HN user
That, and the idea that humans are now programmable and the concept of free will is over. He and his son-of-a-Nazi mentor, Klaus Schwab, want to turn you into the Borg. Literally.
Harrari is a class A megalomaniac and psychopath. Study him if you like, but never let that fact slip your mind as you read his psychotic musings.
There's really very little difference between far left and far right. They're both radical extremes that allow no diversity of thought and that demand unquestioning allegiance to the tribe. Contrary to popular sentiment (or media narratives) they will both resort to verbal and physical violence in support of their views. The only real difference is their opinion of government. Leftist want a total nanny state, far right-wingers want anarchy -- until one of them actually takes power. Then they both take the form of a dictatorship in some form.
Unfortunately, in today's atmosphere (and the sentiment in your comment seems to betray this), people on the left view anyone who's actually a moderate or even slightly right-of-center as "far right".
The problem with your example is that 1] actually happened. 2] is a media/political fabrication being proven in a court of law at this very moment.
And to the point of this article, and many comments here, the news is much more homogenized than people think, because I'm quite sure you've heard no factual coverage of the latter from ANY pundit who sits in front of a TV camera.
I have to seriously ask: Is this actually a surprise to anyone?
Don't rule out another possibility.
The true magnitude of the bot problem is exposed in court. Twitter is exposed for not only lying to Musk, they're also now in trouble for lying to the SEC (for years) and by that same token, lying to investors and advertisers.
Twitter stock crashes to an unthinkable low, DWAC buys it all up.
If Twitter has nothing to hide, then why not give him the complete access he wants? Why should Musk just take Twitter's word?
Musk never intended to buy Twitter. The objective was to expose Twitter as the propaganda machine it is.
On the other hand, if you're a ballot trafficker, this is good news for you and the non-profits and NGOs abetting you.
This is a pretty good example - now just apply it to the actual problem. The amount of currency in circulation.
Inflation isn't about the cost of goods or services actually costing more. They don't. If anything, the cost of production today is far less than it was 50 to 100 years ago because of advances in technology and automation.
It's about the value of the dollar becoming less and less - because there are too many dollars in circulation, which aren't backed by anything real to begin with. "Real" could be something which has a finite supply that we attach an arbitrary value to, like precious metals, or it could be something vitally (needed for life) necessary in today's world like wheat or oil. But for decades now, newly created currency is just an entry in the Fed's ledger book, created out of thin air, backed by nothing.
In your example both the size of the room and the heat represent aspects of currency (note I did not say "money"). The size of the room is the purchasing power of dollars leveraged against the actual effectiveness of the heat. The heat itself, is the value of the currency. The size of the room represents the price of goods.
As the room gets bigger, the heat becomes less effective (it loses value). So pumping in more heat becomes required. When more heat than necessary gets pumped in (on purpose - and it is done on purpose), the room will begin to overheat and no one will want anymore (so it loses its value again). The sane solution would be to stop pumping in more heat - but instead, the same people supplying the heat decide to enlarge the room again, because they are in the business creating heat and charging a fee to deliver it ("they" would be the Federal Reserve - or any private, western central bank).
So the room (i.e. price of goods) must be enlarged over and over again (artificially and unnecessarily) in order for a new infusion of heat to have any value to the people in the room. This in turn, requires the occupants of the room to keep forking over more money in delivery fees to keep the room at a comfortable temperature. If this becomes unfeasible, they may be forced to take out loans to have more usable heat. Now they're paying money for both the heat itself, plus interest on the loan for supplying it in the first place (and they owe it to the same people).
Once you wrap your ahead around the fact that the enlarging of the room and the supply of heat are actually controlled by the same people (who make their money creating heat and charging to deliver it), you then understand that the entire financial system we currently enjoy, is nothing but a giant, legalized system of usury. That delivery fee you owe for supplying the heat is called "interest".
This type of system will always (and is designed to) collapse at pretty regular intervals. When it does, those who control the flow of heat will shut it down, and have legal authority to confiscate the room from the occupants who took out loans for more heat, but couldn't afford to pay it back.
What makes the whole thing more insidious, is that the people supplying the heat never actually owned it to begin with, nor did they create it. It would be as if the room (once upon a time) had a natural heat supply from, say, and underground geothermal source. But some strong-armed, outside entity stepped in, capped that off, and started charging the people in the room for access to what was once naturally available - free of charge.
Lots of vodka and cigarettes.
"Google still gives decent results for many other categories, especially when it comes to factual information."
That is highly questionable and subjective.
