monfrere

How is Bing a pile of garbage? It takes some effort to come up with a search for which it or ddg are markedly worse than google. FWIW I still use google.

monfrere

8년 전discuss

That's how the BBC does their headlines. Anytime something is in quotes, prepend the headline with "Someone says:". For whatever reason they won't write headlines longer than 6 or 7 words.

monfrere

8년 전discuss

I think it doesn't work well for questions with simple answers; it's meant for more open-ended questions. I got much better responses for some random questions I just thought up: "What will AI enable in the future?" "Why are so many depressed?" etc.

monfrere

8년 전discuss

But spoken Chinese is quite different from written Chinese, which allows for more economy. Often a single character will be used in writing where a two-character word would be used in speech. And people's names usually can't be determined by the pronunciation; they are defined by the actual characters. If Chinese moved to a strictly phonetic writing system, a lot of culture would have to adapt: conventions around signage, poetry, proverbs, names (this is a big one!) of people and organizations, formal writing, wordplay, etc.

monfrere

8년 전discuss

FWIW, I am American, and I would absolutely object if Google were building weapons for the Chinese military. I would stop using Microsoft products if it turned out they supplied weapons for the Russian takeover of Crimea. I would delete my Twitter account if they were found to be building special-purpose propaganda tools to aid Turkey's Erdogan. Etc.

Complying with laws in another country is one thing. Working with a military, which necessarily has implications beyond that country's borders, is another. And of course even here there are different degrees. You can build a general-purpose secure email client and sell it to a country's military, or you can design their bombs. Where the line is I'm not sure, but at some point your activity is inherently violent, inherently adversarial to some fraction of people in the world.

monfrere

8년 전discuss

Your discussion of "legality" here is U.S.-centric. Google has offices in Germany, France, Poland, Russia, Turkey, U.A.E., India, and China, to name a few. How would you feel if Google worked on military technology for those countries? Would you point out that it was inevitable that their militaries would seek ways to use A.I.? Would you point out that the Turkish armed forces' activities are permitted under Turkish law? Would you lament the inability of Google employees to separate work from politics?

Google has users in almost all countries, and even our friends in other liberal democracies do not see the U.S. military the same way we do. Perhaps some Google users' family members have even been killed by the U.S. military. This presents a perfectly reasonable business reason (one that has nothing to do with "the personal, the moral, the legal, and the political") for Google to turn down AI drone contracts.

monfrere

8년 전discuss

Not everyone thinks that the U.S. drone program has much to do with keeping free nations safe and prosperous.

monfrere

8년 전discuss

How senior are you? I would first spend some time hunting for innovative teams within Google to transfer to. There are plenty of boring jobs at Google but also plenty of ambitious small teams working on startup-like projects. Even cute experimental features on big established products (search/gmail/maps/drive/etc.) often could plausibly be the basis for an entire startup, but there are also some pie-in-the-sky projects people are working on if you look around a bit.

monfrere

9년 전discuss

I'm surprised Uber is funding general AI research given their reported financial situation.

monfrere

9년 전discuss

> I have this theory that they've noticed that the platform is being used less and less, and is why we're getting so much ads mixed with our friends' posts. They're milking the cow before it dies.

Um, no. Facebook remains the most popular app in the United States with a comfortable lead. It's surpassed only by its own Whatsapp and Messenger globally. I think I read that in terms of time spent in an app, Facebook still beats Whatsapp, but I can't find the stat right now. Facebook just crossed 2 billion MAUs this year.

Its advertising revenue grows at close to 50% a year. Obviously part of that is showing more ads per user, but it's also growth in app usage. I'd say the cow keeps sprouting new udders and they are feverishly trying to keep up with attaching the pumps.

monfrere

9년 전discuss

This should not be downvoted. One sees the source before the colon more often than after the colon, but it is common to see the source after the colon in some publications. I see several instances (e.g., "Corporate lobbying helped derail border tax: senior Republican") on the Reuters homepage right now.

monfrere

9년 전discuss

I believe what she wrote, and I believe you do too, which is why we both keep quoting her. I disagree that either of my imagined scenarios are inconsistent with what she wrote. But thanks anyway for trying to answer my questions.

monfrere

9년 전discuss

With complete sincerity and honesty, I think either sequence of events I described could match what Yeoh wrote.

