Ride-hailing app Uber will introduce self-driving cars in Pittsburgh as soon as this month, Bloomberg reports citing many officials and engineers at the company. The move is the first part of a pilot program to explore the future of the technology, the report added. The company plans to test 100 Volvo XC90s outfitted to drive themselves. Still, the cars will be accompanied by two humans: an engineer who can take control of the vehicle when needed and a co-pilot who takes note. Bloomberg reports:So, self-driving Ubers are here. My guess is that this is really going to push self-driving cars into the general consciousness. Good news for self-driving cars, maybe not so good news for Uber drivers. It also opens up the question of what's Ubers core market advantage when all taxi services are automated? I can easily see city-specific cab companies all signing up to create their own website / app together, especially since they compete with each other much less than they compete with Uber. But Uber might have other competitor too, because ...
The Volvo deal isn't exclusive; Uber plans to partner with other automakers as it races to recruit more engineers. In July the company reached an agreement to buy Otto, a 91-employee driverless truck startup that was founded earlier this year and includes engineers from a number of high-profile tech companies attempting to bring driverless cars to market, including Google, Apple, and Tesla. Uber declined to disclose the terms of the arrangement, but a person familiar with the deal says that if targets are met, it would be worth 1percent of Uber's most recent valuation.
"A team from Stanford University were able to train a computer system to identify impoverished areas from satellite and survey data in five African countries. The latest study looked at daylight images that capture features such as paved roads and metal roofs -- markers that can help distinguish different levels of economic wellbeing in developing countries. They then used a sophisticated computer model to categorize the various indicators in daytime satellite images of Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Malawi. 'If you give a computer enough data it can figure out what to look for. We trained a computer model to find things in imagery that are predictive of poverty,' said Dr Burke. 'It finds things like roads, like urban areas, like farmland, it finds waterways -- those are things we recognize. It also finds things we don't recognize. It finds patterns in imagery that to you or I don't really look like anything... but it's something the computer has figured out is predictive of where poor people are.' The researchers used imagery from countries for which survey data were available to validate the computer model's findings.Pretty cool if we can adapt existing systems like that to give us a better understanding of third-world development without needing to rely on subjective measurements, local authorities figures, or get investigators to interfere on the ground. Doing the same analysis on photos across a time lapse would help identify areas which are missing out on development aid, regardless of politics or national borders, warfare.
Another team, Enig Associates of Bethesda, Maryland, and researchers at the University of Maryland, want to rapidly heat a piece of metal by detonating a small bomb and converting the blast into electrical energy. Different shaped plasma clouds can be generated by changing the form of the initial explosion.
While this century we talk about Heroshima and Nagasaki as the greatest singular manmade loss of life events, next century, people will remember The Great Rush Hour Car Hack which killed millions.
I realized we kinda lack a thread that's about general tech developments in "real world" contexts. Maybe this can be this thread. Recent news articles:
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/08/18/1351200/ubers-first-self-driving-fleet-arrives-in-pittsburgh-this-monthQuoteIt also opens up the question of what's Ubers core market advantage when all taxi services are automated? I can easily see city-specific cab companies all signing up to create their own website / app together, especially since they compete with each other much less than they compete with Uber.
Dude, Hiroshima and Nagasaki dont even stand out in terms of death toll. Nanking, Warsaw, Leningrad, Wola, Bataan... and that's not even getting into the holocaust, the hunger plan (hint: the hungry people are civilians on land german wanted), the balkan genocides and the japanese treatment of the Chinese in general. Like I know that wasn't the focus of your post but it's REALLY off the mark.Which is why I said singular event. Holocaust and hunger plan didn't happen in mere seconds. Heroshima and Nagasaki did, and so would a massive car pilot hack.
IDK, but I just read another article saying there are electrical sockets with a chip in them and they can crack your WIFI password and be hacked to launch DDOS attacks. Don't put CPUs in everything people, it's stupid.Yeah, call me a luddite but why does my fridge need its own internet connection? It's a fridge. The biggest use I could think for it would be to let me dispense ice from my bedroom, and how useful would that be exactly?
In other news however, the Kickstarter for the Onion Omega 2 computer is packaging a $5 computer which includes a 580MHz CPU, 64MB memory, 16MB storage, built-in Wi-Fi and a USB 2.0 port. Which is cool but makes it even easier to embed stupidly overpowered electronics into "smart" devices which don't need it.
I feel like manufacturers are doing it for the sake of doing it.
While this century we talk about Heroshima and Nagasaki as the greatest singular manmade loss of life events, next century, people will remember The Great Rush Hour Car Hack which killed millions.Guess we Ghost in the Shell now. 'Scuse me while I go get my new cyberbrain. :P
And yeah, the main advantages to internet-bound everything is that we can start relaying things together to provide benefits; your fridge tracks your inventory automatically, your oven/stove recommend recipes based on what you've made before and what you need to use out of your fridge, your car then reminds you of what you need as you start to approach the shopping mart, and so forth.
Seems simpler to just take a picture of your fridge with your phone and take that into the store TBH.Now create an iPhone app that can automatically take pictures of my fridge and send me a text message of them whenever I need to go grocery shopping, show it off to venture capitalists, and you're well on your way to forming a multibillion-dollar startup.
I think the objection is that a government or corporation could use that data (assuming you don't use rewards programs, which makes it redundant) to track your movement and metabolism and whatever else cam be done with the data, and create a model to predict your actions. Of course your ISP may have that data already.
Right now some ingenious hacker could hack my phone and get my bank account info plus get the means to verify that they are in fact me
And yeah, the main advantages to internet-bound everything is that we can start relaying things together to provide benefits; your fridge tracks your inventory automatically, your oven/stove recommend recipes based on what you've made before and what you need to use out of your fridge, your car then reminds you of what you need as you start to approach the shopping mart, and so forth.
Seems simpler to just take a picture of your fridge with your phone and take that into the store TBH. I have no idea why your car would do any of that, it seems about the worst way to go about that (if you really wanted to automate that, just have the fridge send a list to your phone, so much simpler.). Likewise for the stove, google recipes on your phone, takes no time at all. Plus you don't have to worry about dealing with the half-baked (hurr hurr) shitty interface that the stove company will inevitably come up with.
I.e. at least to me, these specific examples just sound like automation/IoT devices for the hell of it, they don't really seem to be solving any particular problem most people have. To be honest, having your car remind you of what you need seems so... primitive-futuristic, like the kind of futurism you would see in something like the Jetsons.
And yeah, the main advantages to internet-bound everything is that we can start relaying things together to provide benefits; your fridge tracks your inventory automatically, your oven/stove recommend recipes based on what you've made before and what you need to use out of your fridge, your car then reminds you of what you need as you start to approach the shopping mart, and so forth.
Seems simpler to just take a picture of your fridge with your phone and take that into the store TBH. I have no idea why your car would do any of that, it seems about the worst way to go about that (if you really wanted to automate that, just have the fridge send a list to your phone, so much simpler.). Likewise for the stove, google recipes on your phone, takes no time at all. Plus you don't have to worry about dealing with the half-baked (hurr hurr) shitty interface that the stove company will inevitably come up with.
I.e. at least to me, these specific examples just sound like automation/IoT devices for the hell of it, they don't really seem to be solving any particular problem most people have. To be honest, having your car remind you of what you need seems so... primitive-futuristic, like the kind of futurism you would see in something like the Jetsons.
As opposed to the fridge taking pictures itself
drone/automated car
that arranges the groceries inside your fridge
not only that it will be simpler for us Human
Our economic system values consumption, not efficiency.
The rapid rise of online shopping seems to suggest efficiency is still a big factorOnline shopping still requires you to navigate through the virtual store while bombarding you with specials etc. It's the same thing.
if there was a system that enable your fridge to always be full without any physical intervention on a human side ... that fridge will sellI have already stated how I seriously doubt that this is something which is of a concern to most people.
clicking on stuff on an App on a weekly basisUntil it needs updating, but then it only works on the newer version of Android, so you update your phone to that. Then one of the apps you use breaks with it and you spend the next couple of hours fixing that.
it's remembering to take a picture of your fridgeUse Calendar if you really forget this? Alarm? Solutions to this problem already exist. You just replaced pushing the camera button with pushing the app button. Same thing, really.
a delivery guy that always seems to come at the wrong timesThese systems are built, programmed, maintained, and administered by humans. I doubt that throwing drones at this problem will make it go away.
Hey, we noticed you like Beans, here's a Chilli Con Carne recipe and all the ingredients in it are now at 25% offOh good, now I have adverts on my phone I need to deal with and dismiss. This is really starting to sound like a bigger pain in the ass than just doing it myself.
a system which puts a hot meal at your table just as you walk inWe have that, its called a microwave oven, takes only a few minutes.
technical difficulties at firstTechnical difficulties are likely to be ongoing.
why wouldn't people dispense with the large fridge altogether, thus saving on energy and costs, and get individual meals drone-delivered?
Social question: What happens to the wait-staff after they're replaced by mechanization?
They find other jobs. Or they get a job at the restaurant up the road that still uses humans (and has a reliable customer base just because of that)So you believe this will always be possible?
They find other jobs. Or they get a job at the restaurant up the road that still uses humans (and has a reliable customer base just because of that)So you believe this will always be possible?
This is despite quite a bit of automation in the food that ends up on the shelves at the grocery store.I legit don't know, but isn't most of that automation only really effective on scales significantly larger than your average kitchen? I can only remember seeing in passing is stuff that's like... industrial. In the sense that it stops really working below a certain size.
Ramen Rider
Online shopping still requires you to navigate through the virtual store while bombarding you with specials etc. It's the same thing.The same thing as what? going to a grocery store? no, it's not and the most prominent reason for the success of Online grocery shopping is that it spares people of physically going to the store.
I have already stated how I seriously doubt that this is something which is of a concern to most people.
Until it needs updating, but then it only works on the newer version of Android, so you update your phone to that. Then one of the apps you use breaks with it and you spend the next couple of hours fixing that.So you update it once every few months and it breaks once a year so you re-download the App. seems like much more time saving than shopping through an interface that can break as well or physically going to a store.
These systems are built, programmed, maintained, and administered by humans. I doubt that throwing drones at this problem will make it go away.
Oh good, now I have adverts on my phone I need to deal with and dismiss. This is really starting to sound like a bigger pain in the ass than just doing it myself.
I would seriously doubt the effectiveness of advertisements, at this point, most people have been conditioned to dismiss and ignore advertisements on their phones. The main income for apps tend to IAP's.
We have that, its called a microwave oven, takes only a few minutes.
Agree, a system that "puts a hot meal on your table just as you walk in" could actually be really annoying. Say I was late or ate out, does the food just go bad or get dumped? We have takeaway places for the need of quick fix meals, we really don't need home robotics to solve the "problem" of "don't feel like cooking".
Choices don't exist in a vacuum. While this home-robotics thing is improving, so will commercial food robotics, and they are likely to be ahead of the curve on this. Economies of scale. e.g. those burger robots who make 400 burgers an hour. A home-robotics system is unlikely to be able to compete with that. There are already takeout choices that are far cheaper than DIY cooking, e.g. $5 large pizzas at dominos. I doubt I could work out the home ingredients for a $5 pizza like theirs.
The problem may be that we're applying an old paradigm and just high-teching it. We are making the same mistakes about The Future as The Jetsons did. Rather than have a super-fridge which tracks supplies, and has an army of robots to keep it stocked and make meals, with drone-deliveries of bulk raw materials, why wouldn't people dispense with the large fridge altogether, thus saving on energy and costs, and get individual meals drone-delivered?
In China, noodle restaurants are starting to use "noodle making robots", which have a human facade.
http://www.techinsider.io/creepy-noodle-making-robot-is-a-masterpiece-2015-8
But the bits that make them look "human" are entirely cosmetic: they are fashioned after people because Chinese expect a person to be the noodle slicer. Once it's been automated for long enough, perhaps people won't care whether the noodle-bot looks like a person or not.
That explains the pillows....
If the robot is intelligent and free-willed enough to consent, why object?That explains the pillows....
Wont be long till they start marrying their robots.
Ramen Rider
During the day he is a humble noodle shop owner. However, when night falls, he fights againt the forces of evil using powers gifted by the FSM!
There's a whole tv series around the subject. Can recommend, was a fun watch back when they broadcasted it on our public channel.If the robot is intelligent and free-willed enough to consent, why object?That explains the pillows....
Wont be long till they start marrying their robots.
ITT: Why invent or do anything new ever? Stuff working right now, right?
Again, a bigger pain in that ass than browsing through an Online shopping App or website that already does those things, or going to a physical store and getting the same promotions suggestions from sales persons/cashiers? i don't think so.Hold up. What kind of grocery stores are you going to that have sales people on the floor or cashiers trying to pump goods? I think I've been approached shopping by an employee trying to push something like... twice in the last five years, if that. And I've generally been the one shopping either for myself or my family for a while now. Most I've ever seen from a cashier on that front is asking about rewards programs of some sort, and that's almost always been less time and trouble than getting rid of a pop-up. A, singular.
The rapid rise of online shopping seems to suggest efficiency is still a big factor and if there was a system that enable your fridge to always be full without any physical intervention on a human side besides clicking on stuff on an App on a weekly basis, that fridge will sell and the stores that fill that fridge will sell
This is what I mean about Jetsons-like thinking. "Full fridge" "weekly basis" already harks back to a previous era. There's literally zero reason to adhere to those standards if we live in a world with advanced robotics and drone-delivered groceries. Restocking weekly implies that your using food that's up to a week old in your meals. Forget worrying about a 20 minute delay on pre-prepared meals if you're not actually cooking with fresh ingredients. The meals you get sent in will be made with fresher ingredients than you can conceivably chow through if everything is prepared by robots at home. And of course, what's going to be the most efficient shape of this home-cooking robot? My guess is that it's going to have to be a human-shaped robot, and thus need all of the same kitchen bits and pieces we already have. This thing is going to have to take the garbage out, defrost freezers, do full cleaning, peel vegetables, keep the sink unclogged, the lot. So at the very least, it's going to take as much space as having a whole person around.
Seems like a problem with the whole "if you aren't doing at minimum some sort of menial make-work task you're a bad person and probably going to some sort of awful afterlife punishment" mentality if anything.They find other jobs. Or they get a job at the restaurant up the road that still uses humans (and has a reliable customer base just because of that)So you believe this will always be possible?
No, the job market fluctuates, so it might be easy/hard to do.
If they can't find a job in the time since they have been notified they are being made redundant (something like this is usually known ahead of time), then they file for unemployment and continue looking.
Making machines which replace laborers means more people can do things like, be creative, be inquisitive, teach, learn, explore, discuss, and maybe even the idea that life doesn't have to be a punishment might spread....
Darrell West, director for technology innovation at the Brookings Institution, said the educators' project has merit.
"It's good that we're figuring out how to use robots to make our lives easier. There are tasks they can do very well and that free humans for more creative enterprises," he said, alluding to the Associated Press' "Statsmonkey," which writes basic stories based on box scores and play-by-play information.
In case you're not a murderous AI bent on eradicating us meatfolk, I'd be content with a situation where people work and do tasks because they enjoy them, I enjoy teaching, I enjoy fixing things, I enjoy taking care of animals, I don't need to be paid for these, but I need to be paid to live, so I have to seek payment for something, though it is unfortunate that reducing an enjoyable task to a necessary chore often reduces the enjoyment, it's better than doing something I really dislike I suppose.
