OpenStars

OpenStars , 4 months ago

I think it means "I brought you some dinner: ME!":-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Their corporate website mentions that they use the data for marketing purposes. Whatever type of face they see - e.g. male or female, large or skinny, etc. - gets correlated with what was purchased, and then they sell that data for marketing purposes. Exactly like Google selling your search history, except with likely fewer restrictions in place.

Their website doesn't mention how often they get hacked to give away that data for free - to be clear, that data meaning A PICTURE OF YOUR ACTUAL FUCKING FACE. I don't know what resolution, or even what someone would do with it later, I am focusing here on the fact that the picture taking seems nonconsensual, especially for it to be stored in a database rather than simply used in the moment.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Ofc it could have been benign, but there is no evidence that it was, while conversely everything that we currently know points to a breach of ethics.

One, they did not fully disclose that a camera was even there (unless I am mixing up this story with another one just like it?). That also makes it impossible to...

Two, they did not obtain proper (or any) consent. A banking ATM that needs to use your face to verify your identity could be an example of a benign use, and ignoring the enormous potential security implications of that atm, it could do so with a popup on the screen "Do you consent to having your face observed?", "Do you consent to storage of your facial data in our database?", "Do you consent to us selling the marketing data we collect from analysis of your facial data?". They did none of this.

Three, when asked about it, they lied. Technically they obfuscated the truth, which is just another way of stating that they lied.

Ofc it COULD have been benign, but so far they are zero out of three already towards that end - and that is even from just what we know so far.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

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OpenStars , 4 months ago

I wouldn't mind if like I told my phone to send out a signal "I am a man, but I like cold tea". Partnering together with the machine to help me buy something I will enjoy is truly helpful.

Consent makes all the difference in the world.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

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/s btw, it's a saying as in "you are beyond the ability of mere humans to save you":-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Well, this is certainly the Good Place at least:-).

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OpenStars , 4 months ago

I wouldn't be even a tenth surprised to find out that the name of the later-made TV show was designed as a partial homage to that exact episode that preceded it.

Though maybe not, as the concept seems to describe something deep in our psyches, and appears in so many shows & songs (e.g. R.E.M.'s shiny happy people), and I would bet that the Twilight Zone episode itself was either based on or at least was was preceded by some ancient story written or told hundreds of years before it:-).

OpenStars , 4 months ago

But also, there is far less training data to mix and match responses from, so naively I would expect a higher plagiarism rate, by its very nature.

Less than 2% of the world's population has a doctorate. According to the US Census Bureau, only 1.2% of the US population has a PhD.

source

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Surely many who have them received them from elsewhere before immigration to America, and likewise the proportion of immigrants who have them I would expect to be oversized. Americans tend to be more greedy than anything else and don't put in the effort required for such small (financial) rewards.

Also, those with PhDs tend to congregate into certain areas that support those jobs, i.e. cities but not even a goodly number of those so much; plus smaller college towns too ofc. As such, many in the general populace might rarely if ever run into one for the largest majority of their lives, unless traveling specifically to those areas for some reason?

And ofc rural areas are far larger, geographically speaking, than places where a person with a PhD would (likely) go. So you could randomly pick a spot on a map 100 times and never manage to find someone with a PhD anywhere within tens of miles, I would expect - although that line of thinking reveals my own biases: do most educated farmers stop at like an MS and just follow up with their own (possibly even extensive) self studies, or go all the way to PhDs while working their actual farms? (I doubt it bc it does not sound practical, and that is a hallmark of farmers afaik, but I could be wrong...) Anyway, I expect the unequal distribution is a contributing / exasperating factor to the general rarity.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Jobs seem more about wanking off the bosses ego than anything else 🤷 .

OpenStars , 4 months ago

git 'er done!

OpenStars , 4 months ago

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OpenStars , 4 months ago

It makes sense - he spent so much time learning how the system worked, enough to get around it, so now he makes a living continuing the exploit. Many politicians and CEOs do the same.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

They might literally have had some psychological issue, where they were trying to see how far they could push it without being caught.

