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nyan , to Canada in Posthaste: Canada could face two more decades of stagnant growth, report warns

Part of the issue with raising retirement age, though, is that you can only go so far before the majority of people are unfit to work. Things like osteoarthritis have a much larger effect on your ability to work than they do on your life expectancy. Plus, the burden of continuing to work disproportionately falls on poor people whose work is more physical—well-educated people with desk jobs usually earn more money, have somewhat better savings, and can thus afford to retire a few years before their government pension kicks in.

nyan , to Technology in UK Woman Mistaken As Shoplifter By Facewatch, Now She's Banned From All Stores With Facial Recognition Tech

Technically, there's a tendency for them to be trained on datasets that don't include nearly enough dark-skinned people. As a result, they don't learn to make the necessary distinctions. I'd like to think that the selection of datasets for training facial recognition AI has improved since the most egregious cases of that. I'm not willing to bet on it, though.

nyan , to Technology in UK Woman Mistaken As Shoplifter By Facewatch, Now She's Banned From All Stores With Facial Recognition Tech

stores use it and it alone to ban people despite it having a low but well known error rate.

And it is absolutely predictable that some stores would do that, because humans. At very least, companies deploying this technology need to make certain that all the store staff are properly trained on what it does and doesn't mean, including new hires who arrive after the system is put in. Forcing that is going to require that a law be passed.

nyan , to Technology in Study finds a quarter of all webpages from 2013 to 2023 no longer exist

The real issue is that we seem to be purging all the wrong things.

Useful answer to technical question? Gone five years later.

Unfounded and fraudulent accusation that some teenager in Albuquerque committed a hideous crime? Preserved for the ages. Revenge porn photos? Also preserved, although possibly without the attributions.

Although, really, all of that is human nature too: we conserve what draws the attention of the average mook, not what specialists find useful.

nyan , to Technology in Study finds a quarter of all webpages from 2013 to 2023 no longer exist

Pleased, but surprised.

nyan , to Technology in CEO of Google Says It Has No Solution for Its AI Providing Wildly Incorrect Information

Yes, but as a solution it's far inferior to not presenting questionable output to the public at all.

(There are a few specific AI/LLM types whose output we might be able to "human-proof"—for instance, if we don't allow image generators to make photorealistic images of any sort for any purpose, they become much more difficult to abuse—but I can't see how you would do it for search engine adjuncts like this without having a human curate their training sets.)

nyan , to Technology in CEO of Google Says It Has No Solution for Its AI Providing Wildly Incorrect Information

Because a lot of people won't look at sources even if you serve them up on a silver platter?

nyan , to Technology in CEO of Google Says It Has No Solution for Its AI Providing Wildly Incorrect Information

eat as much glue as you can

Likely won't make a difference to the gene pool. I looked up a couple of MSDS, and it seems that PVA glue ("white glue"), is safe to ingest. The Elmer's glue "recommended" in the original Reddit post is a form of white glue.

nyan , to Technology in Self-Driving Tesla Nearly Hits Oncoming Train, Raises New Concern On Car's Safety

Are there any classes of object left that Tesla FSD has not either hit or almost hit? Icebergs, maybe?

nyan , to Technology in New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC

Someone will figure out how to turn it off again in fairly short order (it might be as simple as a mklink to NUL for the storage directory, causing it to send its recordings into the void). What irritates me more is the typical Microsoft misuse of the word "feature".

(I mean, this thing does have some potential uses (imagine being able to see what that elderly relative you provide tech support for actually did when they claim they "did nothing"), but the privacy concerns vastly outweigh them.)

nyan , to Canada in Canadian immigration asks medical worker fleeing Gaza if he treated Hamas fighters

A possible answer: "I'm sorry, but when someone is bleeding to death in front of me while screaming incoherently, my priority isn't on finding out who their employer is and they'd be unable to tell me even if I asked." Might stir some vestigial sense of shame in the bureacrat asking the question. Or not.

nyan , to Canada in Canada’s standard of living on track for worst decline in 40 years

Perhaps they want to distract people from conditions in the UK.

nyan , to Canada in In Canada, bodies go unclaimed as costs put funerals out of reach

The main point of charging anything at all for a plot would be to finance minimal record keeping: which plots are supposed to be full, who's in them, and, ideally, who bought the space. Plus a quick "do you have a death certificate?" check, and a request to inform whoever's doing the admin if you get to the pauper's field and find the plot you expected to use already occupied. Not an insurmountable barrier for a determined murderer who's done some advance planning, but it should make it less attractive as a dumping ground.

nyan , to Canada in In Canada, bodies go unclaimed as costs put funerals out of reach

Wandering around the Internet a bit, it looks like the cheapest option for disposing of a body in Canada today is basic cremation (no funeral service, no urn, no coffin, no enbalming). Even that runs to around $2000, with some variation between funeral homes. If the CPP death benefit is $2500 before taxes, it might barely cover that, although I expect it would be tight. The major costs are the actual use of the crematorium (~40% of the cost on its own), paying funeral home staff to transport and refrigerate the body, and costs associated with legal documentation.

If you want to bury instead of burn, the cost baloons because cemetary plots and the services cemetaries require you to buy to make use of them are ridiculously expensive. Maybe what we need is a return to the pauper's field—$20 plots, no landscaping, and you dig your own hole (with maybe a quick check from someone official to make sure it's deep enough for sanitary purposes), transport the corpse in whatever vehicle is available, have anyone willing say a few words, get family or friends to help you lower the unfinished softwood crate-coffin, and add whatever marker you can afford after you fill the hole back in. You know, like poor people used to do up until a hundred or so years ago. You'll still need the body refrigeration, and the documentation, but it should be possible to get the costs down by considerable if we focus more on the necessary and less on the pretty and on overpriced "respect" for a deceased who, by definition, cannot be aware of it.

For now, though, set aside some money specifically to pay for disposing of your body, if you can. You heirs will thank you for it.

nyan , to Canada in Tenants don’t have to foot unpaid tax bills for foreign landlords: minister - National | Globalnews.ca

Require transparency in the form of publication of the maintenance bills, then, so that everyone can agree on whether it's a fair deal or not.

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