didgetmaster

I wonder if 'STOP or I will vote for your opponent' might work. Then again, if that worked, you might just start receiving messages asking you to vote for their opponent instead.

Absolutely. At its core, AI is just another algorithm that is subject to the same 'Garbage In-Garbage Out' principle. As more and more of the data used to train the models, is itself generated by AI; the feedback loop you describe gets stronger.

The same question will be asked in a few years to the robotic companies. If robots are so valuable to do certain tasks, why sell robots to consumers at all? Why not just put the robots you make to work in your own factories?

Has anyone done the math to determine how much electricity it takes to send 1 TB of data around your local network?

Engineer: How often should our software scan the local network looking for new devices? Once a day? Once an hour?

Manager: We might miss something. Since scanning doesn't cost us anything, better do it a thousand times a second!

As article says, the coffee machine didn't 'collect' or phone home a TB of data. It just saturated the local network looking for data to collect. This doesn't cost Keurig or any other IoT device company a single cent. It might have been a bug, or maybe not. Without some bad press, like this post; they have no incentive to change anything

I think it boils down to each individual's personal experience.

If you live surrounded by people who will hurt you, steal your stuff, or act in reckless ways if they think no one is watching; then pro-surveillance sounds more appealing.

If instead you feel that the people around you will behave even if no one is watching them; then privacy concerns take precedence.

While I think there are many atheists on HN, I think there are many who have religious convictions, myself included.

The author says everyone who has too much money must feel ashamed and give it away. This is consistent with most of the 'tax the rich' crowd. Members of this crowd are almost always talking about other people and not themselves (e.g. Bernie Sanders).

I merely asked who gets to decide where the line is drawn between 'too much' and 'not too much'.

I also asked all those envious people who want to take money away from those who have it; if they also think some people are 'too intelligent', 'too talented', or 'too attractive'.

>If we find ourselves with way more money than our share, then we say, "oops, how embarrassing",

And just who gets to decide when someone has more than their 'share'? Is it just money that people are not allowed to have too much of, or do you have the same feeling about other things like intelligence, friends, talents, looks, etc.?

Rich is just a word that is over-used to push political agendas. It is a relative term. I am rich compared to a huge segment of the world's population. I am poor compared to the top .1% of people.

'Tax the Rich' politicians will never give you a number when you ask just who they are talking about. It has to be fluid. Bernie Sanders used to rail on millionaires until he became one. Now he only says billionaires.

Computers are generally useful because we have come to trust the output. How many people would use a spreadsheet that posted a disclaimer that stated (some of the calculations might be wrong, don't use the output without first checking each total manually!)?

Almost anyone can be seen as a hero or a zero if the right 15 second clip is captured. We love it when our best moments hit social media, but everyone also piles on when we are caught at our worst (or what appears to be bad, even if it not).

It is amazing how many haters emerge like in this case, when there is so much more to the story.

Is this one of those cases where the TV is being subsidized by the data collection? In other words, if LG had to turn it off, would they have to charge more for the TVs?

Kind of like so many ink jet printers where the manufacturers will sell you the printer at or below cost with the expectation of making it up with overpriced ink cartridges.

Why do people seem to think that optimization is something you only have to deal with once the software scales so much that 100s of TB of memory or disk space (or thousands of hours of processing time) are being wasted.

It is almost like nobody even thought during the design phase about what might happen down the road.

This is why so much software is bloated and often buggy. Just gets something that half-way works out the door ASAP and worry about the rest later (too often, never).

And yet people will put forth dire predictions (drought, flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, etc.) every chance they get. No wonder so many people think it is all a hoax.

I hope so! The area I live in has been experiencing drought and everyone seems to be predicting a wet period coming from this.

Personally, I don't put much faith in weather predictions that are more than a week away.

That's like asking how do you keep up with online news, YouTube, TikTok, or your favorite social media platform. Answer: you don't!

