What is good music though? I think the OP meant that the Ramones were terrible musicians in the sense that they were technically "good", i.e. most jazz musicians are much better technically. But that's the whole point the OP is making, to make good music you don't need to be technically good, i.e. to play the most complex guitar solos or be extremely accurate in your timing on the drums.
Well first they need to proof that Viktor was actually copyrightable. If it was largely written by an llm, that might not be the case? AFAIK several rulings have stated that AI generated code can not be copyrighted.
This is a common misreading of the law. AI cannot hold authorship of code, but no ruling has claimed so far that ai output itself can't be copyrighted (that I know of)
That said, the article says "Okay, prompts, great. Are they any interesting? Surprisingly... yes. As an example workflow_discovery contains a full 6-phase recipe for mining business processes out of Slack conversations, something that definitely required time and experiments to tune. It's hardcoded business logic, but in prompt instead of code."
So the article author clearly knows this prompt would be copyrighted as it wasn't output from an AI, and recognises that there would have been substantial work involved in creating it.
That Reuters article is misleadingly worded. The Stephen Thaler case in question is because Thaler tried to register the AI itself as the author of the copyright, not that he tried to register the output for copyright under his own name. https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2026/03/the-f...
Suppose I illicitly get my hands on the source code for a proprietary product. I read through this code I'm not supposed to have. I write up a detailed set of specifications based on it. I hand those specifications off to someone else to do a clean room implementation.
Sure, I didn't have a license for the code that I read. But I'm pretty sure that doesn't taint my coworker's clean room implementation.
These discussions remind me so much of the US discussions about federal ID documents as verification.
There's a vocal portion of people which opposes any solution because "privacy, government overreach, surveillance ...". So instead of a solution like e.g. zero-proof age verification, that tries to minimize intrusions on privacy, the result is the worst of all worlds, maximum surveillance (but I guess it's ok if it is not the federal government, but meta), with minimum utility. Just look at the freaking mess that is trying to proof your identity in the US.
For there to be a solution, there needs to be a problem. These bills are not addressing a problem. Assume the online platform has a video feed of my kid, or their SSN, or a zero-knowledge-proof of age, or whatever.
Now, what will the platform do with it? Concretely? As in: Name one bad outcome a reasonable parent would care about that's prohibited under these bills. If the bad thing happens due to willful negligence, then there needs to be some actual material consequence to someone at the platform provider.
This isn't from the bill, but this is what I would like to see: Any endless scroll "feed" can only be chronological content only from people/orgs/entities you opt-in to see ("follow", "subscribe", what-have-you).
Why chronological? What is special about that ordering?
You aren’t allowed any kind of filtering, or alternative ordering?
Do you always view the ‘new’ feed on hackernews, or do you prefer looking at the front page? I much prefer the front page, for all sorts of reasons. The new feed has all sorts of spam and garbage posts. Reposts, troll bait, etc. The front page usually has much more interesting posts, and definitely posts that have more interesting comments on them.
I don’t want to get rid of the front page, I like the idea of seeing posts ordered by popularity.
Why should you get to decide I am no longer allowed to sort my own feed by popularity, or however I want? I can’t sort things, just because you think I shouldn’t enjoy my feed too much?
I am not so egotistical as to think I get to decide any of this. Hence, I did not say I "should" get to decide.
I simply said that if I could, that is what I would like to see.
I tried to phrase my comment to convey that I know it is not a popular opinion. I am not surprised that someone would disagree me with, and I am okay with that :)
I have no issue with everyone being able to choose how you view your feed. I might even support legislation that would require any website with a feed to offer a chronological, not filtered version, although many websites already include an option to view a feed in that form.
This whole thread is about attempts to outlaw “addictive” feeds, which is what I take issue with. I don’t like the idea of government having that level of control.
On the other hand, I am also not in the group who says we should make no attempts to help our society deal with the negative effects of addictive feeds. I feel the same way about free speech; I am a huge believer in the absolute necessity for complete free speech, but I also don’t think we can ignore the power and influence of disinformation and/or propaganda. We should absolutely be working on figuring out mitigation tactics that don’t involve prohibiting speech, or prohibiting particular feed algorithms.
>I don’t like the idea of government having that level of control.
This is my usual stance. I have to deal with various regulations (and worse: state-by-state laws) in my business, so I tend to be reflexively anti-regulation.
