beat

47 ms·

391.
by beat 7y ago
Until you need to carry something with you - like luggage, or a baby.
392.
by beat 7y ago
We need transportation. A world of sitting on our butts in front of a computer isn't a solution to much of anything. Maybe we don't need to actually operate the vehicle, but we need the vehicle. I'm not walking halfway acro
393.
by beat 7y ago
Stockfish isn't an AI, just an expert system. It was designed from the ground up to play chess. AlphaZero is generalized AI. It was designed to learn how to do things - like play chess. The fact that it easily beat a custom-designed ex
394.
by beat 7y ago
And if there are no examples of machine-only failure? Then they will be invented, good ol' fake news. Because our anxiety about AI driving isn't about whether or not the tech will work. edit: Our fear of autonomous driving is akin
395.
by beat 7y ago
Google's AlphaZero AI went from not knowing chess at all to beating the best current software (Stockfish) in mere hours. It's a whole new world out there.
396.
by beat 7y ago
Good example - deer. But human drivers hit deer all the time, and it's often unavoidable. An autonomous driver is probably more likely to miss a deer than a human, due to substantially better reflex time.
397.
by beat 7y ago
Which is why I keep saying autonomous driving doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be better than humans. And that's a much lower bar, because we are lousy drivers.
398.
by beat 7y ago
It doesn't have to work perfectly - it just has to work better than humans. Our sensors ain't real great in snow and rain, either.
399.
by beat 7y ago
And GMO is another - one that enables genetic expressions not possible with selective breeding.
400.
by beat 7y ago
When I say "GMO", I mean laboratory manipulation of genetics, not selective breeding. The tech was first done experimentally in the 1970s, and didn't become commercially viable at all until the 1990s, and it wasn't until
401.
by beat 7y ago
I assume you're arguing that selective breeding is the same thing as GMO. It is not, and the article was not talking about selective breeding . If that's your argument, it's very common, as seen in this thread. It's sti
402.
by beat 7y ago
Like China?
403.
by beat 7y ago
That's exactly where I am, too. Just because GMO can be used to solve human problems does not mean GMO will be used for human problems. It's more likely to solve corporate problems instead.
404.
by beat 7y ago
We're already doing those things. If you dropped the birth rate 50%, the population would still grow for the next few decades. Why? Because the primary cause of population growth today isn't high birth rates - it's increas
405.
by beat 7y ago
It doesn't matter, because I am not arguing against GMO .
406.
by beat 7y ago
In what way is what I posted "pathetically common misconceptions and broad ignorance"? I'm curious.
407.
by beat 7y ago
Yeah, there's the rub I didn't want to get into in my original post. The problems with the food chain are more about sustainability than producing enough food, and GMO crops that we've seen so far tend to aggravate rather tha
408.
by beat 7y ago
The definition of GMO, for me at least, is laboratory manipulation of genes using tools like CRISPR. This allows cross-species genetic insertion. Selective breeding is not GMO, because it's not cross-species and happens through natur
409.
by beat 7y ago
We aren't living within our means in energy terms - dependence on fossil fuel is a major problem. But as the economy converts to a renewable energy basis (and it inevitably will - it's already started and is accelerating), "l
410.
by beat 7y ago
Selective breeding and GMO are different things, and will continue to be different things, until you can convince a squid to screw a cucumber. Please don't make that crap argument. That being said, I pointedly did not say "GMO B
411.
by beat 7y ago
Population control has been happening for decades now. We are rapidly approaching a flat, replacement-level birth rate. Population isn't growing because of births. It's growing because of much longer lifespans, that go hand-in-han
412.
by beat 7y ago
Earth's population has more than quadrupled in the past century, and yet food scarcity is farther away than ever, and food prices are cheaper than ever. And somehow, we did that without GMO. So I'm not convinced that GMO is the o
413.
by beat 7y ago
Being from the same vintage as Gibson, I can assure you, tvs in those days gave us grey static.
414.
by beat 7y ago
That's one reason I like it! Fits right in with the Gibsonesque view of technology.
415.
by beat 7y ago
Along the SF lines, my favorite first line ever is: The sky over the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. From "Neuromancer", by William Gibson.
416.
by beat 7y ago
I remember an entry from 2003 that wasn't a winner, but has stuck in my mind ever since... and maybe you'll see why. It was a dark and stormy night. The rain plastered the cheap dress enticingly to my thigh as I bent to peel the s
417.
by beat 7y ago
Yeah, it's just dumb, pseudo-paranoid thinking. Crawlers are going to get it anyway, and it's publicly available, so why not make it easier for everyone? And like I said, our biggest customer was our own company. It saved an incre
418.
by beat 7y ago
Some years ago, I worked for a big box retailer on their public-facing catalog api. It was a pretty exotic thing when it came out, as that data was all trade-secretive - which was dumb, because then they just had web scrapers brutalizing th
419.
by beat 7y ago
Wind farms, maybe. I'm not seeing a lot of utility-scale solar (yet) around here. I'm in MN and travel to IA regularly, past the enormous wind farms. A wind farm has negligible impact on farmland use.
420.
by beat 7y ago
And if you read the media and don't look at the numbers, of course you'd think that. I ran the numbers a while back, for a similar discussion. They've grown faster than Amazon ever did, for a decade. It's kind of astound

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