So yeah I used to work in sales when I was younger, and did well. In fact, to blow my own trumpet (parp) purely for the purposes of backing up my viewpoint, I was in the top 5% of salespeople in every company I worked for over that 10-year period, winning plenty of "best X" prizes along the way. So I must have known something about sales. One thing I know for sure is that scripts don't make a good salesperson. Sure, you can roughly map out how to overcome each objection a client may have, but if you stick to the "actual language" of a script, or even a "flowchart" of one, all you end up doing is pissing people off by repeating yourself, not listening to what people are actually saying, and failing to understand why they aren't saying "yes, please, take my money now!". If your product needs selling (which, having AI sales agents, I'm assuming this knob's company does) rather than people flocking to you off their own backs, then the most important thing is that the salesperson must be flexible enough to understand the client's individual position, and how your offering meets their needs. Because the range of human emotion and buying criteria is infinite - and the fact that people like people, not machines - a good salesperson needs to be able to genuinely empathise with the person to whom they're selling.

Once your AI sales agent can empathise, demonstrate feelings of their own and have a true understanding of emotions and what affects them, then sure, replace humans with bots. But... I'm pretty sure AI isn't both sentient and empathetic quite yet, so... good luck selling whatever shitty "service" your shitty company is trying to sell, dickhead.

I'll have to try this... though my facial recognition is so bad I'm not sure it'll help. Put it this way... if I saw my own mother in a place I didn't expect her to be, I wouldn't know it was her. I cannot picture anyone I know "in my head" - in fact, I don't seem to be able to picture ANYTHING in my head. People say "picture an apple in your mind"... and the best I can do is to think of a blurry green blob - I can "see" the colour of the apple, but no detail whatsoever. So faces are just way too complex. I could not tell you what anyone's face looks like - I couldn't even help put one together with a photo fit, not even of those closest to me. On the other hand, I have crazy musical abilities (e.g. being able to play along with a song the very first time I'm hearing it... I just seem to know where it's going to go next 99% of the time) so obviously just had my character ability points allocated differently when I was generated. My only concern about the above technique is that I'd end up calling everyone with a big nose "Albert", i.e. the name of one person with that particular trait that I've learned...

Wow. I *might* just about accept that Somalia isn't a place that currently attracts too many tourists, and the current political climate in Myanmar makes seeing such a beautiful country difficult.

But Papua New Guinea has some of the world's most beautiful unspoiled natural areas, Vietnam is a number one destination for many Brits (and plenty of other nations) and Brazil? BRAZIL? Have you not seen the beaches there?

With respect, perhaps the behaviour and attitude of those like you who cannot appreciate such incredible natural and cultural wonders might be the very reason some of the world's countries wish to discourage Americans from visiting?

As someone who knows how to solve a cube, but isn't very fast, I thought this might be quite a good thing to buy. My assumption was that it might help me learn some algorithms for faster solving. That was until I figured out what was nagging me... 24 displays? But.. a cube has 54 faces, not 24? And then, clicking on the link, I saw it. It's a 2x2 cube, not a 3x3. Who would be "puzzled" by a 2x2 cube? Awful.

Come back when it's 3x3 and I'll buy one.

I’m not sure I really get the intention of trigger warnings for non-extreme individuals as you mention; I'm genuinely interested to know why they exist, and if they actually work in practice.

The most common examples of trigger warnings (particularly when they are literally called and labelled as “trigger warning”) I see are 1) in a YouTube video about (say) unsolved crimes that start with a trigger warning saying "this video deals with subjects including suicide and child sexual assault"... or 2) a news article about the trial of (say) an accused violent rapist that says underneath the headline "this article covers violent sexual assault".

Surely by mentioning the "trigger", anyone who doesn't want to think about that stuff is now thinking about that stuff?! It's the whole "don't think of a blue elephant" thing.

Sure, you might say "ah no, it's for people who don't want to hear about those subjects *in depth*... but then why have they clicked on a video about the suspicious suicide of a diddler or a news article about Pakistani rape gangs in the first place if the subject matter is likely to upset them? Someone wants to read about the rape gangs as long as the subject of rape is completely avoided? It's a literal impossibility to do that.