This debate has been in the popular psyche for quite a while: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prRtcQz8Uqk
I think it's just more political correctness gone wild. The vast majority of Spanish speakers in America are from Mexico but it somehow became derogatory to refer to them as "Mexican". How is that any different than calling somebody a Puerto Rican or a Brazilian? It simply denotes their place of origin.
This is very true and I think people forget that they have the support of almost all mainstream media. This gives the very false impression that they (and their ideologies) represent the majority of the public - but in reality, this is far from true.
Look at ratings for national sports (MLB, NBA especially) lately. This year's Oscars had the worst rating in history. Coca-Cola's sales plummeted after their "woke" employee training was exposed. Same for Disney. Same for Delta. Parents around the country are descending on their local school boards demanding that Critical Race Theory be abolished.
On the opposite end, when the left tried to "cancel" Goya for supporting Trump, it backfired. Sales went through the roof.
These people are a tiny minority of the population made to seem much bigger and more accepted than they really are by media, politicians and (most unfortunately) Universities - which have become Socialist re-education camps.
I'm not sure how no one has figured out that the long-term goal of the Democrats is to eradicate the middle class entirely.
To be fair, it's not a Democrat or Republican thing at all; although, in recent years, the Democrats have become the public face of the (dare I say it) Deep State. Almost everyone in congress is someone else's puppet, controlled through blackmail or bribery. They do the bidding of faceless, nameless, un-elected globalists, who's long-term agenda is, and has always has been, the total control of all aspects of society.
Their mandate is to vote in favor of policies that benefit the elite, not the working class.
It is no accident that the education system in the US has become what it is today. It does not educate, it indoctrinates. It teaches kids what to think, not how to think. And those that do manage to get a four-year degree are often no better equipped to step into high-paying jobs than they were before. So they're not getting the job offers and they now have huge student loans to pay off.
The elite do not want a population of thinking individuals who ask questions. They want people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, but not so smart that they start questioning the system.
As Trump said, "The system is rigged". And as George Carlin said, "It's a big club, and YOU AIN'T IN IT."
Phones have GPS. In states where texting and driving is banned, why isn't there some way to program the phone so that it simply doesn't function if it detects a speed of over 5-10 mph?
I just don't see a problem with that since it's already the law.
It could then send an automated message back to the caller letting them know the owner appears to be driving and can't take your call.
I'm sure many of us here are old enough to remember life before cell phones and I can guarantee you that there's almost never anything so emergent that it can't wait until you get to your destination.
That's the attitude of most everyone, and hence the reason it won't change. But IF.. (just if) a few hundred million people decided to ditch Chrome and Google's "services" (data collectors in disguise), Google might be forced to take notice.
On the other hand, never say never to Google's dominance going out the window. They may find themselves in very deep trouble in the not too distant future.
Unless they believe they can get away with it.
Let's not be naive. The Big Brother agenda of Google didn't happen in a vacuum. They have government support and protection from some factions of our intelligence agencies to this day (although, perhaps not for much longer). The whole original concept of "Google" as a search engine (and tracking app) was originally a program of DARPA (same for Facebook - originally called "LifeLog"). Do you really think they cut all ties with the government when they went public? Neither Google or Facebook are what they appear to be.
"Privacy" in the sense that it pertains to selling your info to advertisers is just a sideshow; i.e. not the real problem.
We used to call these "Microsoft Minutes"...
Artificial Intelligence could be used for a lot of things, like:
weather generation
ground handling at airports
random bird strikes
controlling in-game aircraft and their routes
Realistic ATC that understands what you say (think Cortana) and responds intelligently.
I'm excited by the idea but I have to agree with an analysis by Frooglesim: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbTSy409BjY).
Microsoft has closed down their Flight Simulation franchise twice now, presumably because it became unprofitable. Microsoft isn't launching this new simulator for nostalgic reasons - they are a business.
This next incarnation, as many have speculated, will almost certainly NOT be a program you install locally. So what happens when the servers go down, or your internet connection is not working?
Most importantly: Many people are speculating that 3rd party content will only be available through MS's online store. So not only is the simulator NOT installed locally, any add-on aircraft or scenery you purchase will also only exist in your online account.
People could easily spend several hundred dollars for add-on aircraft and scenery, so what happens if this venture isn't the success MS hopes it will be? They may close it down again and this time, all your stuff goes "POOF". Do you get a refund? I think not.
I think it was a racing game, not a flight simulator. I used to know how to access that.. but it was 12-15 years ago.
I hope it's not too "video-gamey". That was the downfall of "MS Flight". It was highly disappointing to hard-core simmers who had come to expect realistic flight conditions, routes, ATC, physics and a world-wide map.
