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Before I talk of robots, I need to say a few words about my own robot that I reviewed here. In the review, I was steamed about today’s lack of ever giving anybody any manuals. I thought of this again when I put a box by the basement door, with the book on the top an inch thick manual for a quarter century old Sound Blaster; just a sound card, not a whole device.
Then today I noticed something a woman would have seen the day before I actually started the robot.
For hundreds of thousands of years, humans and their progenitors were hunter-gatherers. The men hunted game, women gathered nuts, fruits, other edible vegetables. This is why there are almost no color-deficiant women, as a color blind female hominid would have starved without charity. Likewise, evolution made men's sight so that movement caught his eye, so he could spot game. His eyes aren't wired to look for stationary things.
This is my sorry excuse for fucking up.
This afternoon I saw, on its edge, wedged between a cardboard box and a gallon of windshield wiper fluid, a booklet. It was the manual to the robot, and other than being as grammatically challenged as anyone with English as a second language, or a computer, it was actually a very good manual.
I owe the ILIFE people an apology. I was going to make an effort to change the Amazon review, but saw that there were thousands of reviews so I didn’t bother. I did see that the broom costs sixty bucks more than I paid.
It had been sweeping for less and less time every day for a while until it only swept for fifteen minutes, and I feared I had gotten a bum battery—then remembered some other devices’ lousy guessing at the battery charge, so I did a cold boot. It swept for hours afterwards.
Then there are the robotic meat puppets. One of Vlad's puppets, President Pinocchio, had been programming his few thousand meat puppets, half of whom were liars and the other half stupid enough to not only believe that the Democrats could actually rig an election in a Republican state, but in more than one! Then, of course, there were those who post things like “democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner.” I often wonder why these people don’t move to North Korea.
After months of programming these hapless fools, he ordered them to the capitol and told them they had to get mean. I wonder what they’ll think when they don’t get their expected pardons?
When the dust settled after the coup attempt, meaning kind of a couple of days ago, when he slithered out from under his rock, waved his hand, and said “people said it was innocent. These are not the droids you’re looking for.”
The Governator, who was a child in Nazi Austria during the “night of the broken glass,” likened the attempted taking of the capitol to the horror of that night.
If Trump and his legislative enablers don't face some harsh consequences for what they have done, you will see it happening over and over.
I personally prefer steel or plastic robots to meat robots. My floor has never been as clean.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday January 14 2021, @10:34PM (11 children)
Robots tend to have a deficiency where their neural networks get programmed from the remote APIs they connect to. Information is accepted uncritically. If I were to listen only to Fock Snooze and hear how the election was stolen -- I would be enraged! Fortunately, some have the ability to detect, or investigate and determine reality from fantasy. The fact that dozens of lawsuits were trivially thrown out of courts, [soylentnews.org] many by Republican judges, some of which were appointed by Trump. That should have been a clue to some that they
were lied toshould not have accepted information so uncritically. After a pattern of this, stop accepting information from that source. Just as I stopped listening to CNN in 2013 for reasons I've explained on SN before. But if I heard something outrageous, I would be enraged. So I can't fault them for their passion. The blame goes to the cloud source they are connecting to. That is what is responsible for this massive failure. Misinformation without truth. The hardware or software could have been better. There should have been backup mechanisms that looked for actual evidence of what was being claimed. Not just accept loud, repeated claims that it was true. Meat or silicon, the problem is still garbage in, garbage out.Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 14 2021, @10:47PM (8 children)
You seem to be responding adverserially to people that are agreeing with you.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday January 14 2021, @11:00PM (7 children)
I am replying. I am not disagreeing. I am stating that the uncritical acceptance of lies repeated in echo chambers may be part of the problem. If I heard some of these things, and blindly accepted it, I would be enraged too. But I'm not enraged because I can determine that the things the president said are false, even if Fox News repeats them many times, they are still false.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday January 15 2021, @02:00AM (6 children)
Both sides are in little bubbles of apparently credible news. The evidence is circumstantial, but there is lots of it and the narrative is coherent. This applies to both sides.
Asking either side for actual evidence is akin to looking for a gas leak with a lit match. There is no clear evidence, so what you get is long rambling articles putting together dodgy looking factoids and out of context snippets to buttress their central thesis. If you are predisposed to accept the central claim this looks like solid evidence, if you are not, it looks like a shoddy hack job.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15 2021, @02:56AM (3 children)
Nope.
