Voice interface is one of the hardest things to implement well in AI because there are so many sentences that sound similar, understanding depends so much on context.

Without understanding the context of the conversation, a voice interface will not be able to know if you are talking about sodas or sawdust, robots or row boats, new displays or nudist plays.

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You know what's even worse than working on developing weapon systems? Working on 90 years old weapon systems.

Aircraft carriers were state of the art during WWII, today they are as obsolete as the USS Arizona was in 1941.

What's the point is spending hundreds of billions of dollars in building sitting ducks that can be taken out by a single hypersonic missile?

I repeat, there is no need to "monetize" everything.

Does that personal information have any monetary value to you? Can you sell it? Does someone using it take anything away from you? If not, then you are losing nothing while you get to use the services of a site without having to pay for it.

All that information does is to enable someone to send you advertisements that might interest you. If it doesn't interest you, too bad, but it's no worse than all the junk mail you have been receiving for so many years.

Anyhow, if you do not like the way it is, no one is forcing you to use any of those sites. It's not like the government taking taxes away from your pockets.

Hint: they also publish the bullshit that Paul Krugman writes.

It's easy to say that internet companies only employs X people, while forgetting that they do not charge users for whatever they provide.

I, for one, think the greatest economic advantage is when we are able to get things for free. There's no need to "monetize" everything.

But if you predict it you will be arrested in North Carolina.

The problem with consoles right now is that any argument you can make for consoles vs. tablets you can also make for PC gaming vs. consoles, and any argument you can make for consoles vs. PCs you can also make for tablets vs. consoles.

Consoles are in an ever shrinking gap between tablets and PCs, I don't think their market has very much space to grow.

That's the whole point raised by TFA. You know your equations are correct if the results of the simulation agrees with the results of the observation.

This system offers an unprecedented way to check how much does model general relativity fit the actual universe.

It's all in TFA, but I suppose reading it breaks the slashdot rules. Since we have three stars that are much more massive than any other three body system observed before, we can make measurements of the effects of gravitation with more precision, because the effects of those three stars on each other are so much bigger than the perturbations from other masses.

But don't forget this is a two ended trip. There must also exist a provision that no country should be allowed to refuse immigrants.

If a person from India or Malawi wanted to go live in the USA or Western Europe they should be allowed to do so, without any hindrance.

Otherwise, it would be just a matter of luck that you inherited your parents' nationality.

Why is it fair to inherit money? Because it's like any other inheritance.

Is it fair that people inherit good looks from their parents? Or athletic potential? Try getting to play in the NBA if you had two very short parents.

Or what about the place where you were born? Is it fair that some people are born in Germany, Sweden, or the USA, while others are born in Somalia, Afghanistan, or North Korea?

The simple fact that you inherited money doesn't mean you didn't deserve it. You deserve it as much as anything else you got by pure chance.

If you think it would be fair to "equalize" the situation by taking away the money people inherit, then there are many other situations that should be equalized as well. One could start by abolishing nationalities, allowing everyone to live and work in whatever country they wanted. Then one should abolish all professional sport competitions, no one should be judged by their sports skills. Also, what about people with inherited musical skills? Get rid of music as a profession as well...

And it shouldn't be. This "guaranteed income" is one more bullshit keynesian theory that will never work. All that a guaranteed income in cash could bring is inflation.

There are resources, like real estate, for instance, that are intrinsically limited. Distributing cash to everyone would increase the demand for these limited resources, without contributing anything to production. For a good example of this, look at what happened when the Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to give financing to anyone who wanted to buy a house.

We can offer people the basic needs, not a basic income. We can give them food, medical care, housing, etc, but not a significant income in cash. If, instead of providing people with financing to buy any house they wanted, the CRA had provided people in need with standard basic houses, the junk mortgage bubble would have never happened.

There are several different niches on earth where life exists in very hostile conditions. But that's not relevant to the question of life on Mars. The point is, did extremophile life arise spontaneously in such places, or did it migrate from somewhere else and gradually adapted to extreme conditions?

As far as we know, life may have a very low probability of appearing. We still don't know the exact combination of factors that led to the formation of the first living organisms, no one has ever been able to duplicate it in a laboratory.

The earth has several unique characteristics, one of them being its presence right in the middle of the habitable zone. However, the right temperature is not enough. The existence of a magnetic field is important, and plate tectonics may also be a fundamental factor, in its recycling of carbonaceous rocks that keeps the carbon dioxide in balance.

The presence of the moon could be fundamental to both the magnetic field and plate tectonics, due to the churning of the earth through tidal action. Also, ocean tides may have been a contributor to the creation of life, perhaps the concentration of soluble minerals in tidal pools were a factor. So, it could be that life will only evolve on a planet with a large moon.

Volvos will use Apple maps?

I have a bad feeling about this. I don't think the Apple maps for the Swiss capital, Gothenburg, are up to date.