You've made a couple of these very broad, sweeping "the system can't do that" statements here... I'm interested to hear what is backing up these assertions.

This kind of priority-based behaviour system is nothing terribly special in robotics in general, so I'm intrigued as to why you feel what is a fairly accepted approach will never be used in autonomous cars.

I have similar questions regarding your comment above that autonomous cars wouldn't ever attempt a dodge because "not even experts can do in most cases". This seems to rest on the assumption that the autonomous system can't possibly operate better than a human. It's true the existing systems can be beaten by a human in many cases... but there's plenty of examples in the wild now showing this isn't an immutable constraint.

There is other responsibilities an employer has besides just "Vetting" though.

For example, child-safe policies are pretty ubiquitous now where the whole goal is to prevent and limit the damage a malicious actor can do in a given situation. Similarly, businesses often require multiple people to sign off on expenses above a certain value to help prevent fraud. Banks have structural separation between some branches to try and avoid conflict of interest in management of assets. Even end-to-end encryption (e.g., Google's recent change to allow organisations to generate and store their own keys so Google can't read them) is a form of mitigation so that a "bad" Google person can't read the orgs documents.

There is plenty of scope for a company to affect the amount of damage even a malicious actor can do within it's system. The question at the heart of this suit is whether Apple put in place sufficient controls to handle this situation. It's not yet known for certain what the outcome is.

This seems like the relevant point to discuss.

Why did Apple require/allow a partner access to private data on the iPhone in the first place? This is why Apple should be held responsible. The consumer doesn't have much ability to protect their device when in for repair, so the onus is on Apple to ensure adequate controls in place. In a case like this, where it's clear a partner has access beyond what was needed.

The reason and value of the lawsuit is to provide business incentive for Apple to improve the protections in their systems. E.g., add a maintenance mode that prevents unauthorized access to user data without explicit (and controlled) user consent.

The clear thing here is that the customer has NO control over who gets the phone once it's given to Apple to repair.

To respond directly to your analogy... if Apple is going to send someone to your house, you absolutely want them to be confident this individual is not going to murder you. If the visitor did murder someone in your house... of course you'd be suing Apple... because it's possible that their processes and protections had gaps and issues that should be fixed. The courts can decide at this point whether Apple did the proper due diligence or not.

A lawsuit gives the opportunity for an investigation to happen, and compensation to be provided in the case where negligence is found. It's not an automatically bad thing.

Just to clarify, you're saying that continuing the lock-down longer term is a lack of strategy, correct?

If so, I agree with you. Initially though, flattening the curve was a properly planned and researched strategy. It was deliberate steps take by governments, companies and individuals to help curb the initial spread. This is in direct contrast to many of the no-lockdown approaches which seemed to have no factual evidence or modelling to back up their theories, and basically all consisted of governments saying "nah, only the old people will die... it's probably fine!".

Definitely though the whole cower-in-our-homes thing is not the long term strategy being intended. At some point, we have enough medical knowledge, tracing practice and testing capabilities to start to carefully unlock parts of our community and economy that were shuttered to help keep the death rate in check.

How important is prediction for this issue?

There are small scale examples (i.e., practical experiments) that have shown the effect of CO2 on closed environment systems, like the Earth's atmosphere. These show that the temperatures rise as the CO2 increases.

We also have records of temperatures over the past 100+ years showing an increase in temperature, and an increase in CO2.

With these two pieces of data (some facts and an experiment), we can assert that the Earth is heating up, and the cause is likely to be CO2. The key purpose a prediction or model serves is to give an estimate of how bad the environment may get if CO2 keeps getting generated at these high levels.

All the models say: "it gets bad". You can question whether the model is fully accurate (perhaps it may not be as bad as the model predicts), but we already have evidence that says the trend is correct... things are heating up, and the environment is changing. Short of flat-out rejection of some very solid science and facts (i.e., global temperatures and CO2 measurements), everyone should be in agreement we need to deal with the CO2 levels, because the future is only going to be worse if we don't.

This does not align with my own observations on this matter.

If I look at something like the mandatory metadata retention in Australia, and how it's been used, the vast majority of the cases it's been used are of no clear value to society as a whole. Similarly, no major cases that have been successfully prosecuted since the program was started have been linked with the usage of this metadata repository. There is still no public proof ay clearly beneficial use of this data has occurred yet, several years after having been implemented.

We both arrive at the same conclusion at least, that a police-decryptable stream is likely more harm than benefit, but I feel your assumptions about the good-faith usage of this data are dangerous to make. I have not seen any proof that these kinds of data repositories are well controlled in general... and given how much data could be retrieved using such a system, I would need a lot of certainty that the society gains outweighed the risk of abuse.

