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Comment Four Way Battle Over Money (Score 2) 61

by Koreantoast (#66300606) Attached to: Walmart To Finally Start Accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay
This is a neverending fight over money, and Walmart, and the retailer side in general, having lost the fight and throwing in the towel. Ever since contactless payments emerged, credit card companies, tech firms, banks, and retailers have been in a massive battle over the hundreds of billions in transaction fees charged each year. Retailers learned the hard way how credit card companies have forced their way in, essentially harvesting up to 1.5%-3.5% per transaction. When they saw tech firms like Apple and Google also working their way in, essentially adding another 1-2% into those transaction fees, they tried everything they could to push consumers in a different direction. Unfortunately, retailers just couldn't put together a decent alternative, and Walmart giving up on their sad app signals their surrender.

Comment Re:Not necessarily a bad thing (Score 1) 214

People on ALL social media NEED to see what the other side says just as much as their own.

Yes, but the question is how it's being represented. Are they being provided with the well articulated viewpoint shared by the vast majority of the other side they disagree with? Or are they being shown the most extreme, inflammatory edge cases of the other side which are incorrectly being portrayed as mainstream? The former can encourage debate, but the latter is just fueling an attitude of "those people are crazy, there's no way I can co-exist with them."

Comment Re:not it's not, it's because AI is a threat (Score 1) 90

by Koreantoast (#66294714) Attached to: Anthropic CEO Says AI Backlash Is 'Fundamentally a Crisis of Trust'

What insight. Could it be because that's exactly what happens? Capitalism is literally defined by this.

Agreed, but I believe the entire "tech" industry is particularly notorious for this even by American capitalist standards. AI is emerging from a business culture that emphasizes "move fast and break things", launching half-completed, "minimally viable" products out quickly without real thought (or in the parlance of kids these days, "f--ks given") on security, privacy, or social impact. Society has figured this out, as we've seen the shift in perception of the tech industry from saviors to villains. So no one should be surprised when people have trust issues with AI firms that have emerged from that same ecosystem.

Comment Good Start but Far Short (Score 1) 67

This is great for some of the small puddle jumper routes and a step forward in the electrification of commercial air travel, but we're talking about a range of 125 miles for the production aircraft in all electric, and a mere 500 miles for a hybrid flight, for 30 passengers. 125 miles won't even cover Honolulu to Hilo which is the first use case I could see. 500 miles is still well within high speed train and driving distances. The scaling up to big commercial aircraft, like an Embraer E2 series, let alone a Boeing or an Airbus single aisle aircraft, is out of range for all electric flight. You'd need to get range at least to 2,000 miles.

Comment Re:Schools are designed to sort students (Score 1) 83

Our modern school system was initially designed to train good little workers for boring, repetitive assembly line work.

I mean, given that society's number one demand of the education system is to prepare students so they can find jobs, the school system is doing what's being asked of it.

Comment Re:Good, Bad, and Ugly (Score 1) 58

I still maintain that I've heard far more negative than positive anecdotes about the VA and their medical care in particular, but there you have it: Anecdotes.

Maybe that's more a condemnation of the American healthcare system overall. The VA may be better than private care, but perhaps there are so many complaints and horror stories about private care throughout society we've just tuned them out at this point.

Comment Re:Social engineering. (Score 1) 92

by Koreantoast (#66287225) Attached to: How Social Media Spurred a Refugee Crisis Between Spain and Morocco

Personally, I feel like this is a lot of what the internet is used for these days, and it kinda depresses me. I remember when the internet was just people with their own little webpages posting random crap. Today, it's a sophisticated tool used for propaganda, conflicts between countries, disinformation, you name it. It's not just countries doing this sort of thing, but companies too. Everyone is trying to manipulate your opinion, and the opinions of entire populations. Gone are the days when the internet was by people, for people. Now it's just a tool used for stuff like this.

The problem is that the Internet was inevitably going to (d)evolve this way no matter what the techno-utopians promised in the 1990s. The moment any communications medium shows the ability to convince / manipulate humans to do something, and especially convince humans to send money or allocate resources differently, interests from across the spectrum from state actors (for both legitimate and illegitimate) to criminal organizations were inevitably going to flood in. It is human nature.