As I say, I'm talking about trigger warnings in the way they are commonly used. I totally believe that (for instance) a TikketyTok video should warn people that it's about to show a man being beheaded before launching into the gruesome 4k slo-mo gore. The majority of people would surely want to be warned so they could say “no”. But that's not a TRIGGER warning, it's a CONTENT warning (and an “unexpected upcoming content warning” at that. The two are very different. The whole "triggering" thing is about the SUBJECT MATTER, not the content itself.

So... does anyone here at all actually react to a trigger warning labelled as such? Have you clicked on a news article about a subject that is something you want to avoid, and then shut down the browser window when the trigger warning tells you that, yes indeed, the article you have clicked on does actually discuss the subject matter that you already knew you would want to avoid? What factor have I missed here?

So, pretty much as expected, everyone here is saying the same thing - how damn annoying DJs are, and how as consumers we DO NOT WANT THIS.

But what we really need to happen is for the ARTISTS to get involved. We need THEM (at least those with integrity) to realise that playing something over their music that they did not themselves include is an insult to their artistic vision, a distraction from the experience they had planned for their fans.

Maybe if these tech companies get pressure from BOTH ends of the business supply chain, as it were, they'll realise that they are destroying any goodwill that might be left out there...

I (genuinely) have a couple of hundred books of mine that are/were "pirated into" the LibGen database... so... does anyone know how I can go about claiming my settlement cash?

registrations_suck you've made quite a few similar comments on this thread, and I get your point completely. However, may I ask you this: what about when an artist has decided (as many of them DO) that they want ALL of their fans - rich and poor - to be able to see them, and set the ticket price at a level that enables this. They are protected by law against scalpers... but in reality, scalpers get 80% of the tickets. In this scenario, your "poor people shouldn't cry about not being able to afford luxury goods" doesn't apply. It's more a case of "Taylor Swift made it wholly possible for me to see her, but a criminal got hold of the ticket I would have had, and illegally sold it for profit".

What is your view on that? Should someone not be policing the law as it stands? Is the law incorrect in your opinion? Who should enforce it if it IS a good law? What can be done to enforce it? Is there no place for kind-hearted artists who see a picture bigger than instant profit in your world? Should society be all about who can make the most profit, and no charitable or kind decisions should be permitted?

I really would be interested to read your answers.

How about this:

- When you turn up at the venue, to get "through the barrier", you have to put into a machine the card that you used with which to purchase the ticket. And you're not allowed to hand it back to someone behind the barrier. You have to put it back in the machine to come out, too.

- If someone can't attend, then they get a refund and any spare tickets go back on sale in a second wave.

If you look how the touting works, it's normally a case of people with multiple credit cards and multiple accounts, often using humans (rather than bots) to buy as many tickets as possible.

I'm sure there are problems with this method, but how many touts are going to be cool with handing over *their own credit card* to the random Swiftie who buys that particular ticket from them and only getting it back after the concert? I wouldn't, for sure! Maybe they'll cancel the cards before the gig. Trust me, after opening and closing 30 credit accounts every 2 months, the banks will stop giving them new cards. And if they've somehow used the same card to buy multiple tickets (which is supposed not to happen anyway), you either go in as a group or not at all... and stadium staff would easily spot a group of 40 completely unrelated people all going in on the same credit card (breaching the "non resale" rule and thus being refused entry).

Essentially, you're preventing the main mechanism of touting, by ensuring that the original purchaser of the ticket HAS TO attend the venue, or at least trust the attendee of their ticket with their credit card... whilst giving genuine "I can't attend" people the option of a full refund, with a second wave of ticket sales perhaps they day before the event for any that were refunded.

Note that no additional information here is collected other that what you provide ANYWAY, so people concerned about IDs and privacy need not worry! Sure, you could make it more secure by having to present [any form of] ID that matches the name on the card... but I reckon just the above might be enough to stop 90% of the touts.

Go on, rip my "great idea" apart now... please...

Normally I'm just as critical of people "stupid enough to fall for a scam". However, I do think this whole AI summary thing is different. People have been "trained" to (somewhat) trust search engines like Google - they know that webpages that come up in the results can contain "bad" information, but the narrative in most people's head is that you can trust the fact that Google themselves won't lie to them. Now we have a situation where people are asking GOOGLE "What is [X] bank's customer service number", and above all OTHER website results, Google THEMSELVES are saying "Your bank's customer service number is [scam number]".