But what if maximum satisfaction causes maximum usage? If you make the perfect feed that shows someone exactly what they want to see at every moment, people are going to use that all the time.
You're assuming wanting to watch something always leads to being satisfied after seeing it. Which is increasingly not the case. People are doomscrolling for hours, and then regret doomscrolling for hours rather than doing something meaningful instead.
>Name one bad outcome a reasonable parent would care about that's prohibited under these bills.
the bad outcomes don't need to be prohibited under these bills. it's already illegal to, for example, distribute pornography to minors. which i think is something that a reasonable parent would have a problem with.
but if there is no way to determine who is a minor and who isn't, then it's impossible to determine the difference between "willful negligence" and regular old negligence and enforce any consequences for breaking that law. age verification laws are about mechanisms to make other, already existing laws actually enforceable.
I can't speak for proof of identity in the US, but please understand that digital privacy is a slippery slope we're already sliding down, it is not unreasonable to be critical of any privacy violating initiative, because privacy is never given back, only taken away.
this position assumes the surveillance state or megacorps would be satisfied with a zero knowledge proof based ID/age verification system, which is not at all obvious to me
meta could spend their billions lobbying for that, if they wanted to
edit: to be clear, I do think a government developed and maintained ZKP ID/age system is the best possible compromise, I just don't think we have any chance of getting it
It's a bait and switch that can be seen by even Ray Charles from a mile away. ZKP assurances is just part of the high-IQ "useful idiots" spreading buy in for the bait.
Please explain how opposition to privacy invasive solutions result in even more privacy invasive solutions being implemented? Is it purely out of spite from the lawmakers? This logic doesn't follow.
It’s obviously worse for your privacy to have third parties handle full images of your drivers license or video of your entire face, which can then be leaked, rather than using a zero knowledge proof that only sends e.g. a birth year. And no, it’s not spite, it’s incoherence. Lawmakers are single minded seekers of re-election to a first degree approximation and will do things to get votes, even if those things don’t logically make sense together, such as requiring age verification without providing the tools for companies to abide by the law themselves.
US lawmakers are single-minded seekers of lobbying and insider trading money, they will sign and trade on whatever ALEC hands them so they receive more money.
Because we’re currently still in the phase where lawmakers are telling tech companies “please find a solution for this issue.” At some point, as has happened in the past with other issues, this will change to “solve this issue, here’s exactly how you have to do it.”
The logic not flowing is the point. People against a federal ID say it is government overreach into state's rights. They consider it the feds invading citizen's rights. They have no need, as it is the purview of the states. So in lieu of a federal ID, private companies are coming up with privacy invading techniques to attempt to verify age. How would one be okay with a private company's invasion of privacy yet not the government's? An invasion of privacy is an invasion of privacy regardless of the one doing the invading.
> An invasion of privacy is an invasion of privacy regardless of the one doing the invading.
Technically, yes, but one party (e.g. USGOV) has many more strands that it can weave together into a larger coherent picture than the other (e.g. Meta).
Also one party has guns and an almost blanket immunity to using them on people it deems it does not like via its privacy violations.
Up until the socials get their own security forces that are deployed as the algo tells them. They have enough money to be the next Pinkertons. /s
But at this point, the government is getting the data from private companies. So if the private companies were not gathering the data, the government would not have such easy access. So I'm much more concerned about private companies for that reason. Yes, the government can do more things to you physically, but they are too dependent on what private companies provide
>”How would one be okay with a private company's invasion of privacy yet not the government's? An invasion of privacy is an invasion of privacy regardless of the one doing the invading.”
‘Invasion’ is doing a lot of work in your comment, and I don’t think there is a clear and widely agreed upon definition of what constitutes an ‘invasion of privacy’. If you have such a definition, please do share it.
Ignoring the reality that some system of age (and ID verification, for certain tasks) system is desired by a significant portion of the population, and does have utility (despite the shouts for "just parent your children") is simply sticking your head in the sand. So by opposing any solution (even solutions that preserve privacy, like zero-knowledge), you make privacy concerns seem unreasonable and weaken stances opposing the more privacy invasive solutions.
Do you have a source for that? Does your source imply that this is desired by the population?
My question is mostly rhetorical: it is obvious that government & safety institutions are themselves fanning the flames of this ridiculous movement away from privacy and towards a surveillance state of over-protectionism. The world has not significantly changed in 50 years in terms of terrorist threats, (except for, ironically, threats to your identity online), yet suddenly now that we can track people online, we must to combat this non-changing threat factor? It's all security theater.