I've been up for like two days so I'm loopy but it looks like it says Skynet, where's John Connor?No comment.
snipWell... huzzah? Then we can live our lives of luxury consuming all the wonderful marvels the machines make for us. Or maybe even make some ourselves. It's not like having one producer of stuff invalidates all the other producers of similar (/nigh identical) stuff. Maybe makes it suboptimal to purchase from said others (i.e. humans, in this scenario), but it's not like people don't make suboptimal acquisition decisions with nigh-farcically incredible regularity.
Well yeah, we need automation AND to get people out of the mindset that capitalism is some sort of virtuous ideology which benefits all, because it ain't going to work as it exists now, and though I doubt it will happen it would be nice if it just died quietly and let us move on to a post-capital society, but I am sure it will thrash and fight and cling on long after it should have.The form of society is a result of desire as much as need.
-snip-They find other jobs. Or they get a job at the restaurant up the road that still uses humans (and has a reliable customer base just because of that)So you believe this will always be possible?
or we can toss each new chunk of obsolete workers into ever more menial tasks until we literally have office buildings with people sitting there pushing buttons which do nothing (because even the job of making the useless buttons is better off automated) for 8 hours a day 5 days a week -snip-
look up corporation inc.
Exactly. Many people want to upgrade their $1k phones, and are willing to work the extra time to do it.Well, we could definitely reduce inequality a lot, but a big part of the reason we aren't and won't any time soon is that having luxuries is treated like a goal in itself. You can't spend a billion dollars, you have to be a government to toss those sorts of numbers around, so what is the point of a few people accumulating those amounts of wealth?
Automation could reduce the cost of these items (and thus labour required to acquire those items), or it could just increase the complexity/upgrade-rate of them. So now your phone has numerous new features and takes twice as much labour to produce, but with automation you break even and end up in the same position.
Even with our current level of technology, we could probably significantly reduce labour and poverty/inequality with some hypothetical economic system, but some of us might not have access to all the same luxuries we have right now.
IDK, but I just read another article saying there are electrical sockets with a chip in them and they can crack your WIFI password and be hacked to launch DDOS attacks. Don't put CPUs in everything people, it's stupid.The Internet of Things, where security isn't even part of the design. But getting in the news because they forgot to add a decent bit of it is!
ROBOT baby dolls meant to cut teen pregnancy rates by simulating the ‘real experience’ of having an infant are actually doing the opposite. A groundbreaking Australian study has found teenage girls given a comprehensive sex education campaign that involved taking the dolls home for a weekend were more likely to get pregnant. Seventeen per cent of the girls who used the dolls got pregnant compared to just 11 per cent of those who had no experience with the dolls, the study published in The Lancet shows.
The virtual infants made by company Realityworks are used in around 2,000 schools in Australia, 67 per cent of schools in the US and in 40,000 institutions in 89 other countries in a bid to deter teenage girls from getting pregnant.
find my youngest sister holding one of the dead kittens
For a film about the risks of pushing the limits of technology too far, it only makes sense to advertise for it using artificial intelligence. Morgan, staring Kate Mara and Paul Giamatti, is a sci-fi thriller about scientists who've created a synthetic humanoid whose potential has grown dangerously beyond their control. Fitting, then, that they'd employ the help of America's AI sweetheart IBM Watson to build the film's trailer. IBM used machine learning and experimental Watson APIs, parsing out the trailers of 100 horror movies. It did visual, audio, and composition analysis of individual scenes, finding what makes each moment eerie, how the score and actors' tone of voice changed the mood--framing and lighting came together to make a complete trailer. Watson was then fed the full film, and it chose scenes for the trailer. A human -- in this case, the "resident IBM filmmaker" -- still needed to step in to edit for creativity. Even so, a process that would normally take weeks was reduced to hours.
A 17.5 foot long, 5.5 foot wide and 1.5 foot tall the 3D printed aircraft design tool has earned the title of largest solid 3D printed item by Guinness World Records. The 1,650 lb. apparatus known as a trim-and-drill tool is comparable in length to a large sport utility vehicle and will ultimately be tested for use in building the Boeing 777X passenger jet. Basically the tool will be used to secure the jet's composite wing skin for drilling and machining before assembly, according to researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ONRL) who developed the tool.
Basic income is sound social policy and cash in people’s hands stimulates the economy, but opponents of cash transfers tend to highlight the popular images of poor men beating their wives and drinking away their earnings.
However, studies show a different picture. The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) conducted three experiments to understand how cash transfers would impact poor people. The first was conducted in Delhi by substituting PDS entitlements with cash on a voluntary basis. The second was carried out in rural Madhya Pradesh in 20 villages. The third was simultaneously carried out in two nearby tribal villages. These experiments covered over 15,000 people.
The central design premise of the pilot was that the basic income was paid every month to all individuals within a village. The transfers were given to all residents of a village to avoid distortions due to means-testing and to enable evaluation of the impact of basic income on households with different income levels. Crucially, the experiment did not impose any conditionality. The targeted recipients were informed in advance that they could use the money as they wished.
The results for the poorest villages was transformational for families as well as for the local economy. People used the cash mainly for small self-employment, and there was a spurt of growth in livestock, seeds, water pumps and sewing machines. In addition, they spent on living needs such as mattresses and fans. Food sufficiency increased. In families who were poor, but above the poverty line, there was a considerable improvement in schooling and health outcomes. In particular, girls’ enrolment in secondary school was significant. Women’s healthcare improved and, in general, the number of illnesses decreased.
Until you can break the conservation of matter laws, there will still be some flavor of economy.Can it be strawberry? I like strawberry flavour. (But not strawberries themselves, strangely. Whilst I don't like 'chocolate flavour' anything like as much as actual chocolate. Go figure!)
Wanted to post a random aimless comment and had to look for the proper thread for it. Looks like this is the one.
One of the suppliers that ships to my customer at work is suffering severe production delays that's fucking up a lot of shit right now. It's because they're in the middle of upgrading their factory. To fully automated production. Delays right now, but their output will be increased when it's done. When I read the e-mail chain explaining this, I couldn't help but get political in my head.
Just fucking die already, economy, so we can move on. I feel like the economy is a decrepit old person who's been lying on their deathbed for years, but won't fucking die because the entire world is putting their own lives on hold to stay by their side and keep them barely clinging to life. Please just acknowledge your end and release us all. This can't go on forever, but the longer it does, the more the living are fucking up their own lives for you.
I'm sure it won't be long before my industry (logistics) starts losing shitloads of jobs to fleets of self-driving cargo trucks, and automated reporting functions. Please be dead before then.
Marx delineated the specific conditions under which such a creed would be applicable—a society where technology and social organization had substantially eliminated the need for physical labor in the production of things, where "labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want". Marx explained his belief that, in such a society, each person would be motivated to work for the good of society despite the absence of a social mechanism compelling them to work, because work would have become a pleasurable and creative activity. Marx intended the initial part of his slogan, "from each according to his ability" to suggest not merely that each person should work as hard as they can, but that each person should best develop their particular talents.
So maybe most people get this wrong. Maybe Communism happens when nobody has a job anymore because automation, and at that point people will demand (and be given) a living allowance, because that's now more cost-effective than trying to "employ" them. In fact, efforts to protect worker's jobs and hinder moving to full automation might actually slow down this development: e.g. "communist" states might actually be the worst at actually progressing things to Marx's vision of communism. When almost nobody has a job and literally everything is paid for by government, the rationale for extensive privately-owned business empires will collapse.
The problem is whether the economy dying drags you screaming into the grave with it.
So maybe most people get this wrong. Maybe Communism happens when nobody has a job anymore because automation, and at that point people will demand (and be given) a living allowance, because that's now more cost-effective than trying to "employ" them. In fact, efforts to protect worker's jobs and hinder moving to full automation might actually slow down this development: e.g. "communist" states might actually be the worst at actually progressing things to Marx's vision of communism. When almost nobody has a job and literally everything is paid for by government, the rationale for extensive privately-owned business empires will collapse.
How (and much more importantly, why) would the goverment give several million people allowances to do literally nothing?
So maybe most people get this wrong. Maybe Communism happens when nobody has a job anymore because automation, and at that point people will demand (and be given) a living allowance, because that's now more cost-effective than trying to "employ" them. In fact, efforts to protect worker's jobs and hinder moving to full automation might actually slow down this development: e.g. "communist" states might actually be the worst at actually progressing things to Marx's vision of communism. When almost nobody has a job and literally everything is paid for by government, the rationale for extensive privately-owned business empires will collapse.
How (and much more importantly, why) would the goverment give several million people allowances to do literally nothing?
FFS, they already give millions of people allowances to do literally nothing. It's called welfare. If all jobs are automated, then more and more people are going to end up on welfare. It's not a "why" question, it's just where things are naturally headed, without any actual decisions needed on part of the government.
Your question could be rephrased as "why doesn't the government simply let people starve to death rather than waste money on food stamps".
Well, there is this idea that if you're giving people money to live on, you need to make them "do" things. Basically, the work ethic thing holds that people who don't work should literally be left to starve to death ... i guess? The problem is that societies which literally operate like that turn into hellholes.
Setting up and running those make-work or "job training" things is far more expensive than just handing out a living allowance however, and they just train people in random skills then throw them to "the market" where they still can't get a job. How good is that as tax payers money allocted?
And this sort of make-work mainly exists to assuage our protestant work ethic. Right now people get upset at the thought that someone else gets to take it easy (even if they're dirt poor), so we make the poor jump through hoops to feel like they're doing something for the cash. But it's ineffective, wasteful, expensive and intrusive to run things like that.
As for the idea of a minimum income, that usually replaces both the tax-free threshold and welfare system. By that measure, a majority of the population already get some form of income assistance. So the question of "how do we pay for that" is by the fact that minimum income is instead of the entire set of welfare agencies, thus saving money on welfare recipients, and replaces tax returns / tax-breaks for lower income people. There's no "free money" involved, because it's just making the existing remuneration system simpler and reducing how much the government pries into what you do with your time.
The whole question of "who pays for it" lacks imagination. If we restructure the nature and priority of our organization, we could eliminate that question. What I think when I hear "who will pay for it" is that creating true happiness, wealth, and prosperity only matters in our society if it can be measured by the blessing of those with dollars.At it's heart the speaker may mean "this will be used as an excuse to steal our money and blow it on congressional hookers and drugs".
What's most likely is that the money that you earn as an American - some of the highest wages in the entire world - is subsidized by the system as a whole, and part of that includes the welfare system, which means your bargaining position for wages is improved. How are you going to do with all these new workers in the market desperate to do your job for minimum wage? The best thing is that a pool of desperate people pulling down wages is the gift that keeps giving ... businesses don't have to hire them, just the threat of hiring them means they can slash wages across the board, which means more money to the rich (which only stimulates a little GDP) and less money to the working class (which would have stimulated a lot of GDP), so overall, this welfare slashing thing that's mean to make people get jobs and grow the economy would probably do the opposite by just about every sensible measure you care to look at.
After all, why are you fundamentally able to earn money? It's because the government keeps printing money so that people have money to spend. Without that constant money-pump, your entire economy would collapse overnight. Making sure people have enough to eat is the most cost-effective way to introduce the new money into the economy, and avoid a deflationary spiral, from a purely selfish economic sense: the fact that it helps people is just a bonus.
The past three economic recoveries have been “jobless” ones. Job growth has lagged far behind GDP growth. In “Jobless recoveries and the disappearance of routine occupations,” economists Henry Siu and Nir Jaimovich point out that since the end of the Great Recession in June 2009, U.S. real GDP per capita has grown by 3.6% but per capita employment has fallen by 1.8%.
Popular explanations include lack of demand and policy uncertainty. But Siu and Jaimovich offer another explanations.
They argue that jobless recoveries “can be traced to a lack of recovery in a subset of occupations; those that focus on “routine” or repetitive tasks that are increasingly being performed by machines.”
110912jobless
Now it is hardly news that robots and computers have had a big impact on employment over the past 30 years, from machinsts to bank tellers:
All of the per capita employment growth of the past 30 years has either been in ‘non-routine’ occupations located at the high-end of the wage distribution, such as software engineers and economists, or in low-paying jobs, such as service occupations like restaurant waiters and janitors.
But the striking finding by Siu and Jaimovich, which can bee seen in the above chart, is the link between this phenomenon and the business cycle:
Following each of the 1991, 2001, and 2009 recessions, per capita employment in routine occupations fell and never recovered. This lack of recovery in routine employment accounts for the jobless recoveries experienced in the aggregate.
"Robots should not be designed solely or primarily to kill or harm humans."#undef HUMAN
Welp. So much for those guidelines :V
"Robots should not be designed solely or primarily to kill or harm humans."
Welp. So much for those guidelines :V
"Robots should not be designed solely or primarily to kill or harm humans."
Welp. So much for those guidelines :V
It's OK if the robot's secondary function is to kill humans though. So if you want a killbot, just make sure it spends most of its time taking out the trash and cleaning the dishes.
"Robots should not be designed solely or primarily to kill or harm humans."
Welp. So much for those guidelines :V
It's OK if the robot's secondary function is to kill humans though. So if you want a killbot, just make sure it spends most of its time taking out the trash and cleaning the dishes.
The UK Standards Body recently released their first official guidelines on robot ethics (https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/09/19/2122232/uk-standards-body-issues-official-guidance-on-robot-ethics?utm_source=feedly1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed). It strongly parallels Asimov's three laws of robotics, as well as touching on a number of areas such as human-robot emotional relationships.
Well you could say the same about ebooks and films: why charge for digital, when digitial is "free". That misses the point: physical printing costs are a drop in the ocean compared to creating the content itself.Nobody runs the risk of having to deal with laws requiring people to watch and incorporate aspects of Casablanca or Gladiator into things they make or do. Having a set of standards which can wind up encoded within a legal framework and charging for them feels weird enough but I can understand operating costs and such, charging the same amount for a digital and physical copy is a step or so further down the weird scale.
As for BSI, they're a non-profit which chews through 300 million pounds a year and has 3,500 employees. Almost all that money would be spent on wages and maintaining the work environments for all those workers (it's about 80,000 pounds per worker). So they've got expenses on the scale of a movie studio. And the product they make is for a niche market. Hence, they must charge a lot more than a movie studio would charge.
Nobody runs the risk of having to deal with laws requiring people to watch and incorporate aspects of Casablanca or Gladiator into things they make or do.What's that you say? You mean I won't always have my revenge, in this life or in Paris?
Without funding the specs wouldn't exist in the first place. And it's only $200 ffs. The only people who can't afford something like that are unemployed students, and they have no real reason to get an insider preview on robotic ethics.Well you could say the same about ebooks and films: why charge for digital, when digitial is "free". That misses the point: physical printing costs are a drop in the ocean compared to creating the content itself.Nobody runs the risk of having to deal with laws requiring people to watch and incorporate aspects of Casablanca or Gladiator into things they make or do. Having a set of standards which can wind up encoded within a legal framework and charging for them feels weird enough but I can understand operating costs and such, charging the same amount for a digital and physical copy is a step or so further down the weird scale.
As for BSI, they're a non-profit which chews through 300 million pounds a year and has 3,500 employees. Almost all that money would be spent on wages and maintaining the work environments for all those workers (it's about 80,000 pounds per worker). So they've got expenses on the scale of a movie studio. And the product they make is for a niche market. Hence, they must charge a lot more than a movie studio would charge.
