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Comment Re:Wow, that's America for you (Score 1) 53

Imagine thinking 4 days leave from your job is some kind if incentive. Most of the rest of the world would consider that a reduction in their legally mandated leave.

Military personnel get 30 days annual leave and can bank up to 60, plus federal holidays. Of course, depending on your unit taking it can be challenging.

Comment Re:Hope Rockstar doesn't miss the release date (Score 2) 53

So, sign up for two years of military service and get authorized leave for 4 days to play a video game? I guess if that really is the deciding factor to enlist, you probably are just the kind of person the army is looking for.

Nah, it's just an added Bennie that costs nothing; they'll still get any other incentives, which, depending on the specialty, can be thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

Comment Re:Can't wait for a story about failed anonymizati (Score 1) 50

Even if it would be truly anonymized, once combined with th other vast amounts od data Google has means it is possible to tie the anonymized data to specific, or a plausible group of people.A bad anonymizing process would be a far more likely culprit, but by analyzing patterns, something AI and computers are good at, could yield interesting results.

It has already been studied and accomplished. Too many studies to name here, but for example, in 1997 a Massachusetts researcher succeeded at converting zip code, birth date, and gender info from voter-registration lists, into links to someone's medical records.

It certainly isn't anything new, it's been used for a long time to develop information; computers have just gotten more powerful so it can be done faster and by people and companies, not just government agencies who could through lots of people at the task. Pattern recognition with computers goes way back, Johns Hopkins University, for example, was doing research on it in the 70's.

Comment Re: Correct alert? (Score 1) 119

BOTH screwed up. The system shouldn't have made the match and the human should have done a better job seeing that the match was wrong. I'll go one larger and say the people who created the procedures screwed up because they didn't make allowances for the possibility of the first two screw-ups.

Comment Re:Can't wait for a story about failed anonymizati (Score 4, Insightful) 50

You know it's going to happen - someone in charge of replacing/stripping all the names and replacing them with numbers, or whatever, is going to fail at some level. A bunch of PII will go into Gemini, and they won't be able to sue Spirit, because they won't exist, and Google will definitely make sure their contract excuses them from any liability.

Even if it would be truly anonymized, once combined with th other vast amounts od data Google has means it is possible to tie the anonymized data to specific, or a plausible group of people.A bad anonymizing process would be a far more likely culprit, but by analyzing patterns, something AI and computers are good at, could yield interesting results.

Comment Re:Trust But Verify (Score 1) 119

The problem is, people have been over-trusting technology since technology was invented. Consider the '70s when corporate representatives were so fond on the phrase "But the computer says...". Yes, you could hear the bold italics in their voice, as if it was the infallible final word on everything.

If THE COMPUTER says you shoplifted, rest assured, some dolt in a suit will treat that like God's own word booming from the clouds.

Comment Re:99.98% (Score 2) 119

the Facewatch system has a 99.98% accuracy rate,

So one in every five thousand people who walk into your stores is going to be falsely accused of a crime? Wow, thanks for making abundantly clear that people should NOT shop there...

More interesting is if 1 in five thousand is also a shoplifter, that means 1 fals positve and one real one, so a 50/50 chance of being wrong when an identificattion is made.

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