Or this whole article could be a hit job - maybe the original thesis literally wrapped these sections with text saying "here is an example of a plausible attempt at plagiarism that would not get caught today - please do not quote me out of context here, m'kay?". The devil is in the details, and I for one am not volunteering to put in the amount of effort it would take to properly judge this person.

Although I bet their bosses are, now.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Oh absolutely. And this being in academia, they likely will lose their job over it - like that Harvard professor who was accused of a highly similar form of plagiarism (borrowing long stretches of text while failing to cite the original source material). I was pointing out the absurdity of not doing that for politicians and CEOs:-(.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

They seem to be hoping that now, with AI, they can. :-|

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Okay not sure about this based on on the other responses but...sure why not, so here goes:

"It looks like you already have".:-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

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OpenStars , 4 months ago

He is telling you to run away - do it, do it now! :-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

The definition of pretty much every word these days has been hijacked to mean the exact opposite - like Google lets you "search" for things you "want", and Reddit would "connect" you to "humans people", FaceBook will steal all of your data share "news", again from "people", and so on.

I pretty much think of "smart" as now meaning "tactically weaponized to maximize corpo profits" - you know, "for your convenience"!:-P 🤮

OpenStars , 4 months ago

I should probably read that - I figured that I get the gist having read Animal Farm but hey, if we are going to live out the irl version then it might be good to at least say that I read about it first!:-P

It is fascinating how some people see far (ahead), by virtue of seeing clear (to the soul/center of the human condition) - technology may change but we don't seem to. Asimov, Jules Verne, George Orwell, they are like techno- or cultural prophets, not that we listened, sadly:-(.

C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) in addition to being a christian apologist also wrote philosophy about how Hitler was able to influence Europe during WWII, and I found that just fascinating e.g. if you avoid ever saying a thing but instead just act as if it is true then it is a way to avoid it being questioned. Evil people have access to so many tricks that a free & just society would never condone using (another big one lately is misinformation), nor would it even so much work in the other direction b/c getting people to question things is a major bonus in such a society so it's at best an anti-pattern there, and yet I wish we were much more aware of them b/c otherwise it is like facing a pathogen with no immune system.

Anyway thank you for reminding me of those quotes:-).

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Then more parents becomes more punishments:-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

por que no los dos?

Life...ah, finds a way.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

No, there's a lot more variety now that the bots have taken over.:-)

OpenStars , 4 months ago

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Cause I got food poisoning the last time I was there. :-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

It is definitely Wednesday my dude. Well, at least it was. :-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

I dunno, I want to believe in a future where both can scare a cop. :-)

OpenStars , 4 months ago

"Mommy what do these numbers above each of our heads mean? They say 23, 24, 25, and 26."

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Uh... the gun has a silencer on it?

While that nut musta been LOUD!

That is extremely nice attention to detail that Pam is wearing a police uniform.:-)

OpenStars , 4 months ago

It's a good thing you added "acorn" there!

OpenStars , 4 months ago

And didn't he have a partner who came and did similarly too? Neither managed to kill the guy they had already previously verified had no weapons.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

That's one way to test if he had somehow gained the power to become bulletproof, I suppose. It might have worked better if they could at least aim straight though:-P.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Exactly this. Like, nobody is blaming the officer for being scared upon hearing a gun-sounding noise, that's just common sense that they should be actually, but to empty the mag at... what? Without knowing what the target was? Or did he legit think that it was his car that was the threat?

That said, it's surely a tough job, especially for the pay and the danger. Which is all the more reason to train them at least up to the level of a kid going squirrel hunting?

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Okay but you are using "facts" and "data" there.:-)

While in their defense, that nut was scawy, and they got their fee-fees huwt.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Now whenever someone says "Why not both?", you can link to this docu-series that explains exactly why not both!:-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

No?