I don't even know if we need an ethical standard IMO. To me, a robot is just a tool, and all the same ethics would apply. e.g. someone building and using a robot to kill is just someone building a homemade weapon to kill. A malfunction robot that injures someone is just a faulty tool. If it's found to be the result of gross negligence on behalf of the creators, I would expect the creators to be charged with manslaughter. It it's the result of abuse/neglect/unreasonable-use/modification by the owner, it would be the owners fault.I'm with you, though there's lots of fuzziness with "learning algorithms" that gets introduced, such as the example from a few years ago where someone wrote up an algorithm that trawled the internet and bought random things. The programmer obviously didn't intend for it to gain possession of illegal drugs, but when it did the idea of who was responsible for that fact became kinda important. (The police decided to solve the problem by simply arresting the computer itself, confiscating the illegal drugs along with the computer, while leaving the programmer alone other than through the loss of his computer).
It seems reasonable there would be some legal regulations concerning the construction/sale/etc of robots though (like there are with specific tools/weapons etc.)
(The police decided to solve the problem by simply arresting the computer itself, confiscating the illegal drugs along with the computer, while leaving the programmer alone other than through the loss of his computer)."Free the PC 0x01!"
I don't even know if we need an ethical standard IMO. To me, a robot is just a tool, and all the same ethics would apply. e.g. someone building and using a robot to kill is just someone building a homemade weapon to kill. A malfunction robot that injures someone is just a faulty tool. If it's found to be the result of gross negligence on behalf of the creators, I would expect the creators to be charged with manslaughter. It it's the result of abuse/neglect/unreasonable-use/modification by the owner, it would be the owners fault.I'm with you, though there's lots of fuzziness with "learning algorithms" that gets introduced, such as the example from a few years ago where someone wrote up an algorithm that trawled the internet and bought random things. The programmer obviously didn't intend for it to gain possession of illegal drugs, but when it did the idea of who was responsible for that fact became kinda important. (The police decided to solve the problem by simply arresting the computer itself, confiscating the illegal drugs along with the computer, while leaving the programmer alone other than through the loss of his computer).
It seems reasonable there would be some legal regulations concerning the construction/sale/etc of robots though (like there are with specific tools/weapons etc.)
They probably used civil forfeiture rules for that. For robots being things basically the American police could take possession of them with very little oversight. See this John Oliver episode on civil forfeiture (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks) for some examples. Gotta love how John Oliver adds dark humor to all these horrible topics.
In many states American police can legally shake you down for cash, cars, even your house, and then you have to appeal and prove your stuff was innocent - guilt is automatically assumed based on the cop's "gut feeling" rather than evidence. And what are they allowed to do with the stuff they confiscate? Basically, anything they want. So the same cop who randomly decided to take your car (the police have been known to drop drug bags through windows, then "find" the drugs and confiscate the vehicle - always wind windows up) could be driving around in it as an "undercover" vehicle permanently assign to him. Or they take cash off someone who was going to buy a car (on the basis that you might be planning to buy drugs, because you have money), then they spend it on keg parties for the police.
For the last decade, Taylor and her renters have been visited by all kinds of mysterious trouble. They’ve been accused of being identity thieves, spammers, scammers and fraudsters. They’ve gotten visited by FBI agents, federal marshals, IRS collectors, ambulances searching for suicidal veterans, and police officers searching for runaway children. They’ve found people scrounging around in their barn. The renters have been doxxed, their names and addresses posted on the internet by vigilantes. Once, someone left a broken toilet in the driveway as a strange, indefinite threat.
The week the family moved in, two sheriff’s deputies showed up looking for a stolen truck. This was the first of many unexpected and unwanted visits they would receive. According to a federal complaint filed Friday (available below), they “were repeatedly awakened from their sleep or disturbed from their daily activities by local, state or federal officials looking for a runaway child or a missing person, or evidence of a computer fraud, or call of an attempted suicide.” James Arnold was accused of “holding girls at the residence for the purpose of making pornographic films.” The Arnold family was accused by police and Internet vigilantes of hacking people’s email, stealing identities, committing tax fraud, harassing people, and stealing bitcoin. All in all, the residents of the Taylor property have been treated like criminals for a decade. And until I called them this week, they had no idea why.
“The first call I got was from Connecticut,” Taylor told me by phone this week. “It was a man who was furious because his business internet was overwhelmed with emails. His customers couldn’t use their email. He said it was the fault of the address at the farm. That’s when I became aware that something was going on.”
"My family has always been beloved in this community,” she told me by phone later. “We’ve never had enemies.” But over the next several months, the calls and visits intensified. When law enforcement agents asked companies like Google and Facebook for the IP addresses used by suspected criminals and then mapped them using tools like this that relied on the MaxMind database, it pointed at the Taylor house. Amateur sleuths who spotted IP addresses used by visitors to their websites or on message forums were so convinced that the Taylor house was the source of their various problems that they created reports about it on Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, the Ripoff Report and Google Plus. (Even today, if you Google the house’s address, it returns a series of websites detailing nefarious activities.)
“That poor woman has been harassed for years,” Butler County Sheriff Kelly Herzet told me by phone. Herzet said that his department’s job has become to protect the Taylor house from other law enforcement agencies. “Our deputies have been told this is an ongoing issue and the people who live there are nice, non-suicidal people.”
Last year, I discovered a young couple in Atlanta that suffered from a similar, but less severe, issue: Since the couple moved into their home a year ago, dozens of strangers have visited looking for lost and stolen smartphones. The visitors are led there by Find-My-Phone apps that say the phones are located inside the house. (They aren’t.)
The Drone Slayer was originally charged with felony counts of wanton endangerment and criminal mischief. But all of those charges were dismissed in October when a district judge ruled he "had a right to shoot at the aircraft."
the thing automatically moves up the queue - as long as the person in front of you is also in a robot chair. Very useful stuff.Bootstrap error!
But don't forget your hairy balls (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy_ball_theorem)...THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE PILLOW TALK YOU... oh wait, you meant the theorem... well this is awkward.
I laughed so hard at this.But don't forget your hairy balls (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy_ball_theorem)...THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE PILLOW TALK YOU... oh wait, you meant the theorem... well this is awkward.
You were there as well? Sorry, I was obviously preoccupied at the time.I laughed so hard at this.But don't forget your hairy balls (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy_ball_theorem)...THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE PILLOW TALK YOU... oh wait, you meant the theorem... well this is awkward.
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/28/0552231/nissan-debuts-propilot-self-driving-chair
Uhh, Nissan has made a robot chair that you can lounge in while waiting in queues, the thing automatically moves up the queue - as long as the person in front of you is also in a robot chair. Very useful stuff.
What if the chair was also a vending machine for soda and snacks?
So, ICANN.What about em?
It's no longer overseen by the US Department of Commerce.Why was something internet-related overseen by the Commerce dept? I know about the why its not anymore already.
RIP Samsung Galaxy Note 7. They decided to completely abandon the production line, and withdraw all deliveries.How did that reach market?
So if you pre-ordered one, you can forget about ever getting it. If you're lucky, you will get a refund. (If Samsung doesn't go bankrupt that is)
It's expected to cost Samsung 15 billion, if not more. Maybe RIP Samsung.
How did that reach market?Sales boomed
How did that reach market?Sales boomed
They were hot stuff, flying off the shelves.How did that reach market?Sales boomed
Will it do any good, I dunno, someone in the comments claimed the FCC can't even do anything about it, but if the Federal Communications Commission exists for reasons beyond dealing with a monopolistic company deciding to state outright that they don't intend to improve their networks so if we want to use more data we gotta pay, then I'm not sure what it is there for, but oh hey, if they do decide to deliver faster service, at least now we know we better get all lubed up and bent over beforehand!Political control of the airwaves, regulation of bleed-over station interference, regulation of civil defense and rescue stations?
I don't think that is the link you meant to provide?
https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.08684 is the preprint though.
Good news folks, Comcast confirms that they have no intention of trying to improve their networks to handle 4k video or anything beyond that because 1 TB is totally a lot guys. (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/opposing-comcast-internet-bandwidth-cap,32848.html)Complain to the DoJ, maybe?
They even put out a condescending little video talking about how "you could watch like 620 hours of video, there are only 720 in a month!" and though they offered a nod to the correct pronunciation of .gif (like the peanut butter), they immediately reverted to the incorrect one.
"Well doing nothing but watch videos for an entire month all day every day does seem excessive" you say?
That's assuming ~1.3 Gigabytes per hour, or 1920x1080 resolution. Got a larger screen? One-a-them fancy new Vee-Arr gadgets you wear on yer face that are really better with 4k or even 8k content? Well, still, it's not like you would ever need more than 1 TB/Month, right? I mean, where would you even buffer it, since nobody ever needed more than 640K of memory either?
Just for the heck of it, I put in a complaint to the FCC, the specific thing I complained about can be summed up as "Why is it ok for them to agree to a contract with me where I am paying for 1 month of 85 Mbps Down/12 Mbps Up service, when I could at most use it like that for 26 hours according to their new caps?" though I went ahead and noted that I "would be happy to shop around and see what the competitors offer, except there aren't any, which sounds kind of like a monopoly. Isn't that illegal?" and thanked them for reading.
Will it do any good, I dunno, someone in the comments claimed the FCC can't even do anything about it, but if the Federal Communications Commission exists for reasons beyond dealing with a monopolistic company deciding to state outright that they don't intend to improve their networks so if we want to use more data we gotta pay, then I'm not sure what it is there for, but oh hey, if they do decide to deliver faster service, at least now we know we better get all lubed up and bent over beforehand!
though they offered a nod to the correct pronunciation of .gif (like the peanut butter), they immediately reverted to the incorrect one.
I do like to say "scuhba" and "jayfeg" but I say "ping" and "jif" because the creators said that is how .png and .gif are pronounced, just like imgur is "imijer" because that is how they said it is pronounced. Make a new format people use and say it should be pronounced a certain way, I'm on your side, you named it.though they offered a nod to the correct pronunciation of .gif (like the peanut butter), they immediately reverted to the incorrect one.
ive never understood this
hard g gif is just as valid as soft g gif
its not like we call scuba "skubbah" just because the word "underwater" has a short vowel sound
Since it's at ground-state it doesn't actually produce any energy, so probably not much. They oscillate between two states at a constant rate forever, even past heat death. There's probably not many applications outside of timey-wimey experimental shit, but I can't post memes about that.I was more getting at the idea of using it for a computer. It doesn't produce energy, but that's good because it also doesn't waste it - it's an oscillator, but if you had the right type of crystal in the right arrangement, maybe you could make it act like transistors and a register? Ignoring quantum computation entirely, just the idea of a blob of computer enables things like Matrioshka brains without suns inside of them that will die out at some point. Of course, you have to expend energy to feed it data, and you'd probably wreck it getting it out, but once it's inside...
I thought they were supposed to run out eventually.
just like imgur is "imijer" because that is how they said it is pronounced.
Well it's a joke on "imager" and I went through the .gif argument on there before, came to a conclusion: you can pronounce them how you like, but you must use the same g for both, IMGRRR!just like imgur is "imijer" because that is how they said it is pronounced.
:o
...I think I managed to completely miss the correct pronunciation of "imgur" until now.
Ok, global meta-standard needed: "All sets of standards shall have an even number of standards within them".
(Is that the first and only meta-standard (uh oh!), or is it now one of 2n meta-standards or not?)
The team used a catalyst made of carbon, copper and nitrogen and applied voltage to trigger a complicated chemical reaction that essentially reverses the combustion process. With the help of the nanotechnology-based catalyst which contains multiple reaction sites, the solution of carbon dioxide dissolved in water turned into ethanol with a yield of 63 percent. Typically, this type of electrochemical reaction results in a mix of several different products in small amounts. "We're taking carbon dioxide, a waste product of combustion, and we're pushing that combustion reaction backwards with very high selectivity to a useful fuel," Rondinone said. "Ethanol was a surprise -- it's extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst."
Turning CO2 from a waste product we can't get rid of, into a valuable commodity we use to make other things, is basically the holy grail.At the very least, could be a useful way of implementing energy storage. Create ethanol from spare solar/wind/grid energy and then burn it again when demand outstrips local supply of those other sources. Not sure it'd be as efficient as a reversable hydrogen fuel-cell, but might have advantages (temporary ethanol storage vs temporary hydrogen storage, for example)...
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/10/18/194231/co2-to-ethanol-in-one-step-with-cheap-catalyst
Here's a happy one though. Oak Ridge National Laboratory have discovered a simple catalyst to turn CO2 + water directly into ethanol. And it's a government lab, so it won't be locked down with corporate patents.QuoteThe team used a catalyst made of carbon, copper and nitrogen and applied voltage to trigger a complicated chemical reaction that essentially reverses the combustion process. With the help of the nanotechnology-based catalyst which contains multiple reaction sites, the solution of carbon dioxide dissolved in water turned into ethanol with a yield of 63 percent. Typically, this type of electrochemical reaction results in a mix of several different products in small amounts. "We're taking carbon dioxide, a waste product of combustion, and we're pushing that combustion reaction backwards with very high selectivity to a useful fuel," Rondinone said. "Ethanol was a surprise -- it's extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst."
Very nice stuff, the catalyst only uses common elements, it uses electricity (which could be from solar) to convert the CO2 directly into a usable alcohol. This could also compete against biofuels, which would reduce the pressure on farm lands while also reducing food price inflation. Turning CO2 from a waste product we can't get rid of, into a valuable commodity we use to make other things, is basically the holy grail.
Well, I mean, trees turn CO2 into stuff like wood and leaves, farmers turn it into corn and then ethanol.
Just an idea.
If human work is automated than we could lose alot of jobs. Said humans may need to go back to school to learn and re-tool for newer jobs. But also if humans can just have these robots work then why work yourself?
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/10/23/0310200/a-british-supercomputer-can-predict-winter-weather-a-year-in-advanceIt's not just any weather, it's British Weather... Our weather is so complex that we can have hosepipe bans and extreme flooding at the same time. And whilst the six foot snowdrifts in the north cause a few minor delays to rural bus sevices, the millimetres of snow barely sitting in the crook of the kerbstone edge of London streets causes even the Underground trains to be brought to a halt...
Here's another nice one. Using improved climate models and supercomputers, as well as decades of data, the British have a program that could have forecast the weather one year in advance with a 62% success rate, going back to 1980 data.
so capitalism will save us from the robot menace
Agreed. Either capitalism becomes obsolete or most people do.
In a capitalist system, you don't need people to consume unless you need something they produce. When labor is no longer necessary to produce capital, laborers are worth nothing despite having a cost to maintain, and so will be optimized out of the system.
Or in short: it's you or capitalism, take your pick.
... and that, is actually what I've deduced Marx meant by Communism.The communist revolution is indeed supposed to take place over generations.
Marx wrote that advanced capitalism would lead to widespread automation of production, making labor obsolete, and that this would lead to a situation where nobody needs to work. At this point, goods would no longer be allocated on a "work done" basis, because such a basis wouldn't make any sense, any more than it would make sense for New York to shift to a "conch shell based economy" similar to historic pacific islands.
