Interesting Links for 27-07-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Mock Jurors, Ex Jurors, Real Jurors: What Can Jury Research Tell Us about Rape Trials?

(tags:law rape Scotland newzealand )

2. Record number of Scottish trainee doctor positions filled

(tags:Scotland NHS healthcare )

3. BMW uses autonomous cars for boring, repetitive tests

(tags:cars testing automation )

4. Twitter tells brands to buy more ads or risk losing their verification

(tags:Twitter extortion advertising )

5. More than 900 people per square mile and they probably vote for a progressive party

(tags:politics cities psychology sociology )

6. Mastercard demands US cannabis shops stop accepting debit cards

(tags:USA law marijuana finance )

Comments

[zz]

6) Payments processors dictating what people spend their money on is one of the great evils of the internet.

[andrewducker]

Yup. It's one of those areas where there's clearly a case for something like bitcoin.

[dewline]

They see debit cards as the Great Enemy, then?

[fub]

On the other hand, I can't really fault them for not wanting to provide banking services for criminal activity -- as the people who do so tend to get sent to jail or get hit with massive fines.

[cmcmck]

Way to go Twitter- great way to make companies go elsewhere!

[dewline]

Obedience test right there, huh?

[calimac]

1) What's bothersome about this is that personal understandings and beliefs are what juries are intended to base their verdicts on. "Are the defendant and witnesses believable?" is the basic question, and you have only your gut instinct as to whether they are or not to go on. That's why we have juries - collections of lay people off the street - in the first place. Yet myths and false beliefs have the same status as true ones (putatively - I'm not so sure even about those).

#5 population density

[mellowtigger]

Finally, a well-presented explanation for the mechanism of this process.

[anna_wing]

3 The BMW robo-testers are another example of how new technology generates applications that are not immediately obvious. Smart glasses, for instance,are useful in industrial contexts,

https://www.controleng.com/articles/using-smart-glasses-for-remote-testing-and-inspections/

and I recall talking to someone years ago about using blockchain to track and collateralise cattle in various African countries (Kenya and Rwanda were mentioned).

https://www.oecd-forum.org/posts/animal-assets-how-blockchain-can-improve-the-businesses-and-lives-of-smallholder-livestock-farmers

[andrewducker]

Yes, lots of tech that makes a lot of sense in a constrained situation where there's the money to invest to make it work well.

Although I'd note that the blockchain article is very much a projection of things they'd like to do. And that if they can agree on a trusted holder of the information then they can just use a database.

[anna_wing]

Yes, if I recall correctly (this was years ago, before COVID), the company I spoke to said that lack of trust was precisely the reason why the various parties (farmers, banks insurers, veterinary certification agencies etc) didn't want the others to know their proprietary information.

[andrewducker]

Interesting.

The issue is that blockchains are public. Or, at least, by default they are. Certainly if you want to verify the data on there. If you want the data on there to be private then a database managed by a trusted third-party is a better bet. It's mostly when you don't have a trusted third-party and therefore want everything in the open that you'd go with a blockchain.

I think this flowchart is quite good: https://twitter.com/justincormack/status/1048875246437195778