All intelligence agencies benefit from more data, and will happily use lack of data as a scapegoat for their own incompetence. They instill fear to justify their existence, unlawful behavior, and lack of results.
When I hear this argument ("better the government do it than a private company") I recoil. The government is sovereign, only accepts lawsuits at its discretion, and can use violence to get its way. We also know for a fact that it abuses its powers and conducts surreptitious unlawful campaigns against its citizens.
I'm not on board with any of it, but the last thing I want is the government to control it.
The government is also, at least theoretically, democratic and accountable to the population.
Meta on the other hand is a dictatorship run by Zuck that's only marginally accountable to stockholders (which are only a small subset of the population).
You know meta keeps a shadow profile on every person who is know to every one of their customers, right? So even if you don't use it, they almost certainly have you in their system.
At least when the government is working, there are controls around what they can collect, what they can do with it, and who they share it with. And what they cannot do with it.
When the government is working as intended, and have not abdicated their duties to the people, the government at least has controls over what they can and cannot do. Yes, they have a monopoly on violence, but they also in theory have lots of controls.
For example, the government cannot silence your speech, but a private company can. The government cannot share your data with others, a private company can.
Unfortunately the government has abdicated their duties and so you think they are worse than a private company.
I get all of these hypotheticals, but, again, we know that it's not true. The government routinely collects and shares information that it shouldn't. We can't talk about it like it doesn't because it was designed not to. We have to contend with reality.
I don't understand the fascination with pretending. System A is bad. System B is worse. System B theoretically shouldn't exist yet it does and there's nothing you can do about it, so now you're advocating for B. What's the rationale?
I think we already laid out our argument too. A private company can do whatever they want with your data. They can sell it, exploit it, and block you from accessing it.
The government can do none of those things. They can't deplatform you. They can't exploit your data or sell it. They can't block you from it.
At least by design.
By design, having the government responsible for verifying your identity is far superior than having private companies do it, because by design they have to be truthful and forthcoming.
The flaw is that the system is failing and so right now the private system and government system are equally bad.
I agree with everything you said when considering your caveat that the government needs to act lawfully and in good faith. I also appreciate that you have probably dealt directly with similar matters. Since the government has demonstrated that it won't comply, though, I am unwilling to go in that direction, and I guess in that way we see it differently.
We might just not have the same government. I'm not American and to me this isn't a failure of government as a concept, but your government as an implementation, if that makes sense.
This seems like a very easy problem. The government has birth records, passports, ssn, phone records, etc. so they could provide an age bracket to anybody that needs it. But instead a private corporation will get to do this and create an absolute mess à la Palantir.
That requires a high level of trust in your current government and whomever is in charge in the future.
Its worth remembering how the Nazis so efficiently found Jews in the Netherlands. The Dutch government kept meticulous records, including things like your name, address, and religious affiliation. That wasn't a big deal until the Nazis rolled in, throw in some level of Nazi sympathizers in the Dutch government and it wasn't hard for them to track down anyone they wanted to find.
Sure, there's a good reason to avoid centralizing data in general but in this case we're talking about governments. Governments are particularly dangerous for mass data collection because they also come with the authority, and military, of a state.
And with the money (or else: the authority) to get the data from private businesses. So they get the full data without any restrictions that they themselves would face.
Based on your other comments, I’m curious what your solution is?
The government needs our records to collect taxes. So at the minimum the government must have some information. We can argue over the mechanism and trust factor but that’s not the core issue here.
The private companies doing this is the core problem. This is a service that the government could provide for free with the most safeguards.
Or perhaps you have some other proposal? And I’m not interested in the no government anarchy you propose elsewhere.
> That requires a high level of trust in your current government and whomever is in charge in the future.
Some entity has to be trusted with our data anyway, at least government supposed to have some accountability before the citizens, corporations have much higher incentives for profit.
Why is it a given that we need to trust an entity with our data? Most of human history got by without data collection, centralized or otherwise, there's no innate law of nature requiring it
It doesn't require only trusting the government (or another corporation) today, it requires trusting all future iterations of them as well. It may be a different story if the data was periodically purged, say after each administration for example.
There are still a lot of underlying assumptions here worth noting though. You're assuming we must have a government and what it must be able to do, like charge me taxes or gatekeep certain activities behind licensing systems.