If I said to someone, "You really gotta go, sorry", I might well describe that later to a friend using the words Yeoh used: "I told him he needs to leave."

If a guy took two steps right into my personal space as I was up against a sofa and a wall, I might well describe that as "he pushed himself onto me to the point where I was backed into a corner".

If a guy put his hand on my shoulder and leaned in for a kiss -- I could see that being what Yeoh described: he "made contact to kiss me". (Frankly, that's not the phrase I would use; it seems vague.)

monfrere

9년 전discuss

I don't know if anyone will believe me that I'm asking in good faith. But I still think that sentence, as written, could describe a wide range of situations. If it went like:

    A: Firmly: "You need to leave. Now."
    B: Shoves A's body multiple times until she is in the opposite corner of the room. Presses his lips to her face without hesitation.

I would be mad as A. But if the scenario went more like:

    A: "I'm tired and it's late. You really gotta go, sorry."
    (A and B walk to the door. There is a sofa by the door.)
    B: Leans body toward A's.
    A: Takes a step back. Is now up against the sofa and the wall.
    B: Puts hand on A's shoulder and leans in slowly for a kiss.
    A: Refuses kiss.

Here as person A I would simply brush B off as an aggressive suitor, unless the two aggravating circumstances I mentioned above were in play. Please tell me if that is unfair.

monfrere

9년 전discuss

I have experienced similarly persistent (or arguably even more persistent) unwanted sexual advances from other men, but I certainly didn't feel "assaulted".

As a socially clueless gay man, I was hoping someone could help elucidate the most problematic parts of McClure's behavior here. The two factors that stand out for me are

1) McClure controlled the funding of the agency Yeoh was heading, so he was in a position of power

2) McClure is a man and Yeoh is a woman, so McClure can be assumed to be more physically imposing

Would it be correct to say that these two factors are what make McClure's behavior inappropriate? In any other context, I would consider asking someone something a third time after two "no"s to be an example of annoying badgering, but not necessarily harassment.

monfrere

9년 전discuss

Oh, right, subfield of the complex numbers. Now sigma is supposed to be an automorphism on that subfield. Which means sigma does take scalar values as arguments, contrary to what stablemap said...

monfrere

9년 전discuss

OK, thanks. Your answer has allowed me to follow the paper a little further, though I think your answer may be inconsistent with the other two answers I got. Also I haven't been able to show myself that if the x_i are the roots of an irreducible polynomial, then Q(x_1,...,x_n) is symmetric with respect to x_1,...,x_n, in the sense claimed in the paper without proof.

monfrere

9년 전discuss

> σ acts on rational functions like f and g

This is what I was missing. But the paper also says σ is an automorphism of Q(x_1, ... x_n). Which is weird, since I thought Q(x_1, ... x_n) was a subfield of the reals (not a field of rational functions). So I still don't get what's going on.

Sigh, I think I've forgotten more since school than I thought.

monfrere

9년 전discuss

> Your sigma is a bijection on rational functions of a, b, not on the evaluations of those functions at particular values of a and b.

I see, this is the key point I was missing. But now I am confused as to whether Q(x_1, x_2) is supposed to be a subfield of the real numbers or a field of rational functions of x_1, x_2.

monfrere

9년 전discuss

Can anyone help me understand what is happening at the bottom of page 23 (page 3 of the PDF)?

It says any permutation sigma of x_1, ..., x_n can be extended to a bijection of Q(x_1, ..., x_n) defined by

    sigma f(x_1, ..., x_n) = f(sigma x_1, ..., sigma x_n).

But I don't see how this definition can be consistent. For example, let

    f(a, b) = a - b
    g(a, b) = a/a + b/b = 2

    x_1 = 5
    x_2 = 3
    sigma x_1 = x_2
    sigma x_2 = x_1

Then according to the formula:

    sigma f(5, 3) = sigma (5 - 3) = sigma 2 = f(3, 5) = -2

But

    sigma g(5, 3) = sigma 2 = g(3, 5) = 2

Contradiction?

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