Comment Re:Jackasses (Score 2) 20
I think there is no scenario where AI can realistically get "banned". The genie is out of the bottle, may as well know what it is capable of.
Comment Re:Lol. No. (Score 1) 302
Yeah, you like hanging around with your friends. You would probably enjoy it the same way in most other jobs if the same people were there. Honestly I've been a programmer for about 30 years as well. Sometimes my co-workers are cool, sometimes I've been stuck in a room with jerks. Sometimes management supports you, sometimes they are toxic sociopaths. Its rarely been about whether its fun to fix bugs or implement some new feature in the application. Occasionally its been interesting to check out some new tech, but 90% its been whether you can stand the people that you have to interact with.
Comment Re:Plane (Score 1) 51
Another one is Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Despite the accolades, apparently the film suffered because people did not want to see a film about Brazil.
Comment Re:Started reading it, then stopped (Score 1) 64
Is this comment satire?
Comment Re:What's a robot? (Score 1) 187
"who is going to protect the 1% from the mobs with pitchforks?"
I think the the robots with automatic weapons will be more than a match.
Comment Re:What's a robot? (Score 2) 187
At which point welfare will be slashed, because "lazy people who dont even work can afford luxuries!!!!" or some such. Corporates have no interest in the well being of the general populace, and the fact that there would be abundant resources for everyone means nothing. They have become adept at grabbing larger and larger slices of the pie, and making the pie bigger does not mean the extra will be shared in any equitable way at all. I really despair for this kind of future, because the only way that wealth gets shared in western countries is when individuals have commercially valuable skills. Once those skills become obsolete or superseded by automation there is no mechanism for distribution beyond welfare or charity. Charity is often questionable, while welfare is opposed by half the population, egged on by the most powerful. Best hope that I can see are those predictions that say that there will always be new jobs and new industries being created that we cant even imagine today, and humans will always be in demand for employment if they want it. Maybe, but that seems like wishful thinking.
Comment Re:I have way less secrets than they. (Score 1) 243
Oh thank you so much for bursting that asshole's bubble. Arrogant dicks that don't know as much as they think they do and bulldoze their way through and shut down other people's ideas are the bane of my life.
Submission + - Obama Administration Set to Expand Sharing of Data That NSA Intercepts (nytimes.com)
schwit1 writes: The Obama administration is on the verge of permitting the National Security Agency to share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.
The change would relax longstanding restrictions on access to the contents of the phone calls and email the security agency vacuums up around the world, including bulk collection of satellite transmissions, communications between foreigners as they cross network switches in the United States, and messages acquired overseas or provided by allies.
The idea is to let more experts across American intelligence gain direct access to unprocessed information, increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value. That also means more officials will be looking at private messages — not only foreigners' phone calls and emails that have not yet had irrelevant personal information screened out, but also communications to, from, or about Americans that the NSA's foreign intelligence programs swept in incidentally.
Civil liberties advocates criticized the change, arguing that it will weaken privacy protections. They said the government should disclose how much American content the NSA collects incidentally — which agency officials have said is hard to measure — and let the public debate what the rules should be for handling that information.
The change would relax longstanding restrictions on access to the contents of the phone calls and email the security agency vacuums up around the world, including bulk collection of satellite transmissions, communications between foreigners as they cross network switches in the United States, and messages acquired overseas or provided by allies.
The idea is to let more experts across American intelligence gain direct access to unprocessed information, increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value. That also means more officials will be looking at private messages — not only foreigners' phone calls and emails that have not yet had irrelevant personal information screened out, but also communications to, from, or about Americans that the NSA's foreign intelligence programs swept in incidentally.
Civil liberties advocates criticized the change, arguing that it will weaken privacy protections. They said the government should disclose how much American content the NSA collects incidentally — which agency officials have said is hard to measure — and let the public debate what the rules should be for handling that information.
Submission + - Former NASA Chief On US Space Policy: "No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: During a congressional hearing Thursday, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin had harsh words for the space agency" and the space policy crafted by President Obama's administration. Under the Obama administration's guidance, NASA has established Mars as a goal for human spaceflight and said that astronauts will visit the red planet by the 2030s. However, a growing number of critics say the agency’s approach is neither affordable nor sustainable.
On Thursday, Griffin, administrator of NASA from 2005 to 2009, joined those critics. The United States has not had a serious discussion about space policy, he testified, and as a result, the space agency is making little discernible progress. NASA simply cannot justify its claims of being on a credible path toward Mars, he added.
On Thursday, Griffin, administrator of NASA from 2005 to 2009, joined those critics. The United States has not had a serious discussion about space policy, he testified, and as a result, the space agency is making little discernible progress. NASA simply cannot justify its claims of being on a credible path toward Mars, he added.
Comment Re:Fears are halfway amusing (Score 2) 200
Not quite sure what point you are trying to make. You seem to be suggesting that because you are using tools around your farm that indicates that robots will not be replacing humans in the workplace. It actually demonstrates the opposite. Your first few examples show that you don't need horses any more, then the chainsaw example shows you don't need an axe or handsaw guy, that the chainsaw that you now own replaces the need for that person. That's the real point. That better and more effective tools replace the need for people and that the tools you have mean that you can run your farm with a fewer people. In your case those fears have been realised, and will be realised more when the large corporate farm down the road will be almost fully staffed with robots/tools and will operate much more cheaply than you are able to. Is this "halfway amusing" to you?
Comment Re: Cue the flamewar... (Score 1) 1134
In Australia, we have elections and rule of law. You guys should try it.
Comment Re:Recursive short replies (Score 1) 131
Exactly. This idea is uncannily similar to that story's plot. Next idea is for a plug-in that rewords your email to make it more persuasive.
Submission + - Soccer Superstar Plays With Very Low Brain Activity
jones_supa writes: Brazilian superstar Neymar's (Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior) brain activity while dancing past opponents is less than 10 per cent the level of amateur players, suggesting he plays as if on "auto-pilot", according to Japanese neurologists Eiichi Naito and Satoshi Hirose. The findings were published in the Swiss journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience following a series of motor skills tests carried out on the 22-year-old Neymar and several other athletes in Barcelona in February this year. Three Spanish second-division footballers and two top-level swimmers were also subjected to the same tests. Researcher Naito told Japan's Mainichi Shimbun newspaper: "Reduced brain activity means less burden which allows [the player] to perform many complex movements at once. We believe this gives him the ability to execute his various shimmies." In the research paper Naito concluded that the test results "provide valuable evidence that the football brain of Neymar recruits very limited neural resources in the motor-cortical foot regions during foot movements".
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"Just think of a computer as hardware you can program." -- Nigel de la Tierre
