304 karma · joined November 10, 2019
For example, detecting the possible presence of a cavity inside an object X, and whether that cavity is large enough to hide another object Y. Learning generic geospatial properties like that can greatly improve a whole swath of downstream prediction tasks (i.e., in a transfer learning sense).
Far from wanting to defend Exxon, but regardless whether or not they knew; if the narrative is that the "world outside Exxon" didn't know, doesn't that in itself amount to wilful ignorance or negligence at best?
What data did they have that the rest of the academic/political world couldn't add up on its own without corporate cooperation?
To me this sounds a bit like driving to a supermarket three towns away because it has the best selection of coffee filters... :)
You're dead wrong about that. Remember Deepmind's original claim to fame? Alphago?
It came up with tactics and strategies that top professional go players considered to be novel to the point of being revolutionary. If you look at the way games are played by human professionals in the years before and after Alphago came on to the stage, you'll find they're different to an extent greater than any other upheaval in the many centuries-long history of the game.
AI is a much more diverse field than you seem to give it credit for. Paint with overly broad strokes like that, and you're bound to go astray.
In that light, I wonder if perhaps a better alternative is for each individual to remain independent as their own one-man company in a freelancer kind of way, and instead to focus on streamlining the process of establishing ad-hoc micro contracts whenever collaborative tasks are to be undertaken -- while still keeping the community aspect of a cooperative in place somehow. At the same time, I guess the reason this isn't done more extensively, is simply due to the overhead of having to reach a consensus of the worth of contributions on a task-by-task basis...
A phone OS should never have to rely on good app behavior to not collapse like a house of cards. Much less one made by a corporation with a 71% worldwide market share.
If anything, real-world contexts are likely to be lower hanging fruit.
I also highly doubt "many" programs make syscalls directly, but I could be wrong. I know I haven't done so since the days I dabbled in assembly, at least.
The "shittier" those "shitcoins" are, the quicker they'll die out. The ones that heavily incentivize early adopters might hang around longer, but they too will inevitably fizzle out if they don't offer any practical innovation.
But if something has a steadily growing user base year after year, maybe it's worth some attention after all?
Or you can just keep screeching "Shitcoins! Shitcoins!". I guess we can all settle for ourselves what form of discourse we consider more constructive and worthwhile.
They're both valuable skills of course, but they should be recognized as being distinct from each other; and measuring "intelligence" as some one-dimensional modality is a spectacular failure to do so, IMO.
This idea is also to an extent analogous to the tradeoff between exploration and exploitation in reinforcement learning (AI).
Are you sure that isn't a bit of a "glass is half empty" perspective? There's no upper limit to how much money you can make by choosing your own path. (If, hypothetically speaking, you were inclined to pursue big $€¥£).
But let's not turn the tables that way. My point is that "opportunity" should have been addressed _before_ Steve Jobs decided to fly in all those industry bigwigs to do his sales pitch. I mean, who was selling who here exactly? Different times I guess...
Because some dev/clown has the hubris to proclaim "there is no other way"? I'd not care if you're Steve Jobs himself. That's some just laugh and leave the room level of Kafkaesque ridiculousness.
Glad I work in the era of public-facing APIs. Even if Apple still seems to be clinging on to their consume-only mentality.
What is your point?
No, what I find highly implausible is the notion that such an extreme "unification at any costs" ideology has any significant popular support. More so still in the aftermath of the PRC's recent suppressive tactics in Hong Kong.
I'm sure the scenarios you hint at are indeed explored at great lengths among Beijing-funded think tank strategists, but I can't see Xi & co being naive enough to elevate such an approach as their most viable course of action.
Closer coordination and cooperation in a socioeconomic context? Also on the table.
But _integration_ with the communist PRC? Uhmm... yeah no, that's a pretty disingenuous characterization of the KMT side of Taiwanese politics.
The historical circumstances of HK and Taiwan are nothing alike. Furthermore, the mainland communist party doesn't have any sway on Taiwanese politics, as far as I can tell ...other than as a common nemesis to unite against in relation to any issues that could affect the island's autonomy.
And as for me being a "gaijin"? That's not even relevant, because my observations are based not on how people interact with me, but rather how my Japanese coworkers tend to communicate with each other on the numerous (almost exclusively open plan) work floors I have been part of for many years.
Working conditions vary hugely from company to company. On a spectrum from "black companies" -as they're called here- to "modern companies" with strict enforcement of work/life balance in terms of office hours and (lack of) overtime. Also, in my experience there's often a lot of variance within the same office too. Usually between those who have learned to set their own boundaries and those who haven't.
If anything, conditions are often the _opposite_ of rigid. Overtime is far more strictly regulated in Japan than in the US, for example. As such, blatantly over-exerting employees is nowhere near as common here as people overseas seem to assume. Because that kind of thing can land a company in a lot of trouble.
It's usually rather the un-rigid aspects that lead to stressful working conditions, as far as I can judge. People here generally strongly value being considerate of those around them, especially in terms of not being a burden to others, and one way this manifests itself is by a drive to meet implicit expectations of coworkers -- real or imagined. Over-promising and over-committing is a common mistake anywhere, but its an even easier trap to fall into in a country like this where expectations aren't rigidly outlined at all.
> The extremely rigid gender roles expected by society are another.
Well, yes, I concede that there is (still) a far larger gender-based bias in societal expectations than in many Western countries. However, wouldn't you say that in most aspects women are the side that draw the shorter sticks here? And yet, about 3 in 4 hikikomori are boys/men, so I'm not sure what kind of conclusion you'd want to draw from that...
Closing issues after a while if the reporting user fails to follow up on a request for additional information can be useful. But more often than not these stalebots kick in because the maintainer(s) never chimed in. Don't use a bot that can't distinguish between those two cases unless your only aim is to wage war on your users and sweep everything inconvenient under the rug.