I'm not arguing we don't need a government. But to silently take for granted that everything from income taxes to public roads and travel restrictions are a given jumps ahead here.
We could decide, for example, that the government shouldn't be allowed to centralize certain data and remove some of what we expect them to do instead.
> We could decide, for example, that the government shouldn't be allowed to centralize certain data and remove some of what we expect them to do instead.
How exactly government manages our data is a valid concern and in the modern world this needs to be reevaluated.
Because this does not address the problem at all. Or rather - it does not address my problems as a citizen, and it just pushes responsibility of parents onto 3rd parties and punishes everyone collectively for it.
Also fundamentally speaking - this does just take away your right to privacy. do you just let your rights be taken away?
I don't want 'minimization' of intrusion of privacy, i want no intrusion of privacy.
Technology is what solutions are made of. The "nontechnical solutions to societal problems" are the things like "wishful thinking", "pretending the problem doesn't exist", "wishing it away", etc.
(Which is fine when the problem is bullshit and there is nothing to solve, which actually may be the case here.)
Right, I would argue they are part of technology, because bureaucracy clearly is, laws move in scope of what's possible and economically feasible, and culture is entirely downstream of that.
Or, put another way, you cannot "just change culture", not any more than you can make a river flow uphill by pushing water with your hands. You can splash some water around and make a little puddle, but it'll quickly flow back to rejoin the river and continue on its way.
Culture is always seeking a dynamic equilibrium, in a landscape defined by economics and technology constraints. The only way to achieve lasting change is to change the landscape.
>Right, I would argue they are part of technology, because bureaucracy clearly is, laws move in scope of what's possible and economically feasible, and culture is entirely downstream of that.
then you’re using different definition that everyone else, and bring nothing into discussion other than confusion.
>Or, put another way, you cannot "just change culture"
it isn't shaped just by technology. There are economic factors and cultural exchanges between different cultures.
This is purely tautological line of thinking, that brings nothing to discussion.
> So instead of a solution like e.g. zero-proof age verification
A solution to what, though? I oppose any solution because I disagree with your premise: this is not a real problem. We do not need to do anything about it, and any cost would be too high.
Why exactly are you extending them the benefit of the doubt when they've proven they don't deserve it over and over again? Even if zero-proof age verification emerged as a strong political alternative I'd fully expect the final bill to have a carve out of the zero proof exemption for the government in it, a backdoor in encryption scheme essentially. Here you tell me that isn't zero proof, which is true but wouldn't change the name on the bill one iota.
Yup. And like the Clipper chip but with much less pushback. It's a weaponized manufacturing consent campaign to fool people into giving up their privacy and anonymity with d/misinformation. It's so disgusting that state and federal legislators are giving them everything they want, well beyond regulatory capture towards absolute corruption and absolute power.
A simple question with a simple answer: as it has done since the inception.
If a kid wants to sneak some porn, he's going to have to hide his digital nudeymag under his digital mattress, and when it's discovered, he'll have to accept his fate as decided by his parents.
Not everyone has (or can have) a driver's license and a social security card literally says it is *not* for identification because it lacks even the most basic aspects. But since the US never managed to come up with an actual system, companies started using SSNs like an identity verifier, because it is the one thing everyone has across every state. But that also makes identity theft or credit fraud trivial in the US compared to other countries.
> a social security card literally says it is not for identification
It no longer says this, and has not for a long long time. My parent's cards did, but mine does not. Also, I'm old (for this forum at least), so this isn't a recent change.
> It no longer says this, and has not for a long long time.
Don't know about "a long long time" but the feds have been treating Social Security Cards as identification since 1943 (military, some agencies) or 1963 (IRS) (cf [0])
I think you're misunderstanding why they are requesting an SSN. You cannot use an SSN to do an in person ID like a photo ID. Same reason a birth certificate cannot be used as an ID. These documents can be used to look up information about you, and a lot of places might use your SSN as a database unique ID, but that kind of info is not identification when someone shouts "papers!" at you.
conflating the two meanings of identification feels deliberate at this point
> companies started using SSNs like an identity verifier
Probably because USGOV said it is[0]
"In 1943 a presidential executive order directed the military and other government agencies to use the number for identification purposes, and in 1961 the Internal Revenue Service began using the number for taxpayer identification."
