jcsmith

8 hours ago, Boon Mee said:

Too bad there's nothing there. 

This witchhunt is a big fat nothing burger ? 

Oh there's nothing there... Except the fact that his campaign manager, son and law, son, and the crazy general took meetings with the Russians during the election, that timelines coordinate with the first leaks of information, that they can't deny their intentions when Donny is responding that this sounds great. Flynn and Manafort will almost certainly be charged. And for some strange reason we keep hearing of more meetings with the Russians that all of Trump's inner circle apparently had mass amnesia about before.

The old, "the elections will happen next year" gag... Works every time apparently.

If Cuba was behind the attacks on US embassy personnel then I'm all for it. But it almost seems like this is being used as an excuse in this case. The Cuban government offered to assist on investigating the matter and were rebuffed by the US government weeks ago.

14 hours ago, sweatalot said:

The AFD are the only one who represent the will of the (undeluded) people who do not want to be islamised. The rest is deluded. Intolerance against invaders should be common sense.

 

What intolerance do the AFD show against Jews?

Do they say Hitler's actions were right?

So the racists are the undeluded and everyone else must be deluded. I guess we know how to label you.

When people behave like this it gives the rest of us a bad name. To hell with this guy.

Justifying and downplaying the significance of all of Trump's outlandish remarks is a full time job.

47 minutes ago, Chivas said:

lol this lunatic cannot be allowed to launch sod all in the deliberate direction of Guam or any USA allies. N Korea will simply cease to exist if he does and rightly so. This is not about Trump posturing but the nutjob in NK

Escalating tensions is not the way to solve the situation. Trump is basically daring him to give him a reason to bomb him. While bombing the heck out of North Korea may remove the  hypothetical threat of a NK nuclear attack on the U.S. at some point down the road, it will ensure the loss of many lives in South Korea, possibly in Japan or Guam. And if he nuked them you can add to that millions of Koreans whose crime was only to be born in the wrong location.

1 hour ago, UnkleMoooose said:

He said during the election that he wanted to reduce the population of government employees sucking on the taxpayer teat. He's standing by his election pledges. Again. Why is there surprise, or even comment on this? Another headline could read "President does what he says he would do - thanks Russia".

All part of his plan to create new jobs? Except job growth hasn't really accelerated at all has it?

It's crazy how quickly this has spun out of control. What happens when Kim launches missiles near Guam? Does Trump bomb them? If he does South Korea is going to get attacked. If that happens what comes next? Millions of people could die in this pissing contest.

30 minutes ago, NanLaew said:

No, he's speaking sh!te.

Trash talking isn't typically a positive when it comes to diplomacy.

54 minutes ago, NanLaew said:

FYI, MOAB's are non-nuclear.

And where are you getting MOAB from? He threatened, "fire and fury like the world has never seen." We've seen atomic bombs. We've seen MOAB. He's threatening nuclear war.

Sitting here listening to you guys make justifications for the president of the United States threatening Nuclear War makes me realize how truly lost you are.

13 hours ago, craigt3365 said:

Probably not because the POTUS knows he's into the mess up to his eye balls.  Trump isn't going after this crime at all.

Trump should be in prison before the next election.

For those crying McCarthyism or touting that he had received no good evidence, the fact of the matter is that he took the meeting under the pretense that the Russian government had useful information on Hillary Clinton. And on the basis of that he brought along his brother in law and the campaign manager who Trump has been claiming for months was not a big part of their campaign (and who has for months been the subject of issues with Russia). That alone is a major problem. There is absolutely no reason to believe his account of what happened because he has already changed his story on at least two occasions. Because this is yet another undisclosed encounter with Russians. You know the question they have been getting asked for months and denying, ridiculing, etc? Only to find one after another come to light which the staff conveniently has forgotten to leave off their security applications. 

There's two things that could have occurred here. The Trump campaign could have all been hit with one of the little flashy things from Men In Black and honestly and truthfully forgotten all of these meetings, or they are lying. Given the fact that they continually keep getting caught in these lies, and that Men In Black's little flashy thing is fictitious, you have to wonder why do they all have Russian amnesia? Why did the president of the United States ask at least three investigators to let the Flynn case go? And why in the world isn't Fox News talking about it?

