Month: April 2015

How Terrorists Are Turning Robots Into Weapons – Defense One

Terrorists are turning to robots as weapons, and they aren’t limited to consumer-grade UAVs with small payloads. … In the next scene of the four-minute clip, a pickup truck is seen driving in the middle of the desert with a tripod-mounted automatic machine gun in its bed. As the camera zooms in, it is clear there is no driver in the cab, which is being operated via crude robotic controls on the steering wheel and floor pedals. Moments later numerous rounds are fired from the machine gun, as a remotely controlled robotic actuator pulls the weapon’s trigger.

Source: How Terrorists Are Turning Robots Into Weapons – Defense One

Why a Harvard Professor Has Mixed Feelings When Students Take Jobs in Finance – The New York Times

Every profession produces both private returns — the fruits of labor that a person enjoys — and social returns — those that society enjoys.

People in some professions provide a surplus of social returns.

But not everyone contributes in this way. In an influential paper, the economists Kevin M. Murphy and Robert W. Vishny, both at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and Andrei Shleifer at Harvard University argue that countries suffer when talented people become what we economists call “rent seekers.” Instead of creating wealth, rent seekers simply transfer it — from others to themselves.

Source: Why a Harvard Professor Has Mixed Feelings When Students Take Jobs in Finance – The New York Times

Rules for Internet Society

Copied from elsewhere on the internet:

1. It’s the Internet, someone disagrees with you.
2. Not everyone who disagrees with you is obligated to be nice about it.
3. You may be a smart person, but that doesn’t always mean your opinions are well-informed or deserve to be taken seriously.
4. Not all opinions you disagree with are hateful or bigoted.
5. #4 Doesn’t necessarily mean your opinions *aren’t* hateful or bigoted.
6. Your freedom of speech doesn’t mean that no one is allowed to criticize, mock, or call you an asshole.
7. Your past hard work, sacrifices, good deeds, education, patriotic service, etc. doesn’t mean that no one gets to call you out for acting like a jerk or saying something dumb.
8. If you say you understand #6 and #7, but continue to cry “persecution!” or “double-standard!” or otherwise complain about “political correctness,” then you don’t really understand #6 and #7.
9. Just because a moderating organization or individual allows an opinion to be posted, it doesn’t mean they endorse, or even agree with, said opinion.
10. Don’t feel too bad if you’ve ever tripped-up on any of these: I just had to explain this to a group of PhDs.

The Abuse of Satire – The Atlantic

In his acceptance speech for the George Polk Career Award, the cartoonist made provocative remarks about satire and the responsibility free speech confers.

Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny—it’s just mean.

What free speech absolutists have failed to acknowledge is that because one has the right to offend a group does not mean that one must. Or that that group gives up the right to be outraged. They’re allowed to feel pain. Freedom should always be discussed within the context of responsibility. At some point free expression absolutism becomes childish and unserious. It becomes its own kind of fanaticism.

It’s not easy figuring out where the red line is for satire anymore. But it’s always worth asking this question: Is anyone, anyone at all, laughing? If not, maybe you crossed it.

Source: The Abuse of Satire – The Atlantic by Garry Trudeau, American cartoonist best known for Doonesbury, his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip