Mammon category archive
This New Gilded Age, It’s Bubblelicious 0
Sam and Emma talk with Rob Larson, professor of economics at Tacoma Community College, about how today’s generation of Robber Barons are perverting the polity.
The Privatization Scam 0
And it is a scam.
The Arizona Republic’s Laurie Roberts runs the numbers and shows that you can voucher on that.
Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0
Responsible for its actions? You must be joking.
Here’s a bit from the report by El Reg (emphasis added):
LinkedIn thus takes after its parent, which recently revised its Service Agreement to make clear that its Assistive AI should not be relied upon.
LinkedIn, however, has taken its denial of responsibility a step further: it will hold users responsible for sharing any policy-violating misinformation created by its own AI tools.
H/T Le Show for its coverage of AI (and many other items that don’t get the attention that they deserve).
The Entitlement Society 0
They keep doing it because they keep getting away with it.
The Crypto Con 0
It seems like everyone wants in on the scam.
The Crypto Con 0
The FBI followed the money. From El Reg (emphasis in the original):
The FBI investigation tracked payments to at least three deputies and their associates from Zort funds, and also probed how Iza was making his money. This led to the criminal charges.
Follow the link to see where it led them.
Medicare Disadvantage 0
Thom reports that hospitals are increasingly frustrated at dealing with Medicare “Advantage” plans, because those “insurers” just don’t want to, well, pay for medical care, because actually paying for stuff cuts into their profits.
As far as I am concerned, Medicare “Advantage” was a con and scam from the git-go. It was created solely to allow private companies to get their paws on public money. When I qualified for Medicare (yeah, I’m old), I made sure to avoid Medicare “Advantage” for the same reason I don’t answer phone calls when the caller ID reads “Scam Likely.”
But that’s just me.
The Crypto Con 0
Paul Krugman is less than sanguine about crypto con artists’ growing interest in and influence on politics. A snippet:
(snip)
So crypto’s political spending clearly seems motivated by financial self-interest, while the right-wing lurch of other tech bros may — as a Facebook founder, Chris Hughes, put it the other day in The New York Times — reflect a sense of common cause with Trump, who like them believes that he shouldn’t have to play by the rules.
Follow the link for the full article.
Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0
I commend to your attention Harry Shearer’s interview with Gary Marcus on this week’s episode of Le Show about AI and Silicon Valley’s reckless over-hyping of its capabilities.
The interview starts at about the 28 minute mark and lasts a little less than half an hour.
The Sure Thing 0
Read the full story for the details.
Aside:
The reason you are seeing so many commercials urging you to install gambling apps on your “device” is simple.
In the long run, you lose.
Gambling* is a mug’s game, and they’re hoping you volunteer to be the mug.
_____________________
*I’ll make exceptions for friendly wagers between friends (he said redundantly) and for playing the ponies. If you know what you are doing, you can do okay playing the ponies. My late ex-father-in-law certainly did very nicely at the OTB. Indeed, thanks to his tutelage on how to read the racing forms, I once hit an exacta at Delaware Park.
Come to think of it, that’s the last time I went to the horse races.