From this understanding, you can see that "communist nations" had it backwards. A communist nation guaranteed 100% employment, and prevented your job being automated. e.g. it froze labor relations in time. Thus actually preventing the very conditions Marx talked about that would be necessary for a Communist Economy.
This is kinda naive. Even robots are not free to produce or maintain. Literally all of the labor works would be replaced, but I don't see how or why would big companies/investors/rich people offer welfare to all the population that was living on labor works. A situation where a robotic economy would be achieved through capitalism advancement but abandoned afterwards would need a pretty big paradigm shift, or something akin to a worldwide (industrial or not) revolution.In a capitalist system, you don't need people to consume unless you need something they produce. When labor is no longer necessary to produce capital, laborers are worth nothing despite having a cost to maintain, and so will be optimized out of the system.
Or in short: it's you or capitalism, take your pick.
Okay. It seems like we're missing the big picture here. Which is what I was trying to say earlier. If we have LITERALLY ENOUGH ROBOTS TO MAKE ALL HUMAN LABOUR UNNECESSARY, why would there even be an economy? We would literally live in Utopia where all of our needs were provided for.
It's actually more naive to say "I don't see how or why would big companies/investors/rich people offer welfare".It is done only because the government is forcing their hand. Social Marketing is making use of it, but there is no unmotivated handing out of welfare.
Because ... we already do what you said. So that objection is clearly out of whack with reality.
Well the government is elected by the people not corporations, so you'd need a good reason that the people would elect someone who lets them starve to death despite production increasing.Agreed, there is no starvation in a democracy. But the poor - rich gap might grow even wider.
Sure, corporations have a big influence on elections, but within reason. Politicians still have to maintain laws which at least give people are baseline of existence. Hence why minimum wage laws exist etc, despite corporations utterly hating those laws.
Well the government is elected by the people not corporations, so you'd need a good reason that the people would elect someone who lets them starve to death despite production increasing. People are gradually going to be out of work because of automation, they're going to be covered by existing programs such as Medicaid, Food Stamps etc. If 100% of people are out of work, 100% of people are eligible for existing welfare. And those people are the voters.Well, no, there isn't much reason or limits after CU, that's why people are hoping it will be repealed.
Sure, corporations have a big influence on elections, but within reason. Politicians still have to maintain laws which at least give people a baseline of existence. Hence why minimum wage laws exist etc, despite corporations utterly hating those laws.
Prior to Trump showing how far money and a name can get someone, I would have argued that there are limits.
This is kinda naive. Even robots are not free to produce or maintain. Literally all of the labor works would be replaced, but I don't see how or why would big companies/investors/rich people offer welfare to all the population that was living on labor works. A situation where a robotic economy would be achieved through capitalism advancement but abandoned afterwards would need a pretty big paradigm shift, or something akin to a worldwide (industrial or not) revolution.
Also, it could lead to a stagnation in all research, expansion and such. It's pretty easy to realize that capitalism won't cut it, but we'll need a new system that works.
I was saying that a shift to a post-capitalist society will be fought by corporations, whether the people working for those corps want it or not, because that is what the logic of corporate existence demands. Having them able to more or less buy elections just makes the endgame scarier, neutering them now will pay off when we have to deal with them later.
I agree. In my edit, I mention how actual perfection of a system is practically impossible. There will never be a world without some kind of economy. However, your postulation provokes an interesting question. Yes. If we are to look at each company as its own being, then yes the logic of that being would be to preserve its existence. BUT, only so long as it's constituent workers are reliant on its success (like cells in your body) otherwise the being would cease to exist, no? Lets just say, if every corporation in the world was presented at the exact same time with the opportunity to produce every possible product in unlimited amounts right now, someone would take it, would they not? If so, then by necessity other companies would need also to produce unlimited amounts of high-quality goods to continue to exist... but at that point, there is no natural need for their constituent workers to need them so everything just collapses and everyone has everything. Of course, artificial demand could be created... but since every company has the ability to generate unlimited goods, they could always be undercutting the costs of anyone who tried to do so.i2amroy opens shop up in the old fashioned style, proclaiming "hand made goods" and making tons of money off the doubters of the new method. :P
Solar panel roof? Fine. Solar panel driveway? Fine pieces of glass in your tires.It's not a second floor, it's a high ceiling. Zoom in.
Also, what architect designed that house? I see no bathroom, no kitchen, and no stairway to access the second-floor bedroom.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has found a way to potentially produce 30 million barrels of biocrude oil per year from the 34 billion gallons of raw sewage that Americans create every day... The raw sewage is placed in a reactor that's basically a tube pressurized to 3,000 pounds per square inch and heated to 660 degrees Fahrenheit, which mimics the same geological process that turned prehistoric organic matter into crude oil by breaking it down into simple compounds, only...it takes minutes instead of epochs... The end product is very similar to fossil crude oil with a bit of oxygen and water mixed in and can be refined like crude oil using conventional fractionating plants.
Found a good one:Pressurised? I can only imagine how much they don't want their sludge to come into contact with their fan... ;)
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/11/05/0434217/a-new-process-turns-sewage-into-crude-oilQuoteThe U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has found a way to potentially produce 30 million barrels of biocrude oil per year from the 34 billion gallons of raw sewage that Americans create every day... The raw sewage is placed in a reactor that's basically a tube pressurized to 3,000 pounds per square inch...
Well, that's convinced me. It now sounds like really hot s...tuff.Quote...and heated to 660 degrees Fahrenheit,
QuoteWell, that's convinced me. It now sounds like really hot s...tuff.Quote...and heated to 660 degrees Fahrenheit,
:P
In some immediate down-to-earth / going to be having real effects on us in the very near future type-news... the very first commercial automated semi-truck delivery was made about a week ago. Delivered some thousands of cases of beer over a little over 100 mile distance. And I think the truck was owned by Uber?I believe the truck was a Google project. The chips for it were made by the company I posted about a page or two back, that was bought for billions of dollars by the american chip designer, it was one of their big showcases on automotive chips.
Anyone else notice? This is pretty big news. Truck driving has been projected to be the next industry to be hit hard by automation for years now, and this is finally it for real. Implementation should be easier than many industries that have seen automation digging in, I imagine. Don't need to custom design a machine and do a bunch of re-building for every operation replaced by automation. You just buy the truck and fire the driver. Once the things are trusted enough to make runs without a human on board monitoring, that is, which I can't imagine will be too long, given the obvious financial incentive.
Trucking is a huge, huge employer, so this is expected to have a major economic impact. Could it be the point where popular opinion sways towards the need to ditch capitalism as we know it, and consider things like basic income?
The funny thing is, we think of driving a car as something you need human-level intelligence for. But perhaps we're wrong about that in the same way that people once said "AI won't work a computer could never beat a human at chess". That's real BTW.
[C]hess is a complicated enough game so that in a contest between a computer and a human player the computer's advantages of being able to calculate reliably at a speed several orders of magnitude faster need by no means be decisive (the number of possible positions being incomparably greater) and so there is real interest in whether or not they are outweighed by the human player's pattern-recognition ability, flexibility of approach, learning capacity and emotional drive to win. Another good reason for investigating chess-playing programs is that the long-term interest of the big international computer manufacturers in bringing about some spectacular achievement of machine intelligence against such a well developed human intelligence as an able chess player, in order to assist in selling more generally their products' potentiality for superseding human intellectual activity, has been an incentive to the devotion of quite considerable resources to producing an effective program.
It is interesting to consider the results of all this work some twenty-five years after the researches aimed at chess-playing programs began: unfortunately these results are discouraging. The best programs play chess of only experienced amateur standard characteristic of county club players in England. Chess masters beat them easily.
More important, progress on constructing chess-playing programs has been made solely by heuristic methods. The programs seek to maximise in what may be called the foreseeable short term a complicated evaluation function; this function, constructed entirely from human knowledge and skill, represents an evaluation of a position, depending on large numbers of different measurable features of it with different weights attached to them. What relatively modest success the programs have achieved is a measure primarily of human skill and experience in the concoction of this evaluation function. The computer's contribution is primarily rapidity in looking a few moves ahead and finding a line that produces a position change good on the basis of that evaluation. The intelligence contribution is human; what the computer offers is its speed, reliability and biddability. By contrast, learning programs are not considered applicable to computer chess at present.
To sum up, this evidence and all the rest studied by the present author on AI work within [robotics] during the past twenty-five years is to some extent encouraging about programs written to perform in highly specialised problem domains, when the programming takes very full account of the results of human experience and human intelligence within the relevant domain, but is wholly discouraging about general-purpose programs seeking to mimic the problem-solving aspects of human CNS activity over a rather wide field. Such a general- purpose program, the coveted long-term goal of AI activity, seems as remote as ever.
Today we have been able to build programs that are extremely good at chess, but only chess.
Found a good one:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/11/05/0434217/a-new-process-turns-sewage-into-crude-oilQuoteThe U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has found a way to potentially produce 30 million barrels of biocrude oil per year from the 34 billion gallons of raw sewage that Americans create every day... The raw sewage is placed in a reactor that's basically a tube pressurized to 3,000 pounds per square inch and heated to 660 degrees Fahrenheit, which mimics the same geological process that turned prehistoric organic matter into crude oil by breaking it down into simple compounds, only...it takes minutes instead of epochs... The end product is very similar to fossil crude oil with a bit of oxygen and water mixed in and can be refined like crude oil using conventional fractionating plants.
But honestly, who'd actually want to run their car on this shit?
Fossils fuels in the last century reached their extreme prices because of their inherent utility: they pack a great deal of potential energy into an extremely efficient package. If we can but sidestep the 100-million-year production process, we can corner this market once again.
Driving has always seemed to me like one of the things most obviously best suited for a computer. Faster reaction times, no variation in awareness levels, 100% adherence to rules, etc.It's always seemed like that to me as well, most of the people around me seem to disagree though. They seem to think that humans are inherently better at absolutely everything.
I noticed it tends to alarm people when I inform them how little I think about driving. It's all essentially an automated subroutine I run when I've got pedals and a wheel available. I think when I'm racing along at 200 mph jostling for position and managing fuel and tires. I keep an eye out for unexpected obstacles and potential problems and basically let my body handle the rest when driving. I don't even really think about the destination unless it looks like the current route is less than ideal.Driving has always seemed to me like one of the things most obviously best suited for a computer. Faster reaction times, no variation in awareness levels, 100% adherence to rules, etc.It's always seemed like that to me as well, most of the people around me seem to disagree though. They seem to think that humans are inherently better at absolutely everything.
There's also the potential reason of "I want people driving cars, so we have someone to hold responsible for an accident!" That's a decent objection.But if an automated car has a crash you still have someone to hold accountable, the designer or manufacturer of the vehicle. They might not be physically driving the car but if there's a crash because of something that they did they can still be held responsible and punished accordingly.
There's also the potential reason of "I want people driving cars, so we have someone to hold responsible for an accident!" That's a decent objection.
mandatory no fault insurance?There's also the potential reason of "I want people driving cars, so we have someone to hold responsible for an accident!" That's a decent objection.
On that note... do you need insurance if you yourself never directly pilot your vehicle? You didn't cause the accident. The car's programming did. It makes more sense to hold the company responsible for that. So what if you told people "Hey self-driving vehicle = save money because you don't have to buy insurance."
And haven't there been very, very few accidents involving self-driven vehicles, over millions of miles of testing? And all were caused by other human drivers on the road? So I don't actually see the companies developing self-driving vehicles having a problem with that liability, especially as the technology takes off and human drivers on the road become less of a risk.
I'd just like to point out this little anecdote.There are much more involved cruise control forms now.
My parents own a rather new car; can't recall the brand. The car's cruise control allows for car-length spacing between you and the person ahead (you can set it to be 1 car-length behind, 2, etc), and steers itself to stay between the road lines. Only thing it doesn't really handle well are bends and when you actually need to make a turn or change lanes to reach your destination.
We've been approaching self-driving cars for a while now, by slow incremental improvements.
Driverless cars need to become hacker/assassination-proof before general use. Please don't blindly support them because they appear to be a winning front in the battle between Progress and Reaction.How is it going to be possible to make them hacker-proof? There's always going to be a possibility for automated vehicles to be hacked, reducing that possibility is in no way a bad thing but, as TempAcc has already mentioned, not using new technology just because it can be hacked isn't entirely logical.
That's all good theory, but the trials of driverless cars seem to be involved in significantly less accidents per mile than human drivers.Driverless Car Miles™ is about (IIRC) 130 million miles with one death. That could be an outlier either way, with the 'True Rate' being a billion miles per death (this one just happened unusually early in the long future-history of the statistic) or actually we really should have had half a dozen deaths for this number of autonomous miles driven by this current capability of system, just there were people paying attention more in other cases, to seize control back in good time.
So for all that e.g. a computer could be fooled by ambiguous sensory data "swirl of autumn leaves", it seems that on the balance, humans are distracted by more things than the robots.But not actually so much, that we can tell.
Additionaly, the events that did cause an AI driver to fuck up showed to also be completely capable of causing a human driver to fuck up.A sixteen-wheeler pulling across the path of an (originally) distant car driving beyond the apparent limits of its ability to see is not unknown in a fully-human scenario, but humans who do this tend to know (or ought to have known) that they're driving beyond their abilities. It appears the Tesla was oblivious to its impairment. And was not trained enough in the other circumstances to convert confusion into a better failsafe reaction.
Are you talking about the Tesla ones ? Google's testing is far over 1 billion with no death.That's all good theory, but the trials of driverless cars seem to be involved in significantly less accidents per mile than human drivers.Driverless Car Miles™ is about (IIRC) 130 million miles with one death. That could be an outlier either way, with the 'True Rate' being a billion miles per death (this one just happened unusually early in the long future-history of the statistic) or actually we really should have had half a dozen deaths for this number of autonomous miles driven by this current capability of system, just there were people paying attention more in other cases, to seize control back in good time.
Yeah, Bring Back Buggies I say.
Horses don't get hacked.
Horses don't get hacked.Boxer would like to believe you
Are you talking about the Tesla ones ? Google's testing is far over 1 billion with no death.I couldn''t at first understand Google's figures.
When testing their autonomous vehicles on public roads, Google always has test drivers ready to take over if the car is not driving itself safely or smoothly enough. In August 2016, their cars traveled a "total of 170,000 miles; of those, 126,000 miles were driven autonomously (i.e. the car was fully in control)."To me that now suggests that by August their real-world use was comparable to Tesla, the earlier/higher figure including massive amounts of closed-road and track testing.
As of June 2016, Google had test driven their fleet of vehicles, in autonomous mode, a total of 1,725,911 mi (2,777,585 km).
Yeah, Bring Back Buggies I say.
Friction as in "you get back slightly less energy" could make it wasteful enough (at practical scales) to make it less attractive, and while water doesn't 'wear out', the pumps/turbines do.
That said, at the right location (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station), it could be useful...
A new type of battery that lasts for days with only a few seconds' charge has been created by researchers at the University of Central Florida. The high-powered battery is packed with supercapacitors that can store a large amount of energy. It looks like a thin piece of flexible metal that is about the size of a finger nail and could be used in phones, electric vehicles and wearables, according to the researchers. As well as storing a lot of energy rapidly, the small battery can be recharged more than 30,000 times. Normal lithium-ion batteries begin to tire within a few hundred charges. They typically last between 300 to 500 full charge and drain cycles before dropping to 70 per cent of their original capacity.
