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Comment Government complicit in private censorship (Score 1) 94

Even if you define "censor" to refer only to public sector acts, the government can censor on behalf of a private person by enforcing exclusive rights asserted by said private person. In the case of iMessage and other closed platforms, the exclusive rights in question are often those granted under anti-circumvention statutes implementing the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty, such as 17 USC 1201 and foreign counterparts.

Comment XML and JSON schemas are for semantics (Score 2) 94

Both XML and JSON have a syntax, which describes what makes a document using those languages well-formed. However, not all well-formed markup is valid in a particular application. For example, you don't want "-567" or "butt" as the value of the "width" attribute in an "img" element in HTML. For this reason, applications of XML and applications of JSON have semantics, which further refine what is considered "valid" for that application. An XML or JSON schema can be used to quickly reject documents that are well-formed but not valid.

Comment Hmmm. (Score 1) 53

Something that quick won't be from random mutations of coding genes, but it's entirely believable for genes that aren't considered coding but which control coding genes. It would also be believable for epigenetic markers.

So there's quite a few ways you can get extremely rapid change. I'm curious as to which mechanism is used - it might not be either of those I suggested, either.

Comment "Application" dates to mid-1980s (Score 1) 185

Programs for macOS and its predecessor Mac OS have been called applications since the mid-1980s. Three usage examples for the short form "app" in Wiktionary come from computing books and magazines from 1999, which predates the iPod, let alone the iPhone. The term "killer app" in particular dates to PC Week in 1988.

Comment Re:no. (Score 1) 185

The Node.JS came up, and Javascript's status in the browser could not explain the existence of Node.

That one's easy. Running JavaScript on the server allows using the same code on the client to validate data in form inputs before submission that the server uses to authoritatively validate data in received submissions. Writing the code once and only once eliminates the class of errors where the client's pre-submission validation (in JavaScript) differs in behavior from the server's authoritative validation (usually in C#, Java, Perl, Ruby, Python, or Go).

Comment JS as bridge between WASM and DOM (Score 1) 185

JavaScript's main advantage was that it was the privileged scripting language in the browser. That advantage is disappearing now that runtime and toolchain support is increasing for WebAssembly.

JavaScript's main advantage remains that it is the privileged scripting language for moving values back and forth between the DOM and WebAssembly in the browser.

Comment Re:Few thoughts. (Score 1) 51

Manchester, England. I resisted getting a Slashdot ID for a while, as I hated the idea of username/password logins rather than just entering a name. Otherwise my UID would be two or three digits, as I had been on Slashdot a long time before they had usernames.

Comment Re:Few thoughts. (Score 1) 51

No, I would have to disagree, for a simple reason.

Humans are capable of abstracting/generalising, extrapolating, and projecting because of the architecture of the brain and not because of any specific feature of a human neuron.

The very nature of a NN architecture means that NNs, as they exist, cannot ever perform the functions that make humans intelligent. The human brain is designed purely around input semantics (what things mean), not input syntax (what things are), because the brain has essentially nothing external in it, everything is internal.

Comment Re:Few thoughts. (Score 1) 51

I use AGI to mean an AI that is capable of anything the biological brain is capable of, because the brain is the only probable intelligence to measure against.

This has nothing to do with good/bad, or any of the other stuff in your post. It's a simple process - if there's a model of thought the brain can do, then it is a modern of thought an AGI must do or it is neither general nor intelligent.

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