Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:FOR MAGA ONLY (Score 2) 150

This has nothing to do with rationality.
Wind turbines have long been a hate object for Trump.
He has claimed that they cause cancer and that they ruin the environment, etc.

And they obscure the ocean view from his beach-front golf course in Scotland.
(He lost the legal battle to have hem stopped/removed.)

How Trump's loathing for wind turbines started with a Scottish court battle

Submission + - Houston man arrested for threatening Gov. Abbott's office over anime (abc13.com) 1

alternative_right writes: A man from Houston was arrested and charged after making terroristic threats to Gov. Greg Abbott's office in July, court records show.

The court documents show that the threatening voicemail was apparently about anime and the recent Texas law requiring age verification for certain websites, such as pornographic and obscene content. The voicemail to the Governor's Constituent Communications line read in part:

"I don't know which one of you sons of (expletive) passed this (expletive) bill to get this damn (expletive) blocking my (expletive) anime, but you whole (expletive) (expletive) need to unpass this (expletive). Y'all are (expletive) ridiculous with your (expletive) (expletive). My Google account says I'm (expletive) over the age of 18, and your (expletive) is passing these (expletive) laws. I'm a (expletive) stab every (expletive) one of you (expletive). Unlock my (expletive) anime."

Comment Betting is not like stocks (Score 5, Insightful) 52

TFA: "If you want to ban profiting from the failure of clinical trials, you would start with the stock market, where the financial incentive for this type of profit is orders of magnitude larger," said Kalshi spokesman Jack Such, pointing to stock market short sellers who have profited from clinical trial failures. "While Kalshi and the stock market are the same in this regard, they do differ in one important way: the stock market doesn't give any valuable information to researchers," Such said.

This is either ignorant and/or maliciously deceptive for the simple fact that there are rules against insider trading. Investors in pharmaceutical companies are not (or at least, should not be) privy to modifying the conduct of a trial in order to secure or deny approval. There is no similar oversight for these betting markets. Sure, they might say that your wager could be disqualified if it comes out that you interfered in the outcome, but that is little comfort for the trial participants and the drug sponsors, who can't just hop into a time machine and run it back.

And that's why there are so many regulations surrounding the conduct of clinical trials. People might argue that there is corruption and untoward influence already--that FDA approvals (especially under the current administration) are not necessarily based purely on scientific and medical legitimacy. But that's a very strange argument to put forth in defense of enabling MORE interference.

While I'm at it, let's also just shut down the absurd idea that betting markets somehow facilitate better information sharing about novel treatments. The point of these trials is to gather the evidence in an unbiased, objective, scientific way. Betting on them is not going to gather you any more meaningful evidence than what the trial designers have specified in the study protocol. The idea that "the market is efficient" is not in any meaningful sense a scientific approach to deciding whether an investigational product actually works. If that were the case, the FDA would be basing approvals off stock prices.

Honestly, who do these assholes think they're fooling? The only reason why they want to do this is because the house takes their cut, win or lose.

Comment The point is the current framework is inadequate (Score 1) 87

We can debate ad nauseam about the appropriateness of Asimov's laws, their historical context, how he as a SF writer applied them in his work, whether or not he was "right," etc. But the essential problem remains: the current framework that we are using to develop these technologies are inadequate for the purpose of ensuring safety.

Now, some people would argue otherwise--that, to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs. Every technology has the potential for misuse. Nothing can ever be 100% safe. And I don't dispute this, but that is also not the point, because, again, the central question of safety has to do with designing systems that will not destroy us. We're not talking about individual adverse impacts--which, mind you, we should strive to avoid as well--but the kind of technology that has the potential for global impact. Not enough effort has been made to safeguard against this contingency.

And we also have people who would say that such worries are needlessly alarmist, and assert that current systems are nowhere near that level of capability. That may be true. But that kind of thinking is much like climate change denialism in that it is rooted in a failure to anticipate and plan. Scientists warned us about climate change over 50 years ago and nothing was done; the evidence continues to mount and there still are people who have a financial and political motive to deny it. And for similar motives, there are people who insist on moving forward incautiously, with no regard for safety or ethics or consequences, because it gives them power and money.