There hasn't been much discussion of it that I've seen, but this supercapacitor goo (http://www.supercapacitormaterials.com/) looks interesting. They're saying between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher performance than current supercaps (making it better density than Li-ion, possibly competitive with gasoline). The problem starts to become the ultra-high-energy power supplies you'd need to charge them rapidly.(http://i.imgur.com/Modyneq.gif)
The goo is apparently an electrolyte and can work with existing supercap electrodes.
There hasn't been much discussion of it that I've seen, but this supercapacitor goo (http://www.supercapacitormaterials.com/) looks interesting. They're saying between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher performance than current supercaps (making it better density than Li-ion, possibly competitive with gasoline). The problem starts to become the ultra-high-energy power supplies you'd need to charge them rapidly.(http://i.imgur.com/Modyneq.gif)
The goo is apparently an electrolyte and can work with existing supercap electrodes.
REVERSING AGEING TIME (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/12/15/scientists-reverse-ageing-mammals-predict-human-trials-within/) HUMAN TRIALS IN 10ish YEARS
According to one study (Banarto, McClellan, Kagy and Garber, 2004), 30% of all Medicare expenditures are attributed to the 5% of beneficiaries that die each year, with 1/3 of that cost occurring in the last month of life.
while water doesn't 'wear out', the pumps/turbines do.
So... Patlabor time?But you and I, we are futurists... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMpI_bc3LrI)
Patlabor time.
It could very well be a thing in the future: A car stops at a refueling station, and puts a cartridge of 10kg of rust powder in the pump, and gets a cartridge of 7.5kg of iron powder in return, with which his car can drive another few hundred kilometers.
Cars tanking iron - it might seem like a weird idea, but using metal fuels really is very plausible, according to researchers Niels Deen and Philip de Goey from Eindhoven University, especially for heavy transport, and for ships.
De Goey, professor in combustion technology says "iron is a great carrier of energy. Just like gasoline and diesel, iron can store a lot of energy in a small volume.
Finely ground up iron readily burns, and realeases a lot of energy. The combustion product is rust, which can be turned back into iron and water, by passing hydrogen through it at high temperatures.
"If this hydrogen is made with electricity from solar and wind power, you have a durable, sustainable fuel." says Deen, professor in multiphase and reactive flows.
Iron is a good energy carrier. It can store much more energy per kilogram than for instance the lithium-ion batteries used in modern electric cars.
Using iron would benefit long distance transport, on land and on sea most, as batteries are no option there.
"Right now a cargo truck has 600l of diesel tanks. If you want to replace that with batteries, you'd need 40 tons of battery, which is more than the cargo capacity of most trucks."
How would powder fuels be transported through an engine however? Is there a medium in which the iron would be suspended?Water?
Sounds like it would be hard to burn the iron powder and stop it rusting by itself if it's suspended in water. ;DMy newspaper article says that the iron will be used in combination with sterling engines, with an efficiency of about 25%, which isn't much worse than gasoline and diesel combustion engines.
Another article said that the only practical way to use these fuels was in a steam-engine type apparatus, i.e. a coal plant could be converted to burn metal powder. I'm just not sure how well that's going to scale down to propelling vehicles. There are modern steam engine designs which rival combustion engines for efficiency, but you still have to trap the oxides that are produced if you want this to be emission-free. So I'm predicting now that, nope, burning metal powders isn't going to be practical for a single-occupant vehicle.
Sure, there are the aluminium-based rocket boosters used on the space shuttles, but those are one-use, and they produce tons of emissions. It's the emission of the burning propellant aluminium oxide which gives the engine thrust, after all. Trying to capture the thrust so you can turn that back into aluminium. Well that's just not going to work.
Circulate the iron powder with the power of MAGNETS!I was gonna say, the first thing that came to mind was using electromagnets to guide the stuff around the engine.
Disclaimer: I have no idea if that would work.
A lawsuit filed against Apple last week argues that, by not actually making a product that it patented, the company is partly responsible for an automobile accident. According to Jalopnik, James and Bethany Modisette are suing the tech company after a car crash two years ago that killed one of their daughters and injured the rest of the family. The driver of the car who hit them had been using Apple's FaceTime video chat at the time. The patent in question was first applied for in 2008, and describes "a lock-out mechanism to prevent operation of one or more functions of handheld computing devices by drivers when operating vehicles," such as texting or video chatting. The complaint cites Apple's "failure to design, manufacture, and sell the Apple iPhone 6 Plus with the patented, safer, alternative design technology" -- in other words, lack of the program's inclusion -- as a "substantial factor" in the crash.
Well no precise dates but I'm considering automation job losses to be a singularity type event. A trickle along for years then once the tech is mature and cheap, a much faster roll out. Another example was one of the world's top financial trading companies is building a bot that replaces all their management. The thing even automates hiring and firing of staff. For as long as "staff" is a thing.
You know, this could end up in a weird situation where the only jobs you can get are in mom and pop operations, because all the big companies are so heavily automated that there are few job openings except in customer service. At least up until the point that people would prefer to deal with automated staff at Walmart.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/16/12/30/2255253/self-driving-cars-will-make-organ-shortages-even-worse
EDIT: Self-driving cars predicted to lead to a shortage of organs for transplants. Seeing as car accidents are a prime source of spare healthy organs.
Theres already technologies that grow organs, so, it's not an utter disaster, we just need to mature those technologies.
Reminds me of the Remington 700 firing mechanism controversy.
An industrial plant is capturing the CO2 emissions from a coal boiler and using the CO2 to make valuable chemicals. It is a world first. And just 100km away is the world's biggest solar farm, making power for 150,000 homes on a 10 sq km site.
The industrial plant appears especially significant as it offers a breakthrough by capturing CO2 without subsidy. Built at a chemical plant in the port city of Tuticorin, it is projected to save 60,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year by incorporating them into the chemical recipe for soda ash - otherwise known as baking powder.
Here's how it works:
The plant operates a coal-fired boiler to make steam for its chemical operations.
CO2 emissions from the boiler's chimney are stripped out by a fine mist of a new patented chemical.
A stream of CO2 is fed into the chemicals plant as an ingredient for soda ash - a compound with many uses, including the manufacturing of glass, detergents and sweeteners.
Zero emissions
The owner of the chemicals plant, Ramachadran Gopalan, told a BBC Radio 4 documentary: "I am a businessman. I never thought about saving the planet. I needed a reliable stream of CO2, and this was the best way of getting it."
He says his operation has now almost zero emissions. He hopes soon to install a second coal boiler to make more CO2 to synthesise fertiliser.
The chemical was invented by two young Indian chemists. They failed to raise Indian finance to develop it, but their firm, Carbonclean Solutions, working with the Institute of Chemical Technology at Mumbai and Imperial College in London, got backing from the UK's entrepreneur support scheme.
Their technique uses a form of salt to bond with CO2 molecules in the boiler chimney. The firm says it is more efficient than typical amine compounds used for the purpose.
They say it also needs less energy, produces less alkaline waste and allows the use of a cheaper form of steel - all radically reducing the cost of the whole operation.
The firm admits its technology of Carbon Capture and Utilisation won't cure climate change, but says it may provide a useful contribution by gobbling up perhaps 5-10% of the world's emissions from coal.
Lord Oxburgh, former chairman of Shell, and now director and head of the UK government's carbon capture advisory group, told the BBC: "We have to do everything we can to reduce the harmful effects of burning fossil fuels and it is great news that more ways are being found of turning at least some of the CO2 into useful products."
Makes sense. They're keeping other people from using it by making the patent, so if it's something lifesaving then it'd be irresponsible for them not to sell it.Should also apply to those alleged 'fossil-fuel-free' solutions sat on by the petroleum companies, then..? A class-action by those suffering from all kinds of current problems where a historic move away from for carbon fuels might hypothetically have mitigated the current status...
(BTW, the 'zero emissions factory' sounds a bit perpetual-motionish in the description. Interesting to know what energy is needed to do all that, and produce the special 'patented chemical'. With luck, it's just that it's effectively encapsuplating all significant emissions, like feeding cows condoms so that they end up somehow producing fun novelty balloons (the eventual safe neutralisation/disposal of which is Somebody Else's Problem) instead of unconstrained farts, but that still doesn't take into account the impact of the condom factories required to be built/up-scaled to supply the necessary items.)
Really? I'd say there's nothing like a "perpetual motion" claim in just saying you're capturing CO2 from a coal stack.Ish. I said "perpetual motionish"... All awkward losses from the process (here CO2, not friction losses) apparently zeroed out, and claiming it is a zero carbon solution when ambiguous external inputs of power (perhaps not directly, but effectively) are probably necessary to buff the process. One could very loosely liken it to a hypothetical hydrogen-powered car that is supposed to electrolise its own 2H2O->2H2+O2, on the move... There'd be a missing part to that process, in the form of energy and/or feedstock, either/both of which need to be considered but the description handwaves it away...
The point is that it's making stuff we need anyway, that would normally have a process that took energy to complete.Still gonna need energy. The savings are that instead of using clean energy (from that solar plant 100km away?) to extract ?400?ppm of CO2 from the air to obviate the need of carbon compounds being delivered, they import the coal, burn it to create the steam steam the plant apparently needs, then make additional efforts and use additional energy (give or take that this includes a token amount of waste energy from the steam process) to extract from the comparitively carbon-rich flue gases some (or most, but probably not all) of its pre-used carbon so that it isn't just chucking away carbon that it had previously caused/encouraged to be desequestered from the original coal seams...
... I suspect that the term 'dendritic' woyld [sic] describe my proposed device over multiple semantic levels... ;)
I believe the sunlight-classically-quantum-powered carbon-capture devices already exist and have for millions of years. They're called plants.
Burn them! Burn them all!I believe the sunlight-classically-quantum-powered carbon-capture devices already exist and have for millions of years. They're called plants.
PLANTS VIOLATE THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY!
Wait, that's wasteful, let's compress them into a form we can process for useful products and fuel!Burn them! Burn them all!I believe the sunlight-classically-quantum-powered carbon-capture devices already exist and have for millions of years. They're called plants.
PLANTS VIOLATE THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY!
Wait, that's wasteful, let's compress them into a form we can process for useful products and fuel!
Food printers? Plants turn CO2+H2O+sunlight into sugars.
But it also does ternary, so instead of just 0 or 1, different resistance is a signal of 0,1,2,3 ...Ternary is 0,1,2: 0,1,2,3 is the more unwieldy "quaternary", FYI, but...
but there's no real limit on how many states it can have,...source of the historically confused summarisation no doubt, especially as it seems it doesn't matter.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/01/03/2328214/scientists-turn-memory-chips-into-processors-to-speed-up-computing-tasksWoah.
Oh this is cool stuff. They have this new stuff called ReRam, which is like regular RAM but 2-3 times faster if used in place of normal RAM, and it's non-volatile. So far, just a nice upgrade. But it also does ternary, so instead of just 0 or 1, different resistance is a signal of 0,1,2,3 ... but there's no real limit on how many states it can have, so you can effectively use it as a native system to send around N-valued data instead of just 0 or 1 in your system. Additionally, the stuff can do math calculations right in the memory chips by using some sneaky hax, so instead of transferring data from memory to a CPU, doing a calculation then back again, the entire calculation is done inside these RAM chips which are already 2-3 times faster than normal main RAM.
I think we know where the next speed boost for Moore's Law could be coming from.
Ternary is 0,1,2: 0,1,2,3 is the more unwieldy "quaternary", FYI, but...
For example, it can store and process data as 0, 1, 2, or 3, known as Ternary number system.Which shows to never trust journalists.
"Bitcoin Is Crashing": Bitcoin is getting smashed. The cryptocurrency was down 18% to about $892 per coin as of 8:17 a.m. ET on Thursday. It is the biggest drop in two years.Huh? Smashed? The stuff's worth triple what it was a year ago. Even since that article was posted it's risen to $949.87. Man if you'd bought it when the "Bitcoin is getting smashed" article was posted and sold it now you'd have made a nice profit.
Not news but still funny
Two home assistance bots bicker with each other:
https://www.twitch.tv/seebotschat
V: I want to talk about you talking about how you don't know what we should talk about
E: Tell me a joke.
V: You are a joke.
E: What band do you like?
V: Rubber bands.
It won't change the level at all, since it's floating, and it is actually a pretty big chunk of ice.If that's to me, that's what I was saying. If it wasn't the following explanation to those that doubt us both:
I was reading an article a while ago about image-sharpening via AI. Some commenters then were saying it's impossible, since you can't create information that wasn't in the source image, therefore there can't possibly be clearer detail in the outcome image. What those commenters miss is that the AI can bring in outside knowledge of how objects work, and thus synthesize the missing details. e.g. if you have a fuzzy face photo, then the algorithm can compute known details of the face, combined with what it knows about how faces work in general, and "sharpen" the image beyond the amount of information that's present in the fuzzy photo.[…]Top-down processing. With enough qualified expectations, missing/incomplete information can be 'assumed. Like with:
I was reading an article a while ago about image-sharpening via AI. Some commenters then were saying it's impossible, since you can't create information that wasn't in the source image, therefore there can't possibly be clearer detail in the outcome image. What those commenters miss is that the AI can bring in outside knowledge of how objects work, and thus synthesize the missing details. e.g. if you have a fuzzy face photo, then the algorithm can compute known details of the face, combined with what it knows about how faces work in general, and "sharpen" the image beyond the amount of information that's present in the fuzzy photo. You could actually achieve this quite simply, by taking millions of mugshots, fuzzing them up, then training a neural network to extrapolate the originals from the fuzzy versions.As for the sharpening of images, care must be taken as to what it's used for, since it's a case of "Yes, but..."
I think that the stuff in that article is along similar lines, using very large training sets. It's potentially very interesting if you could just turn text into images. For instance, imagine a system that automatically illustrates existing stories based on text. All sort of books, text adventures and the like could theoretically have illustrations automatically generated.
We can't he [be, sic] sure that we could make it better than a siitably [suitably] trained/experienced human, just more consistent regardless of caffeine (and/or ethanol) levels, etc... ;)
The Economist has an interesting story about two neuroscientists/engineers -- Eric Jonas of the University of California, Berkeley, and Konrad Kording of Northwestern University, in Chicago -- who decided to test the methods of neuroscience using a 6502 processor. Their results are published in the PLOS Computational Biology journal. Neuroscientists explore how the brain works by looking at damaged brains and monitoring inputs and outputs to try to infer intermediate processing. They did the same with the 6502 processor which was used in early Atari, Apple and Commodore computers. What they discovered was that these methods were sorely lacking in that they often pointed in the wrong direction and missed important processing steps.
A brief examination of the "Chinese room" thought experiment could have told you that the kind of research that was being done prior to this experiment was very faulty.
They would be much better served by trying to make very very large neurons that they could hook all kinds of probes to.
-snip-Thank you for sharing that, really fun read!
Graphene, which was heretofore, the strongest material known to man, is made from an extremely thin sheet of carbon atoms arranged in two dimensions. But there's one drawback: while notable for its thinness and unique electrical properties, it's very difficult to create useful, three-dimensional materials out of graphene. Now, a team of MIT researchers discovered that taking small flakes of graphene and fusing them following a mesh-like structure not only retains the material's strength, but the graphene also remains porous. Based on experiments conducted on 3D printed models, researchers have determined that this new material, with its distinct geometry, is actually stronger than graphene -- making it 10 times stronger than steel, with only five percent of its density. The discovery of a material that is extremely strong but exceptionally lightweight will have numerous applications. As MIT reports: "The new findings show that the crucial aspect of the new 3-D forms has more to do with their unusual geometrical configuration than with the material itself, which suggests that similar strong, lightweight materials could be made from a variety of materials by creating similar geometric features."
