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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: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: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.

Comment Process Patents (Score 1) 50

Independent of the sleazy nature of the glass, process patents have gotten out of hand and need to be reigned in. People have made highlight reels for years, this is just an automation tool that certainly could be protected rationally by copyright without a claim to have invented automating highlight reels. I mean, AI could already do it with the right prompt and training.

Comment Re:What?? Must be switched off immediately! (Score 2, Insightful) 10

I mean, this could be used to see things about the non-existent climate change, right? It must be banned! Or maybe put 100% tariffs on every byte of data!

Yes, you must inject one byte for every byte you take; can't let you get away with science. Maybe Congress should make it illegal to take publicly available information and use it for scientific purposes.

Since researchers used publicly available orbital information from Starlink satellites , I wonder how long it will be before Musk wants to get paid for the data.

Comment Not a big deal to me (Score 2) 261

Freshman year is an acclimation and get you non-core stuff out of the way. Taking them out means the easy A's don't inflate your grade point so your reported GPA is mr indicative of your actual major performance. Personally, when I interview I really didn't care about GPA. You got in to a school where we hire, you made it through and graduated; I always thought using them was just a way for a company to say "We hired the brightest." I was more interested in what you did during school, what you were interested in; a few tech questions sorted out what you know.

Years ago, when I got my grad degree, one company wanted to know your undergrad GPA as well. For fuck sake, I got into a school you obviously hire a lot of people from, I graduated , and my undergrad was over a decade ago. Needless to say, I didn't accept their offer to interview; I suspect with my initial reaction to their request it would not have gone well.

The real problem is grade inflation, which makes GA even less important.

Comment Re:Translated from History. (Score 1) 45

"More than $8 trillion of capital is expected to be invested, a staggering sum. We see an enormous opportunity for private capital to finance a portion of this along with public capital."

Translated: “We’ll get all the upside and foist the downside on public investors. “

What exactly is the "public capital" they speak of here? Are they offering pre-build IPOs or some equally delusional investment "opportunity" while pretending vaporware could never dot-bomb again? History is a bit curious if we're still that dumb, or if we've become even dumber.

"No one in this world, so far as I know... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." H L Mencken

Comment Translated from WallSpeak (Score 5, Insightful) 45

"More than $8 trillion of capital is expected to be invested, a staggering sum. We see an enormous opportunity for private capital to finance a portion of this along with public capital."

Translated: “We’ll get all the upside and foist the downside on public investors. “

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