We’re finally able to talk about Ready Player One, and the gang as expected has different reactions. (Red light behind Kishore means spoilers are in play!) We also talk about the death of Steam Machines, new Intel chips, and spider science. Plus a quick VR minute!
One Day Builds
Adam embarks on one of his most ambitious builds yet: fulfil…
Show And Tell
Adam recently completed a build of the royal St. Edwards cro…
Making
Viewers often ask to see Adam working in real-time, so this …
One Day Builds
Adam and Norm assemble a beautifully machined replica prop k…
One Day Builds
One of the ways Adam has been getting through lockdown has b…
Making
Adam unboxes and performs a quick test of this novel new hel…
Making
When Adam visited Weta Workshop early last year, he stopped …
One Day Builds
Adam tackles a shop shelf build that he's been putting off f…
Show And Tell
Time for a model kit build! This steampunk-inspired mechanic…
One Day Builds
Adam reveals his surprise Christmas present for his wife--a …
Why not do HBONOW???
I gotta disagree with Norm on touch screen laptops. I’ve got a touchpad right under my thumb when my hands are on the keyboard. I don’t need a touch screen, and I don’t want fingerprints on my screen. I’ve seen nothing on touchscreen for a desktop/laptop that makes me want a touchscreen.
I would love to see a full discussion (2 hours or more) of AI in the classroom. This would include what it would be like now, in the near future and finally after several years of development just for the classroom. This discussion would include Norm, Jamie, Kishore and one or two accomplished AI developers.Thank you.
Both Siri and a fully intelligent system are both considered AI where the former is “weak” and the latter is “strong”. So you are both right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_AI
well there is the new Top Story drop… “Today’s Top Story…. the whole fart world under reported.”
The “moment of science” in this episode begs the question–Did dinosaurs fart?
I’m interviewing the authors of the book next week. I’ll ask!
I think Norm and I both need to see RPO again because either I ascribed stuff from the book to the film erroneously or Norm missed a lot of stuff he said the film didn’t show.
1:01:00 Apple switched their Mac chipset two times. The original Macs were Motorola 68k. They switched to PowerPC later. Holy cow I’m old.
Since then, Motorola has been bought by Lenovo. PowerPC was a collab between Apple, IBM, and Motorola… now IBM has more employees in India than in the US. You can basically read the history of modern Earth economics in that one company’s line of computers…. im sure Martian children will be studying it in school in 2200. . .
ok the true experience of midwest Toys R US… i have been going to the same Toys R Us since before my brain could form memories. I was truly tearing up standing in the line to buy my last toy from Toys R Us… i dont think anyone will ever tear up if Amazon shuts down….. they will just find another website to order stuff from. we are definitely physical beings and cannot be transplanted completely into the Oasis yet…. like trees, when they move them, they have to take the root ball, there are all kinds of micro-organisms in symbiosis with the larger being.
As for whether the sanctions related to violating GDPR (the European privacy laws they discuss) are harsh enough to get companies like FB to comply, the fine is up to 4% of global revenue if found in violation of key parts of the law.
When you consider the fines that the EU has previously handed out to the likes of Google ($2.7 billion), Intel (1+ billion Euro), Microsoft (900 & 560 million Euros in separate cases), Daimler (1 billion Euros), car-glass manufacturer Saint-Gobain (880million Euros) etc. for breaching competition-legislation, and the 13 billion Euros they charged Apple after they tried to avoid taxes, and I think it is fair to say the new laws should not be taken lightly. It is not just likely, but inevitable, that given the high-profile of these new regulations, there will be examples made of major players early on, to make the rest fall in line.
Also, while I do not doubt Kishore is entirely correct in saying that Cambridge Analytica did not change people’s voting patterns in terms of which party they prefer, they could have, through identifying those susceptible to certain types of messaging, have amplified the polarization on one side in particular, and changed whether they voted at all.
Now, I may be wrong, but the research I’ve seen discounting the CA methodology has only focused on whether its success in affecting purchasing decisions translates to shifting voter *sides* and not patterns as in vote/stay home.
If you affect FB-timelines with the goal of getting the GOP side riled up for Trump, and get the other side infighting (Hillary/Bernie) or complacent (broadcast things to the effect of “Hillary will win in a landslide”) until they don’t even bother, you don’t need big numbers to have a big effect… even if not a single person votes for a different party as a result of their ad-tampering.
I hope the GDPR angle at disclosing exactly what was done works, so that it is possible to see whether their goal really was to get people to switch sides, because if so it probably didn’t work, but then again, I have no background in any of the science involved and even I can tell you that getting someone who loves My Little Pony to buy something cutesy is a lot easier than getting a democrat to vote for the guy from the Apprentice as POTUS.
Sigh . . . why is this website so amazingly inept? I had a nice comment responding to Kim_A, but it won’t let me post it because of an unspecified error. It’s enough to make one want to just give up on this site.
Regarding Ready Player One (I’ll confess, I disliked the book and have no intent to see the movie), at what point does this Russian Doll of Unreality reach the absurd level. Let’s say that they make a VR game of the movie – something I’m assuming folks would be excited about. So, one would play Wade, who would then become Parzifal, who would then pretend to be Mathew Broderick in War Games? We’re reaching three or four levels deep into unreality. And my question is, at what point does steeping one’s life in unreality lead to real and serious despair when faced with actual reality. The real world in Ready Player One was not improving, nor did the saving of the Oasis in any way make it apparent that it would improve the real world. It was left to continue to rot, for people to continue to just live miserable lives in the Stacks, because, Hey, we’ve got a great place to escape to so who cares about anything else?