Comment Re:More detailed explanation (Score 1) 123

by Koreantoast (#66284062) Attached to: Zuckerberg's Superyacht Reportedly Declined To Help Stranded Boat

He finds "operating on a different radio channel" on the yacht a flimsy excuse as the request was broadcast on the standard emergency channel. Any vessel sailing should have at least one radio on the emergency channel at all times. That however does not explain why the support vessel did nothing.

I think it boils down to the classic dilemma: was it malice (intentionally ignoring a vessel in need) or incompetence (failing to properly monitor the emergency channels)? Both are equally bad looks. The former generates more negative publicity, the latter should be a firing event.

Comment Re:potentially criminal act (Score 1) 123

by Koreantoast (#66284050) Attached to: Zuckerberg's Superyacht Reportedly Declined To Help Stranded Boat

Nowhere does your link say "applies if it's a distress call".

The article actually spends a couple paragraphs explaining this:

When another ship is in distress, everyone in the area is obligated to respond as long as doing so doesn't put their own ship at risk. But maritime law expert Ian Ralby said this situation appears different, and the crew of Zuckerberg's yacht wouldn't face that legal obligation.

“It’s the difference between calling AAA and 911. You need an ambulance on site, that’s a distress call. You need somebody to give you a jump or to tow your car, you call AAA,” said Ralby, who is president of the nonprofit Auxilium Worldwide that focuses on promoting sustainable development and ocean governance, among other goals. It is a big difference in terms of the emergency type, he said. "Both concerning, both needing assistance, but the legal obligations to respond are very different...”

Retired Coast Guard Captain Aaron C. Davenport, who spent three decades with the branch of the military responsible for rescues on the water, said running out of gas simply isn't considered an emergency, and the Launchpad wasn't obligated to help.

So in summary, morally repugnant? Yes. Illegal? No.

Comment Go to Court... then face Retaliation? (Score 3, Insightful) 87

Sure, they can go to court to challenge them. They may even get a few bucks out of it. However, that's not going to make up for when the Federal government responds by deporting Nintendo USA's senior leadership and slapping a tariff on their products.

Comment Patronizing Comments on Hawaiians Misses Point (Score 3, Interesting) 183

For all the usual patronizing comments mocking the Hawaiian traditional religion and discussions on the sacredness of the site are missing the broader issues that are driving the protests. I'll first note that the vast majority of native Hawaiians are Christian or agnostic/atheist. This is really a highly visible protest against a perceived sense of outside interests continuously ignoring concerns about natives and locals and doing what they want on the islands. The last century and a half has been marked with powerful outside interests coming in and building military bases and firing ranges, private billionaire enclaves, and suppressing native language and culture. These protests blew up with TMT because it's a target they can actively and continuously protest without being steamrolled by the Federal government on national security grounds or billionaires with their lawyers and private security forces.

Mauna Kea should probably be more viewed as "sacred" in terms of a site of significant, deep cultural / identity importance rather than religious. So think of it roughly analogous to someone wanting to plow over Yellowstone or Arlington National Cemetery to build a telescope.

Comment Trade Offs for a Very Dangerous Tool (Score 1) 100

People always forget that this is an important reason why these tools are dangerous. Let's give departments the benefit of the doubt that 99% of police officers will use this tool properly. The tradeoff becomes that inevitably, you are going to have 1% that abuse the system like our stalker cop here. Separately, you also have the abuse of the system broadly constantly leaning in to expand where they can use the tool out of expediency or convenience even at the cost of violating individual civil liberties. So the real question here is whether the tradeoff of these extreme abuse cases worth it, and do we have confidence in the police departments to maintain the proper procedures and discipline to minimize the abuses?

Comment Positive and Negative Way (Score 4, Insightful) 180

The sales manager could have taken this in a positive way, let the top sales lead smash a pie into the sales manager's face as a morale booster. The "humiliation" is born by the leader on their own orders, so it's all in good fun. Pushing that humiliation down onto one of your other employees is just bullying.

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