People ask military to stop holding coups and to return the power to the people.

15 minutes ago, blackson said:

I say if Trump or anyone else is dirty, say so, file indictments, prove your theories, otherwise shut the <deleted> up!

Considering that Trump fired the FBI director, is thinking of shutting down the special prosecutor, and probably will see the standing FBI director recused as well soon, this is easier said than done. Perhaps you should take your own advice though.

Bringing happiness to the people...

Somewhat anticlimactic since what was covered was basically what had been given to the press yesterday. But the main takeaways from the Comey situation for me were:
 

• Asking everyone to leave before he brought up the Flynn issue and then saying he hoped he could let it go, that imo is obstruction. You can't say it was unintentional when he asked everyone else to leave. It's not enough to convict him but if that is combined with other similar situations (which has been reported in the press but which the individuals said they couldn't comment on in a public hearing yesterday) then each of those adds up to build a case towards that.
• The cloud over his head thing is also a smaller thing that feeds into the obstruction narrative, along with Trump asking him multiple times if he was personally under investigation. 
• The biggest bit of the obstruction case though is the fact that Trump a) Got Sessions involved (who was recused) and got Rosenstein to write that memo of excuses for firing Comey. Had all of his people go out and claim that it was due to mistreatment of Clinton or poor performance by Comey, but then himself admitted that he fired him because of the Russia probe. 
• On the positive for Trump, Comey has confirmed that he did tell Trump multiple times that he was not under investigation at that time, which helps Trump's credibility for that weird assertation in the middle of his firing Comey letter.
• None of this is a smoking gun by itself. But it helps to build a case.

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

The congressional hearings are on now, but the 4 representatives are not helping to clear the air by refusing to answer if Trump or anyone attempted to influence any investigation.

Hopefully Comey will be more forthcoming tomorrow.

Comey released a bunch of pages on what he is going to say tomorrow. They are reading portions on the news now.

From what has been read so far:

- Trump on multiple occasions tried to get him to back off the investigation.

- Trump asked him many times if he was being investigated.

- Confirms most of the stuff that has been leaked out in the press about those meetings.

So I'm guessing tomorrow will be explosive.

9 minutes ago, fatdrunkandstupid said:

Now that Trump is running the planet we may see some positive steps toward ridding ourselves of this problem.

And what is that? Human existence?

40 minutes ago, manarak said:

 

interesting points.

I feel that replacing people with machines is a consequence of socialism blowing up labor costs.

 

what opportunities will there be for self-driving taxis in Bangkok?

In Zurich of course, 20 minutes taxi will set you back 70 USD... a case for automated taxis right there, but not where taxi driving is paid what it's worth.

 

then making the point of diagnosis of problems - look at current PCs.

they are a clearly delimited system, yet software is unable to diagnose all but the simplest problems.

why don't we have alerts for RAM misreads, unacceptable core voltages, driver incompatibilities...

 

AI is all software. get the AI to be able to write complex software, and then I will say, ok, the next age has arrived.

It's definitely a fun discussion. 

Bangkok is probably a ways off from like self-driving vehicles imo simply because of lower prices of taxis in compared to the west, and higher prices of the vehicles. But eventually that would become cost-effective. I think that's really the limiter on a lot of this stuff, being cost-effective. In America the last numbers I read had more than 1% of jobs being driving jobs (truckers, taxi drivers, couriers, bus drivers, etc). 

When it's cheaper to replace people with machines, companies will do it. But it will reach that point at different stages in different locations and fields.

I think we're a long way from real self-programming code. But I'm impressed with the ability of machine learning to master video games for example (my field), AlphaGo, etc. As an amateur poker player I'm also really interesting to know that limit holdem has already been mastered my machines, and to read some of the approaches that the software developed which are completely outside of the box in modern poker tactics, yet extremely effective. Many poker players make the bulk of their money online these days, but as bots become stronger, it's going to destroy that industry. Moving ahead to the future, when BCIs or optical implants become viable you would likewise have similar issues in live poker. As medical technology improves sports are going to deal with these issues, as well.

Change is jarring but inevitable. There's of course a lot of good things that can come out of this all, as well.

2 hours ago, manarak said:

I'm a programmer.

