robbrown451

I wonder if some sort of cryptocoin/blockchain alternative could be created, that would be harder to shut down.

It would probably have to be based on having an elected council (with an odd number of members) signing off on the outcome of a market. If people see a bias in their history (which of course should be public), they will factor that into their bids, hopefully discouraging people from getting on the council to make money on their own bids.

And of course the council should be elected with some kind of ranked-choice/condorcet so you tend to elect centrists rather than extremists.

Usually that is one click to correct, which works for me.

I often search for things I don't know how to spell, typically a proper noun, and often specifically because I am trying to figure out how to spell it and that is the quickest way.

Something like that is about as key to using the web as anything. I've used quotes on searches to get an exact phrase since, what, 1995? The fact that has been broken for a long time and now fixed is absolutely worth top story of the day to me.

You don't even want it to spell correct? That's pretty extreme.

My 8 year old thinks I'm old fashioned because I don't just talk to the google lady casually like she is my friend, when doing a search/asking a question.

I like the way you think.

My thought exactly. Far more dangerous is to allow them to inject it into your veins rather than fling it through the air.

At the very least, the dragonflies should be cyborgs that can be centrally controlled and can build cyborg components.

I'm pretty sure the Imagineers are already on it.

They need little robots/drones to scout about at night for larva and kill them.

True, this will take a lot of robots. But that's ok, since during the daytime when the guests are there, the robots can go back to the fab shop and make more robots.

That should get the last few percent. I can't imagine anything going wrong with this idea. You're welcome!

So what is the benefit then?

Whether people read the guidelines and whether they follow them are different things. Sorta like with speed limits.... people can be well aware of them, but if they aren't enforced, only some subset are going to obey them. And that subset gets smaller when they see tons of people zooming past them.

That said dang does an admirable job.

I'd suggest it is part of the natural evolution of discussion boards. Some go there more quickly than others. When people act badly, and get away with it (without having the post quickly hidden, all the way to them getting banned), the people who don't act that way start participating less. So it can be a downward spiral.

I do wish boards would use some more smarts to help manage the prominence of posts. Way back in the day Slashdot did this pretty well with being able to rate things as insightful, troll, etc, but they never imporoved their algorithm much after the initial design (and it sucked that only certain people could moderate at any given time). They also had meta-moderation. A lot of promising things. But Slashdot became horrible after a few years.

Ok, so you are saying a cat isn't sentient?

And yet, most would agree that a cat can feel pain, but a machine can't. I think most people would object if the Google engineer said "I think this AI is every bit as sentient as a cat." They'd still say he's crazy.

I also wonder what would happen if that particular AI actually had logic to "observe its own thought processes and integrate them back into consciousness". Would we then just spin on the semantics, such as by arguing that this isn't really "observing" and it certainly isn't "consciousness"? (how can you define words like "consciousness" without using words or concepts like "sentience", bringing us back to square one?)

So I don't think meta-cognition is the answer either.

"Sentience I guess I would call awareness of self or something along those lines."

Is a self driving car aware of itself? Surely within its logic it represents itself as a vehicle, while also being able to logically represent other vehicles on the road. Its logic accounts for there being similarities (they both obey the same laws of physics and such) and differences (its logic controls its own behavior but not that of other vehicles). So it has a meaningful and useful concept of "self". All of this is required for it to be able to function.

What if some future iteration of a self driving car's vision system allows it to glean useful information from reflections, such as off of store windows? If it correctly can identify a reflection of itself as being itself... well then it has passed the mirror test. But that is a pretty silly thing to assign too much meaning to.

I just don't see "awareness of self" as being meaningful. It doesn't narrow down the definition at all.

Well what I drink today isn't nasty, since I add milk and sugar. :)

I guess all that may be true, it just isn't interesting to me. I'm happy with what I drink. I don't care about loving black coffee.

Maybe, but I just don't like black coffee, and I'm pretty sure I've had "good" black coffee. Too acidic and bitter.

I guess you could say I "just don't like coffee," but I do like it with cream and sugar, so.... I mean, whatever. That's what I like.

I'm an advocate for the middle ground. I get store brand whole bean coffee (1) , and grind it and use a Mr. Coffee. Then put sugar and milk in because black coffee is nasty.

I see no value to obsessing over perfect coffee. I have friends who do and love to talk endlessly about it. Holy crap how boring.

Nor am I going to drink Maxwell house unless I have no other reasonable option.

1: typically light or medium roast... if nothing else, dark roasts clog up my grinder

now I kinda want to try

I was slightly disappointed at the heavy use of sprite sheets (which seems less than "pure" css), but after looking closely there would be no way to get the gears right just relying on css transforms (i.e. rotation) because of the 3d and brushed metal look they wanted for the gears.

But yeah extremely impressive. I could do implement it if you gave me those sprite sheets and javascript easily enough, but wouldn't have any clue how to with css.

Geez I'd just cross the street to avoid the situation rather than go to that kind of effort.

It was far more than 8 feet away. And if it wasn't, they could easily step back and keep filming.

Then it would apply to a lot more situations. The problem is that the only reason people are that close is that they are recording. If they try to say "no one can be closer than 8 feet" that complicates things considerably.... I mean, I've walked by such situations on the sidewalk and gotten closer than 8 feet, because it was unavoidable without crossing the street. (these situations weren't ones likely to be filmed, though, just typical city stuff like with homeless and/or mentally ill people) But I wasn't just hanging out really closely, as I'd be if recording.

