Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Submission + - Another fine identity mess the Google has gotten us into? (creators.google)

shanen writes: Can't find any discussion of "Google for Creators", so here's a submission for ye olde Slashdot. Me thinks the essential idea is sort of good, but the idea of the google controlling it is bad. My version was kind of a public utility website where each person could anchor their identity on the Web, though I was seeing it as a way to protect identity by linking your real identities and allowing for the reporting of impersonation identities. My version of the idea broke down over the lack of a trustworthy host for such a thing.

The google's motivation is much more clear and I sort of applaud them. The google wants to have a kind of choke-point over as many Internet influencers as possible. If your identity is big enough to matter, then the google is offering to give "free" advertising. ONLY if you matter in the ways that google accepts but the real questions are "Why would anyone trust the google that much these years?" and "How is the google planning to monetize the choke-point?"

Comment Re:I'm not convinced (Score 1) 39

Drones are specifically the male bees. Most bees are not drones.

That's not what I said. I said that the word "drone", as in a mindless unthinking being, is derived from drones, as in male bees. I did not say "all bees are drone bees".

And an individual bee has limited memory. They even forget which hive they are from after a while if they don't return to it.

You are confusing "forgetting" with "disruption".

Bees have both a geospatial "mental map" (based on landmarks, the sun, etc) and a chemical fingerprint (they recognize their nestmates' smell). Concerning their geospatial memory, not only is it not poor, the main problem with it is that it's too stubborn. If you move a hive 20 meters away, the bees will fly back to the same empty location where their hive used to be and wait there. They don't adapt well to change because they have a long-term memory of "the hive was here".

If a beekeeper wants to move a hive, they have to trigger an "orientation flight" to get the bees to learn the new location (this typically involves locking them inside their hive for several days to disrupt their routine). During an orientation flight, the bees will learn the new hive location, and then they'll subbornly remember that location long-term, even if you move the hive again.

As for recognizing their nestmates, this is again based on smell. A bee being isolated for days or weeks will still be recognized by guard bees at the entrance and welcomed in. However, guards will sometimes let in bees that don't belong to that hive as well, if e.g. they're passive and laden with pollen and nectar; they haven't "forgotten" their scent, they're just "forgiving" of mistakes if there's a reward to be had (bees sometimes make navigation errors, esp. if all nest boxes are similar in shape/colour or due to wind, and enter the wrong hive)

I'll repeat: bees do NOT have a short memory. This is a myth. It's not true. The very example you gave is actually an example of bee memory being too rigid.

Comment Re:If we go with the mind being emergent (Score 1) 39

It's IMHO amazingly impressive how dense information can be stored within neural networks. Even a comparably tiny LLM can store more information than the human brain, despite the brain's theoretical storage being far higher due to its vast number of connections (ANNs are better at information density, we're better at learning from limited datasets). The tiny LLM will crush humans at a quiz in virtually anything except said human's particular areas of expertise. Storing information as a superposition of states across a large number of neurons and connections (whether we're talking artificial or biological) is an immensely space-efficient way to do so, and the human mind is nowhere near the limits of information storage capability.

There is no technical reason why a given organism, such as a bee, could not achieve far denser information representations in order to be able to do more with its limited neural capacity (though there are always tradeoffs). One of the reasons that ANNs learn slower-but-denser is the use of a very low learning rate with a very large amount of data that covers the same topic from many different angles, giving the weights ample time to explore different possible circuits in parallel and seeing which ones predict reality the best ("learn everything all at once" vs. "learn this thing NOW"). Bees aren't tasked with learning anywhere nearly as diverse things as a human is and spend all day doing the same basic job (the same information "from different angles"), so it seems quite possible that their greater "information specialization" as they go about their day may be able to lead to denser representations of said information.

BTW, at risk of a tangent (your comment about non-neuron cells playing roles), it's been really interesting to me seeing how a key difference between artificial and biological learning has been clearing up. In biological neural networks, weight cannot flip sign (Dale's Principle). In the general case, a neuron is either excitatory or inhibitory (usually a small number of inhibitory neurons per cluster of excitatory neurons); it can't change from one to the other even if learning would favour that. At a first glance, that would seem to cripple learning capability (and definitely does if you implement that in ANNs). But what appears to actually happen in biological neural networks is a sort of horizontal learning, co-dependent synaptic plasticity, between excitatory and inhibitory neurons. Instead of merely weakening an excitatory connection down to zero and then being able to go no further, learning simultaneously weakens the excitatory connections and strengthens the inhibitory connections. The excitatory neurons are the primary drivers of information storage and processing, but the inhibitory neurons adjust the baseline to give them the flexibility to express negative net activations as needed.

Comment Re:I'm not convinced (Score 1) 39

It is a myth that individual bees only retain information for half an hour. Depending on the memory at hand, bee memories can last days, weeks, or even the remainder of their foraging life. They have to remember things, because the timeframes a hive operates on are much longer than half an hour, including night time and being kept inside by inclement weather for days or even weeks at at time. Individual bees also learn much more than can be conveyed through waggle dances, such as what colours and shapes of flowers are yielding best in a given area at what time of day (bee learning is essential to them being able to function as generalists, able to handle any mix of plants at any latitude).