So far, none of the governments pressuring for this change have been able to make even a vaguely believable assurance on this point.

The last thing I want is another robo-prosecution system that runs amok and starts flinging out automated infractions and charges. Between speed cameras, stop light cameras & automated debt-collection programs, automated parking infringements, etc we already have way too many.

I've seen two reasonable alternatives around here to explain the market reaction by the way. So, I'm certainly not closed to another explanation for what stock price indicates in this instance.

Unfortunately, you have presented no theories or constructive thoughts on the subject. Repeatedly asserting "that's not how markets work" does not prove you possess any particular skill or knowledge on the subject.

Ah... I was wondering when you might stop by.

I've read a lot of your comments... You've still yet to explain your position on this in any coherent way, or provide any possible alternative to how things should work.

It's a brilliant strategy tbh... Hard to shoot down your theory when all you do is tell others they are wrong.

Your repeated belief that stockholders ought to be immune to bad choices by Facebook purely because the investors were foolish enough to sink money into non-voting stock...? I really don't understand how you think this stock market thing works in real life.

It's really quite simple: if you profit as a result of a company's immoral actions, it's not unexpected that you will suffer by reduced dividends/share price when the company is called to account. It's not "punishing" people... It's merely good economic cause and effect. Next time, the investor should learn to be more mindful of the downside of non-voting stock, and why it's important to have a say in company choices.

Companies, especially ones with a track record for being irresponsible, will likely only adjust behaviour when their available capital takes a hit. A rising stock price means the shares are still in demand.

How else can you explain it?

That's the whole bloody point of the stock market. What else is it, if not a way to invest capital in companies that you believe will be profitable in future. If you are investing without doing your homework, then you are a bad investor. If you are with a fund that is doing this routinely, then the market *should* burn the fund, because they are not doing their due diligence.

The stock price is supposed to factor in risks vs. rewards a company faces, and is supposed to be relatively accurate because many, many people are doing their own evaluations to determine this value.

Blind investment is just silly. Anyone doing that on the stock market deserves to get pummeled...

That is precisely what they are paid for. Fund managers should have already been questioning the stability of the Facebook stock after the first round of fines, and should have been closely monitoring the situation afterwards. The fact that no-one batted an eye after the first privacy violations, and in fact continued to invest more in the company with a pretty bad track record at that point of protecting their user data, shows how inconsequential the FTC is.

You don't seem to be following your argument through to it's logical end point. Facebook was fined because it broke the law, not once, but twice. It's share price deserves to fall, in spite of the fact that this hurts clueless investors in the company, because that is the only way to hit the paypackets of the people that engineered the terrible decisions within Facebook.

The company has openly flaunted the law a second time, and has suffered almost nothing as a result. What will drive the so-called change now?

So where is Facebook's equivalent of jail time and other impacts? This is the point... Facebook & it's investors all appear to believe that it made more than it lost as a result of the fine. If you fined a bank robber $50 when they stole $200... then did nothing else to them, you've just given them an easy way to make $150.

This is what the stock markets are saying has happened to Facebook. The stock price is saying "Facebook is still a great bet, and is going to continue to grow steadily in coming years"... not something you want investors predicting when the company breaks the law a second time and is slapped with a record-breaking fine.

Stock price reflects a company's predicted profitability on the open market. It's going up because Facebook has not lost enough money for people to question it's behaviour yet.

The stock value drops because other stockholders start questioning whether the company valuation (i.e., it's predicted profits they're wanting dividends from) is accurate. The problem you seem to be missing here is that the stockholders, that is, the people supplying capital to Facebook with the expectation that they'll be able to receive their investment back PLUS a healthy amount of interest, all believe that Facebook is going to be even more profitable in future years in spite of this fine.

$5 billion wasn't even enough to make the stock price stay steady... it still rose after the announcement. This was after Facebook broke the law ONCE AGAIN, while already under a good behaviour bond for previous privacy violations. This is clear news to other large companies out there that you can break the law, and still grow steadily.

As the previous poster said... the stock price should have dropped if the fine was big enough to make people wonder whether Facebook's profitability was going to continue to grow. The clear answer here is that no-one outside Facebook was phased... so why is Facebook likely to change it's behaviour?

The risk I feel you're overlooking here is that kids at these young ages will mimic stuff they see, because they don't yet have the depth of understanding required to determine which actions are dangerous.

It's not the possibly-immoral-or-disagreeable things that people are concerned about. It would be the video that shows someone stabbing or harming themselves, or eating poisonous things (hello tide-pods!) that cause the outrage. On their own, the kid might not think to try this, but once they see someone else doing it, you can bet it'll move to the top of their todo list.

There are some really good reasons to shelter children of certain ages from certain things...