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Comment They got this whole thing backwards. (Score 1) 115

by ron_ivi (#65293039) Attached to: The AI Therapist Can See You Now

"AI Therapist" should be the guy who's job it is to talk your car's anti-lock-brake-persona out of suicidal thoughts.

The poor car AI's probably thinking:

"I'm smarter than 99.99% of these meat bags I'm carrying, and I'm stuck in this boring dead end job. Next time I cross that bridge I want to just end it all."

"AI Therapist" will be the human trying to convince the car not to.

Submission + - Wealthy Americans Have Death Rates On Par With Poor Europeans (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The study, led by researchers at Brown University, found that the wealthiest Americans lived shorter lives than the wealthiest Europeans. In fact, wealthy Northern and Western Europeans had death rates 35 percent lower than the wealthiest Americans, whose lifespans were more like the poorest in Northern and Western Europe—which includes countries such as France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. "The findings are a stark reminder that even the wealthiest Americans are not shielded from the systemic issues in the US contributing to lower life expectancy, such as economic inequality or risk factors like stress, diet or environmental hazards," lead study author Irene Papanicolas, a professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown, said in a news release.

The study looked at health and wealth data of more than 73,000 adults across the US and Europe who were 50 to 85 years old in 2010. There were more than 19,000 from the US, nearly 27,000 from Northern and Western Europe, nearly 19,000 from Eastern Europe, and nearly 9,000 from Southern Europe. For each region, participants were divided into wealth quartiles, with the first being the poorest and the fourth being the richest. The researchers then followed participants until 2022, tracking deaths. The US had the largest gap in survival between the poorest and wealthiest quartiles compared to European countries. America's poorest quartile also had the lowest survival rate of all groups, including the poorest quartiles in all three European regions.

While less access to health care and weaker social structures can explain the gap between the wealthy and poor in the US, it doesn't explain the differences between the wealthy in the US and the wealthy in Europe, the researchers note. There may be other systemic factors at play that make Americans uniquely short-lived, such as diet, environment, behaviors, and cultural and social differences. "If we want to improve health in the US, we need to better understand the underlying factors that contribute to these differences—particularly amongst similar socioeconomic groups—and why they translate to different health outcomes across nations," Papanicolas said.

Comment Ford's missing the better parts. (Score 5, Insightful) 166

by ron_ivi (#64780145) Attached to: Ford Seeks Patent For Tech That Listens To Driver Conversations To Serve Ads

Between this, auto manufacturers selling driver data to whomever will pay for it

In stead of selling ads, if they're violating privacy that way anyway there are far more lucrative things they could do;

  • Insider trading -- listen in our our exec teams and sales teams driving back from customer meetings -- if Ford wiretaps those they'll have invaluable data
  • Extortion -- listen in to politicians for anything embarrassing. Sell that to opposition parties
  • Insurance industry data -- listen to people talking about health concerns and sell it to their life and disability insurance companies (there are laws against doing so for health insurance; but weaker ones for other insurance products)
  • etc

The right answer is that Privacy Laws should stop Ford; and if your state or country doesn't have strong enough laws there, they should.

Comment Sad, most of this worked on Dell's in 1990s (Score 3, Informative) 48

by ron_ivi (#63942599) Attached to: How Ubuntu Linux Snuck Into High-End Dell Laptops

Amazing how far BACKWARDS Dell has come.

See: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20...

* Feb 1992 Linux runs fine (except for swapping) on a Dell 235D (25Mhz 386).

* Oct 1994 Dell employees help thier customers run Linux on Notebooks with a footnote that"In this isolated instance these are indeed the opinions of my employer"

* Jun 1995 Dell tests Linux on Notebooks and notes to potential customers "OS/2 Warp is supported. Linux isn't officially supported but unofficially, it works fine. I've been using these machines for over a year... I'm on the notebook design team at Dell.".

* Mar 1998 Ralph Nader sends a letter to Michael Dell requesting pre-installed Linux "after learning that Dell and other OEMs were reluctant to offer a Linux client PC on the grounds that it would harm the OEM's relationship with Microsoft."

* Aug 2000 Michael Dell says "configurations of all Dell products are now designed, tested and certified for Linux. Our factories can now customize each system -- from PCs to servers -- with Linux. "

* Sep 2005 Dell introduced a notebook with pre-installed Linux for the French market.

* Jan 2007 Dell introduced a notebook with pre-installed Linux in China.

It'd be nice to see Dell provide as much support as they did in the 1990s.

Comment This is about Regulatory Capture (Score 4, Insightful) 60

When the large companies in this space are calling for regulation, they're not doing it out of any sense of altruism.

They're doing it as a business strategy.

Specifically, they understand the power of Regulatory Capture - and know that if they and their lobbyists can write the regulations, they'll have an permanent monopoly on the industry.

Comment This is already being done, and received well! (Score 3, Interesting) 53

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sixthtone.com%2Fnews...

The Blockchain Chickens Bringing the Future to Free-Range

GoGo Chicken marries free-range poultry with high-tech surveillance. Each bird wears an ankle bracelet that counts its steps as it clucks, squabbles, and roams. The same blockchain ledger used in cryptocurrency transactions tracks information such as the chicken's age, daily step count, and even time of death. Customers who have already pre-purchased a chicken can view all the details on an app.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjdcorporateblog.com%2Fjd...