The view the general public has of AI is completely wrong and very over-optimistic regarding not only its capabilities today, but also regarding what it will probably be capable of in 20 years.

What you describe will maybe happen for the most simple of devices during the lifespan of my children.

I'm also a programmer, and while I agree that the general perception of what AI can do currently is overblown, I don't think it will take until the end of our childrens lifespans for self-repair to only be available on the simplest of programs. I think the notion of human-like robots as repairman is a long way away of course, but auto-detection of problems, simple forms of self-repair I don't think those are far off pipe dreams. Self-awareness isn't happening any time soon, but machine learning is happening now. Right now it takes a lot of human input to direct, but as quantum computers mature past the D-Wave offerings, as 3d printing becomes cheaper, and as general purpose machine learning improves simply from a software standpoint it will be to replace many of our jobs not in another fifty years, but within the next ten years. The rest of my post isn't directly targeted at you but just my general thoughts.

Self-driving vehicles for example, how long is it before they replace the majority of taxis and 18 wheel shipping? How much safer will they be? How much more capable will they be at diagnosing and recognizing engine problems than your average driver? 

Humans will have a role in customer support for some time, but much of the common support questions can be handled with software. Siri for example is obviously not an example of true machine learning, more of searching through monstrous data sets. But the ability of software to respond to logical questions from data is going to improve. As is the ability to recognize input in a more intelligent (for lack of a better word) manner. 

Data input, an easy brute force and boring job. This is already losing a lot of steam to more and more intelligent forms of parsing and data mining. Computers are better suited to find patterns, and to parse data than humans would ever be. That is not new, but there are still millions of data processing jobs that won't be available forever.

I love the fact that I can swipe an ATM or a credit card to get gas without needing to interact with anyone. It's convenient but it also costs jobs. 

Many developed countries have lost many farming jobs to machinery already. That's going to be the case in less developed countries, as well.

Once medical technology is available in everyone's phones (another great tool) it will give people less reason to visit the doctor's office. Less demand for positions will naturally mean less jobs.

Programmers, artists, PR people, etc may not be in any danger any time soon. But eventually they too will eventually feel the effects of this. 
 

I just don't think any of this stuff is avoidable. It's also not necessarily a bad thing, provided that people can live reasonable lives. I'm one who thinks that things like Brain-Computer Interfaces are a positive part of the future. But certainly within the next 10-20 years there's going to be a lot of changes, a lot of jobs lost, while the population continues to grow.  It's something that will need to be addressed and that people need to be (and are) thinking about.

The reason that jobs are at threat is because it the machines are cheaper in some cases, right now. It will be the case in more as the years go by. After the initial investment they are virtually free other than energy and maintenance. While a traditional sci fi style robot that can outproduce us is still a good ways away, AI does not need that. Auto-driving cars are a good example of that. There are already shipping trucks, and auto-driving taxis in the works. Customer service jobs are already being lost to software. Most industries are still years away from seeing serious impacts but it's coming. 

On 5/31/2017 at 2:08 PM, rkidlad said:

Scary really. As time goes on machines will take over so many jobs. The real big problem then will be how to distribute the money. How are you supposed to earn money when there are literally no jobs available for you to do?

We're going to have to move to some type of a shared welfare style system at some point. There's really no way around this. Machines and AI are maturing rapidly and they will handle the work more cheaper and more effectively than we will be able to. It will hit things like driving, customer support, factory jobs first, but long term many people won't be suited for the highly specialized jobs which are available without things like Brain/Computer Interfaces. 

We can view that as a doomsday event. And if there is not a redistribution of wealth it would be. But provided everyone has sufficient resources to live it, and things to occupy their time, it could also be a very good thing. If we didn't need to work we could spend a lot more time with our families, and doing things we want to do rather than things we are doing out of necessity. It's going to require the people at the top to give up something though, and that's the real challenge. 

45 minutes ago, Smarter Than You said:

"possibly as soon as next year"

                       

Next year would be about 3 years later than first promised - not quite sure "soon" is the right word here.

Was going to post the same thing. It was supposed to be each of the last few years, they are already giving up on this year and possibly next year? Let's call it what it is. Prayuth has no intention of ever giving up power.