it varying inputs, and it must adjust to maintain state to keep chemical reactions going (when it stops doing that, it dies)... (usually by having a lot less variation inside than outside presents it with).

For a cell, that `maintenance' logic could've been achieved via selection (evolution, cells that weren't good at maintaining state didn't live long).

Extrapolated via evolution all the way to human beings, we maintain our state (eat, drink, avoid cars, work, etc.,) to avoid dying (maintain our life to keep it going). Along the way we find more clever ways of `specializing' to obscure features of the random variables we're presented with by the environment (such as building rockets to go to the moon, etc.)

In that sense, a thermos really is `intelligent'---it maintains its ``life'' while conditions remain favorable (hot stays hot, cold stays cold, etc.,). Environment outside could get hot/cold much more frequently than the maintain internal state, etc.

...can't wait for their Faraday iCage appliance then... supplement the walled garden.

Couldn't get anyone to invest in it. Why?

Because 2010. This is 2015... free moneh for everyone!*

*tech startups with "autonomous", "app", "cloud", "shiny", and "daffodil" in their descriptions.

This could be solved by making it slightly sturdier, perhaps 200-400lb (instead of easy-to-carry-away 40lb), perhaps a metal cage to protect bits, a taser for those enthusiastic pedestrians... and in extreme cases, perhaps a gun...for those termination missions (though then it would have to be made to look like Schwarzenegger :-).

If they really want things to change, they should agree to work towards abolishing stupid patents---not to create semi-trusts that other companies have to fight.