Oh uh I mean... nope, it's still a no actually. :-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Your stipud ! (both sic and /s btw) -> there, now you don't have to go back to Reddit to recall the nostalgia, you are ... welcome, I guess?:-D

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Your (sic) WRONG!

About EVRRTYHIGN! (sic)

I may know nothing myself, but I still have an opinion and will share it with you, consent be damned!

Why I... [Reddit cap exceeded, please deposit $10 to continue conversation].

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Which would normally mean that Reddit is not far behind, unless their CEO has the brains to avoid stepping into this same trap. But since it's Huffman, they're screwed! 😆

OpenStars , 4 months ago

He's tried. Nobody wants to fuck him:-P.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

It's a common phrase on Lemmy though: we can go lower.

Urg, but then again, just... why!?

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Yet still four heaping plates of food?

And...wait a minute, did she microwave that glass of wine as well?

:-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

I hope she kept it in the box it came in before pouring it into the glass. :-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Except then you get the boss' son "making coffee" at daddy's (friend's) company as their "service". The rich will still find a way to game the system.

Which doesn't mean that it's not worth a try!:-)

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Robert Reich can definitely explain it better than I:-). Basically any law that further enhances their protection moves them forward - e.g. Citizens United - while other things may pull them back, e.g. Obama raised the marginal top tax rate on dividends.

But corporations can do many things, like corporation A takes out a huge loan, builds a building, then hands it to B, then defaults on the loan, even while the board members of B are the same humans as were on A. Sounds like stealing right? Humans need to eat, breathe, sleep, and pay their debts, but corporations do not, plus have special protections besides. In the USA, a "President" of a legal entity can be held liable for actions taken by either himself or by the company, whereas a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) not as much.

Corporations helped do things not otherwise possible, e.g. didn't they build the Panama Canal? At the time that was such a huge endeavor that a single normal company could not have done it.

But there's a balance, and all told that balance has as of late tipped towards enhancing protections for corporations while offering less rights to the humans, i.e. the former has risen and by implication, at the expense of the latter.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Even if we were to assume for the sake of argument that corporations were the best thing since sliced bread - which in some ways they legit are, e.g. see how powerful computers have gotten in the hands of American LLCs, and there seems little doubt that such a pace of innovation would have occurred elsewhere in the world? but even so, setting that aside - the many special exemptions that have continued to be granted to them seems to have lost the balance that they may once have enjoyed.

Like, when will their wealth eventually trickle down to the rest of us mere humans? Even their own human CEOs are as nothing compared to those giant monolithic entities, able to engage with the world underneath the umbrella of special protections granted to them by governments, which their human board members could not accomplish either on their own or collectively without those special exemptions - that's just the whole point of forming a LLC to begin with.

And the American taxpayer continues to subsidize them, so yes we get even more powerful computing devices (in our pockets, on our wrists, on our faces, inside our very brains!?:-P), but on the other hand, most millennials and younger who do not already have a home have lost hope of ever owning one?

So yeah, as the OP graphic illustrated, "productivity" went up but "wages" (unlike stock dividends) did not, depicting the rise of corporations that use stock rather than Oxygen as the air that they breathe, and correspondingly that occurred at the expense of the mere human, who must rely on "dolla dolla bills ya'all" to be able to purchase goods & services. And there the ultra-wealthy have the most advantages (by design) as they can sacrifice the tiniest percentage of their stock portfolio to be able to purchase a car (or private jet, helicopter, humongous boat, whatever), whereas the mere human must scrimp and save for literally DECADES just to live somewhere where rain does not fall onto their heads as they sleep. It's not fair - which is fine, nobody who thinks about it for even a moment wants it to be even (why should someone who never works get paid, whereas someone who expends great sacrifices and efforts get similar reimbursement in return - that would be the true unfairness, from a ROI perspective) - but more to the point, it's nowhere near as balanced today as it once was, say, back in the 50s, 60s, and early to mid 70s. We used to exist side-by-side with corporations, whereas today a tipping point has been crossed and now we are becoming their slaves.