You browse it occasionally and read something interesting to you, then move on. Don't worry about what you missed. There isn't enough time in the day to try and capture it all.

I was facing a similar situation when I upgraded my system about a year and a half ago. I wanted to upgrade from 32GB RAM to 64GB. The kit (DDR5 6000) was $179. I knew that I might want to add an additional 64GB later on, so I had to decide if I should wait for prices to drop further.

I decided to get the extra RAM. Boy am I glad now. If I thought this was just a temporary spike, I would be tempted to sell the extra memory (I don't really need it yet), but I don't see prices falling anytime soon.

I think there are many companies that have not hopped on the AI bandwagon yet. This is why AI companies still see a huge potential for continued growth.

Some are hesitant to chase after the latest fad (fearing it will soon fade); others want the industry to shake out many of the flaws first.

We saw the same thing with the Internet. Many companies (including some really big ones) were slow to embrace it until everyone else was on board.

Right. Almost every economy is circular in some fashion. Every producer is also a consumer. Sometimes the circle is quite big, but many of the dollars (or other currency) that you spend, come back to you in the money you earn.

A distributed, object-based, general-purpose data management system. I was insane enough to try and tackle a project that needs at least a couple dozen programmers to implement all the planned features.

It does some amazing things, but is far from finished.

Writing some code that actually works for the problem at hand, can be fairly easy.

Writing code that does this while being clean and efficient is a lot harder. How many slow, buggy programs have been written because the assigned programmer did not yet have the expertise needed to do it right?

Can you get one that displays ads on the exterior? That way you can be like the taxis and buses running around town! I'm sure the chick's will think that is cool.

But what if the AI told you that the pizza you are about to order sucks (or informs you that the people making it didn't wash their hands) and recommended you try a different place that was better (e.g. closer, cheaper)?

It is difficult to know when you 'have enough' money because like death, you never know what is around the corner. Most of us earn, save, and spend money during our working lives so that we can retire comfortably; but it seems like there is no magic number for when we have arrived.

How long will we live? What will our health be like? Would we like to travel? Leave the kids an inheritance? Give it away? All of these can influence the number.

The secret to amassing wealth is to always live beneath your means; but don't forget to enjoy yourself as you make the journey towards retirement.

I don't think that anyone believes that some problems like crime and poverty can be solved such that it completely goes away. By 'solving', I meant take action such that the result is obvious in that the problem is greatly diminished.

And yes, I do think that individuals and departments feel threatened that they will be impacted if something like that actually happened.

People often attribute the government's inability to solve a problem even after throwing billions of dollars at it; as a sign of incompetence. While there is plenty of incompetence within government; I think the 'Preserve the Problem' response is mostly to blame.

If we 'solved' crime, homelessness, drug use, poverty, etc.; then budgets would decrease and political power would diminish. Those in charge of solving the problem often have the least incentive to do so.

I didn't say only do air conditioning during the peak times. You can definitely adjust the AC so that it runs on full during the peak times and cools things down a few degrees below ideal, then back it off and allow the temperature to rise a few degrees once electricity becomes more expensive.

Again, if the incentives are there, people will adjust.

Renewable power tends to be sporadic. When the wind is blowing or the sun is shining brightly, they produce a lot of cheap power.

People think the solution is to build huge battery packs to store all that excess power during peak periods and drain them down during off-peak times.

That is certainly a solution, even if it is an expensive one. Perhaps a cheaper one is to get everyone to consume the power while it is being produced. Running air conditioners at full blast. Washing clothes and dishes. Charging electric vehicles. There are many things that can be shifted to those peak times, if the incentives are there.

Call me a skeptic (which I probably am), but the bar seems incredibly low. I am glad they are finally doing something about worthless college degrees financed by the taxpayers; but this feels like too little.

The colleges don't have to prove the degree is worth the price paid for it, only that it is better than nothing. If you go to some Ivy League school and rack up $100K debt, you don't have to show that you will earn enough to pay that back; only show that you make more than if you never went to college.