US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8876

On September 29 2017 06:25 GreenHorizons wrote:


That's what Wegandi's mercenaries privatized police are for.

On September 29 2017 06:30 Artisreal wrote:

I would actually laugh at a private security company accompanying autonomous vehicles.
Maybe it even makes sense of you drive in a convoy. 20+ trucks guarded by one patrol car.

On September 29 2017 06:24 Artisreal wrote:
Scruples against hurting people? Whereas an autonomous truck is just property.

On September 29 2017 06:32 Nebuchad wrote:
Humans are not that smart, they shouldn't be harder to trick than an efficient system.

If your deterrent is having to be careful about the driver then it shouldn't be difficult to offer a deterrent of similar value

On September 29 2017 06:40 Belisarius wrote:
This is valid, but at the same time, no longer having to pay 1/3 of gross income on salaries frees up a lot of capital to beef up locks, insure stock etc etc. You'd be talking literal mad-max levels of societal breakdown and theft for them to end up behind on stock losses.

On September 29 2017 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I still don't know what you're arguing.

Will there be problems? Yes.
Will those problems prevent automated goods transport from becoming standard? Almost certainly not.

On September 29 2017 07:05 Plansix wrote:



That automation is a fatalistic bogyman that people use when discussion low income jobs being destroyed and never returning. New jobs will be created or in the case of the trucking industry, the job may change. The cashierless store will need a bunch of employees to prevent people from stealing stuff. There is no robot that can deal with the nightmare that is a public restroom. That when you bore down on the subject of automation elimination many jobs, it is tough to see all humans being removed from the equation.

On September 29 2017 07:08 Belisarius wrote:
I'm not personally convinced it's a net good for society. I think we'll have to be very careful with it and I really don't have a lot of faith in our ability to navigate it given the current state of politics.

It is, however, an enormous net good for the bottom line of most companies, so arguing that it won't happen is silly.

It will happen. We need to work out how to deal with it.

Twitter is taking a hint from Facebook and handing over information to Congress about accounts that may have been used for malicious purposes or for misinformation around the 2016 Presidential elections. The company’s Vice President for Public Policy, Colin Crowell, met with staff from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about the issues the social media platform faced, according to a blog post from Twitter.

Last week Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his social media company would also be handing over in information to Congress about accounts that were found on the site and believed to be used for advertising during the election. Both companies have found accounts they believe were used for propaganda-like advertising.

Twitter’s blog post said that while the company won’t be able to divulge every detail of information it gives to the United States government it will try to be as transparent through the process as possible. Starting with the release of information Thursday.

Twitter said that of the more than 400 accounts found through Facebook’s review, Twitter found 22 corresponding accounts on its own site. The company said all of those accounts had either previously been suspended or were immediately after they were found.

Those 22 accounts led the company to another 179 related or linked accounts and the company also took action on those accounts which were found to be in violation of the social media platform’s rules. The company also pointed out that none of these accounts were registered advertisers on the site.

Twitter also handed over information about three Russia Today accounts that the US intelligence committee had previously identified as accounts that had allegedly sought to interfere with the election. These accounts were identified as having close ties to the Russian government. Early findings from Twitter show that the Russia Today accounts spent $274,100 in U.S. advertising during the 2016 election year and the accounts promoted more than 1,500 tweets that definitely or possibly targeted the U.S. news market.

These findings among others were handed over to the U.S. government and Twitter said, “This is an ongoing process and we will continue to collaborate with investigators.”

Since the election Twitter says it has made several changes to make the platform a safer place for users and is looking to continue making it a better place for users who would like more transparency. “ As patterns of malicious activity evolve, we’re adapting to meet them head-on,” said the blog post from Twitter. Already the company said it catches more than 3 million suspicious accounts every week, which is more than double what they were finding with their automated systems a year ago.

In addition to catching these accounts the company is working on automated means to find non-human activity patterns, cluster accounts, false positives and more. These attempts go hand in hand with efforts to detect human-directed accounts and content on the platform as well.

Some new features will be coming out over the next few weeks or months that will help increase the detection of “spammy and suspicious activity.”

On September 29 2017 07:47 Jockmcplop wrote:
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-fate-of-liberalism

Interesting podcast about how liberal has become a dirty word. Its a bit bashing of those on the left and Sam is especially dismissive of identity politics. Mark Lilla seems smart and raises some interesting points though, especially about how class based politics has disappeared and been replaced by an infinitely fragmented identity battle.