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Comment Just like /. (Score 4, Informative) 13

IMDB is one of the grandads of the web, like /. (1995 for both ?), and I was using both of them within a month of their creation (although it took me a good while before I created an account on /. as I thought I had nothing to contribute at the time). IMDB was only movies first. Then I was annoyed when they added TV series. Then even more annoyed with the addition of video games. And now they add onlyfans 'models' ? GET OFF MY LAWN !!!

Comment Re: Induced demand (Score 1) 149

You are right. I wish in a city enclosed between mountains, there are only 4 or so main accesses (and some minor ones). It was always jammed, do the ecological mayor 15 or so years ago decided to make it much worse: the main entrances got traffic lights for no other purpose than to slow entering traffic, making it basically impossible at rush hour. BUT at the same time they built lots of bike paths and improved bud and tram network. Now I don't have a single colleague coming with a car.

Comment Re: Murderbot seriously? (Score 1) 16

Yes, the books are entertaining and can be read on several levels, but the prize went to the *series*, which IMHO is somewhat subpar. For instance they show the researchers as just naive morons while in the book they are the only ones with ethics and a backbone. And the introspective side of Murderbot is glossed over.

Comment Re:The rest of the headline (Score 4, Insightful) 84

If you aren't being a cunt causing problems - then its a non issue....

The problem is there are plenty of things someone does that aren't a "problem" but which can cause serious repercussions that they may not wish to share. For example, perhaps someone visits a porn shop with their spouse on a regular basis to buy sex toys, or someone is a cross-dresser or have illicit flings with other people or are a closeted homosexual. All things which are not problems, but which may get you ostracized by your friends, expelled from your church, or fired from your work.

Is this a 'non-issue' to you?

I feel like the idiots who say "you shouldn't care if your life is on full display in front of other people" have boring lives and cannot imagine that perhaps someone may wish to keep their membership in a Wiccan coven or their visits to a nude beach separate from the potentially judgmental folks they work with.

And sometimes we may wish to keep our private lives private simply out of a sense of propriety. It may not matter, for example, that I've personally attended a Wiccan celebration where we danced sky clad in my youth to the people I currently work for. But it's not something I particularly want to share, either. And I certainly don't want things like this to be discovered by some corporation as part of a massive dragnet through my life.

And we haven't even gone into the potential of misrepresenting your behavior. That guy who regularly visits the grocery store when you do--by sheer coincidence? He may be a terrorist. Do you want to be rounded up as part of a terrorist drag net?

"If you aren't being a cunt causing problems - then its a non issue...." is probably the dumbest damned thing I've ever seen in response to stuff like this.

Comment Your calculator is superintelligent (Score 3, Interesting) 165

I love a term a friend of mine used to use when talking about AI: "Narrowly superhuman" (before "superintelligence" got to be a thing).

AI is narrowly superhuman. It is able to do specific things that used to be defined as a "hallmark of intelligence" much better than a human. The easiest one? Summing numbers. It's both faster and more precise than a human.

AI gets more and more such areas it can do better than a human.

If we define "Superintelligent" to be "A computer system able to do absolutely everything we can somehow call intelligence better than any human", we will *never* have superintelligence. The things we define as intelligence will be in conflict; we'll land at the system being better at one at the cost of another.

I'm in favor with being careful about this development. But "prohibiting the development of superintelligence" isn't an option. It's already here.

Comment Re:No. (Score 1) 29

Dividing the yearly US spend on Internet advertising by the number of people in the US that has Internet access gives $900-$970 spend per person per year, or $75-$81 per month.

Please choose the option you want:

1. I want to pay about $75 per month per member in my family into the ad auctions to not see any ads. Ie, keep the infrastructure, but let you opt to pay your share through money rather than attention.
2. I want to prohibit ads, and accept that everybody will have to pay for the sites they want access to, that there will be much fewer services, that there will be much higher transaction costs, and that the poor will have much less ability to access services. (Microtransactions won't solve this, due to the need for trust evaluation of same.)
3. I want some combination of 1 and 2, where some sides of ads are prohibited so it is possible to buy my way out of them at a lower price,. I accept that this will result in the loss of some services and lower access to others for the poor.
4. I want legislation that makes Internet ad blockers work more consistently. I accept that this just shifts the attention cost to other people, and have me getting the benefit without paying the cost.
5. I want to remove Internet ads and subsidize the sites through taxes.
6. I want to increase the requirements of Trust and Safety checks and format restrictions for ads, potentially accepting higher overhead (in what goes to content vs infrastructure) for less annoying/bad ads. I accept that doing this creates significant advantages of scale for ad networks.
7. Other, please describe, including where costs gets shifted with your proposal.

The above are my best attempt at listing possible options and their correct caveats. In most situations, I find ads annoying (who doesn't). Unfortunately, they are the main money highway of Internet content.

DISCLOSURE: I used to work for Google, where I rang infrastructure for stopping bad ads/advertisers and for removing fake clicks. I've also been interested at the use of sub-cent microtransactions to pay for content since the 1990s, though I've become disillusioned as I've learned more about the attention economics involved. Approving individual microtransactions has a higher attention cost than dealing with the ads, and bulking them per-site (through micro-subscriptions) will limit the number of sites that can have content.

Comment Re:"They want things done quickly" (Score 1) 185

I got in a car with a friend 2 days ago. It was his wife's car and the 2 of us couldn't even figure out how to turn the radio off with the idiotic screen. And the funny part is that a few weeks previous he hosted a few students from Munich (home of BMW) in his own car and they were so surprised to see a car with buttons that they took selfies in front of them !!!

Comment Re:It was never intended to end (Score 1) 96

today Microsoft is one of the world's largest users of Linux. It has no current motivation to harm Linux and every reason to defend it.

False. As a hosting provider Microsoft doesn't care what OS people are using, they just have to host it. But as an OS provider, Linux is still competition, so they still have a reason to attack it.

Yeah, you're not understanding what I'm saying: Azure doesn't just host Linux VMs, significant parts of the infrastructure are built on Linux. Microsoft has just as much (if not more) to lose from a resurgent SCO lawsuit than anyone, they aren't going to be the ones rocking this boat.

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