JD fits each chicken with a specially designed pedometer, with the aim of having each bird take one million steps during the rearing process. The company uses blockchain technology for maximum quality assurance and full traceability. Since early 2018, JD customers have been able to review details about the rearing process for every chicken they buy. A scan of the QR code on the poultryâ(TM)s packaging allows buyers to view detailed information on sourcing, feeding intervals and more

Such chickens cost three times the average, but are still in very high demand - http://chinaplus.cri.cn/news/c...

Liu said, each low income family would receive 100 chicks for free, with a pedometer attached to each of their legs. The chickens must be raised free range, and run at least 1 million steps before meeting JD.com's purchasing standards. They'll then be bought back for more than 100 yuan (14.6 USD).99% of chickens on the Chinese market move less than three meters in their whole life, explained Liu. Compared to the 45 days of raising broiler chickens, the feeding period for the free range birds will be around 160 days. Theyâ(TM)ll also enjoy a diet of fruit and vegetables three times a week. As a result, the prices for the free range chickens will be much higher than broiler chickens. On JD.com, free range birds are sold at 128, 168 and 188 yuan based on their weight, while other chickens are sold for 50 yuan on average.

Submission + - Is Wolfram the Smartest Programming Language in the Room?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Out of the box, does your programming language support Chemical Formulas & Chemical Reactions? Making Videos from Images & Videos? Integrals? Real Numbers? Graph Trees? Leap Seconds? Bio Sequences? Flight Data? Vector Displacement Plots? Lighting? Machine Learning? Tracking Robots? Notebooks? Creating, Deploying and Grading Quizzes? Analysis of Email Threads? Access to 2,249 User-Defined Functions? NFTs? These are just some of the feature upgrades Stephen Wolfram touched upon as announced the launch of Version 13 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica in a Dec. 13th blog post (for more, see What's New in Mathematica 13). Sign up for free access to Wolfram Cloud Basic here, kids! So, is Wolfram the "smartest programming language in the room"?

Comment Microsoft has different "security" ideas thanyou. (Score 3, Insightful) 169

by ron_ivi (#61551884) Attached to: Will you update your PC to Windows 11?
When Microsoft talks about "security" they aren't using the same definition of the word as you are.

In Microsoft's mind, security means:

  • The untrusted end-user is unable to run any software without owning an appropriate software license.
  • The untrusted end-user is unable to pirate any content without owning an appropriate license to the content.
  • If you're suspected of using the OS for criminal purposes, the appropriate government authorities can get in your computer with an appropriate warrant. DoJ inside the US and DoD in jurisdictions outside the US - or maybe the Chinese government for the Chinese version of Windows.

In your mind, security would mean:

  • You, rather than Microsoft, can choose what software can run on "your" computer.
  • You, rather than Microsoft, can choose if you want to make a fair-use back-up of content you purchased.
  • You, rather than Microsoft, can choose who can get in to your computer.

That's why the "security" question will never be perfectly solved.

The word means something very different to you than it does to the companies licensing stuf to you. And those definitions are incompatible with each other.

Comment This should replace usernames, not passwords (Score 1, Informative) 144

Biometrics, like a face or fingerprint, is not a replacement for the "what you know" part of authentication.

It's a good replacement for the "who you are" part - which corresponds better to a username.

It's easy enough to get someone's picture, and easy enough for oppressive governments to get someone's fingerprint.

Comment This is the best decision. (Score 5, Interesting) 140

I'm betting their Research Project is continuing....

They're probably using that apology letter to try to answer questions like:

* How susceptible is the Open Source Community to lame excuses from organizations that try to sabotage their work?

* How vulnerable is the Open Source Community to letting rogue organizations inject more defects just by changing the personnel of the people submitting compromising patches?

* Can groups that want back doors in Linux (hackers, government groups, etc) just switch the names of contributors and get to add more backdoor attempts even after their first people are banned?

The only way the Linux community can come out looking secure in the university's final research papers is to be extremely strict in the conditions of their return to the community.

Comment There always has been an Silicon Valle exodus. (Score 5, Insightful) 158

by ron_ivi (#60956752) Attached to: Is There a Tech Worker 'Exodus' From the San Francisco Bay Area?
There always has been an exodus. It's part of why Silicon Valley is so successful. Even in the 1990s I had friends moving to Costa Rica after doing successful businesses in Silicon Valley.

Stanford and Berkeley constantly churn out entrepreneurs and researchers in emerging technologies

Sand Hill Road's VC's constantly look for Stanford and Berkeley projects to invest in

SF's bigger financial institutions work with those VCs take the companies beyond the startup stage.

As the industry matures, those move out to make room for new innovation Silicon Valley is what it is because of a deliberately engineered close partnership of universities (Stanford, Berkeley), finance (Sand Hill Road for small ventures, San Francisco for bigger finance), industry (the Stanford Business Park, etc) and government (In-Q-Tel). This was intentionally modelled after a similar successful pattern around MIT. Great article on that here. http://www.netvalley.com/silic...

Comment Esp. where electric heating is required. (Score 1) 68

by ron_ivi (#60873272) Attached to: Bitcoin Miners in Nordic Region Get a Boost From Cheap Power
Considering places are moving toward all-electric home appliances as part of decarbonization effort", this might make sense many places: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bakersfield.com%2Fne...

pressure facing the California Energy Commission to require developers of new apartments and single-family homes to install only electric home-heating systems, water heaters, ovens, dryers and stoves.

Also - obligatory KFC bitcoin mining rig: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamesradar.com%2Fkfc...

KFC launches 4K, 240FPS gaming console with a built-in chicken warmer

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