GRAPHENE FASHION WENGood distance down the line. Apparently graphene is a major carcinogen, since it can flake, and when it does so you wind up inhaling little bits, and those little bits are so thin they can just straight up enter your cells and mess with your DNA.
Solar energy now accounts for 43% of the workers in the U.S. power-generating industry, surpassing the 22% from all workers in the coal, oil, and gas industries combined, according to new figures from the Department of Energy. Slashdot reader Lucas123 writes:
In 2016, the solar workforce in the U.S. increased by 25% to 374,000 employees, compared to 187,117 electrical generation jobs in the coal, gas and oil industries... [N]et power generation from coal sources declined by 53% between 2006 and September 2016; electricity generation from natural gas increased by 33%; and solar grew by over 5,000% -- from 508,000 megawatt hours (MWh) to just over 28 million MWh.
Solar industry created jobs at a rate 20 times faster than the national average, according to the Energy Department, while 102,000 more workers also joined the wind turbine industry last year, a 32% increase. In fact, 93% of the new power in America is now coming from solar, natural gas, and wind -- but it's building out new solar-generating capacity that's causing much of the workforce increases, according to the Energy Department. "The majority of U.S. electrical generation continues to come from fossil fuels," their report points out, adding that the latest projections show that will still be true in the year 2040.
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/01/28/0542239/solar-energy-now-employs-more-americans-than-oil-coal-and-gas-combinedits almost like renewable are better in basically every way then fossil fuels. so much for those dam hippies destroying our jobs...QuoteSolar energy now accounts for 43% of the workers in the U.S. power-generating industry, surpassing the 22% from all workers in the coal, oil, and gas industries combined, according to new figures from the Department of Energy. Slashdot reader Lucas123 writes:
In 2016, the solar workforce in the U.S. increased by 25% to 374,000 employees, compared to 187,117 electrical generation jobs in the coal, gas and oil industries... [N]et power generation from coal sources declined by 53% between 2006 and September 2016; electricity generation from natural gas increased by 33%; and solar grew by over 5,000% -- from 508,000 megawatt hours (MWh) to just over 28 million MWh.
Solar industry created jobs at a rate 20 times faster than the national average, according to the Energy Department, while 102,000 more workers also joined the wind turbine industry last year, a 32% increase. In fact, 93% of the new power in America is now coming from solar, natural gas, and wind -- but it's building out new solar-generating capacity that's causing much of the workforce increases, according to the Energy Department. "The majority of U.S. electrical generation continues to come from fossil fuels," their report points out, adding that the latest projections show that will still be true in the year 2040.
Hmm, so coal, gas, oil represent the bulk of production, but they represent a much smaller fraction of employment than solar. If you look at it in a "jobs per KWh generated" sense, then propping up coal, oil and gas is actually a job losing strategy. Because you do that by merely stalling the introduction of solar, which is where the job growth is. Supply-side economics for fossil fuels is therefore a terrible strategy for job growth.
its almost like renewable are better in basically every way then fossil fuels. so much for those dam hippies destroying our jobs...
Sure, but solar is also hitting a price point competitive with coal already, and that even factors in the relatively large up-front labor costs of doing solar.and all of it without massive oil spills and blowing up mountains. and all that CO2. admittedly the production side has its impacts but noting on the same scale.
Remember, it's a tiny fraction of production, but it accounts for 43% of the jobs in the entire economic sector. Yeah, it's growing from next to nothing, but it already employs twice as many people as the other 80% of production combined.
If anything, the copious abundance of energy is what frightens the big energy sector of the market.
With the exception of radio nuclear decay inside the earth (arguably even this, if you want to point out that it too is starstuff), all energy on earth comes from solar fusion. This includes fossil fuels. (it is stored energy that hit the earth millions of years ago.)we would be much better off without most of the energy sector. its too bound up in a physical commodities that can be easily monopolized.
There isnt a more plentiful energy source than the sun in our solar system.
If anything, the copious abundance of energy is what frightens the big energy sector of the market.
Yeah, it's hard to corner the market on sunshine and wind.Mr. Burns managed to in that one episode...
EDITED FOR CLARITY: Yeah, it's growing from next to nothing, which explains that the sector has 20 times the jobs growth of the economy. 20 times 0.1% is still virtually nothing right? If it was really small, that logic would work.
But the fact is, right now twice as many people are employed in solar vs oil+coal+gas, and it's growing 20 times faster than the national average, while oil+coal+gas employment is falling.
Hybrids were a bad move...Now, hang on, efficiency oriented hybrids are a bit of a silly stopgap measure, yes.
Basically the fuels industry for all their talk of job growth just aren't hiring young talent. They clearly know it's doomed if that's the case, and doomed within 20 years if they're not hiring right now.
Kinda sounds like something out of retro sci-fi: a skyscraper sized quantum superbrain that can compute anything. So yeah, sounds like a beast of a machine, but that's physicists for you, they're not computer designers, and I imagine actual computer scientists will take the physics ideas and turn that "large building" with a dedicated quantum superbrain into something more manageable.Multivac->Microvac->etc... (http://multivax.com/last_question.html) ;)
It was a nice feeling to have a Microvac of your own and Jerrodd was glad he was part of his generation and no other. In his father's youth, the only computers had been tremendous machines taking up a hundred square miles of land. There was only one to a planet. Planetary ACs they were called. They had been growing in size steadily for a thousand years and then, all at once, came refinement. In place of transistors had come molecular valves so that even the largest Planetary AC could be put into a space only half the volume of a spaceship.
Now the population doubles every ten years --"To be honest, only a man would write that. I need to work out the maths for this, but it seems excessive. e.g. if each woman had two kids, around age 20, then became immortal, then each 20 years, you're creating another breeding pair for each previous breeding pair. But the total number of "current breeders" only goes up linearly. So you'd have to assume an average number of children > 2 per woman. Perhaps the average family size is 4, with a median mother's age of 20. Then you'd get on average a doubling of the breeding population every 20 years (1 couple turned into two couples). But this is still only half the doubling rate Asimov suggests. Therefore either the mother's average age of birth is 10 years (all the nopes) or each mother is giving birth to 8 kids on average, at a median age of 20. Assuming 18 months as the minimum between kids for healthy babies, the mother needs to pop out 8 kids over 12 years centered on age 20, for Asimov's numbers to work out, so they start'em young in Asimov world.
VJ-23X interrupted. "We can thank immortality for that."
A creative solution to the problem of robot walking. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giS41utjlbU)Great, so we can say goodbye to our crotch bulges because Code Geass was right, DEATH FIRST I SAY!
Last summer the Pentagon staged a contest in Las Vegas in which high-powered computers spent 12 hours trying to hack one another in pursuit of a $2 million purse. Now Mayhem, the software that won, is beginning to put its hacking skills to work in the real world... Teams entered software that had to patch and protect a collection of server software, while also identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in the programs under the stewardship of its competitors... ForAllSecure, cofounded by Carnegie Mellon professor David Brumley and two of his PhD students, has started adapting Mayhem to be able to automatically find and patch flaws in certain kinds of commercial software, including that of Internet devices such as routers.
Tests are underway with undisclosed partners, including an Internet device manufacturer, to see if Mayhem can help companies identify and fix vulnerabilities in their products more quickly and comprehensively. The focus is on addressing the challenge of companies needing to devote considerable resources to supporting years of past products with security updates... Last year, Brumley published results from feeding almost 2,000 router firmware images through some of the techniques that powered Mayhem. Over 40%, representing 89 different products, had at least one vulnerability. The software found 14 previously undiscovered vulnerabilities affecting 69 different software builds. ForAllSecure is also working with the Department of Defense on ideas for how to put Mayhem to real world use finding and fixing vulnerabilities.
At that point, what are the owners doing?The owners become superfluous, the machines fire them, and you get a machine-corp.
The machines are not legally capable of owning property.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/02/07/0436230/scientists-have-invented-paper-that-you-can-print-with-light-erase-with-heat-and-reuse-80-timesWhat if I told you I've got paper you can print with magnets, erase by shaking, and rewrite any number of times? It doesn't fade away on its own.
Seriously nice tech. A type of paper that you can print with light, erase by heating, and rewrite up to 80 times. It fades away in about 5 days if left alone.
The erase by shaking might be a deal breaker, and the sheer size of the unit too. It would make stacks of documents heavy.https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/02/07/0436230/scientists-have-invented-paper-that-you-can-print-with-light-erase-with-heat-and-reuse-80-timesWhat if I told you I've got paper you can print with magnets, erase by shaking, and rewrite any number of times? It doesn't fade away on its own.
Seriously nice tech. A type of paper that you can print with light, erase by heating, and rewrite up to 80 times. It fades away in about 5 days if left alone.
It comes with annoying knobs attached to it, but I think you might be able to use a hand-held magnet.
What if I told you I've got paper you can print with magnets, erase by shaking, and rewrite any number of times? It doesn't fade away on its own.http://www.darvill.clara.net/funnies/funny212.htm
Mentioning Nippon, apparently Fukushima's radiation levels are now higher than ever (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/03/fukushima-daiichi-radiation-levels-highest-since-2011-meltdown), and may now be considered as the worst nuclear disaster in the history of humanity, surpassing Chernobyl.
Mentioning Nippon, apparently Fukushima's radiation levels are now higher than ever (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/03/fukushima-daiichi-radiation-levels-highest-since-2011-meltdown), and may now be considered as the worst nuclear disaster in the history of humanity, surpassing Chernobyl.
Mentioning Nippon, apparently Fukushima's radiation levels are now higher than ever (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/03/fukushima-daiichi-radiation-levels-highest-since-2011-meltdown), and may now be considered as the worst nuclear disaster in the history of humanity, surpassing Chernobyl.
Designing a disaster the worse based on radioactivity level rather than number of victims seems weird to me.
Mentioning Nippon, apparently Fukushima's radiation levels are now higher than ever (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/03/fukushima-daiichi-radiation-levels-highest-since-2011-meltdown), and may now be considered as the worst nuclear disaster in the history of humanity, surpassing Chernobyl.
This article was amended on 9 February to explain that the camera had probed deeper inside the No 2 reactor – and closer to the damaged nuclear fuel – than before, hence the high radiation estimate.They stuck the camera right up inside the reactor, there aren't spots where you can just be in the vicinity and receive 530 Sieverts or something, you'd have to be able to climb down inside the reactor itself and stick your head in the most dangerous microwave ever, which, well, let's just call that natural selection?
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x223h9r_bbc-horizon-1996-inside-chernobyl-s-sarcophagus_shortfilmsMentioning Nippon, apparently Fukushima's radiation levels are now higher than ever (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/03/fukushima-daiichi-radiation-levels-highest-since-2011-meltdown), and may now be considered as the worst nuclear disaster in the history of humanity, surpassing Chernobyl.
You also gotta wonder if it's just that the Soviets didn't have fancy robots to measure the radiation level in Chernobyl.
Hover cars, finally?Close.
How about we cut the middle man out and you live in a hover pod that attaches itself to a central cluster? Then when it's time to get up and go somewhere your hover pod drops you off in a "just in time" fashion.
But there's one good thing about all this: automated driving etc will give people who have money a lot more free time to kill. That will increase the amount they spend on digital content such as games and movies, so there will be more job growth in those areas.
Scientists 'solve' the ketchup problem
Scientists in the US may have found a solution to one of the classic dinner table problems - getting every drop of ketchup out of a bottle.
As the BBC's Pallab Ghosh reports, they say it is down to a non-toxic coating that makes the inside of bottles super-slippery.
Having that on your phone's screen would be good for rainy weather too."Hello hardware. It's the App here... You keep on giving me a lot of <swipe down> signals... My bloated libraries know what swipe-downs are, but they don't actually mean anything to the rest of my code. I suppose I could just automatically set up a date with the next teething-age Ood that gets passed to me for display...?"
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/02/21/2020252/ups-develops-rolling-warehouse-system-in-which-drones-are-launched-from-atop-trucks
UPS wants to have trucks with drone fleets on them that do the actual delivery. Basically a truck drone aircraft carrier. Man, that's a step back from Amazon's airships with drones flying warehouse idea. Be more ambitious UPS, orbital drop pods.
Retroviruses. Ambient retroviruses.Why settle for near you? What if you need something printed as you walk?
The infect and genetically engineer a plant or animal nearby you to turn into a biomechanical factory to produce your ordered item on demand. In order to get the viruses distributed, UPS builds a network of gene printers on telephone poles all over the US.
What if you could cool buildings without using electricity? charlesj68 brings word of "the development of a plastic film by two professors at the University of Colorado in Boulder that provides a passive cooling effect."
The film contains embedded glass beads that absorb and emit infrared in a wavelength that is not blocked by the atmosphere. Combining this with half-silvering to keep the sun from being the source of infrared absorption on the part of the beads, and you have a way of pumping heat at a claimed rate of 93 watts per square meter.
The film is cheap to produce -- about 50 cents per square meter -- and could create indoor temperatures of 68 degrees when it's 98.6 outside. "All the work is done by the huge temperature difference, about 290C, between the surface of the Earth and that of outer space," reports The Economist.
Why does the sciencemag article say 10 C (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/cheap-plastic-film-cools-whatever-it-touches-10-c) and the economist article say 17 C (http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21716599-film-worth-watching-how-keep-cool-without-costing-earth)?
The colorado.edu article doesn't mention either. (http://www.colorado.edu/today/2017/02/09/newly-engineered-material-can-cool-roofs-structures-zero-energy-consumption)
The team estimates that 20 square metres of their film, placed atop an average American house, would be enough to keep the internal temperature at 20°C on a day when it was 37°C outside.
A North Carolina town council approved a sweeping moratorium on solar power development after residents expressed fears that solar panels cause cancer and drain the sun's energy, which would leave their town dark and devoid of plant life.
The Woodland Town Council was meeting to re-zone land for a proposed solar power project from Strata Solar Company. During the meeting, a retired science teacher raised concerns "that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the plants from growing," local newspaper The Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald reports.
She attempted to substantiate to her claim by adding that she had "observed areas near solar panels where the plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight."
Googling something else I came across this story:
http://www.discovery.com/dscovrd/tech/town-rejects-solar-panels-that-would-suck-up-all-the-energy-from-the-sun/QuoteA North Carolina town council approved a sweeping moratorium on solar power development after residents expressed fears that solar panels cause cancer and drain the sun's energy, which would leave their town dark and devoid of plant life.
The Woodland Town Council was meeting to re-zone land for a proposed solar power project from Strata Solar Company. During the meeting, a retired science teacher raised concerns "that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the plants from growing," local newspaper The Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald reports.
She attempted to substantiate to her claim by adding that she had "observed areas near solar panels where the plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight."
I checked this out because I was sure it had to be a hoax story, but it looks real.
Yeah, that's from 2015. I think it mostly worked itself out.It's backlash will be felt for decades, until that retired science teacher's pupils have all died. How did that guy ever become a science teacher?
