"I tried to start Adobe Acrobat today, part of the Creative Cloud suite, and it wouldn't start unless I agreed to new Terms of Use. But to read the Terms of Use, I had to agree to the Terms of Use first. This video shows me haplessly clicking the "Terms of Use" link only to be prevented from reading them because, of course, I had not agreed to the Terms of Use"
"READ CAREFULLY. By reading this post, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer."
"There's no concrete evidence of long-term harm to our children caused by using our phones around them, but there's enough evidence of potential short-term effects that it makes sense to be mindful of it. Some amount of phone use around our kids is probably okay, but if we're absorbed in our devices in a way that interferes with our ability to connect with and respond to them, this can become a problem. Also, let's be kind to ourselves."
"A wave of artificial intelligence-driven misinformation and disinformation that could influence key looming elections poses the biggest short-term threat to the global economy, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has said.
In a deeply gloomy assessment, the body that convenes its annual meeting in Davos next week expressed concern that politics could be disrupted by the spread of false information, potentially leading to riots, strikes and crackdowns on dissent from governments."
"Do screens destroy kids' executive functioning? In short: no. Some types of screen use (in particular, non-educational, 'fantastical' shows) may have short-term impacts on attention, memory, or inhibition. But these effects don't seem to be long-term, unless screen use is excessive and interfering with other important activities. And some screens (educational apps, certain video games) may actually improve executive functioning skills. "
"While biometrics may not be the long term alternative to passwords, they are safer to use. Rather than seeing them as separate methods to identify that you are who you say you are, they should instead be viewed as complementary methods that can be used together to verify an individual."
"In terms of safety, a 2013 Navigant Research report noted "the potential for greatly reduced accident rates." Such potential rests on the basic logic of driving: Good driving relies on physics calculations; bad driving happens thanks to human physical limitations like intoxication and sleepiness."
"A new study released this month in First Monday uncovers more than 4,000 unique keywords censored over the last year and a half on Chinese instant messaging platforms. Focusing on Skype and the microblogging service Sina Weibo, the researchers cultivated their keyword list using reverse-engineering techniques such as packet sniffing, which captures and analyzes packets of data as they pass through a network."
"Many younger people just don't think in terms of their future employability, of identity theft, of legal problems if they're being provocative. Not to mention straightforward reputational issues." (Paris Brown, Phippen adds, "clearly never thought what she tweeted when she was 14" might one day stop her being Britain's first youth police commissioner.)"
"When people connected to the hotspot, the terms and conditions they were asked to sign up to included a "Herod clause" promising free Wi-Fi but only if "the recipient agreed to assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity". Six people signed up.
F-Secure, the security firm that sponsored the experiment, has confirmed that it won't be enforcing the clause."
"EFF has released its mobile app to help people join in important, timely struggles, but you can't get it for your Iphone or Ipad, because Apple insists that EFF use DRM, and this is contrary to everything it stands for.
In a petition, EFF calls out Apple's incredibly abusive, one-sided developer "agreement" and calls on developers and Apple users to join a campaign to get Apple to give developers the freedom to release their creations on more liberal terms."
"When it comes to the speed of these improvements, Yudkowsky says its important to not confuse the current speed of AI research with the speed of a real AI once built. Those are two very different things. What's more, there's no reason to believe that an AI won't show a sudden huge leap in intelligence, resulting in an ensuing "intelligence explosion" (a better term for the Singularity)."
"No arguments there, but the term, which stands for "artificial intelligence", has a more storied history than Spielberg and Kubrick's 2001 film. The concept of artificial intelligence goes back to the birth of computing: in 1950, just 14 years after defining the concept of a general-purpose computer, Alan Turing asked "Can machines think?""
"The UK is opposing an international ban on so-called "killer robots" at a United Nations conference that is this week examining future developments of what are officially termed lethal autonomous weapons systems (Laws)."
"O'Neill recounts an exercise to improve service to homeless families in New York City, in which data-analysis was used to identify risk-factors for long-term homelessness. The problem, O'Neill describes, was that many of the factors in the existing data on homelessness were entangled with things like race (and its proxies, like ZIP codes, which map extensively to race in heavily segregated cities like New York). Using data that reflects racism in the system to train a machine-learning algorithm whose conclusions can't be readily understood runs the risk of embedding that racism in a new set of policies, these ones scrubbed clean of the appearance of bias with the application of objective-seeming mathematics. "
"About two years ago the retail team lost another key task: negotiating with major brands and manufacturers the terms of popular sales on the site called "Lightning Deals." Common during the holidays as well as Mother's Day and Father's Day, they help move lots of inventory in a short period.
Now, instead of calling their vendor manager at Amazon, the makers of handbags, smartphone accessories and other products simply logged into an Amazon portal that would determine if Amazon liked the deal being offered and the quantity it was willing to buy. No small talk. No give and take. Thousands of Amazon man hours spent forecasting demand, planning marketing strategies and negotiating deals was now handled by software, a major leap in efficiency."
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