That's correct, but what does a driver license have to do with it? A state-issued driver license is one document that can serve as identification. There are plenty of others, including those that are solely for identification. Are you unintentionally conflating them, or are you suggesting that there a eligible people who are unable to get an identity document?
Some financial institutions may not have proper fraud prevention policies, but that is a problem both caused by and to be resolved by the financial institution, not the consumer. Pretending it's the consumer's problem may protect the financial institution, but leads to entire categories of new problems far more devastating. Don't pretend some nebulous concept of identity has been stolen. Say it like it is: the financial institution was defrauded due to their own lax policies.
Identity theft is commonly understood to be exactly what you just mentioned. Obviously no one can steal me (which is exactly what I thought when I first heard the term as a broke college kid; who wants to be me anyway?)
We aren't "pretending" it's a consumer problem. It is a consumer problem. When someone opens up a credit card or loan in my namd, whose life gets messed up? Not the banks! Pretending it's not a consumer problem is dangerous and can lead to a lot of messed up financial lives.
Personally, I freeze my credit with all major bureaux, and I shred any mail that has my name on it. It's annoying, yes, but the alternative is even more annoying.
The only reason _you_ have a problem when somebody defrauds the bank, is because the banks sufficiently marketed the term Identify Theft. In reality, nothing of yours was stolen. In reality, the actual illicit act was somebody lying to the bank, and the bank not properly verifying who that person is.
You say nothing of mine is stolen but they hypothetically just racked up $10k debt on my identity. This is stuff that affects real things like my ability to get a mortgage, and I am also on the hook for that money unless I find a way to cancel that card. No matter the case, it very much is my problem, and they successfully took money from someone else (the bank) and made me pay for it. That's theft.
> the actual illicit act was somebody lying to the bank
Yes, this is known as fraud, and the entire concept of identity theft.
You must not live in the US or have very odd patterns, I'm positive a majority of the US population have free credit monitoring due to the multiple SSN data leaks.
I think they're talking about proving your identity to a non govt entity. A few things that come to mind are any platform with a KYC, they require you to upload your ID and assure you they're secure with a little lock icon.
When I needed to get my newborn daughter's social security card I went to the local SS office, only to be turned away because I did not have an appointment. So I went home, finally got an appointment after an hour on the phone, trying to explain why I didn't have her SS card (apparently "it never arrived" did not compute), went back the next day with my passport card to provide as proof of identity. Only for them to say "we don't accept passport cards as ID. We can use your license though!"
The identity issuer - the government - already has the your privacy. If you have a unique identifier from the government which websites can call the government with to verify your identity, you won't lose any privacy. All the websites get is just a unique string, no date of birth, no name, no address. This approach is the cornerstone of oauth/oidc.
> I'm not sure what's a mess about a driver's license, social security card
Neither of those are accepted by various states' voter id laws, nor can you reliably board an airplane with them since RealID.
The only foolproof identity card in the US appears to be a passport (which, you know, global federal identity card... exactly what the folks against universal ids dislike)
To clarify: in a number of states a Real ID doesn't include a citizenship indicator, and a Real ID in those states is not sufficient identification for voting purposes.
For the majority of existing Real IDs, they will not be valid proof of eligibility to vote.[1]
> While your REAL ID would count as a photo ID when voting, in only a few states would it be considered proof of citizenship. Only five states — Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington — offer the type of enhanced REAL IDs that explicitly indicate U.S. citizenship.
> Outside of those states, you would need another document to prove you were born in the U.S.
My research suggests that all U.S. states that require identification at the polls accept a driving license as a form of valid photo ID. Are you aware of any that don’t?
It's not about eliminating voter fraud - it appears to be about eliminating large swathes of legitimate voters, largely in correlation with how they are expected to vote.
> Neither of those are accepted by various states' voter id laws
You've made this up.
> nor can you reliably board an airplane with them since RealID.
That sounds like a problem that they created, and can choose to uncreate. I don't need to know the identity of people on planes any more than I need to know the identity of people in trains, buses, or taxis. "RealID" itself is dumb, and was the result of wearing down popular resistance for decades.
There are also a bunch of other gotchas: Original birth certificates and all currently-issued military IDs are not acceptable, for instance (even though the bill lists birth certificates and military IDs as acceptable, there are carve-outs to ban the common cases).
Good luck getting a passport between now and then.
To be clear, it's not required to vote. It's required for a new registration to vote. Which is typically done when you get a new ID, which already requires having those documents, more even because you have to show proof of current residence.
