YES! Whoever invented motion smoothing is a monster. It's the worst thing to happen to cinema since colorization. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't turned on by default, which means that a whole bunch of people who aren't tech-savvy wind up leaving it on and then wonder why movies look so weird.

Since one of the "drones" is a 1970 era flapping bird wind up toy, I think they might be confused in their reporting. I know, that never happens at Fox.
I have no doubt they are working on ornithopter drones, I have serious doubts they plan to use them for daily surveillance of ordinary citizens in the near future, especially since, as mentioned above, they already have pretty comprehensive surveillance today, and this program is in it's infancy according to the report.

WHAT!?!
I think I just witnessed a reverse Pinocchio, that real bird just became a wind up toy before my eyes.
*promote

Hmmm... along comes plastic. Plastic is cheap, reusable, lasts a long time, doesn't mind getting wet, weighs less compared to the variety of non-plastic things it replaced. Humans love plastic. Producers make more things out of plastic to keep the humans happy. Uh oh. Plastic winds up where it shouldn't. Humans aren't bad, plastic producers that made the plastic for the humans are bad. Humans might have wanted it before, now they don't, but it's not their fault, it's the shitty industries fault. How dare they make things that we used to want, but now we don't. Bastards. If you feel so strongly, take everything you own that has plastic in it and give it the toss. That'll show 'em. (Proper government representation?)

Not entirely true, if you're douchy enough you can still wind up like Roy Moore.
I hope there's no rules against someone named something other than Alice being sent to the moon, I'd hate to see this ruined by a technicality.

Yeah, in Japan both people would have been at fault. They're really strict about that stuff. Even if you have the right of way, if an accident could have been avoided just by you being a more cautious driver, you'll wind up getting ticketed too.

Happened to my boss a month ago--he got hit at a light while making a turn during a green turn arrow (driver coming from opposite direction gunned it on the yellow but didn't beat the red). The police ruled that even though my boss had the right of way, a cautious driver should anticipate people trying to beat the light and check to make sure traffic coming from the opposite direction is fully stopped before initiating a turn, so both parties were at fault (though not equally of course).

Basically as a driver in Japan you are supposed to assume that everyone around you is an unsafe driver and take any necessary precautions to avoid accidents. The only time you'll 100% not be at fault for an accident is if you're rear-ended while fully stopped or if the car experiences a catastrophic mechanical failure (i.e. blowing a tire on the freeway causing you to temporarily lose control of the vehicle).

As I've said before, even if we somehow wind up in a best case scenario of a benevolent superintelligent AI that shares our goals, we're still just pets at that point.

You might love your dog, but you don't let it make decisions for you.

But that's extremely unlikely. Max talks about "letting " the AI decide at one point in the video. The verb "let" implies a degree of control on our part. If we get a superintelligent AI, we won't be "letting" it do anything, any more than apes "let" humans do something. Maybe on a short scale/timeline, an individual ape might force a human to do something (i.e. a gorilla makes a human run away), but in real terms, apes don't really get a say if we decide to do something.

Basically, as soon as we get superintelligent AI* , the world will be unrecognisable.

* I mean a true superintelligent AGI, something that is smarter than us and therefore by definition able to write a better version of itself.

@Diogenes

Thank you for your detailed answer. I do agree with you that context matters and that words are neither inherently good or bad by themselves. However, I think you’re looking at the situation from a more microscopic point of view as a simple joke between two people. I prefer to take a more macroscopic view of the situation. Allow me to explain.

Going back to my hypothetical example, it’s true that I didn't mean any harm when I used the term "retard" towards my brother. I think all people like to think of themselves as "good" people. For example, I would never in my life point at person with Down Syndrome and scream "Retard!" at the top of my lungs or attempt to belittle someone with an actual mental disability. The problem, however, is that by using the word in the way I did in the example I am tacitly--and quite publicly (remember this is happening in a parking lot)--endorsing the equating of people with mental disabilities to stupidity. I may be making a joke towards my brother but it isn’t just my brother that winds up being the butt of the joke.

Now maybe from your perspective, it’s just one person saying a joke. Look at the context, you might say. It’s a distasteful joke but no big deal, right? And I could agree with that if it was just some off-color joke limited to a single individual. Unfortunately, and I think we can both agree on this, the use of “retard” to mean “stupid” is a relatively common occurrence in American vernacular. You couple that with the stigma against mental illness and mental disability and I think it becomes fairly plain to see that on the macroscopic level (i.e. society) we have a problem: a group that is socially disadvantaged and historically discriminated against is even further marginalized by the language people use in their everyday lives. Now, if you don’t agree this is a problem, I’m afraid the conversation has to end here since the logical conclusion of such a stance is that people should be free to say whatever they want and be immune to criticism, damn the consequences.