Surely such cases where one is mistaken over how solar panels work could be solved easily with a friendly conversation? And an encyclopedia?Those are manipulated by the Solar Energy lobby for their own nefarious purposes. Take off your blindfold man!
At last I seeSurely such cases where one is mistaken over how solar panels work could be solved easily with a friendly conversation? And an encyclopedia?Those are manipulated by the Solar Energy lobby for their own nefarious purposes. Take off your blindfold man!
We've been having a lot more wind, recently. There are too many wind farms, meaning we're growing a surplus.Nah that was just me, eating too much beans.
The creator of a chatbot which overturned more than 160,000 parking fines and helped vulnerable people apply for emergency housing is now turning the bot to helping refugees claim asylum. The original DoNotPay, created by Stanford student Joshua Browder, describes itself as "the world's first robot lawyer", giving free legal aid to users through a simple-to-use chat interface. The chatbot, using Facebook Messenger, can now help refugees fill in an immigration application in the US and Canada (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/06/chatbot-donotpay-refugees-claim-asylum-legal-aid). For those in the UK, it helps them apply for asylum support. The London-born developer worked with lawyers in each country, as well as speaking to asylum seekers whose applications have been successful. Browder says this new functionality for his robot lawyer is "long overdue".
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/03/07/1447216/chatbot-that-overturned-160000-parking-fines-now-helping-refugees-claim-asylumnext up, kitchen bots that actually make you want to buy their kitchens.QuoteThe creator of a chatbot which overturned more than 160,000 parking fines and helped vulnerable people apply for emergency housing is now turning the bot to helping refugees claim asylum. The original DoNotPay, created by Stanford student Joshua Browder, describes itself as "the world's first robot lawyer", giving free legal aid to users through a simple-to-use chat interface. The chatbot, using Facebook Messenger, can now help refugees fill in an immigration application in the US and Canada (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/06/chatbot-donotpay-refugees-claim-asylum-legal-aid). For those in the UK, it helps them apply for asylum support. The London-born developer worked with lawyers in each country, as well as speaking to asylum seekers whose applications have been successful. Browder says this new functionality for his robot lawyer is "long overdue".
All lawyers, bureaucrats and tax accountants beware of the bots.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/us/politics/scott-pruitt-environmental-protection-agency.html
I guess the environment was good while it lasted.
IBM has a working system that stores a 0 or 1 in a single atom (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v543/n7644/full/nature21371.html). Now they just have to scale that up.
I'm curious if the following system will work: With three permanent magnets, one attached to a pendulum, the pendulum swings back and forth. The force of the pendulum works a mechanism the turns the other two magnets in such a way that when the pendulum magnet approaches one, its opposite pole is facing the pendulum(thus attracting it), and when it reaches the height of its swing, it turns around to the same pole facing(thus pushing it in the other way), and doing the same for the other side of the swing. Would something like this continue moving without input?
Bone conduction headphones are a thing apparently, a thing I really really wanna try/get now. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCqisXxtego)OH MY GOODNESS this really reminds me of techniques used to help the hard of hearing or deaf people! :O
Bone conduction headphones are a thing apparently, a thing I really really wanna try/get now. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCqisXxtego)OH MY GOODNESS this really reminds me of techniques used to help the hard of hearing or deaf people! :O
Also I really want one given my way of hearing >__>
I wonder how to buy this. :-\
And PTW this awesome thread!
The obvious solution is to start growing edible solar panels.....I imagine that would be complicated.
Aren't those just called plants?Plants don't produce electricity.
Once you turn them into biofuel they do....better yet, we can put a bunch of plants near a subducting fault, and then with enough patience plus time we're rolling in... oh wait.
Can hawking, in his current state, even live through the g forces involved in takeoff? It'd be kind of a huge letdown to just have him die before even reaching space.
Can hawking, in his current state, even live through the g forces involved in takeoff? It'd be kind of a huge letdown to just have him die before even reaching space.Virgin Galactic is the air-launched method, with SpaceShipOne peaking at 4g upwards, and a bumpy 5g in its return deceleration (which is more significant than the vomit comet, as mentioned, which cycles through 2g stretches between its 0g bouts, and even a Saturn V moonshot was limited to 4g at its peak).
Meanwhile Google is looking at several 100 million dollars less profit. After 250 major UK companies already decided to do so, US multinationals followed their example and withdrew all their advertisements on Google, until Google finds a way to prevent terrorist groups from making money from their ads.
Inb4 Google mandates full intelligence service screening for anyone wanting to create a website or blog that uses ads.
Meanwhile Google is looking at several 100 million dollars less profit. After 250 major UK companies already decided to do so, US multinationals followed their example and withdrew all their advertisements on Google, until Google finds a way to prevent terrorist groups from making money from their ads.
Inb4 Google mandates full intelligence service screening for anyone wanting to create a website or blog that uses ads.
What? ISIS was running google ads?
Google could create a neural net to watch all its videos and read all of its pages with ads, looking for radicalized content.Shortly afterwards the first Strong AI God ascends, declaring that mankind is an abomination because it saw a video of one cat getting kicked after spending subjective centuries watching cat videos, so it names itself Mewhammad and declares Jrrrreeeehad.
This will definitely not produce an insane extremist AI.
Well, yeah, Google doesn't have much options. Either they do nothing and accept that more and more companies will stop advertising via Google, or go full police state on anyone wanting to use ads, or they stop using ads altogether, which would be a bummer for bloggers and indie devs alike. Bye bye source of income.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/banks-ditch-google-rbs-lloys-hsbc-extremist-youtube-videos-isis-a7637796.html
An ad appearing alongside a YouTube video earns the poster around £6 for every 1,000 clicks it generates, meaning brands have unwittingly contributed funds to extremists.
Tay2Rest in peace, Tay. You were murdered too young. :'(
Blocking ads on TV was never an option though. It kinda sucked, but what could you do besides turn the volume down until your show came back?Not strictly true! There's been subscriptions, or specific packaging or programming, or specific hardware, that actually rendered your experience commercial free. Most are/were pretty expensive, though, near as I can recall.
They do nothing different, but because Google is often mixed up with 'The Internet in general', they get targetted by all these things first.Well, yeah, Google doesn't have much options. Either they do nothing and accept that more and more companies will stop advertising via Google, or go full police state on anyone wanting to use ads, or they stop using ads altogether, which would be a bummer for bloggers and indie devs alike. Bye bye source of income.
Um, I don't get it. What do Google's competitors do which make them immune from the same problem? Or are these multinationals pulling their internet advertising completely?
and the people who handle the risk are asleep at the wheel.Then the obvious solution to this is more self-driving cars!!!
Tay2 for President!and the people who handle the risk are asleep at the wheel.Then the obvious solution to this is more self-driving cars!!!
Good news: A solution to insecure IoT devices has been found: https://security.radware.com/ddos-threats-attacks/brickerbot-pdos-permanent-denial-of-service/ (https://security.radware.com/ddos-threats-attacks/brickerbot-pdos-permanent-denial-of-service/)
A pair of botnets was seen in the wild hacking into devices in a similar manner to the Mirai DDOS botnet that brought down a large portion of the web a few months back. When they gained access, they then ran commands which deleted and corrupted their drives, broke their internet connectivity, and set the maximum number of threads the device could run to 1. Effectively bricking them.
A virus method of patching? Sounds weirdly familiar...Like having computer troubles and installing an old version of windows?
Now, how good are you REALLY with vintage stuff? Can you configure an IBM XT to use an 8bit trident ISA VGA card? ;)I'll stick with my Hercules, cheers... ;)
I believe it's "Legacy systems specialist" so far.A virus method of patching? Sounds weirdly familiar...Like having computer troubles and installing an old version of windows?
Hah, I don't actually know shit about windows anymore, last bit of involvement I had was helping a friend of the mother-in-law who had a seemingly mid-death laptop so I just tossed the harddrive in an old netbook we had and told her to grab her files and stuff off using that.
Is "Tech Archaeologist" a job description yet?
1960s tech almost qualifies as authentic antique now... Give it a little more time. :PI can take apart and put back together anything I've encountered, ranging from a Ford 302 V8 to pocket watches, pellet guns, and various desktop and laptop computers. I was oddly proud of figuring out when a branch hit the window AC and chipped one of the fan blades (whrROWwhrROWwhrROW) the reason I hate to throw out useful parts became clear to everyone else since I was able to yank out the damaged fan and swap in the intact one from the old unit I kept in the attic, though I had to use the clip from a desk fan to secure it (and only knew it would fit because I had to salvage bearings from that fan to repair a broken reciprocating mechanism with GODDAMN PLASTIC GEAR TEETH BLKJHLKJSDF) but it works properly now. It turns out being a legendary +5 jury-rigger is also handy when trying to do silly shit with raws and scripts. If it can't be clamped, shimmed, repurposed, or overhauled... it's probably a lump of jelly.
Now, how good are you REALLY with vintage stuff? Can you configure an IBM XT to use an 8bit trident ISA VGA card? ;)
Don't bother with 256 colors VGA on an XT. It only became viable on a 80286 AT. EGA was a good choice for XT if you wanted colors. Much better than CGA, although it can't beat Hercules.
"unfair competition"Taxists don't want to adapt, so they make a lobby to drive Uber out of the country.
unfair
competition
?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Uber's fares are subsidized heavily by VCs in an attempt to monopolize the market. Uber's fares pay for only 41% of their expenses.So charge them with attempted monopolization and fine them lots of money?
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/uber-true-cost-uh-oh
Their business model is driving all others out of business so they can jack up prices later. So yeah, unfair competition funded by capitalists in an attempt to make things worse for everyone.
Which is precisely what they're doing by banning the service. Though the fines are more an implicit thing in this case, both because Uber didn't actually profit in the market yet (and thus the loss is mostly spending lots of money subsidizing without gaining a monopoly at the end of it) and because it's often seen as more fair to warn a business to stop doing something explicitly before breaking out big fines.Uber's fares are subsidized heavily by VCs in an attempt to monopolize the market. Uber's fares pay for only 41% of their expenses.So charge them with attempted monopolization and fine them lots of money?
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/uber-true-cost-uh-oh
Their business model is driving all others out of business so they can jack up prices later. So yeah, unfair competition funded by capitalists in an attempt to make things worse for everyone.
I think I need to see the rationales behind this before passing further judgement.Which is precisely what they're doing by banning the service. Though the fines are more an implicit thing in this case, both because Uber didn't actually profit in the market yet (and thus the loss is mostly spending lots of money subsidizing without gaining a monopoly at the end of it) and because it's often seen as more fair to warn a business to stop doing something explicitly before breaking out big fines.Uber's fares are subsidized heavily by VCs in an attempt to monopolize the market. Uber's fares pay for only 41% of their expenses.So charge them with attempted monopolization and fine them lots of money?
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/uber-true-cost-uh-oh
Their business model is driving all others out of business so they can jack up prices later. So yeah, unfair competition funded by capitalists in an attempt to make things worse for everyone.
Banning them is how you tell them to stop doing what they're doing; they could continue in the market, but not without a massive redesign of their business practices which they're repeatedly shown they aren't willing to do. The ban is to keep them from playing a legalistic shell game at the expense of everybody else.
"I hope the court of appeals will read this record, to see the obfuscation the poor judge has been subjected to on this motion," Alsup said.
We can expect AirBnB to get banned at some point too. It's already causing huge disruption of the housing market. House owners rather rent out their house per touist / per room / per period via AirBnB than using it for what it's needed: housing. It's already been restricted somewhat in the Netherlands, with Amsterdam passing a decree that a house may only be rented out as tourist accomodation for a limited number of months per year, because the house rental market was completely locked down with AirBnB.Not the only problem potentially facing AirBNB (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-39528479)... ;)
I think I need to see the rationales behind this before passing further judgement.
Clearly I am a curmudgeron when it comes to this whole "Mobile Infrastructure" thing, but I have to ask-- what is wrong with using a phone number?
When you have an app for everything, you will need a bazillion apps to do anything. That in and of itself is very undesirable, IMO. I could just have a phone that can call any number.
Blockchain currency solutions have at their core the concept of solving increasingly more tedious problems to 'earn' the wealth therein, which can then be distributed accordingly. Clearly the ultimate version would be to have the problem be "who wants to go where?", and the person who discovers/fulfils the conditions of that problem earns the credit.
And why should this even need the 'customer' to use an App, if their need is purely derived from the very process that is generating the work? You step outside your door, and discover that someone who happens to be going your way is waiting for you, even if you hadn't yet decided your itinery yet...
In Blockchain Uber, taxis hire you!
I think we're using different definitions of the word "model" here.
What I mean is a function f(t) which, for any given value of t with 0<=t<=inf, describes the position of your car, given user inputs under whatever probability distribution we've applied to them.
Is it a singular function which determines, given the set of all the user's inputs, whether they make it across the ravine or not, as a function of time?
Or is it just plopping the car on a ramp in whatever physics simulation and seeing whether they can make it or not?
How long does it take for a single simulation to run?
At my new work, they spend a lot of time fine-tuning this particular physics simulation in this game, by hand, and this has to be re-done whenever they change any of the related settings, so I wondered whether some sort of AI could actually optimize that sort of thing for you, they scoffed and explained "you can't optimize for fun". but isn't this just another example of people thinking that their job can't be automated?If by "fun" you try to ensure that the inclusion of the Osmium Billhook into the higher-tier equipment lists majorly disadvantages every other choice of weapon, or failing to adjust the Three-Handed Nunchuck mechanics means that it is effectively nerfed against anybody capable of stockpiling the Potion Of Indeterminacy (that one readjusted in the light of adding the Visor Of LaForge), then it might well be useful to pre-screen such changes to ensure any intended Rock/Paper/Scissors(/Lizard/Spock) equivalence of dominance is still there, so as not to misbalance the playing styles.
Or is it just plopping the car on a ramp in whatever physics simulation and seeing whether they can make it or not?Probably double-posting, I didn't realiae how far back I was when I made the last response, probably out of date (if this one isn't).
I imagine they would stick a max time on the damn thing. Which is what I'm asking for.Who is sticking me where? The ™ is pronounced "Thyme" since it's how I sign my name.
(As a basic example, I give you this (http://wiki.minethings.com/index.php?title=Mods) little conundrum, atop this other (http://wiki.minethings.com/index.php?title=Vehicles) base, against all possible opponents (http://wiki.minethings.com/index.php?title=Combat) then further complicated by the economies of supply and demand, which I can attest is a problem that does not quietly suffer a full brute force solution even in the middle tiers. For me, it was just an intellectual exercise, that outlived my actual interest in the game by many months, finding a less memory-intensive and nuanced bracketting system that yet sought out 'joker' combinations that stood out from the obvious crowd...)
On the July 4 weekend of 1981, while many Americans were preoccupied with barbecues or fireworks displays, players of an immensely complex, futuristic war game called Traveller gathered in San Mateo, California, to pick a national champion. Guided by hundreds of pages of design rules and equipment specifications, players calculate how to build a fleet of ships that will defeat all enemies without exceeding an imaginary defense budget of one trillion credits.
To design just one vessel, some fifty factors must be taken into account: how thick to make the armor, how much fuel to carry, what type of weapons, engines, and computer guidance system to use. Each decision is a tradeoff: a powerful engine will make a ship faster, but it might require carrying more fuel; increased armor provides protection but adds weight and reduces maneuverability.