I'm less interested in the specifics about whether Asimov's laws are appropriate or sufficient or correctly ordered, than I am about what we actually need to do as a race to prevent disasters. Let the historical record show that have been profoundly cavalier--we literally discovered planet-destroying science (nuclear fission) and then treated it like a toy. I don't think it is unreasonable to express doubts about our ability to have learned our lesson.

Comment Um... (Score 4, Informative) 87

Aren't most of the stories written around these three rules about ambiguities and loopholes, how they're incomplete, misinterpreted, misapplied and how things otherwise go wrong - for us humans? An AI determining that humans must be perpetually babysat to prevent them from injuring themselves or others is a common storyline.

The Asimov Problem

Almost every story in his robot series is about the ways the Three Laws fail — the edge cases, the interpretations, the unintended consequences of simple rules applied to a complex world. The Laws were a starting point, and his fiction was a decades-long exploration of why starting points are never enough.

Comment Re:We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score 3, Informative) 124

I love how you gave zero fucks about birds being killed ...

Cats followed by glass buildings kill orders of magnitude more birds than wind turbines, which are about 9th on the list.

No, President Trump: Wind turbines aren't killing 'all the birds.' Cats are.

Wind Turbines & Birds: Myths & Facts Uncovered

Cats, cars, buildings and vehicles kill about 6,000 times more birds than wind turbines do. The biggest killer of birds in the U.S. by a long shot is domestic cats. After cats, building collisions due to glass (599 million bird deaths annually, on average) and vehicle collisions (214.5 million annually) pose the second and third biggest threats to birds. Poison kills an estimated 72 million birds each year, and collisions with electrical lines result in 25 million deaths annually. Then, way down at No. 9 on the list of threats to birds is wind turbines, which caused an average of 234,012 bird deaths annually.

Comment Re:We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score 2) 124

When you run a government like a business it's not there for you it's there for the owners. And if you're reading this you are not an owner.

Even worse? Running a business like Trump runs a business - or a casino (six filed for bankruptcy).
Businesses of Donald Trump that went bankrupt (24)

D - Donald J. Trump Foundation
G - Golden Nugget Atlantic City, GoTrump.com
H - Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City
N - New Jersey Generals
P - Paradox Hotel Vancouver, Plaza Hotel
T - TD Trump Deutschland, Trump Entertainment Resorts, Trump Ice, Trump Institute, Trump magazines, Trump Mortgage, The Trump Network, Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump Productions, Trump Shuttle, Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump Vodka, Trump World's Fair, Trump: The Game, Trumped!

Submission + - New Orleans will use AI to answer 911 calls instead of a human (shreveporttimes.com)

fjo3 writes: If you call 911 in New Orleans, you may hear the sound of an artificial intelligence (AI) agent answering your call instead of a human voice.

The Orleans Parish Communication District (OPCD) is changing the way dispatch calls are handled in New Orleans with the implementation of new technology.

Submission + - VA Gov Spanberger Working to Stop the Dominion-NextEra Merger (archive.is)

schwit1 writes: NextEra Energy, a Florida-based utility company, has filed paperwork to buy Dominion Energy for about $67 billion, creating the largest regulated electric utility in the world. Virginia’s State Corporation Commission is the regulatory body tasked with reviewing the application, and the SCC’s commissioners will ultimately decide whether to approve, deny or impose new conditions on any potential merger.

As a Virginian, I am deeply skeptical about whether selling our primary state-regulated utility to an out-of-state company is good for the commonwealth. I have serious questions about what this deal would mean for us. And as governor, I intend to get answers and be a voice for Virginians in the process.

That is why I will be taking the legal step of “intervening” in this proposed merger, which means that as governor, I will formally request to be a party to the case.

I know this action is unprecedented by a Virginia governor — but so, too, is the size of this proposed merger and its potential impact on the commonwealth. Virginians deserve to know that their leaders are laser-focused on ensuring that their needs are part of the SCC review.

Slashdot Top Deals

Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage.

Working...