In my state you can only get an ID mailed, and it has to be mailed to your primary residence. Except the mail doesn't go to many primary residences. The USPS straight up refuses to mine and gets real nasty if you ask them to, as they ask for made up paperwork requirements (certificate of occupancy) that isn't even issued for some houses in my county (this paper only needed if you want to follow certain increased scrutiny building options and plan on getting a mortgage, in my case there is no legal way for me to get one). Now if you're actually homeless you can use a shelter as a legal residence for your ID, but if you have a real legal residence USPS refuses to then you are shit out of luck.
A couple decades ago they used to print the ID then and there, IDs were far more accessible back then. For some god forsaken reason they stopped that most everywhere.
This is just the moderation fallacy, pronounced with the same kind of unearned confidence in which the moderation fallacy is usually pronounced.
To put it in Godwin's terms: you're the one saying that the people denying the Jewish Question are the people enabling the Nazis. If we would just agree to the moderate compromise (fill in the blank), then the Nazis wouldn't have an excuse.
Most importantly, it's also an attack on a strawman. Nobody is arguing agains zero-proof age verification. It's probably possible, but in reality is absolute nonsense. There is no material proposal anywhere for a zero-proof age verification system that prevents individuals from being tracked. There is mathematical speculation, and proposals that vaguely and dishonestly simulate what people are pretending exists somewhere.
All of them involve individuals giving up their privacy, and insidiously substitute protecting your identity from the providers of "adult" information where protecting your identity from the government and the providers of verification services are actually the important parts. I do not give half of a shit whether some porn site knows who I am; the only reason I care at all is because they may share this information with governments and private entities that will use it to track me, manipulate me, or blackmail me.
The reason for this? Governments would lose all interest in age verification if it were possible to do it without invading my privacy. If it is possible in the abstract (which it may well be, mathematically), governments would prioritize sabotaging any company or proposal that could make it happen.
The fake proposals of zero-proofs are offering me something I don't care about in order to trick me into giving up something I value, and calling me unreasonable for not falling for it. No, I'm just not a fool.
The real solution: a legal requirement for "adult" information services to only reply to requests that declare they're from someone over the legal age to consume that information. People who give their children computers could root them to make sure that that header is stripped, you could install browser extensions to make sure that header is stripped, you could make sure that header was stripped at the router, you could make sure that everyone could make a phone call to their ISP to tell them never to allow a packet across that carried that header unless it also included a key or a password that the adults of the household could add onto their own requests.
The above methods don't take any technical sophistication at all, and would solve the problem better than computers that attested age, the computers that 14-year olds would be operating for their often computer-illiterate parents anyway.
Why aren't they used? Because this is a totalitarian game, not a serious proposal to solve a serious problem, and it is just meant to fool morons long enough to screw us all in a permanent way.
Tell me you don't have children without saying you don't have children.
In many places it is essentially impossible for children (even younger than 13) to have a normal social live without access to a smart phone. Just some examples, many public transport providers are moving to apps as the only way to pay for fares, nearly all communication for sports clubs happens through messenger platforms, school information is typically distributed via apps as well and the list goes on (I have not even touched on the kids own social interactions).
The irony is that the people who say "parents should parent their kids online activities" the loudest, largely grew up with unrestricted computer use, in chat rooms, weird corners of the internet all by working around any restrictions that parents tried to put on them. Mainly because they were much more computer literate then the older generation.
There exist similar systems in pretty much any other western nation. The problem is that teaching doctors is expensive and isn't something you can ramp up quickly because you need other doctors to teach the new doctors. The supply of doctors is a problem that is universal to essentially all western nations especially if you move away from metropolitan areas. It's largely due to aging populations and failure to increase spending on medical education over decades. I think the US is actually better off than many other countries, because they pay disproportionately high salaries so get more immigrants.
That said I don't think there's evidence that lack of doctors is what is driving up cost in the US. Just an example, growth in hospital administrators has significantly outpaced medical staff over the last decades, which will directly increase cost.
This reminds of a debate in the German parliament 30 years back or so, about the cost for the Eurofighter project (IIRC). Essentially one speaker had argued against the staggering cost, and a second speaker from the government defended the project by saying how many jobs it created. Someone shouted that building a pyramid in honor of Helmut Kohl and it would create a lot of jobs as well, that didn't mean it's a good idea.
