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Comment Re: Better late than never (Score 1) 46

I'm not sure I like the idea of Google, never mind Apple (or even worse, Samsung) skimming off the top of every single purchase I make.

On the other hand, the fraud losses are a lot lower, and as far as I know the transaction fee is the same, and the credit card company pays the 0.15% fee out of their cut. So while it theoretically *could* eventually drive up the rate in the future, I don't think that's happening currently.

Comment Re:How do you play videos inside an MRI machine? (Score 1) 39

OK, off topic, but how do you display videos to somebody inside an MRI scanner? The magnetic / EMF forces those machines generate are pretty titanic, and any piece of metal gets sucked into the center of it.

Assuming it is installed inside somehow, you can avoid the projectile risk by not using any ferrous metal in its construction. Non-ferrous metals (e.g. dental fillings) aren't a problem in an MRI, though you may feel the electrical eddy currents induced by the magnetic fields. For something like an LCD panel, you'd probably want to shield the ever-living crap out of it to minimize problems, and I'm not even certain that it is feasible for that reason, but that's different from the LCD panel physically flying off the mount.

Comment Re:Time for another anti-trust investigation Googl (Score 5, Informative) 40

as evil is almost always necessary when the stated goal of your business is to maximize shareholder value at all costs

Don't interpret this as me having an opinion on this specific article (I don't), but that's a gross misrepresentation of what the law requires. As someone running a business, you *do* have a fiduciary duty to the stockholders, but that's not the same thing as requiring you to maximize shareholder value at all costs. Doing what is best for the company and the shareholders does not strictly mean more dollars.

For example, if a company had a choice whether to make a drone that would make a lot of money by selling to militaries, but would be used to annihilate the shareholders, no rational person would claim that the fiduciary duty requires them to build the drone.

More broadly, companies have a responsibility to behave ethically, for two reasons:

  • Perceptions of unethical behavior can impact a company's long-term profitability by discouraging customers/users.
  • Unethical behavior is often illegal, and when it isn't illegal, it often becomes illegal as soon as a company demonstrates that it is possible.

In other words, behaving unethically is how companies find themselves massively regulated in ways that negatively impact long-term profits. Every antitrust suit is an example of this, as the only reason those laws exist is because some company previously behaved unethically.

Comment Re:Is it ragebait, or (Score 1) 214

The older people get, the more set in their ways they become, and the less they like change. So basically, people become more conservative as they age, and less tolerant of things they don't understand. They also accumulate more wealth and favor keeping more of it (fiscal conservatism). And so on. This is generally a well-understood phenomenon.

Anyone who was not a liberal at 20 years of age had no heart, while anyone who was still a liberal at 40 had no head.

- Winston Churchill (among others)

To be fair, back then, 40 was old. But yes, you get my point.

Comment Re:Cities? (Score 5, Insightful) 53

When companies throw around terms like "cities and towns" for drone logistics, they are usually talking about sprawling suburban developments with neat, wide-open lawns, not dense urban cores.

Well, yeah, but those are still cities. Almost twice as many people live in parts of cities that are not "dense urban cores".

And the dense areas involve apartment complexes with hundreds or thousands of units and interior halls, so they're not delivering one package to the building; they're delivering a hundred. It wouldn't make sense to send drones for that.

But if you can handle the suburban sprawl with drones, that's a huge logistics win, because that's where all the time is spent — not by somebody going to an urban-core building and dropping a hundred packages in the mail room, but by somebody going to a hundred individual houses and dropping off a hundred packages one at a time.

Comment Re:How this may play out (Score 3, Interesting) 72

I don't think that's correct? Possibly I'm misreading this, but it looks like the study involved giving two things, both the Keytruda, and a separate personalized vaccine.

You're not misreading it. It is individualized. Different cancers express different antigens, and the mRNA vaccine needs to construct something that expresses those same antigens to train the immune system to attack them.

The nice thing about mRNA, is that it is potentially relatively cheap to synthesize mRNA strands and replicate them. It won't be hundreds of dollars, but it won't be millions, either. Right now, I think it's hundreds of thousands per patient, but that will go down over time as they streamline the process of taking a sample of the tumor and determining an mRNA gene sequence that matches said cancer. And economies of scale on the equipment will also probably help.