I think they were just trying to address a relatively new situation that was causing them problems.

I don't really agree with this law, but I also don't think your cynicism on that particular thing is entirely warranted.

How do you arrive at "free circulation" being a "basic human right." I've never heard that.

Seems pretty common to not necessarily be allowed to go anywhere you please just because you want to. Maybe it is an extreme example, but I know I don't want people freely circulating inside my house.

That's kind of the logic of a cheating spouse: "hey, if they don't know, they aren't harmed."

Or for that matter, someone who spies through a peep hole at hotel guests.

Sure, this is less serious, but I don't agree with the "what you don't know doesn't harm you" excuse. It's deceptive and wrong.

Over time this should result in speed limits adjusting to how fast people actually drive, rather than it always being assumed that people drive faster by 10 mph or whatever.

It does not assume an infinite market, it just assumes a larger market than your example. Everything still applies if you just adjust the numbers downward or upwards to match whatever particular market you are speaking of.

The reason things tend toward free in software... at least consumer software... is that capitalism is really optimized for things that have significant marginal cost. Over time, supply and demand tend to cause the price to approach the marginal cost. (the cost to make one more product)

But software has effectively zero marginal cost. Meaning normal competition and the free market just don't work.

Say a company makes some software that costs them a million dollars to make. They figure their best chance of making a profit is by pricing it at $100, and selling at least 10,000 copies.

Now another company decides to compete as well. It costs them a million dollars as well to develop their competing product, which we can imagine is every bit as good and serves the exact same need.

But they figure their best chance of making a profit is to sell it for $10. Sure, they make less per copy, but the lower price should allow them to sell a lot more. So they'll need to sell at least 100,000 copies.

That's bad. There is no reasonable way of saying how much value a single copy has. It's not like making, say, a bicycle where the bulk of the price is to cover the marginal cost.... i.e. the cost of making one more bicycle.

Anyone developing software must realize that they could be massively undercut by competition. It's just not a stable model.

Does anyone remember when Apple's WebObjects product was reduced in price from $200,000 to $699? Then a year later, bundled with the operating system?

Sure. I mean, you can. I live in San Francisco and as often as not, walk to the grocery store. But it's a pain carrying bags around. Not everyone in the world is going to be ok with that when they are used to just packing a bunch of bags in a car. It's ridiculously unrealistic to think that everyone... including the elderly, etc ... will be happy to just use a train that might be a many block walk on each end.

Yes you can get groceries delivered fairly cheaply, but it will be cheaper with self driving vehicles and robot loading and delivery.

Trains and subways don't get you from anywhere to anywhere. They are incredibly expensive and take many years to add new lines, disrupting all kinds of things in the meantime. And they often take way longer to get you places. My time has value. There's a million things I'd rather be doing than waiting for a train, or waiting while a train makes tons of stops along the way that a car wouldn't.

And are you expecting me to carry bags of groceries on the train? How's that work? I sure hope the train has a stop in front of my house.

"With the tens of billions if not more spent on driverless cars you could have actually rebuilt a decent chunk of infrastructure."

According to this, it costs 3 billion a mile for subway. Maybe that's an extreme.... but still. You know how many miles of road there are that are currently used by cars? https://sf.curbed.com/2018/6/18/17464616/bay-area-subway-tra...

Also, one nice thing about software compared to trains: once you've built the software, each additional copy costs nothing. And the vast majority of the self-driving car initiative is in developing the software.

Also, trains don't help with avoiding things like making grocery runs altogether. Self driving cars (and other robotics that are benefactors of the technology) can make it practical to eliminate the vast majority of grocery shopping and other typical errands, having a robotic system deliver it to your door more cheaply than going to an old-school grocery store.

As for your space analogy.... sorry, but this is just different. This deals with existing infrastructure, existing culture, and so on. We need a smooth transition.

"all of this time and money wasted on driverless cars has been a complete failure."

That's quite a stretch. If you think the money would be better spent elsewhere, ok. But to call it a failure is silly. Personally, I think driverless taxis making car ownership less necessary will be a huge plus. It will also make life a lot better for those due to age (too young or too old) or other issues not being able to drive.

I remember the space program being credited as contributing so much to the economy via by-product technology. Certainly self-driving cars contributes to automating tons of things beyond driving people around on public streets. After all, self-driving car tech is really just a subset of robotics.

Of course if you are against automation in all senses (e.g. they're putting people out of work!") that's a different discussion.

"the US culture of using a car for everyday transportation is fucking insane, wasteful, and contributes to the rising cost of living across the US (not just SF)."

Ok, but to get away from that you need gradual steps. I'd say it is far less insane to call a robo-taxi when needed (possibly a van-sized one that carries many people at once, which become practical once more people are willing to give up owning cars), than it is to actually own a car that sits idle, possibly on city streets, 95% of the time. Also there will be robo-deliveries, so you don't need to use a car for such basic things as going to the grocery store. This can actually be far cheaper for the stores, since there is no need for large spaces consumers can walk around in. The whole process can be automated, including filling your order, putting it on a truck, and putting it on your front porch (or in some kind of box accessible to the bot). Stuff like this is all part of the same technological effort.

No app to randomly generate them?