I was part of a survey from MS about what I'd like to see in the next version of the simulator (this was after FSX went away but before "Flight). The survey asked a lot of questions about my thoughts on making the sim more goal/mission oriented (essentially, more of a game).
I made it really clear that I thought that was fine as an addition but should not replace the current real-world functionality. Give people the option.
I can't imagine my answers were that different from most long-time users - basically it needed to have all the features I mentioned above, plus an open SDK for 3rd party developers.
MS didn't listen and "Flight" was a huge disappointment - at which point I moved to X-Plane.
Hopefully, they've gone back to their roots with this new version because it looks absolutely amazing.
I'm a very good musician and have never thought about it exactly that way before but I have to say, that's a very good explanation and way of thinking about it. I think it's a bit abstract for someone trying to learn to read music, but it's absolutely correct.
It is just a convention, not a rule. It is very common in classical music for a piece in a minor key to end on a major chord (called a Picardy 3rd) or in some cases to end on the dominate 5th - which is a major chord. The latter though, isn't usually the absolute end of a piece because it leaves you hanging (rather like ending "Happy Birthday" on the word "to" - and leaving off the "you").
HA! This made my day.
Yes, I almost mentioned this point about A# and Bb on his blog but didn't. He gives an example of an A# major scale and it becomes immediately obvious that something's wrong. In order to write such a scale you either have to skip named notes (A#, C, D.. what happened to B?) or have a key signature that contains double sharps. That would be the "theoretically correct" way to do it but there are no key signatures with double sharps. So the correct name for the scale is B flat, which follows the diatonic major scale pattern of "wwhwwwh" and does not skip named notes.
But from his point of view (as any beginner) this is very confusing. They sound the same and they use the same physical keys on the keyboard, so what's the difference? There is no good answer to that except it satisfies the theory (the musical "rules") of western music.
Yes, I was trying to explain some theory to my sister and she had it in her head that "black notes" on the piano - or anything we call a sharp or flat - were "minor". It took a lot of explaining to get her to realize that a single note on it's own is in no particular key and no particular mode (scale).
The 'a' sound in "Slaw" is a bit tricky. it rhymes somewhat with the 'o' sound in 'ostrich', 'ought' or 'taught', which are written with the symbol for an 'o'. Oddly though, the word "Father" is written with an 'a'. If it's really necessary to distinguish between these sounds, Gregg Shorthand does allow for diacritical marks over vowels, but they are rarely used, since the meaning is usually clear from the context (and they slow you down).
It may help to realize that John Robert Gregg was Irish - so imagine his somewhat British pronunciation of vowels. Since Gregg shorthand is written phonetically, the words "father" and "farther" are written pretty much the same . That becomes a bit confusing to an American speaker of English.
I taught myself shorthand in high school. I love foreign languages and found it fascinating. A "Secret Language" like someone said above.
But I agree with one of the other posters, if you do not use it often, you will find it very difficult to do well. The basics of Gregg shorthand are incredibly simple, but it is another thing entirely to master - to be able to write quickly and accurately takes practice. Still, it is not impossible and you use it quite readily only knowing the basics. Unfortunately it has become a lost art except to a very few.
It would be quite an undertaking to write OCR software for Gregg shorthand because the writer has a lot of freedom to construct abbreviations on the spot or join several small words together when convenient (rather like native Germans can come up with compound words you won't find in a dictionary). The other problem would be clarity. While Gregg Shorthand doesn't have rules like Pittman for placing certain strokes on or above a line, proportion is quite important because several letters share common shapes ("n and "m", "p and b", "t and d", "f and v" are all quite similar but vary in length or height).
So the writer would have to be consistent in their proportions and the software would need to be able to learn the writer's style.
No, I don't work for them but, has no one here heard of PowerBasic?
it started out as BASIC/Z, the first interactive compiler for CP/M and MDOS. It was then extended MS-DOS/PC-DOS and was then published in 1987 as Turbo BASIC by Borland. When Borland discontinued it - the Author, Bob Zale, re-released it as PowerBasic.
A very modern compiler with extremely similar syntax to QB (at least in the text-mode version). Comes in a Windows version as well.
Both compilers are written in assembly. No runtime. Extremely small, fast executables. Supports inline assembly (mix BASIC and assembler in the same procedure). Windows version creates stand-alone executables or DLLs. Supports user-defined marcros. Regular Expressions. Supports both OOP and procedural style programming. Too many features to list here. Complete manuals available for free on their site (powerbasic.com)
This would be a good BASIC to start a kid off with.
Check out the forums. Especially the source code forum. There are some very talented people there.
Not free but very reasonably priced compared to MS products.