But if you do agree it is a problem, how are we going to solve it? My take on the situation is that doing absolutely nothing when witnessing a situation like the one I've described is unlikely to improve society in any way. The status quo will be maintained if people are not confronted about their language use.

That being said, people often say things without fully comprehending the implications of what they are saying. They often talk the way they were raised and never once questioned whether what they were saying was actually harmful or not. I don’t think people should be pilloried for that, but in the event that they are unaware of how they are contributing to the discrimination and oppression of others they certainly need to be educated.

This necessarily entails confrontation, although that confrontation might be very low key. Continuing the example above, I think a good way for the woman in the example to “enlighten” me about my misguided use of the word “retard” would be something along the lines of this:

“Excuse me. I really wish you wouldn’t equate having a mental handicap with stupidity. My nephew has Down Syndrome and even though, yes, he can’t do everything that a person without an intellectual handicap can do he is most certainly not stupid.”

Now, all of that said, I see nothing wrong with publicly shaming those who clearly understand the implications of what they are saying and out of either stubbornness, a need for attention, or actual spite willfully continue to use language that is degrading or oppressive. A white person frequently using the N-word in public to describe black people, for instance, is a situation where I’d be completely fine with them getting verbally eviscerated. We don't always have to be polite, even when being politically correct.

As a final note, I want to make it clear that I believe in free speech in the sense that everyone should be free to say whatever they wish. However, as a caveat to that I also believe that free speech comes with the responsibility that people must own everything they say. If someone wishes to use offensive, degrading, or oppressive language that is their choice. Free speech in no way gives them a free pass from criticism of that choice, however.

LOL, East Palo Alto. I volunteered at the Boys and Girls Club there for a year when I lived in Mountain View. Two cops got shot and East Palo Alto had the highest murder rate ever that year. It's utterly insane how on one side of the 101 you have these multi-million dollar mansions and Stanford University and on the other side you have gangland.

Meanwhile, back on topic, when I moved to Mountain View in 2002 my rent was $800 a month for a studio apartment. The rent went up by $100 a year every year until I finally called it quits in 2007 when they wanted to charge me $1300 a month. I gave up ever actually being able to own a home in the Bay Area (let alone rent) and left in 2009.

In Japan now, and things aren't quite as bad as the Bay Area, but we've been house hunting recently and we're shocked at the disparity between what we want versus what we can actually afford, even with both us being full-time professionals. I know that 2nd place he goes to is supposed to be a joke but it's not that far off from the truth, at least as far as our experiences go. While the places we've been shown by the real estate agent are certainly habitable, they aren't particularly nice. So we're going to have to decide whether we want to live someplace not so great with the advantage being the mortgage will be paid off by the time we retire or just rent in a place we're comfortable with and wind up having to really budget hard after retirement since rent will consume a sizable portion of our pensions/social security.

Nope, me neither.

Which is sort of the point. It's unheard of that all of these agencies came to the same conclusion on a specific matter. Some may take this as an indicator of how damning the evidence really is, others see this as an indicator that the "assessments" were made on hierarchical levels reserved for political appointees.

The absence of dissent supports the second point of view. No group of analysts in their right mind would create a report without also strongly pointing out contradictory facts, inconsistencies, and separating fact from interpretation. That's what Hersh is referring to. This is not an NIE, it's an opinion piece. This memo by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (wierd name) goes down the same route:

As you will have gathered by now, we strongly suspect that the evidence your intelligence chiefs have of a joint Russian-hacking-WikiLeaks-publishing operation is no better than the “intelligence” evidence in 2002-2003 – expressed then with comparable flat-fact “certitude” – of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Now, an opinion piece might be sufficient if it came from credible institutions and had a moderatly important subject. But this is throwing serious accusations at a sovereign nation in times when diplomatic relations are stressed as it is. And that's not going into the credibility problem of many of these agencies, who have a very dubious track record on these issues.

Ian Welsh had a piece the other day on the CIA vs Trump, and his take on intelligence agencies is pretty close to what mine has been since I learned about the Stasi some 20 years ago:

The CIA and NSA are not the friend of any left-wing worth having: they are innately anti-democratic, anti-privacy, and anti-rights. Secret agencies are anathema to any open government. At an existential level, intelligence agencies are at best a double edged sword, and by their nature, they always wind up serving the interests of the few, against the interests of the people.