It may also be the case that it becomes less individualized over time. At some point, we might reach the point where they have a bunch of pre-sequenced antigens that are all ready to go, and someone just keys in a list of antigens, and a piece of software spits out the mRNA sequence. At that point, it is still individualized, but with a much, much more streamlined process for generating it.

Note that I don't work in this field, so take all of this as the opinion of an educated layperson observer. :-)

Comment Re:Is it ragebait, or (Score 3) 214

X is bad for our democracy because it's controlled by money - money can purchase access to eyeballs through "promoted" Tweets (or whatever they call them now), and money is the basis of the design of X's algorithm (well, that and Musk's ego). So when the oligarchs, massive corporations, and egomaniacs control the information that people see, it quickly destroys democracy and becomes unhealthy for all of us.

And by that, you mean X is bad for our democracy because it is a for-profit corporation. Free speech and corporate fiscal sponsorship of that speech have been at odds since time immemorial. The problem is that the corporate sponsorship seems to be winning and the free speech seems to be losing, drowned out by the voices of those who have more money, more bots, etc.

Comment Re:Simple truth is ragebait to all partisans. (Score 5, Insightful) 214

Of course it serves more ragebait for Democrats and probably a lot of Republican socialists, too. Most of X is going to be considered ragebait for them. I mean they are going to hate that people are practicing with and enjoying firearms.

About 20% of Democrats own firearms. So no, they won't. But implying that Democrats are going to be up in arms because they're somehow so fragile that the idea of people using firearms would cause them crippling pain is rage baiting. Please stop.

They are going to hate to hear Libertarians tell the truth about COVID.

They are going to hear people who have not actually read any of the scientific papers tell what a bunch of people pushing an agenda on YouTube claim is the truth about COVID. FTFY.

They are going to hate to hear about the true source of Inflation (Government).

Does anyone actually disagree with that?

They are going to hate to see folks be told about migrant crisis in Europe and about the ICE sending migrants in the US packing.

What migrant crisis? You mean that immigrants initially may cost more than they contribute, but in the long term, contribute more than they cost? This is just an economics lesson and has zero to do with ICE rounding people up who are legally allowed to be here and who have harmed no one, terminating their right to be here, and deporting them, often to countries where they are then immediately imprisoned or killed, or to countries where they don't speak the language, or other fundamental human rights abuses. This has zero to do with the upsurge in underage pregnancies occurring in ICE detention because of illegally unsafe conditions. This has zero to do with deaths occurring in ICE detention because of illegally denying prisoners access to adequate medical care. And so on.

What you're missing is that the left doesn't object to deporting dangerous people. The left doesn't even object to deporting people en masse so long as they are granted their constitutional right to a fair hearing and due process. What the left objects to are gestapo tactics, illegally rounding college students on valid student visas in the middle of the night and deporting them on a bench warrant obtained under false pretense, locking people in cages at density that exceeds what any sane person would consider humane treatment, illegal discharge of firearms resulting in death of unarmed civilians, and any number of other criminal acts committed by ICE in their war on non-white people.

If you want to change policy, change policy. But change it above the board, through actions by Congress, and make those changes explicitly non-retroactive. Don't treat people like garbage. If you do that, the left won't have a problem with you. They might disagree with you, but they will not be offended by you. What offends the left is when the right shows disrespect and contempt for them. And they should be offended by that, because not respecting others is per se offensive.

They are going to really dislike when they see how little respect anyone has for "trans" anything and how much of a joke they consider it.

They're going to dislike it because disrespecting people is a sin. They might not use the word "sin", but the moral argument is the same.

They don't want folks learning that the last 26 years we've had more H1B visas than jobs created in IT in the USA.

Do you think H1-B reduction is a left-right thing? It isn't. It's a corporate-sponsored-politicians versus everyone else thing. The voters on the left don't like H1-Bs, either. They just dislike them for different reasons than the right does. The right dislikes H1-Bs because they bring in more immigrants. The left dislikes H1-Bs because they trap immigrants in jobs and make transferring hard, which makes it possible for companies to mistreat them, not pay them a fair wage, etc. The only people who like them are the ones who are in the pockets of the companies that take advantage of them as a cost-reduction tool.

They are going to hate the anti-communism sentiments. The anti-war vibe will piss off both sets of partisans who have their pet wars. The pro-drug attitudes will also cause Republican head-explosions.

