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Comment Soulful Technology (Score 1) 181

I appreciate his support of analyzing the potential impacts of AI in a longer cultural context. It's a soulful perspective that I've appreciated beyond the basics of data privacy and ethical auditing of models. While many people try to find leaders that match all their positions on issues (an impossible task), I found this Pope Francis to be transparent in applying core beliefs in the Common Good and love for one's neighbors on the planet. Hopefully we will have another Pope that can effectively spread the potential for good in the world. Who knows, maybe technology will help amplify the Common Good over zero-sum outcomes.

Comment Some other steps to take first (Score 1) 102

I'm a fan of the government system we have (it was founded with the assumption of the Common Good driving free citizens). I am also optimistic about the distributed and private phase of technology replacing current analog, non-transparent systems. There is still a big gap between the two. Governments print official money. Bitcoin represents a new store of value. Taxes are the intersection. Look at the countries that have become dollar pegged over the last few decades. They have given up their monetary policy for the stability of the US Treasury. What happens when the US Treasury shifts to decentralized super-governmental store of value? We still need to get through the refactoring and codifying the governance system that encompasses the transition away from the dollar to DeFi. I am not sure Miami is going to be the city to lead this charge unless they are willing to replace their local bureaucracy in concert with shifting away from the dollar.

Comment Stopping at the source (Score 1) 199

I totally commend people willing to clean up the existing mess, but yes, we need to stop the source. On Monday I attended a lunch lecture from Beth Terry, author of Plastic Free. It was part of a series hosted by Oceana (https://oceana.org). Here's a short post I wrote on medium: https://medium.com/@davepander...

Comment Which is better? GPS tracking or Fingerprinting? (Score 1) 260

I think the question is more about what is better? Some would say that the "big-brother" monitoring and tracking of TNCs deters more bad-actors (on both driver and passenger side) than a one-time fingerprint check. Does anyone have any data showing that background checks have prevented people from driving? Or is there a correlation between people with "records" driving with TNCs and committing assaults? Are people debating universal finger-printing as a measure to "make things more safe" or just a "Taxi's have to do it, so everyone else should bear the same economic barrier to entry" argument? If GPS tracking and profiles are more safe, then the taxi industry should adopt that and drop the fingerprinting. An interesting thing about the political process is that the drivers and companies have to deal with the TNCs' technological and social media advantage. I have seen it many times: TNC's can easily accelerate the political process because they have their customers' email addresses. They can get petitions signed much more easily. Cab Companies and Taxi drivers do not have this option. This fact alone has distorted what city councils across America see, TNCs can get their customers to click a few buttons to complain with an email blast or social media post, while taxi companies have a much harder time getting petitions signed. I'm not saying this is "unfair" but more that it's a structural reality in the current TNC vs. Taxi industry conflict.

Comment Re: This is where I worry. (Score 1) 356

Wow, I subscribed to Stratfor as a grad student and really appreciated their balanced analysis. Not only that, they talked about travel safety and freely published the bulk of their analysis. I always saw them as a great source of information that wasn't colored by the politically influenced mass media. What a shame, Anonymous just lost a lot of credit in my book. Now they took my Debit Card #? I hope my rent check doesn't bounce, things are still tight.
Education

200 Students Admit Cheating After Professor's Online Rant 693

Over 200 University of Central Florida students admitted to cheating on a midterm exam after their professor figured out at least a third of his class had cheated. In a lecture posted on YouTube, Professor Richard Quinn told the students that he had done a statistical analysis of the grades and was using other methods to identify the cheats, but instead of turning the list over to the university authorities he offered the following deal: "I don't want to have to explain to your parents why you didn't graduate, so I went to the Dean and I made a deal. The deal is you can either wait it out and hope that we don't identify you, or you can identify yourself to your lab instructor and you can complete the rest of the course and the grade you get in the course is the grade you earned in the course."
Science

Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132

An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"

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