Never heard of him before now, but even in Chinese history records of his voyages were scattered or omitted, due in part possibly because his voyages went against the wishes of a previous ruler. He made seven voyages between 1405 and 1433, the Wikipedia article mentions nothing about colonization efforts so that's probably why East Africa doesn't speak Chinese.
On the other side we have Christopher Columbus who was in all the history books here in America and was regularly celebrated. Until we got more honest with our history, now it's Indigenous People's Day in many places (That Italian Asshole Day just doesn't look as good on a calendar I guess).
If the Chinese had taken over the world then maybe we would be reading about someone else discovering the Americas (and probably called something else too) but as it stands Europeans did and that's who winds up in the history books.

So European culture is to blame for all this? You 'll have to be more specific, what have the Europeans done that nobody else have managed to do?

As far Johansson's role in the movie goes, I can take her or leave her really, they could have cast an Asian action star and I would have been fine with that. But the choice of Johansson was less about nerds like me and more about getting everyone else into the theater. Oh, and I think Idris Elba would make an awesome James Bond, just sayin.

Even if you could buy your own debt it may not save you. Like they said earlier, their record keeping is notoriously bad, someone could still come after you for debt you don't actually owe anymore. You could probably send them packing with enough time and effort but but it might wind up costing you anyhow.
Wonderful system we have here, I could fix it, with a few nukes.

The reason many in the NRA are so against smart guns is because some places (New Jersey is one I think) have it written into law that when smart guns become technically and commercially viable then all arms dealers must switch to selling only smart guns within something like 3 years. Essentially making the sale of all other guns illegal I guess.
And the gun manufacturers pretty much already have immunity from being sued for how someone uses their products. There is no reasonable way that the makers of a firearm could possibly insure that someone they sell a gun to will not use it in either a criminal or just recklessly.
Personally I think smart guns are a great idea but I think lawmakers didn't consider how their own laws might wind up hindering the adoption of smart guns.
Here's the story I heard on NPR about it a week or two back.
http://www.npr.org/2016/04/07/473416699/how-an-idea-to-develop-a-safer-smart-gun-backfired

What you're missing is that people are pushing back to the point of destroying other peoples livelyhood.
It's not worth telling an edgy joke at a university if a group of individuals, who cannot control their own emotions, go ballistic and start telling everyone that will listen about what a terrible person you are. Before you know it people are protesting your next gig and you are being featured all over TV for being horrible.
It's not the fact that people get offended that is the problem, it's the fact that they get so offended at any perceived slight could have you wind up in a lawsuit.
A certain story about feminists in Canada comes to mind.

Knowledge and personal choices don't work the way you want them to, Doug. People hear things and then it processes as logical or illogical -- and beyond that it is not intrinsically associated with action, let alone revolutionizing the world. (I love you, man.)

Action may occur, but that is associated with predetermined tendencies in an individual's mind. I see life as being like stuck in a mandelbrot set (except even more fucked with chaos and shit): You want to get over to one cluster, but you're quickly swept up in the pattern of c, c² + c, (c²+c)² + c, ((c² + c)² +c)² + c, (((c² + c)² + c)² + c. You want to be rational but it is not easily accomplished; perhaps even a complete impossibility. Your truth is only truly applicable to your location in the set and you will never be able to reach the other areas of the set to deliver the truth.

Similar to any fractal, visualized or unvisualized complex mathematical set, there is truth, but the truth that serves one series of nodes (people, regions, cultures, education levels), does not consistently serve or do justice for another node, even if it is the truth. Your truth may be met with hostility or confusion.

One example I can think of in real life is the inconsistency between the western civilization node and the eastern civilization node, wherein we have learned through logic and historical context, that the rights of one people should extend to all people, men and women; yet for some, religious belief is so ingrained within the human brain, it creates a node where they see their restricted freedom as a freedom itself -- I speak of the hijab. This is where truth fractals and the pattern of determinism is becomes more readily apparent. Women in hijabs find it difficult to excercise in a standard hijab, so someone, in an effort to promote healthy lives in Muslim communities, invented a sports hijab -- like the sports bra of the Middle East. Those within the node wherein Islam is true, see this as empowering; while those outside that node, see only restriction to women's rights: confusion. Regardless of how logical you may state it from outside the pattern, it will not serve as truth in the way it serves you in your own ever evolving, shifting node.

The way that I see it is, we live in a biological nightmare where freedom is only an illusion. You'll run around like a wind up toy until you're dead. Everything that is and will be is a series of things fucking with other things; exploding in rage, or taking it solemnly up the ass. But but but -- no, sorry, that's why you don't give a fuck. You found the secret of life -- the true enlightenment that harmony is disorder and that free will is a lie. Enjoy it because it is and ever will be.