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Comment Cost of Privacy (Score 1) 119

Appleâ(TM)s focus on privacy probably at least contributes to a poor Siri experience. Being able to use user queries, follow-up queries, tone indicating frustration, etc. would be useful in building a better Siri.

Comment Information Warfare (Score 1) 258

âoeInformation warfare manipulates information trusted by targets without their awareness, so that the targets will make decisions against their interest but in the interest of the one conducting information warfare.â A functioning society relies on individuals being able to discern truth from falsehood. Such technology makes it more difficult to trust our eyes, something so many of us do implicitly. Given how much âoefake newsâ was a problem in the 2016 election in the US, fake videos that cannot be discerned as such by the average person will make things worse. Imagine if a fake video circulated of a police office doing something egregious, but where people couldnâ(TM)t discern it as such. How many people even care to verify where something is real of fake before acting?

Comment Has anyone actually tried using it? (Score 1) 55

When I come across new hyped up tech, I tried to build something with it -- that usually tells me if it's a bunch of hype or something more. With most crypto projects, I find that is _very_ difficult to actually build anything. On many, I have to click through several layers of 'Get Started', 'Learn More', etc. buttons to even get to any technical info. I was interested in Livepeer, a kind of "Uber for video transcoding". But after hours of trying, discovered the requirements for being a transcoding node were too high for the ordinary user. And using it for transcoding was difficult. AWS Transcoder or running FFmpeg on EC2 are so much more practical. Polkadot and Internet Computer seem neat in concept, but again, too difficult / impractical to do anything either. I haven't tried Solana yet. Storj, a kind of "Uber for storage" is one that I think it _actually_ useful. Has an AWS S3 compatible API, 80% cheaper than S3, good docs, easy to get node up and running -- it actually makes sense.

Comment Corruption (Score 1) 240

I went to OneMedical in SF a few years back for a cough that wouldn't go away. Doctor listened to lungs for 5 minutes, recommended over-the-counters, told me to come back in a week. A week later, similar thing, this time prescribed something, again told me to come back in a week. I didn't get the bill for the first visit until well after the third visit. Apparently he was billing $725 for each visit, insurance was capping it at $350. My deductible was $2000, so I was now on the hook for $1,050. The no insurance cash rate was $150 per visit -- I would have paid $450. I argued with customer service about this for an hour, at which point was connected with a manager who reduced the bill to the cash rate. Now I'm with Kaiser, but before that I would always ask what was the cash-rate for a visit -- often that was cheaper than insurance. Where else in America do you not know the price of something until well after you buy it?

Comment Re:I'm not sure I understand (Score 1) 80

I think it's trying to replace the client-server model of the web, where clients HTTP GET content from centralized clouds, with a decentralized model similar to Pied Piper's in Silicon Valley -- serving resources (storage, bandwidth, and compute) are distributed amongst the participants of the network, similar to BitTorrent, and participants are rewarded for providing these resources with a blockchain-based token. A pretty neat and compelling idea actually. Even possible to do within existing web browsers with WebRTC data channels. Tor hides the client's origin from the server, but still relies on a client-server model of the web.

Comment A convert (Score 1) 117

I switched to an electric toothbrush after receiving it as a gift from a family member, who knew me to be a curmudgeony simple creature of habit who uses the free dentist-provided toothbrush at each 6-month cleaning. I noticed a few things: - The gimmicky app did actually get me to spend more time on brushing - With three visits since under my belt, I have had two with no cavities and one with one small cavity. Previously, I have typically had a cavity or two per visit. If I had purchased the toothbrush, it would have paid for itself with the money I saved on fillings. - Wisdom teeth (never had removed) feel easier to get to - Teeth feel cleaner, more polished. Electric vibration probably does better job of wiping off bacteria.

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