Not many people in the U.S. like communism. The problem comes from folks on the right painting everything they don't like as communist, and from painting socialism with the same brush. They are not the same. Socialism is a spectrum, with the moderate end wanting things like guaranteed medical care, K-12 schooling, TVA, police and fire protection, etc. and the extreme end wanting governments to buy all the big companies and give the money back to the people.

A lot of folks on the right paint even the moderate end as communism, which is an attitude that's far-removed from any reasoned analysis of objective reality. And they do this because blowhard politicians use the word "communism" as a shibboleth/dog whistle, along with words like "woke", "DEI", etc., deliberately distorting the meaning of words to score cheap political points. It's not the positions the right takes that offend the left. It is the massively distorted caricatures of the left's positions that the right has to use to scare people into voting for them.

There honestly isn't much there for them. I mean it's mostly just the truth about what's really going on. I'm sure they are going to hate that. I've gotta say, fuck the both of them and I'm super glad they're mad. Truth is treason in an empire of lies.

I haven't seen a whole lot of truth coming out of X. I've mostly seen a lot of people who think they're speaking the truth, whose entire premise could be torn down by a mountain of studies proving conclusively that they're wrong, were it not for the fact that the people arguing the other side are also arguing from ignorance. To be fair, this pretty much describes political discussions on the Internet in general, not just X.

Comment Re:Is it ragebait, or (Score 2, Insightful) 214

Yes, to expand on your point - just looking at demographics the Democrats tend to skew younger and the Republicans tend to skew older.

This is kind of the nature of things. The older people get, the more set in their ways they become, and the less they like change. So basically, people become more conservative as they age, and less tolerant of things they don't understand. They also accumulate more wealth and favor keeping more of it (fiscal conservatism). And so on. This is generally a well-understood phenomenon.

Emotional maturity tends to skew older as well, so it offers two possibilities:
1) The results would be the same based on age, not politicial affiliation.

If you mean that ragebait baits younger people more, you're probably correct. Older people at some point realize that they're not going to change anyone's opinion when it is so thoroughly unhinged in its presentation, because that means they aren't presenting an opinion because of careful thought, but rather because of conditioning. So it's usually a waste of time to reply at all.

2) People with less maturity tend to want echo chambers, those with emotional control can more easily engage with challenging opinions.

IMO, rage baiting and echo chambers are basically two sides of the same coin. It's either deliberately provoking them to condition them to attack anything that disagrees with their opinions or it is regurgitating opinions. If anything, rage baiting is the fire that tests the echo chamber. It fuels it. It creates it.

I'm okay with engaging with challenging opinions. This is not the same thing as rage baiting. A challenging opinion requires actually giving reasons for that opinion, supporting evidence, etc. Rage baiting is assuming the contrary without supporting evidence, acting as though everyone knows that it is true, and accusing people of being stupid if they disagree. The two have very little in common. It's the difference between arguing with an intellectual and arguing with a deliberate troll. One can change opinions, or at least refine them. The other is just a bunch of talking heads shouting at each other.

Comment Re:Facebook is atrocious this way (Score 1) 214

I'd found Facebook mostly infers your political beliefs from the politicians you follow, and if you don't follow any politicians it will assume you align similarly with the bulk of your friends. The easiest way to get it to stop showing you political views you're not interested is, unfortunately, to start following some of the politicians that you hate the least.

What if there are no politicians that we don't hate infinitely?

Comment Re:What a benefit! (Score 3, Insightful) 53

Mod parent Funny, though "continues to be money" was a bit annoying or something. Or maybe my case is too weird or too ancient? Even worse, it was an open contract with no special incentives. (And none of that insane "Thank you for your service" garbage in those days.)

It's a statistically correct statement, at least post-1973. When asked what the main consideration for joining was, money was the top answer, and IIRC more than half gave that answer. The military is a steady job and provides other financial-adjacent benefits, such as the G.I. Bill paying for higher education. And when there aren't so many steady jobs out there, that makes it more compelling.

Not saying it's the only reason, just that it is one of the larger influencing factors in how well the military is able to recruit.

