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Submission + - Arizona Limits Construction Around Phoenix as its Water Supply Dwindles (nytimes.com) 1

MightyMartian writes: Arizona has determined that there is not enough groundwater for all of the housing construction that has already been approved in the Phoenix area, and will stop developers from building some new subdivisions, a sign of looming trouble in the West and other places where overuse, drought and climate change are straining water supplies.

The decision by state officials very likely means the beginning of the end to the explosive development that has made the Phoenix area the fastest growing metropolitan region in the country.

Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, gets more than half its water supply from groundwater. Most of the rest comes from rivers and aqueducts as well as recycled wastewater. In practical terms, groundwater is a finite resource; it can take thousands of years or longer to be replenished.

Comment 1 in 5 is signal the post is crap (Score 2) 2

I don't know how many children are sexually exploited online, but it is clear and obvious to non-morons that if "1 in 5 children are sexually exploited online" is true, than they are using a very bad definition of 'sexually exploited online'.

Don't trust scammers that make up patently false statistics by using strange definitions.
 

Comment Re:Robots make consistent mistakes, huge advantage (Score 1) 37

Being tired, distracted and mad are all subcategories of "Overstimulated with excess data". Robots do worse when given too much data as well. They slow down, and make mistakes. It is easier to tell them to ignore excess data, but that is not perfect.

Humans sample their environments MORE than robots do. Constant noise, temp, sight, touch, scent, samplings. The robots are the one that take too much time and quantimize their data into x times per second. Humans DO not take 2-8 seconds to react, we react instantly to simple issues. We can take 2-8 seconds to react to more unexpected issues.

People constantly make the wrong beliefs about robots. Robots are not like in the movies, better than humans. Instead they are almost always worse than humans about everything EXCEPT the specific task they are designed to do. Some subtaks they may also be better at, but not all.

I do agree that the robots do not do non-programmed things, which is one of the major reasons they are already better drivers than humans.

Comment Re:Interesting (Score 4, Insightful) 70

The midterms did not have the problems and complaints the 2020 had. The problem was not 528's coverage, but that the midterm was far more boring.

Nate Silver is a hard line mathematician. He looks at the numbers. When people are lying about the numbers, he is very interesting proving them wrong. When the lies get boring, so does he.

I hope that wherever he lands, he continues to put out good data analysis. I suspect that in the next presidential election, it will get very interesting again. Unless Trump goes to jail before then, and all we get is Biden Vs. Trump-lite.

Comment Robots make consistent mistakes, huge advantage (Score 4, Interesting) 37

Robots make consistent mistakes, humans make random ones.
Consistent mistakes are fixable, random ones, less so.

Robots are better drivers not because they have better brains, but because they never make stupid mistakes.

Humans: start young, get old, get drunk, get tired, and get mad. We accept the first two, outlaw and punish the rest. Robots start inexperienced, blind, and ignorant of new activity. We FIX those and the robots do not repeat the problem.

Comment Re:Fact (Score 1) 62

Totally true. Usually stolen in tiny tiny bits by your friend.

When I give my phone number to my friends, I did NOT give them permission to upload it to Facebook. But they did.

Am I going to dump them because of that tiny theft? No, of course not. I won't even complain.

But when all of them do it, despite me never joining Facebook, facebook now has an immense amount of information about me. THe fact that I have a bunch of friends of the same age that went to X high school is captured. Same with college. Same with each job I ever went to, same with every hobby.

Despite me never telling Facebook anything, they know my age, where I grew up, each school, every hobby, every location where I lived, etc.

All caused by tiny little thefts from people I trust and forgive their indiscretion.

But I do not forgive Facebook. They did not do tiny thefts, they enganged in a policy of buying stolen data and criminally analyzing it.

Comment AI makes medium, not great, not bad. (Score 1) 126

First, what we call AI now is not movie AI. There is no consciousness, no sapience, and therefore no real creativity. Real world AI is just a formula.

The thing about formula Movies and formula TV, is that it is always good, never great. The really great movies break the formula and create new ones. So a real life AI will always follow the formula it finds (not creates) and will always create a good work, never a great one, never a bad one.

Comment Good attempt (Score 2) 74

Right now, what happens is they create algorithms using old data, irregardless of the inherent racism is the old data. Go to Harvard? Get a plus in any formula. Go to a historically black university, no plus for you.

When they were building the formulas by hand, this was barely acceptable. Before they put it in a black box, people could complain, sue, and get changes.

But when they themselves do not know the formula, then there is no way to complain. If you cannot see the formula, but only the methodology, you cannot change it. The only way to fix it it is to police the methodology.

Please note the cumulative, inheritable nature of cultures mean that the racism is always present. Even if a black/hispanic/asian/jewish person never underwent direct discrimination, their starting point was the result of centuries of discrimination. People live where their parents lived, where their grandparents lived, etc. etc. They inherit both money and attitudes from their ancestors. People get into college because their ancestors did.

Comment Window Shades Blind Cops (Score 4, Insightful) 84

Cops cannot see any child abuse or other criminal activities in people's houses because of the criminal gear called a "Shade".

In fact, some of the manufacturers have gone so far as to call their shades "Blinds" because of how they blind the cops to crimes committed by people in their homes.

Comment Worthless law (Score 1) 69

It is not that hard to have a separate app that codes a message and copy/paste that into an email or other messaging app.

In fact that concept pre-dates the end-to-end decryption method. If they do not provide end to end encryption, you can easily provide your own encryption by hand.

Trying to stop end-to-end decryption will just result in casual/honest people having bad encryption while the serious/dishonest people will find other ways to get real encryption.
 

Comment Accuracy issues with no explanation. (Score 1) 161

The various find X programs are set up to give you the 'best possible' results and do not show the accuracy.

If they obtain accuracy to the nearest meter / yard, they pick a spot in the middle. That works fine. If they get accuracy to the nearest zip code, they show the middle of the zip code. That does not work fine.

Nearest county works horrible. Nearest state is worthless. Nearest country is the worst example I ever heard. There is a farm house in the exact center of the country that used to have police show up, with warrants every few months all because the search could only narrow it down to the United States.

They had to sue multiple people before the cops stopped got warrants to search their house for guns, drugs, kidnap victims, etc..

All these services should be required to clearly state "Accurate within X feet." Anything less is criminal.

Comment Causation assumed, really reveresed (Score 1) 123

People that are not healthy do not drink moderately. Their liver cannot handle it.

Got cancer? Diabetes? Kidney disease? Taking pain medication?

  Don't drink.

Surprise surprise, the majority of people that drink alcohol are healthy.

Because if you are not healthy you do not drink.

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