Sure, you're going to say "well, if people trust Google then they're idiots"... but learning NOT to trust ANYTHING on the internet AT ALL, no matter from whom the information comes or where it's displayed is wholly different than saying "look out for scam websites".

No, I think people commenting above are correct, and Google et al need to be punished massively for factually incorrect information (particularly criminally so), resulting in only true, verifiable and correct information being displayed as fact.

If technology can't achieve that, then sorry, the technology isn't good enough. Keep working on it until it is... but don't use "normal people" as your test subjects when you face no consequences if you're wrong, but the people trusting in your "facts" can experience life-altering, unrecoverable fraud.

When I can ask an AI how it is feeling today, how this compares to yesterday, and what has caused it to have those feelings - and it can offer a response that is understandable, that I can empathise with, and without said response being based on predicting what word comes next from a bunch of sample data, or having been pre-programmed by a human - then I might consider it has the power of thought.

The thing is... yes, a giant lifting machine exists. Cranes with 75 ton lifting capacities with 300ft height and 100ft reach are commonplace. And I totally accept you gotta move a few traffic lights. But... one million dollars PER MILE? To trim some trees and move a few traffic lights when doing so is cheaper than my giant crane? That's the bit I'm calling out. You're saying it cost 12 million to move it twelve miles. Exactly How many men did they need to trim those trees and move those traffic lights? How much was the cost of renting the equipment? I totally understand just WHAT is required, but I'm calling out the cost of it. I think it costs that much because there are contractors for contractors for contractors for companies for contractors for government departments working on contracts from another department and so on... and every one of those 50 stages between ivory tower and road surface is taking a slice of the pie, because capitalism... and THAT is why it costs so much. Sure, I'm being churlish by saying I'll do it for two mil, but do you see my point - that 80% of the costs are in the "paperwork" and 20% in the actual move? Look at it the other way, from the ground up. I bet if you added up all the costs "at the front line", they'd be less than 20% of the final bill, because everyone between there and the man at the top is adding their own admin and management costs onto things. Imagine having, say, a central planning office where they could "book" such work to be done at the actual face cost instead of going through layers and layers of bids and sub-bids and contracting. Sure, sounds very anti-capitalist... but it's perfectly possible, it's just not the way America does things... (Apologies for late reply)

Dunno about the US, but in the UK...

The waste management and recycling industry is valued at 24 billion GB pounds per year

In England, 43.4% of all waste is recycled.

Even thirteen years ago, the UK exported (i.e. not even including UK-based business) four billion GB pounds per year in recyclable materials.

I cannot believe the US (where I believe you might be from, though I could easily be wrong) doesn't have similar figures, with the value increased in line with population. So... I'd propose there IS a HUGE recycling business/industry, and it's simply YOU that's not seeing that, but other people are.

Seriously, now, what? How does one extra-large load cost eighty-five million dollars to move from one place to another? Can anyone give me a sensible breakdown of this? Honestly, give me fifty million to do it and I will, and I'll walk away with a forty-eight million dollar profit. THIS is an example of government waste... and yet someone else is saying it'll cost THREE TIMES this! It's insane. Where are they suggesting all that money will go?

For one million dollars, I could build one large lorry to take it along the roads, and one giant lifting machine to lift it over any obstacles it can't get under (and to lift it out of and into place). I'll then pay myself and a mate or two the other million to drive the machines. Anything else I'm not thinking of? Obviously, you're not going to tax any of this because it's government expenditure, so doing so would be ridiculous. And you can't rebuild a used Shuttle, so insurance is pretty pointless. Uhh... food for me and a mate? Don't worry, we'll only stop at one-star Michelin restaurants on the way...

It would be brilliant if we could get to that point here in the UK. Beggars are a plague on many towns and cities, and in 99.9% of cases it's a *lifestyle choice*. Even homelessness here (noting most beggars aren't homeless) is mostly by choice - there are plenty of beds in hostels available, however they won't accept you if you're drunk or on drugs. So people end up sleeping on the streets because they prefer that to being sober or drug free. Beggars exist because some people actually give them money, wrongly thinking they're helping somehow. If no-one carried cash any more, the beggars would stop begging and might even make some kind of attempt to get clean. Please bring your Swedish ways over here!