Also, the hive doesn't just blindly accept whatever any bee says. Each bee functions as an individual in a society. When a bee waggles in the "town square" (on the comb), other bees gather around to "listen" (detecting oscillating shifts in the electric field plus tactile contact and sound). But whether a bee actually decides to make use of that information depends on whether they're having good or bad foraging success. Only a small fraction of bees on average (usually a single-digit percentage of watchers) will decide to make use of the information. And if another bee "disagrees" with a waggle dance - for example, if they've been there and found nothing, or worse, found dead bees, predators or a rival hive), they can make a counter-buzz to argue against it. The arguments can get quite "heated", with many bees taking part.

We think of bees as mindless drones (literally, we took the very word!), but they're all individuals each acting on their own. There are simply various rallying factors that keep them together (for example, the scent of the queen, the desire to live in a warm hive, etc). The information communicated within a hive is limited; bees overwhelmingly rely on their own mind and memory, and perform their tasks as individuals.

Comment Re:8-1 decision (Score 2) 70

Congress doesn't have these powers.

Yes, they do. Had you ever read the discussions in the Senate about the amendments, you would have known this very subject came up. Unfortunately, his orange lardness has hidden from public view those historical records, so what I'm about to say goes from my memory.

Essentially, if Congress has the power to enact laws affecting the country, it is up to the Executive and Judicial branches to curb that power. Madison, despite opposition to the General Welfare Clause, admitted late in the life that clause granted Congress a power to legislate on all national problems. His nature of limited government was undercut by that clause, for if the national Congress could enact laws affecting the country, it wasn't a limited government, was it?

Further, as mentioned in the debates, Congress could delegate its authority. It would be inconceivable for Congress to be involved with the minutae of the country, to discuss and debate whether this or that is allowed. Instead, as granted by the Constitution, Congress has delegated its powers to others. Namely, agencies such as the FTC.

It's really hard to find these powers in such a tiny document without decades of legal training.

No it's not. All one need do is read the debates in the Senate to understand the mindset of the Founding Fathers. If you want more, reading a few books about those Founding Fathers would suffice to fill your lack of knowledge.

Comment Re:Yeah. Just like James Bond or Star Trek (Score 1) 94

The first season of BSG had to have all that in it. They were just attacked. They had no military to protect them. Their home planets were being nuked. Their government was non-existent. The survivors had to make a run for it without any preparations. They had to figure out how to survive without any backup.

Aside from Apollo's "hack" to fool the cyclons, the first season was strong in what it had to be.

Comment Re:Insert Neocon war propaganda (Score 2) 294

2 may, 16 "ukranian" firepoint drones in 3 waves on starobelsk (lugansk) students dormitory kills 21 and injures 41. this is ukranians killing (ex) ukranians, most of them kids. ofc barely reported in western media.

It was all over the media, just like when Russia deliberately bombed a school in Mariupol on March 16, 2022 which had a message it was being used as a shelter. At least 600 people were murdered by Russia.

24 may, russian explicit retalliation mainly on kiev, an exceptionally massive strike involving 100 missiles and hundreds of drones, most of them passing through and hitting infrastructure. civilian casualties: 4 (by worst-case ukranian accounts (unconfirmed))

On March 9, 2022, Russia deliberately struck Maternity Hospital Number 3 in Mairupol, murdering four people, wounding at least sixteen, and causing at least one still birth.

Shall we discuss the murder of civilians in Bucha by Russia? The mass rapes by Russia?

When Russia collapses due to Ukraine's victory, that will be a glorious day for celebration.

Comment But you MUST love the gen AI bots! Or... (Score 1) 92

Why the FP brain fart? Or am I just reflecting too much.

I actually started using GitHub for a new project, but without the Copilot seasoning... Which somehow led me to these rants of the day?

So how do y'all feel about Microsoft's new Copilot websearches? It seems to me that the successes are minor and forgettable while many of the failures are spectacular far beyond merely being wrong. The better to sell more advertising? I wonder if some AI can explain to me how this makes economic sense as the stock markets tumble to new highs, TACO and NACHO notwithstanding. I'd websearch the google, but that has become even more ridiculous. And my last short question to DeepSeek apparently drove it insane?

Meanwhile, the people who appear most influential in today's world appear to be divided between a league of Bond villains and a gaggle of pompous puppets, with the biggest and most orange puppet playing with nuclear weapons... Not seeing a path to human survival in this mess.

So I should go for a joke? Something about no wife, but several contractural sperm recipients? Or how about the Bond villain who has sent his own family to Argentina to protect them from the mess he's making in the country where his money and influence comes from? These are the (negative) resolutions of the Fermi Paradox we have all been looking for? (With the usual spirited apology to the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi?)

Comment Re:Welcome (Score 1) 113

Long before the E.U. legislation went into effect, there were long consultations which standard to adhere too. So tech companies had enough time to read the writing on the wall and move. That was the reason why USB-C was ubiquitous everywhere when the due date came. Apple was struggling for some time, debating the idea, but finally caved with the 16 series.

Your argument is a typical strawman argument. You postulate the idea that the E.U. came up with USB-C as the next standard out of the blue, and then argue that companies were already transitioning when the legislation was finalized. But your postulate is (probably intentionally) wrong.

Slashdot Top Deals

Remember to say hello to your bank teller.

Working...