Comment What a benefit! (Score 4, Interesting) 53

I mean sure, I might die in a pointless war in Iran that wouldn't have been necessary if the same guy who started this war hadn't ripped up the nuclear agreements we had previously with Iran the last time he was in charge, but think about getting to play a video game for FOUR WHOLE DAYS!

But in all seriousness, the main motivation for joining the military continues to be money. So I guess if they were planning to play GTA anyway, that's like extra free money, so maybe it might tip the balance for a few people... but I doubt it will rise above the noise floor. Politics, active wars, etc. also don't usually rise above the noise floor, surprisingly.

The only big factor in recruiting is the economy. When the job market is good, recruiting drops. When the job market stinks, recruiting increases. So if they really want to increase military recruiting, all they have to do is tank the job market further, and it will happen naturally.

Comment Re:Organizers (Score 2) 86

What do you mean, a search task? I just pop the CD in, and it plays. I mean yeah, sometimes I have to flip through my CD organizer at a stop light, but it doesn't take more than a few seconds.

Even on a phone, if you're playing an album, you're playing an album. You search for it once, not over and over. A 15% increase in fatalities, if this isn't just noise that will regress to the mean after more data comes in, would point to people being distracted for an extended period of time... you know... by actually listening to the music and paying attention to that instead of to their driving.

Comment Re:99.98% (Score 4, Interesting) 119

and

"A correct alert was sent to the retailer, but was subsequently subject to human error in the way it was handled in store,"

So was the guy a shoplifter or not? Because apparently not and the human error was acting on the alert it seems. Sounds like the front fell off.

Facial recognition software doesn't actually "recognize" your face, it selects a series of points the algorithm thinks important in a pattern and matches them to other patterns in the database. It's the same technology, though less advanced, than fingerprint readers. Until better filters for the patterns were developed there were a lot of false positives in the fingerprint readers as well, and I suspect this will be the case with facial recognition software as well.

Faces are way less unique than fingerprints unless you are using a camera with such high resolution that you can see the individual hairs, pimples, birthmarks, moles, freckles, and other tiny details, and even then, only if you are analyzing it at that level of detail after using fixed points to unwrap the image into a flat UV map for comparison.

Statistically, no two people have the same fingerprint, so it's just a matter of comparing enough points to achieve the desired confidence level. At a shape/structural level, lots of pairs of unrelated people have faces that are too much alike to reliably detect the difference, likely because there's not as much genetic diversity as one might assume.

Compounding this is the fact that a fingerprint is detected by being pressed flat against something, whereas face shape has to be recognized from arbitrary angles.

Any approach that does not stitch together multiple camera angles to get a complete image of the entire face and then unwrap it into a high-res UV map and then use the result as a secondary filter pass after structural comparison is doomed to fail frequently when presented with an adequately large number of people. There are simply too many people that look far too much alike even within a fairly small geographical area like a state or small country, much less the entire world.

Accuracy is the wrong number to give. Accuracy is right answers over wrong answers, without any info about whether they were false positives or false negatives. What you really want is a relationship between the number of false positives and by total positives, or perhaps the relationship between false positives and total negatives. The latter is called specificity (true_negatives/ (true_negatives + false_positives)), and gives you an indication of how likely people are to be falsely accused. This needs to be incredibly low.

But the better number would be false_positives / (false_positives + true_positives), because that would tell you how likely it is that someone flagged is really the person in question.

Either way, for this purpose, the only rational way to use the tech is to watch flagged people more carefully. Trying to escort them out of the store is going to be a disaster of false positives, for all the reasons previously mentioned (look-alikes, limitations caused by camera perspective, etc.).

Comment Re: Why? (Score 2) 51

There's an easy fix for that. If someone distributes a free app and that app receives more than a certain (high) number of downloads per month, then charge them a fair fee for hosting the download, where that fee reflects the actual costs of hosting that app plus a small markup for Apple to get some profit.

This is defensible because Apple is recovering actual costs here. Not just piggybacking on someone's subscription service.

False. It is still indefensible, because it is a problem of Apple's own creation. If Apple wants to charge for it, that's fine, but only if they also allow their devices to download apps from somewhere other than Apple.

For in-app purchases of content, it already works that way, of course, but I'm assuming this isn't what is being discussed here, because it would be particularly heinous of Apple to want to charge up to a 15% tax on content that it had no involvement either in payment for or distribution of.

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