local_yokel
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7 years ago
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on: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game
You act like getting the extra money was some kind of unexpected surprise. In reality RSI has been shamelessly and aggressively soliciting extra funds since the early days - most famously by selling concept art for ships (not even fully designed yet in a game that doesn't exist yet!) at thousands of dollars a pop to their rich cultists. If a big studio / publisher had pulled this kind of stunt and then failed to deliver, the gaming media would have ripped them apart.
local_yokel
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7 years ago
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on: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one
Come watch some DS3 speedruns and travel even further down the rabbit hole of people who know everything about the game to an absolutely obsessive degree and are insanely good at playing it. It's not for everyone mind you, but I find it hugely entertaining if you take the time to appreciate it.
local_yokel
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7 years ago
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on: Grand Jury Indicts Russian Officers for Hacking Related to the 2016 Election
How should Germany have answered the Obama-sanctioned eavesdropping on Angela Merkel's phone?
local_yokel
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7 years ago
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on: Bias detectives: the researchers striving to make algorithms fair
It's worth pointing out that the original ProPublica investigation was conducted by journalists unskilled in statistics and machine learning. There was a convincing rebuttal posted by the actual scientists involved, which is of course ignored since "racist AI" is the kind of headline that's just too golden to abandon.
http://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/80_2_6_0.pdf
local_yokel
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7 years ago
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on: The Machine Fired Me
I agree. It's a well known problem where the training set isn't representative of the underlying population. While it can certainly be argued that the engineers should have recognized this deficiency and taken corrective action, I really don't understand why all the respondents to your post are so quick to assert racist intent based on clickbait headlines from Forbes.
local_yokel
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7 years ago
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on: Judges sentence youth offenders to chess, with promising results
Can also recommend lichess. Been playing there for a couple years now. They're a registered non-profit, and none of the features are hidden if you choose not to donate.
local_yokel
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7 years ago
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on: YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Videos, and More
For people with a signal processing background, this is actually a very trivial thing. The basic technique has been in use for probably a hundred years - radar being a classical example - nothing at all to do with Google. Basically, you can get a signal-to-noise ratio improvement proportional to the duration of the signal you're attempting to detect (in this case, audio), thus allowing you to detect very weak signals in the presence of strong noise or other unwanted signals. Look up "pulse compression" or "correlation detection" if you're interested.
local_yokel
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7 years ago
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on: 4Chan Is Turning 15–And Remains the Internet's Teenager
Summary: grouchy suburban dad who realizes he isn't cool anymore shakes fist at rebellious neighborhood kids, shouting that they need to grow up.
Why is it that whenever a mainstream site like Wired pumps out an article looking down their noses at some "problematic" online community, it's immediately obvious that the author has never been part of said community and instead bases their overly simplistic views on an hour of research.
local_yokel
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7 years ago
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on: The dark side of “service with a smile”
Even more unnerving than the fake smile and general aggressiveness of retail workers / waiters to chat you up is when the pizza delivery guy tries to get personal by using your real name, as if we were at the pub sharing some jokes over a pint.
local_yokel
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7 years ago
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on: Netflix is basically remaking all of TV now
Well, they're certainly not doing anything differently than traditional producers when it comes to taking the axe to shows after just 1 or 2 seasons. Whenever I see a new Netflix show released, which seems to be just about every week now, the first thing that comes to mind is "even if I like this, will there actually be a second season?". This degrades the time investment of immersing yourself in a show's characters and storytelling.
local_yokel
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8 years ago
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on: New autoplay policy in Chrome
Of course they threw the word "learn" in there to make it sound like advanced new tech, but this seems like something that can be done with simple heuristics (as opposed to machine learning).
local_yokel
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8 years ago
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on: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley
As with most people from ivy league schools, they're certainly the best at believing they're the best based exclusively on where they come from.
local_yokel
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8 years ago
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on: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating
How is cheating only an issue in academia? It shows a lack of ethics and a lack of knowledge on the part of the student, and these are things that are quite important to being able to do a good job in the real world.
You say "the current system is stupid", "academia is an artificial world", and "past projects and word of mouth" are what matters. Past projects and word of mouth are both systems that are ripe for manipulation by having the right social / marketing skills. Coincidentally, you can also appropriate other people's work and pass it off as your own, perhaps without getting caught. I think I'm beginning to understand why you value these highly.
