• 0 Posts
  • 14 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 21st, 2023
  • morry040@kbin.socialtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead
    2·
    5 months ago

    I think it’s more about the web visitor cost. Handling traffic and API calls becomes a financial problem when there are a growing number of companies using bots to scrape data. Larger companies are moving their content behind paywalls, which acts as a bot filter, and have also identified that they can generate a revenue stream from subscriptions and API connections. Old content on the web is not deemed to have much business value, so it’s a decision of either charging for it or scrapping it.

  • morry040@kbin.socialtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Neuralink implants brain chip in first human, Musk says
    15·
    5 months ago

    There’s quite a difference between rapid prototyping on software/hardware versus the human body.
    Musk’s approach to developing engineering advances has worked well in the software, aerospace, and vehicular industries. Development on inorganic things is much more predictable, we can isolate variables, and it is easier to understand cause & effect. If you screw up some software on an inorganic system, your program might crash, your rocket might explode, or your car won’t start. These risks can be anticipated and costed fairly well, therefore rapid prototyping has an acceptable risk/reward ratio in that environment.

    The human body, on the other hand, is an extremely complex system that we still don’t fully understand. Each person is a unique variation on the model and that changes over time depending on upbringing, diet, exercise, and life experiences. Applying the same engineering approaches from inorganic industries has a much higher risk once you cross into the medical realm. If you have errors in a medical situation, you risk sickening, injuring, or even killing a person. The risk/reward ratio is skewed towards ensuring that human life is protected at all costs.

    Using SpaceX as an example, the first three launches failed spectacularly and a fourth failure would have ended the business but fortunately the fourth test was a success. If you’re suggesting that we apply the same risk-taking to Neuralink, are you suggesting that it’s acceptable for the first three patients to die, as long as the fourth is a success?

  • morry040@kbin.socialtoWorld News@lemmy.ml•Russia accuses Ukraine of killing 65 of its own POWs by shooting down plane
    1·
    5 months ago

    I wouldn’t call it propaganda or even news - it’s just theories at this stage.
    What we can speculate about is motive to deceive. Russia has been incurring some notable losses from Ukrainian anti-air defences recently, so there would be a motive from the Russian side to portray those anti-air defences as either ineffective or untrustworthy so as to try and sway public opinion about its use.

    Claiming that POWs were onboard the plane aligns with that motive but it also raises questions such as:

    1. The plane was reportedly shot down after taking off from Belgorod, so if it was carrying POWs away from Belgorod, what was the intended destination? It doesn’t seem logical that Russia would fly from Belgorod into Ukraine (unless they were stupid or taking the risk).
    2. Why not transport POWs to Ukraine by road or rail, given that Kharkiv is only a 90 min drive away?
  • morry040@kbin.socialtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Why are people lining up for Worldcoin eyeball scans? “Easy $50”
    1·
    11 months ago

    Great article, thanks! The last few sections really make it seem like a dumpster fire.

    So, in simple terms, the value proposition is that the retinal scan will generate a unique ID of a person in the system and ensure that a person cannot be registered more than once. This will then allow the system to be used for tasks like authentication or ensuring fair distribution of tokens. Another potential use case mentioned is something like the administration of Universal Basic Income (UBI), whereby the system would verify that people receive UBI and cannot claim duplicate payments. You could also extend that idea to things like government ID.

    The privacy concerns would probably prevent a roll-out in most Western markets, so it will be interesting to see if they can generate enough business in other markets.

  • morry040@kbin.socialtoTechnology@beehaw.org•[VERGE] Twitter has started blocking unregistered users
    1·
    1 year ago

    A lot of the tech companies were slammed by investors over the last two years for missing their earnings and many of them are still struggling to go back to 2021 optimistic growth rates. The layoffs last year have also cost them a lot of their best talent, so the quality of innovation, decision making, and execution has suffered. You are now left with a bunch of older executives who never really understood that it was their younger talent that was the core of their company’s success, so they fall back on older methods like increasing prices and cutting costs to try and lead the board / shareholders into thinking that their ridiculous executive salary packages are somehow justified.