It would be silly if it weren’t already a reality, albeit not yet in such a complete form. Real life communities have been destroyed because of Facebook and Twitter – will the advent of VR only serve to increase the decay of all that is real? Is there a limit to how many realities can occupy our attention, and is it a universal truth that one reality can only grow at the expense of another?
To warp Adam’s catch phrase, I reject your reality and substitute my own, but at what point do we just lose everything that is real? In a world where sex robots is a booming industry, I suggest this is a serious concern.
I’ll give it another try . . .
My thoughts are varied on this topic. First, if anyone is so ignorant so that Facebook actually shapes either their position on any topic of principle or their will to go out and vote for candidates they support – well, that person is an idiot and there’s really nothing that can be done to fix that. Truly, if someone said, “Hey, Facebook makes it look like my candidate will win in a landslide, therefore I’m not going to bother to go vote at my local precinct.” – well, that person is a disgrace. However, I doubt there are many such people on either side of the political spectrum.
Second, there are thousands upon thousands of tools being used to try to manipulate people. Facebook was just one of them. From the Mainstream Media (including all news channels which are all biased in their own ways) to paid advertisements to newspapers to billboards to robocalls to people knocking on doors . . . etc. How on earth can anyone find a “control group” to measure whether Facebook was the real prime mover in shaping folks perceptions and opinions? In a world chock full of people spending millions of dollars to influence, bamboozle, and persuade folks, why is Facebook suddenly isolated as “the” culprit. It seems absurd. I mean, there was evidence that surfaced showing collaboration between DNC officials and news debate moderators to give one candidate an edge over another, and there wasn’t ANYWHERE near this level of outcry or alarm. Or look at the evidence that’s shown up showing that DNC officials were using Pakistani IT support guys with criminal records and NO BACKGROUND checks on their official network and PCs – and there’s practically no news coverage or concern. There are many, many things that should be much more concerning than Facebook data analytics, none of which appears to have been illegal in any way.
Third, it’s not as if Facebook wasn’t utilized to the maximum by Obama. Yet, when he used this data it was hailed as brilliant and not as a “violation of our privacy.” See stories at these links:
http://dailycaller.com/2018/03/19/facebook-trump-obama-cambridge-data/
https://heavy.com/news/2018/03/carol-davidsen-obama-facebook-tweets-davidson/
I say all of this as someone who definitely does not use Facebook and thinks it’s one of the worst things to happen to civilization. However, this absurd rage directed against them by political pundits and the like seems like a big sham. I think they see an opportunity to use this as a gateway to start US government regulation of CONTENT on the Internet, and I can’t see how ANYONE would think that’s a good idea.
At any rate, those are my thoughts on this silliness. And, at the end of the day, it really is very, very silly.
I agree with most of your points, but will add that some people are indeed as easily led as to be, as you say, idiots… which is why I am hesitant to conclude there was no effect of the FB-breach.
Hearing scientists state there was no effect when they don’t actually know what CA was trying to do rubs me the wrong way, so I’d love to see the data and see whether switching parties was ever the goal, or just altering the tone of the social media debate around the election. Not to know for sure, because as you say, there is no control group here.
As for your note on Obama’s microtargeting campaign and censorship, I must admit I have not seen a single article or even outraged tweet saying that any level of targeting political ads should be illegal (even if some have noted it is exceptionally wasteful resource-wise, and not a little annoying). I don’t doubt they exist though, but that is as you say, silly, and akin to banning lawn-signs and lapel-pins. However, what I have seen people outraged by is that the data used to form Cambridge Analytica’s graphs was stolen, and outrage at FB for letting that happen as well as the general overreach in their data gathering (also mostly silly, as people certainly agreed to the terms).
But, if you are telling me that Obama’s campaign also hacked their way to 87 million people’s social media data in order to train their microtargeting algorithm, I will happily concede the leftist double standard. 🙂
Just a minor point of clarification on my end – what Obama’s campaign did during 2012 is actually identical to what Cambridge Analytica is accused of doing, only Obama’s folks did it on a larger scale and with Facebook’s permission. That’s what Carol Davidsen, one of the senior campaign managers, is on the record as saying. I’ve got a great audio clip of her explaining how they were able to suck data across the entire Facebook network via the social graph app, to an extent that surprised even Facebook itself (Tested.com won’t let me post a link to the clip, though). In fact, Facebook changed its policies after this realization to prevent others from mining data in this fashion, but LET the Obama campaign keep and use the data it had extracted because Facebook supported the Obama campaign.
Here’s a YouTube clip that contains some of the background (including some of Davidsen’s own words):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0bV2b4WMmQ
Like I said – I personally hate Facebook, but not nearly as much as I hate Twitter. I’ll agree, too, that there certainly are idiots out there (bot liberals and so-called conservatives), but folks that easily swayed by Facebook will be easily swayed by anything. Heck, if someone is that ignorant you could advertise on the back of a box of Fruity Pebbles and persuade them. There’s no way to prevent someone that swayable from being swayed, certainly not in the hurricane of media we live in, so why worry?
Regarding what scientists can know in this situation – I’ll agree, it’s practically impossible for them to make the claims they’re making, but then scientists jumping the gun is not an uncommon thing (as the history of science illustrates).