The evidence of insurrection we have are all the videos and pictures, many posted by the insurrectionists themselves. We also have the video evidence of Trump inciting the crowd along with Giuliani, along with way too many videos of Don Jr, his weirdly loud wife, numerous members of congress, and Fox programs all calling for violence.
If you didn't see NotSanguine's journal here is an admittedly short bunch of clips of some of these things https://twitter.com/jiveDurkey/status/1349732479440048135 [twitter.com]
I truly truly truly wish we could peak into the alternate universe where DNC and GOP were reversed so we could watch the howling of conservatives as liberals push the same Trumpian levels of fascism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15 2021, @04:25AM (1 child)
"I truly truly truly wish we could peak into the alternate universe where DNC and GOP were reversed"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqZdpUbd0VY [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15 2021, @05:27AM
Oh right, and the GOP lost their shit and howled for 4 years. The worst I see there are some garbage cans on fire and people protesting in the street.
Thanks, guess we see that the MAGAts truly are the despicable violent thugs we've known you are. Peaceful protests with a little property vandalism? Not good, but pales in comparison to murdering police and storming the nation's capitol for attempted insurrection while chanting to hang the vice president you elected.
Lol you thought you had a gotcha. Even now I don't see liberal outlets calling for heads, just prosecution under the law. Truly the divide is clear, and it is heartening to hear so many stories of people rejecting the Republican party over what it has come to represent.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 15 2021, @05:14AM
It wasn't "alternate" [history.com]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Friday January 15 2021, @02:39PM (1 child)
You need to read the first comment in the thread. If you only watch Fox, Democrats are evil. If you only watch CNN, Republicans are evil. The right wing's "the media are liberal" is brain dead stupid, there are thousands of media outlets around the world with thousands of varying viewpoints, most very near the political center.
But when you see Trump say one thing on Monday, then deny saying it on Tuesday, either you know he's a lying fool, or you're an even bigger fool.
Trump sent his supporters to the capitol and told them to get mean. They screamed death threats against congresspeople and the Vice President, fought with police, killing one policeman, vandalized and looted.
All of this was recorded and photographed. The only doubt is in the minds of the willingly ignorant, and the incredibly stupid.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday January 16 2021, @08:29AM
I am not a USian, and probably don't see as much of Trump as you lot (although the media over here loves to hate him too) but I haven't seen him do that, at least not more than any other politician. What I have seen him do is state something in a rambling way, have the media interpret it in the worst light possible, and then seen him deny that. The canonical example is COVID and bleach.
Watch the actual video of his speech. He literally said "UV or bleach kill this thing instantly. Wouldn't it be nice if we could find something that would do that inside the body". He's right, it would be nice.
The media reported that as "Trump said to inject bleach to cure COVID".
He then denied saying that.
Then the media calls him a liar.
It was the same with his "endless stream of racist and sexist tweets". I repeatedly challenged people writing that to link to a racist or sexist tweet. Not because I was defending Trump, but because I actually wanted to read them myself. The closest anyone ever came was one tweet that was a specific attack on four members of Congress, where he said if they didn't like it they could go back to their own shithole countries. One is not an endless stream.
I do not like the guy, and I think he is narcissistic, corrupt, and nowhere near as bright as he thinks he is, but I have never seen the media go after another western politician the way they went after Trump. You say you can't believe his supporters don't know all the bad stuff he's done? His supporters have watched the media flat out lie about him for five years. It doesn't matter what the media say now because on the issue of Trump, they have zero credibility.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Friday January 15 2021, @02:02AM (1 child)
That's why i go to as many news sites as i can, to try to suss out the truth: i DO go to foxnews AND CNN and BBC and CBC and politico and thehill and al jazeera and skynews and npr and... jeez what did i miss?
Journalists, though, seem to be shit: they take what 'leaders' tell them and just report it, some with as much bias and twist as they can (CNN AND Foxnews...looking at you...)
CBC and BBC seem pretty unbiased, mostly...(in Cartman voice)...mostly...
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15 2021, @05:00AM
There is a Tower in Toronto, that controls peoples minds! Tax on wicker goods. Little girls in three piece suits with black baloons. I Don't Want to Go to Toronto! [youtube.com] Do I have to go? Do I? (Canadians! So paranoid!)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 15 2021, @12:03PM (1 child)
That's the lesson I get from this journal entry.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Touché) by mcgrew on Friday January 15 2021, @02:44PM
It could be a software issue, but I think the problem is faulty memory, and perhaps a loose screw or two.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience