While I get there is a lot of profit to be made by the media by covering sad looking victims, juxtaposed against strong military men dressed up as police officers in armor, the truth is such coverage is terribly unhealthy for society. Enhanced corporate profits and creation of additional patronage jobs in local police departments is not a public good, instead it’s harmful. While the television stations may love all the automobiles and laundry soap the are selling on backs of victims, and police departments love being flush with cash to buy fun-looking toys and weapons – along with the ability to hire their high-school drop out uncle billy to their force – it’s so incredibly harmful to society.
What’s the alternative? I don’t know, I always worry about the government getting too much into the censorship business. If government tells newspapers and televisions that they can’t glorify murder and violence on their airwaves, the next step is the politicians cracking down on negative reporting about themselves. A ban of glorifying violence could easily be used to prosecute those who report on corruption or publicly support positions other then the official state party line. Likewise, restrictions on police and authorities talking to the media could foster corruption, as any law that limits disclosure by the police allows government corruption to flourish.
I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe more disclosure and easier opt-outs could be a partial solution. For example, many television sets have the ability to block violent content if so rated. Certain news stories could be blocked out unless people requested such content. Likewise, parental controls could be added to web browsers to provide a similar form of blocking. Such blocking could be seamless – rather then blanking out screens, alternative content also able to sell advertising could be part of the answer. Likewise, disclaimer requirements could be imposed on the media – for example if they are going to promote mass-shootings on airwaves, they’d be required to provide information on mental health hotlines, and actively encourage people who are thinking of engaging in violent activities to seek help. Local police departments, who are flush with cash from existing the excessive taxation placed on individuals and businesses, could fund such mental health programs, so they are free to those interested in participating.
Like many people I’ve been following closely both the hype and reality of ChatGPT. At the same time, I’ve been learning a lot about different forms of machine learning, and how they can be used to enhance computing, especially as computers grow in power. I also have been using computers for more then a quarter century, so I have some ideas on where machine learning could be useful for every day uses, while other cases were not so useful.
Things I Don’t Think We’ll See in the Future
ChatGPT is not going to replace writers, artists, or secretaries except for the most basic tasks
ChatGPT will not ever write quality news articles, press releases, or publications.
Natural language searches will not become the norm, as it’s a lot of typing or speaking and prone to mistakes, however machine learning will continue to be applied to both search terms and results to get more useful results
Things I Think We’ll See in the Future
Machine learning will be applied to people’s personal computer file system to better flag mistakes in documents, like in Microsoft Word. If for example, you regularly type out a press release or a report a certain way in Word, and something is different format-wise or stylistically in your current version, your Word processor would flag if not automatically fix it.
Machine learning could automatically generate templates based on previously saved documents on your computer, allowing you just to update and fill in the details of the document.
Machine learning would be used for resizing and colorizing photos in Gimp and Adobe Photoshop, automatically tracing edges, vectorizing and detecting words.
Machine learning would make the creation of graphics more automated, by creating sensible styles, and anticipating your next move.
Command line code would be far better automated, with much better tab competition both based on the commands others have used, and what you have previously run
Basically, any process you run on your computer would have much more tab completion, with the computer automatically predicting your likely next move, helping to speed up processing, as the computer could start working on the likely next step
I don’t anticipate the centralized machine learning model, with vast databases getting that much play. Internet access can be funky, and people are often hesitant to share data. It’s risky to be too reliant on other people’s servers. But I do think machine learning is going to only grow in importance on desktop computers, with more and more predictions made locally to assist users in getting tasks done quicker on their computers.
Each area code in NY State has a little over 1 million residents outside of New York City, due to most of state traditionally having 7-digit dialing.
While in theory, within a area code can have 10 million numbers, there are restrictions on numbers that can be used in North American Plan, which gets you down to 7.9 million numbers. It wouldn’t work for example to give somebody the number 911-5424.
But it’s actually much less then 7.9 million numbers per area code, because they allocate numbers out of local exchanges, and many numbers remain unallocated but in ownership of local exchanges and carriers.
NYS Population by Area Code
Except for New York City-area codes, most areas codes in NYS have had between 1 to 1.5 million residents.
On Friday, a group of Extinction Rebellion activists occupied a Tesla store in central Milan. Activists chained themselves to the cars’ tyres, and others glued themselves to the windows along with the slogans “Make millionaires pay again” and “Ecology for all, no ecofascism”.
Analysts are openly wondering if Musk is causing lasting damage to a brand he has made synonymous with electric cars and, by extension, liberal aspirations to tackle climate change.