The Kohl pyramid vs Eurofighter is a funny but very poor example that isn't remotely comparable. Useless defence projects have the advantage that it keeps institutional know-how from being lost and ready for the time when war actually comes for you. That's why Europe has been left unprepared by the war in Ukraine and why the US is the defense powerhouse.
Yup. It's one of those industries where an important part of the mission is reasonably level spending over extended periods. Much of the real cost is the cost of being able to produce it, this can end up being more than the actual cost to produce one item.
(Even more extreme: drug pricing. It can take a billion dollars to bring a drug to market, something has to pay for that. Unfortunately, the reality is that it's basically the US market that covers the world's drug R&D.)
Have you watched sail gp or the recent America's cups. The racing is as incredibly exciting to watch and the skills of the sailors is a huge part of it. I'd argue that technology was always a huge part of sailing, but compare that to many of the "old" America's cups and now you'll see the racing is so much more exciting (largely because while technology is at the forefront, the rules make boats technologically advanced, but also comparable enough to each other).
I'd also argue that sailors (and particularly skippers) are still celebrities (within the sailing community). Now where you're right, is that that these boats are not accessible to the average sailors anymore, but it is because they require so much skill to sail.
> Now where you're right, is that that these boats are not accessible to the average sailors anymore, but it is because they require so much skill to sail.
I'd argue the money is a much larger factor than it was in the past, but in the past it was quite expensive as well.
Well at least it's not Amazon prime where they now interrupt the movie for the same ad/trailer 3 for weeks unless you pay extra again.
Fwiw I always enjoyed the trailers at the movies, no the other ads I could very much do away with (and I used to purposefully come late to shows to miss the ads).
I don't necessarily hate the trailers per se, but this is about time management.
If the whole preshow is 10 minutes like in the theater where I used to live a few years ago, that is still somewhat more acceptable. But these days, with 20-25 min of preshow, were I to arrive at the showtime, I'd be looking at spending 1hr extra just to see a movie compared to watching it home (consider the time it takes to travel and maybe wait in the line for concessions).
I'm sure that's what lots of people do and many people are totally fine with this. Not me. I have got too much going on to spare that 1hr, especially on a weekday evening. I have to intentionally leave late to arrive on time to justify even going to the theater at all.
What is the point of your post? I find it increasingly tedious to read comments about alledged AI use under almost every post. It's like complaining that you didn't want to read the submission because you didn't like their font or website design.
I think almost everyone here agrees they don't want to read AI slop, but this submission clearly wasn't that as you admit yourself.
> According to that article, Waymo crashes 2.3x more often than human drivers (every 98k miles vs 229k miles), which is clearly false.
Why is it clearly false? It might be false, but clearly? I would definitely like to see evidence either way.
> I think it's far more likely that humans don't report most minor collisions to insurance, and that both Robotaxis and Waymo are safer than human drivers on average.
That sounds like you are trying to find reasons to get the conclusion you want.
The NHTSA requires a report when any automated driving system hits any object at any speed, or if anything else hits the ADS vehicle resulting damage that is reasonably expected to exceed $1,000.[1] In practice, this means that everyone reports any ADS collision, since trading paint between two vehicles can result in >$1k in damage total.
If you go to the NHTSA's page regarding their Standing General Order[2] and download the CSV of all ADS incidents[3], you can filter where the reporting entity is Waymo and find 520 rows. If you filter where the vehicle was stopped or parked, you'll find 318 crashes. If you scan through the narrative column, you'll see things like a Waymo yielding to pedestrians in a crosswalk and getting rear-ended, or waiting for a red light to change and getting rear-ended, or yielding to a pickup truck that then shifted into reverse and backed into the Waymo. In other words: the majority of Waymo collisions are due to human drivers.
So either Waymos are ridiculously unlucky, or when these sorts of things happen between two human driven cars, it's rarely reported to insurance. In my experience, if there's only minor damage, both parties exchange contact info and don't involve the authorities. Maybe one compensates the other for damage, or maybe neither party cares enough about a minor dent or scrape to deal with it. I've done this when someone rear-ended me, and I know my parents have done it when they've had collisions.
If human driven vehicles really did average 229k miles between any collision of any kind, we'd see many more pristine older vehicles. But if you pay attention to other cars on the road or in parking lots, you'll see far more dents and scratches than would be expected from that statistic. And that's not even counting the damage that gets repaired!
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