But Xi still wants some samples of the American products to know where the Chinese products are in relative terms. The better to set higher targets.

Still wondering what sort of trap he'll spring on the YOB. The tricky part is that Xi can't pull too hard on the buffoon's strings or everyone will notice. Has to let the YOB think it's really his latest brilliant idea. Even though Xi has been rehearsing with the YOB's GAIvatar for weeks already...

Rather disappointing this juicy story didn't get any Funny.

Closest to the joke I was looking for?

But maybe they will now use LinkedIn to find much better opportunities? Unless they prefer to spend more time with their families?

I think it's mostly the winners'-side bias of lucky rich people for "righteous indignation". Also common affliction among religious fanatics. But they aren't morally right. Just lucky or fanatical or both.

Sandel's position is somewhat different. Been a while since I've read the book, but as recall it he said that admissions should involve two phases. The screening stage would eliminate the least qualified candidates, basically the people who are not going to be able to do classwork. I don't think he gave any numbers but he estimated that the percentage wasn't that large. Most of the applications are based in reality and therefore most of the applicants have a pretty good idea about their own capabilities. The lottery would start with the pool of qualified applicants.

It got more complicated when he started dealing with other aspects of admissions policy, especially the degree to which a university wants future graduates to have different demographic characteristics than previous graduates. I remember one idea was to give some categories extra tickets in the lottery to tilt the odds in favor of desired changes. Not to deny admissions to any specific person, but to sometimes give more chances to other kinds of people.

(He covered some of the same material in a later book. Which reminds me that it's probably time for me to check what else he's written lately. I've read a number of his books and found all of them interesting.)

Notice the triple of moderation abuse? Me neither, but someone should?

Let's go on the theory that they got into Harvard because they are the best of the best. If that were the case, then at most universities they should expect a top grade against the "lesser" students and why should they be penalized with sub-A grades just for being the best?

Yeah, I'm going for funny, but I'm not laughing. Upon reflection, I'm not sure if I wouldn't have been better served and served better by not graduating and teaching at top universities. (Though most of my early teaching was at schools not near the top.)

So I'll recommend The Tyranny of Merit by Michael Sandel (of Harvard). The more I think about it, the more I like his lottery ideas.

Pretty sure you were going for Funny, but it's too dark and there are too many hostages in this situation.

However I do think it's hilarious for them to believe the blackmailers didn't keep a backup copy. Also funny that they are involved in education and don't seem to understand the lesson to be learned here.

Need some kind of anti-funny mod for the responses of the various police authorities, though in a sense it's hard to blame them. We are in a time of perfect crime. There should be a joke in here about "When cryptocurrency is outlawed, then only outlaws will..." The problem with the attempted joke is that it seems to require outlawing the greedy parts of human nature or something?

Mod parent funnier for insurance, though the moderation is so broken it scarcely seems to matter. If I understand the current status, it has two mod points, and is only displaying the funny one. I expected the second to be something constructive, probably "insightful" the way some folks see things around here, but turns out to be another censor troll mod.

But if I had my own malignant AI, I'm pretty sure the first question would be "How do I delete Facebook? Not my account. The entire website."

Just joking and going for funny, but reading more about Facebook than about AI these weeks... "Facebook delenda est."

So I asked an AI about the proper Latin and it suggested "Prosopobiblion delenda est."

Mod parent Funny on the scatological humor. Couldn't happen to a un-nicer company because I doubt there are any. Perhaps Amazon, which was mentioned in the discussion by way of negative comparison.

For whatever it is worth (and apparently quite little) I've been reading books about Facebook/Fecebook recently and coming away with a really "bad feeling about this". Book citations wanted?

I didn't think so. This is Slashdot circa 2026...

Basically the same point I raised in an earlier discussion of this... What to call this? A leveraged buyout of the imagination?

However it makes about as much sense as most merger shenanigans and I would approve if at least one of the side effects was that eBay disappeared.

But I want to find a recursive joke somewhere around here... Something about eBay auctions/sales of merger/acquisitions/divestitures?

Basically the ACK, but I'm also concerned with the kinetic threats from the control of robots by ASI. You must have seen some of the recent videos of the Chinese humanoid robots dancing? Also the bipedal robot that set the new record for the half-marathon?

Okay, I think your FP is sort of funny and deserves the mod you were going for, but I was looking for the other joke of the revised Subject.

Not laughing, but I think we are living in the biggest house of cards ever. So much awful software and we are so dependent on it. If anyone did have an ASI that was capable of finding every bug, then that person could pwn the world faster than any human-mediated responses.

Pretty sure it hasn't happened yet, but if the ASI was sufficiently "super", then how would I (or you) know?

I like the joke, but it would be funnier to try to fix the dead tree snail mail system with such craziness as an alias database for mapping convenient email addresses.

Another crazy innovation would be to default to no bulk-class mail, but with a new opt-in option to accept it ONLY if the recipient gets a cut of the postage paid.

But I just read another book on why that trick would never work, so...