ICanSleepWhenI'mDead

Yeah - - who gives a **** about grandma. The virus will probably get her anyway.

Direct quotes from the article you cited: 1. "Bayesian statistical inference uses a set of founding beliefs about a system before predicting probabilities." 2. "But a key result here is that when one compares the rare-life versus common-life scenarios, the common-life scenario is always at least nine times more likely than the rare one." Executive summary - - If your "founding belief" is that life elsewhere in the universe is common, it is much, much more likely that any mathematical model you construct based on that belief will predict (1) a greater chance of life existing elsewhere in the universe, than if (2) your "founding belief" is that life elsewhere in the universe is rare. Shocking. And as some sort of mathematical wizardry beyond the understanding of average folks with no PhD in astronomy or mathematics, if you adjust your "founding belief" so that you start with the assumption that life is even more common than you first thought, then the mathematical model you construct based on that belief will predict a greater chance of life existing elsewhere in the universe than you first thought. In other news, if you knew absolutely nothing about water but had a founding, speculative belief that it was fairly dry, any mathematical model you constructed to predict the dryness of water would predict greater dryness than if your initial, speculative, founding belief was that water was fairly wet. Speculative garbage in, speculative garbage out. Because the founding belief on which the mathematical model is based is purely speculative, the fancy-sounding model has no predictive value whatsoever.

Well, I don't know if I would call it an update, but apparently the fact that we have no real evidence of alien life tends to prove that there is a conspiracy to hide it: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/5/8/21244090/pentagon-ufo-videos-navy-alexander-wendt?utm_source=pocket-newtab

If you consider hiring a financial advisor rather than doing your own stock market research, be sure to ask him/her where they keep the customer's yachts.

I share the amazement, but interpret what it means much differently. My guess is that most computer investing models look at recent stock market drops, see a lot of "V-shaped" recoveries, and blindly predict that this time will be the same. But in my personal opinion, it's not the same. The state governors can react to vocal criticism by a minority of consumers and by their big-money business-owning donors who are losing profits, by allowing the economy to re-open, but the average consumer is NOT going to immediately resume the same spending habits they had before the pandemic. If we get a re-test of the recent lows, and those lows hold, I'll consider buying stocks - - not before then. And FWIW, I take the general optimism about stocks in this thread as a pretty reliable contrary indicator. Time will tell. Your mileage may vary. Do not try this at home. Professional driver on closed course. Consult your physician for a complete list of all side-effects. Full disclosure - - I have occasionally been called an idiot by both my significant other and by prior insignificant others.

I would have preferred Jake From State Farm:

I could understand if this thread was closed because of the trolling, but it's a mystery to me why the original "Marquis Lee Cut" thread was closed. It contained no flaming, no trolling, and concerned a player that at least some Bills fans (including some veteran posters) were willing to talk about. Does the Board lack server capacity to allow such a discussion to continue? I just don't get the delight some take in shutting down threads. This is a polite request - - can a moderator enlighten me please?

Hey Bob, Nobody will look for our new spy cam in an oversize eyeball. And if McDermott eventually figures it out, he obviously should have known he was being watched. It's genius ! ! ! We should run the CIA, Bill

More info on how computer vision helps facial recognition technology work, and on how "adversarial imagery" can be used to try to defeat it: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/16/dressing-for-the-surveillance-age?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Turns out that it's the rest of us who are more likely to be dead: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-it-pays-to-be-grumpy-and-bad-tempered?utm_source=pocket-newtab Who knew?

On the early history of government UFO investigations (also explains why we call them flying saucers and not flying pancakes): https://www.wired.com/story/how-ufo-sightings-became-an-american-obsession/?utm_source=pocket-newtab And here's a reprint of the 6/19 "Wired Guide to Aliens" - - my apologies if previously posted - - I had not seen it before. https://www.wired.com/story/wired-guide-aliens/

I need to throw out some old song lyrics to have "space" in my head for the concepts in this article - - one of the authors is an experimental physics professor who conducts research on the Large Hadron Collider: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-is-space?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I have no life, so I need an update on the Small Town office dilemma.

This article from 2017 just found me (so my apologies if it was previously posted a few years ago): https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-new-theory-on-why-we-haven-t-found-aliens-yet?utm_source=pocket-newtab If we haven't been able to find alien civilizations because they're all sleeping while waiting for the universe to get colder, shouldn't we be able to hear them snore?

I have used Gate 1 Travel twice for week-long guided bus tours in Europe within the last 5 years (one was Croatia/Slovenia but included a couple days in Venice), with good results both times. Other family members have used them for two other bus tours elsewhere, also with good results. https://www.gate1travel.com/europe?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkeTVwv6w5wIVBRitBh0smwGgEAAYASABEgLZ0PD_BwE

From https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/persian-cats-9242012/ Persian Cats How Iranian air crews, cut off from U.S. technical support, used the F-14 against Iraqi attackers. By Tom Cooper Air & Space Magazine | Subscribe September 2006 FIVE YEARS BEFORE THE 1979 Islamic Revolution transformed Iran, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a pilot who had earned his wings in 1946 flying a British Tiger Moth, arranged for Iran to purchase 80 Grumman F-14A Tomcats and 633 Hughes AIM-54 Phoenix missiles for $2 billion. (The Iranian deal is credited with saving the F-14 program, which Congress had stopped funding, and by some with saving the Grumman Corporation from bankruptcy.) Iran became the only country besides the United States to fly the big fighter.

Not directly responsive to 4merper4mer's point #2 above, but perhaps related: https://gizmodo.com/which-religion-is-friendliest-to-the-idea-of-aliens-1841241730?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I realize this isn't everybody's cup of tea, but if anybody is interested in the history of how facial recognition technology evolved in its early years, there's some good stuff in this recently published Wired article: https://www.wired.com/story/secret-history-facial-recognition/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Who did you buy it from? http://osxdaily.com/2017/11/10/can-use-iphone-x-without-face-id/

Any updates on this?

The iphone recognizes its owner's face after the owner allows it to do that. The company mentioned in the article created an app that analyzes a stranger's face and allegedly compares it to over a billion images scraped from all over the internet and identifies the stranger, whether the stranger likes it or not. Both use facial recognition technology, but the Clearview app potentially has a much greater impact on your privacy. Just my opinion, but I think it's sad that so few people care about privacy these days. As the Stanford law professor said in the article - - "Absent a very strong federal privacy law, we're all screwed."

From https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab "But without public scrutiny, more than 600 law enforcement agencies have started using Clearview in the past year, according to the company, which declined to provide a list. The computer code underlying its app, analyzed by The New York Times, includes programming language to pair it with augmented-reality glasses; users would potentially be able to identify every person they saw. The tool could identify activists at a protest or an attractive stranger on the subway, revealing not just their names but where they lived, what they did and whom they knew." * * * * * * * * * * * * * “It’s creepy what they’re doing, but there will be many more of these companies. There is no monopoly on math,” said Al Gidari, a privacy professor at Stanford Law School. “Absent a very strong federal privacy law, we’re all screwed.”

"Period" Why is it that people with the most off the wall and idiotic opinions seem to think that if they conclude by saying "period," the rest of the world is required to agree with them?