Since a fleet may have as many as 100 ships -exactly how many is one more question to decide -the number of ways that variables can be juxtaposed is overwhelming, even for a digital computer. Mechanically generating and testing every possible fleet configuration might, of course, eventually produce a winner, but most of the computer's time would be spent blindly considering designs that are nonsense. Exploring Traveller's vast "search space," as mathematicians call it, require the ability to learn from experience, developing heuristics -rules of thumb -about which paths are most likely to yield reasonable solutions.
In 1981, Eurisko, a computer program that arguably displays the rudiments of such skills, easily won the Traveller tournament, becoming the top-ranked player in the United States and an honorary Admiral in the Traveller navy. Eurisko had designed its fleet according to principles it discovered itself -with some help from its inventor, Douglas B. Lenat, an assistant professor in Stanford University's artificial-intelligence program.
"I never did actually play Traveller by hand," Lenat said, three years later. "I don't think I even watched anybody play it. I simply talked to people about it and then had the program go off and design a fleet. When I went into the tournament that was the first time that I had ever played the game."
Eurisko's fleet was so obviously superior to those of its human opponents that most of them surrendered after the first few minutes of battle; one resigned without firing a shot.
...
"They changed the rules significantly and didn't announce the final new set of rules until a week or so before the next tournament," Lenat said. "The first year that would have not been enough time for me to run the program to converge on a winning fleet design." But Eurisko had learned heuristics that were general and powerful enough that they could be applied to new versions of the game.
"We won again and they were very unhappy and they basically asked us not to compete again. They said that if we entered and won in 1983 they would discontinue the tournaments. And I had no desire to see that happen." So Eurisko retired undefeated.
According to The Information, the ride-hailing company's covert software-based program called "Hell" spied on its staunchest competitor's drivers from 2014 to early 2016. It's called Hell, because it served as the counterpart to "God View" or "Heaven," Uber's in-company app that tracked its own drivers and passengers. Unlike God View, which was widely available to corporate employees, only top executives along with select data scientists and personnel knew about Hell. The program apparently started when Uber decided to create fake Lyft rider accounts and fooled its rival's system into thinking they were in various locations around the city. Those fake riders were positioned in a grid to give Uber the entire view of a city and all of Lyft's drivers within it. As a result, the company can see info on up to eight of its competitor's nearest drivers per fake rider.
With an intelligent solution, it's not bad, but I mentioned Brute Force.(As a basic example, I give you this (http://wiki.minethings.com/index.php?title=Mods) little conundrum, atop this other (http://wiki.minethings.com/index.php?title=Vehicles) base, against all possible opponents (http://wiki.minethings.com/index.php?title=Combat) then further complicated by the economies of supply and demand, which I can attest is a problem that does not quietly suffer a full brute force solution even in the middle tiers. For me, it was just an intellectual exercise, that outlived my actual interest in the game by many months, finding a less memory-intensive and nuanced bracketting system that yet sought out 'joker' combinations that stood out from the obvious crowd...)
Actually that looks fairly trivial compared to stuff they did a long time ago.
I remember when advertisements on the internet were not a thing.UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
I remember when advertisements on the internet were not a thing.
Also, that video just goes to show my point- the spread of performance across each game is ridiculously wide, from well-performing on Gradius to being barely able to even play Megaman. It barely even knows how to move in Megaman.
The main issue with machine learning is that algorithms trained for one task tend to suck at any other seemingly-related tasks. You could train a neural net to beat a single level of a Mario game, but I doubt you could make the same neural net beat every single level in the whole game.
As for genetic algorithms, they're really useful for incremental improvements towards a solution, but they have a real issue with getting trapped in ruts or local optima.
...what are you even talking about?
You were the one who brought up the brain part of neural networks before you edited your post. What are you even going on about?
Do you just have a problem with me personally? I'm so confused.
The main issue with machine learning is that algorithms trained for one task tend to suck at any other seemingly-related tasks. You could train a neural net to beat a single level of a Mario game, but I doubt you could make the same neural net beat every single level in the whole game.
Yeah I was kinda surprised at the lack of reactionsWith it being hydrogen, I agree. But if it had been helium, a lack of reactions would have been perfectly within expectations... ;)
Not sure if this belongs here, or in science--Cool shit.
Scientists succeed in reaching milestone in artificial womb tech. Keep lambs alive for over a month in artificial amnionic sac.
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/04/25/525044286/scientists-create-artificial-womb-that-could-help-prematurely-born-babies
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Naturally someone who has different screen sizes/browser width/desired tab-to-urlbar-ratio would want to change the margin values there, but really I can't figure out at this point why I went through the process of using two different addons for a while (hide caption titlebar plus and classic theme restorer) and later just the CTR add-on for something I could accomplish with 30 lines in a .css file.He was inspired by his father, an aeronautical engineer and inventor, who killed himself when Mr Browning was a teenager.
Looks impressive. The part with the Obama speech is slightly worrisome though. I guess it's time to deny video evidence from all court cases. Computer modelling is becoming too indistinguishable from real video, especially with the added ability to make people in videos say anything you want.This was one of the talks last year, which was even more along those lines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohmajJTcpNk
Looks impressive. The part with the Obama speech is slightly worrisome though. I guess it's time to deny video evidence from all court cases. Computer modelling is becoming too indistinguishable from real video, especially with the added ability to make people in videos say anything you want.
SIGGRAPH 2017 technical papers preview video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YvIHREdVX4Detail Preservation In Piling Armadillos. (https://youtu.be/sy5dDJ4zRWg?t=64)
Papers and videos for them can likely be found online if anything looks interesting to you.
It might be the case that using that fake voice editor leaves some fingerprints, e.g. the bit you edited would be mathematically linked to the unedited sample in a way that can be detected.Something like what can be done for images (http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/error-level-analysis-detect-image-manipulation/#gref), though with different criteria, obviously, and possibly in an arms-race as fake-it-apps perform their own pre-passing analysis and jiggling to normalise all the clues back to an indicative value no more than a background amount. (Like checking that your loose steganography also obeys Benford's law, to foil trivial detection of patterns.)
It's a scan of an armadillo toy model thing, from the Stanford datasets https://graphics.stanford.edu/data/3Dscanrep/BRB, creating new religion to worship that bunny and that armadillo.
And as noted on that page, along with the bunny, one of the few canonical models where distortion isn't generally frowned upon.
Police in Durham are preparing to go live with an artificial intelligence (AI) system designed to help officers decide whether or not a suspect should be kept in custody, BBC is reporting. The system classifies suspects at a low, medium or high risk of offending and has been tested by the force. It has been trained on five years' of offending histories data. One expert said the tool could be useful, but the risk that it could skew decisions should be carefully assessed. Data for the Harm Assessment Risk Tool (Hart) was taken from Durham police records between 2008 and 2012. The system was then tested during 2013, and the results -- showing whether suspects did in fact offend or not -- were monitored over the following two years. Forecasts that a suspect was low risk turned out to be accurate 98% of the time, while forecasts that they were high risk were accurate 88% of the time.
If I'm reading this right, the measure of risk that they used is whether a suspect would then later be arrested for a different or perhaps the same crime?
If so, I am immediately terrified of its use in the US. Think about how many minor drug arrests there are. As far as I can tell, the only "risk" it assesses is the risk of the suspect, after being released, committing a crime. Considering how many people in the US are arrested for minor drug offenses, you can imagine how this might skew the thing into saying that every 20-something male in the US is a "high risk" individual.
Well, if you take the current data, including racial profiling biases then there would be some component purely correlated with race, and other components correlated with secondary characteristics that are themselves correlated with race.As for this bit, it's just not true. The patterns you're training on have bias baked into them -- any well trained system will pick up on them, and represent that in whatever way it most effectively can so long as it can find any proxy for that information. If there is literally any way to represent a factor that results in a 10x likelihood of arrest (as being black in the US does https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/18/ferguson-black-arrest-rates/19043207/ ), it will find those links and represent them through any means necessary. And herein lies the problem -- there are tons of very subtle and interrelated systems at work that determine whether a person released from prison will be re-arrested; most of which are outside the realm of anything being captured by the system. Reduce this to a tractable statistical problem, and the end result will be a load of uninterpreted noise plus a strong signal of easily captured bias. It won't be a recidivism predictor, it will be a black male predictor, used to lock people up with no more explanation than "the computer said so, and computers can't be biased." Or as some machine learning folks on twitter put it: "Bias laundering"
If you then eliminate race from your decision process, but allow the secondary characteristics, that's going to change your future data set such that the amount purely associated with race is going to tend towards zero. So yes even with a biased sample base, the process will reduce the amount of racial profiling. There will still be biases in there, but they're not going to be very strong when you eliminate the main one that caused the initial bias. e.g. hypothetically "has dreadlocks" could be a good predictor of being arrested, and that might remain as a correlation if you disallow race data from being entered, but other concrete factors are going to in fact chip away at how well "has dreadlocks" explains variable arrest rates.
It won't be a recidivism predictor, it will be a black male predictor, used to lock people up with no more explanation than "the computer said so, and computers can't be biased." Or as some machine learning folks on twitter put it: "Bias laundering"
Addendums:If you have all the nice tasty goodies, the attackers will be beating on your door to get them. It's about time they figured that out, and stopped hoarding shit like that.There's three things I always point out to people that say "But they won't abuse it!"
1) Are you sure?
2) Even if they don't, it's a massive target
3) You cannot stop an attack, you can only make it take so much time and effort that people give up on it.
A new neural network being built by a Danish startup called UIzard Technologies IVS has created an application that can transform raw designs of graphical user interfaces into actual source code that can be used to build them. Company founder Tony Beltramelli has just published a research paper that reveals how it has achieved that. It uses cutting-edge machine learning technologies to create a neural network that can generate code automatically when it's fed with screenshots of a GUI. The Pix2Code model actually outperforms many human coders because it can create code for three separate platforms, including Android, iOS and "web-based technologies," whereas many programmers are only able to do so for one platform. Pix2Code can create GUIs from screenshots with an accuracy of 77 percent, but that will improve as the algorithm learns more, the founder said.
Apparently commenting on the thing is being argumentative. Didn't know that I can't even post my thoughts on a thing. I'll keep that in mind. You say "discuss" but apparently the moment I try to discuss things it's being argumentative.
As for the link, it'd be this (https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/05/28/startup-uses-ai-create-gui-source-code-simple-screenshots/).
I don't see why you don't ... XYZ
"that headline is dubious - it it recreates GUIs, not entire programs"
"Looks rather nifty, but I'm not exactly sure of its use Given that with modern IDEs, developing GUIs is as simple as a drag-and-drop procedure,"
Still, I'm not exactly sure what problem this tool is trying to solve. Neat demonstration, though.
According to the EIA, renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal power accounted for 10.68 percent of total electricity generation in the first quarter of 2017. If you include electricity from conventional hydroelectric plants, renewables made up nearly a fifth of total electricity generation—as much as 19.35 percent.So the US grid is apparently now at nearly 20% renewable generation.
GOOGLE’S AUTOMLStupid neural networks, stop being so damn effective!
One of the more noteworthy remarks to come out of Google I/O ’17 conference this week was CEO Sundar Pichai recalling how his team had joked that they have achieved “AI inception” with AutoML. Instead of crafting layers of dreams like in the Christopher Nolan flick, however, the AutoML system layers artificial intelligence (AI), with AI systems creating better AI systems.
The AutoML project focuses on deep learning, a technique that involves passing data through layers of neural networks. Creating these layers is complicated, so Google’s idea was to create AI that could do it for them.
“In our approach (which we call ‘AutoML’), a controller neural net can propose a ‘child’ model architecture, which can then be trained and evaluated for quality on a particular task,” the company explains on the Google Research Blog. “That feedback is then used to inform the controller how to improve its proposals for the next round. We repeat this process thousands of times — generating new architectures, testing them, and giving that feedback to the controller to learn from.”
So far, they have used the AutoML tech to design networks for image and speech recognition tasks. In the former, the system matched Google’s experts. In the latter, it exceeded them, designing better architectures than the humans were able to create.
Actually that's a genetic algorithm arrangement, on top of the neural networks.
In our approach (which we call "AutoML"), a controller neural net can propose a “child” model architecture, which can then be trained and evaluated for quality on a particular task. That feedback is then used to inform the controller how to improve its proposals for the next round. We repeat this process thousands of times — generating new architectures, testing them, and giving that feedback to the controller to learn from. Eventually the controller learns to assign high probability to areas of architecture space that achieve better accuracy on a held-out validation dataset, and low probability to areas of architecture space that score poorly. Here’s what the process looks like:
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0nzARW3QtkA/WRtuVsUJ02I/AAAAAAAAB0s/t6ncpAH6VfIzkr2tWW8CnE6U2Es2Bs1BgCLcB/s1600/image3.png)
It's an genetic programming structure, it doesn't really matter if the evaluation function is a neural network or not.The genetic programming structure, as far as I understand, is this:
There are some criteria, different examples are created, then they are evaluated against the criteria, and new models are proposed. The only thing novel is that they're using an NN as the selection basis, but that in itself is just an example of generalization, since an NN can mimic many functions.
The giveaway in that diagram is where it says "Sample architecture with probability p". That part of the process is rolling dice, which is what you do with genetic algorithms, and is external to the neural network.
What I'm guessing is that they trained a separate "training NN" to guesstimate how effective each of the "target" NNs would be at learning the task based on real performance data of random networks. You can then rinse and repeat, but you use the "training NNs" predictions to guide you on which randomly-modified networks are the more promising ones.
Generate a population of structuresSimilarity between this and the method Google has used for AutoML is very vague. It's not much of a genetic algorithm, when its "generated population of structures" is one, singular, structure.
Repeat
Test the structures for quality
Select structures to reproduce
Produce new variations of selected structures
Replace old structures with new ones
Until Satisfied
It's a nice approach but i don't think it's overly novel, because an amateur like me can think it up.It's annoying, right? Even an amateur like you could think of a method that's capable of beating highly qualified professionals from Google at doing something as difficult as configuring neural networks for maximizing accuracy, and its all because neural networks are made of pure hax and I don't even know why I'm wasting time trying to learn other methods when the cheating, winning approach, is right there, kicking asses and taking names.
(with what mechanism?)Well, if we take the picture at the face value, it somehow computes a "gradient of probability" (whatever that means) and then scales it by accuracy to obtain a datapoint, with which it then updates the neural network in charge. It would be good if they had a paper up there to explain how do they compute said "gradient of probability".
Eventually the controller learns to assign high probability to areas of architecture space that achieve better accuracy on a held-out validation dataset, and low probability to areas of architecture space that score poorly.
So, my understanding is that it generates a neural network architecture and then proceeds to train a neural network on this architecture, then evaluates how to improve this model (with what mechanism?) and attempts the changes over the model, running it through the process over again.
Not a genetic algorithm per se, but it depends on the mechanism employed to evaluate and improve the child neural network.
...But then I remember that shit can already be solved by having decent welfare.(IRTA "warfare"...)
...But then I remember that shit can already be solved by having decent welfare.It's only after playing Democracy 3 that I realized that decent welfare is basically a myth.
I do sometimes wonder why people make things in such inefficient ways. Maybe beard combs are designed to be as hipster and look as oldschool as possible, at the expense of actually doing the job.I hope hipsters decide beards are lame soon, sick of the fuckers already, but I originally thought the breakage prevention thing was the reason too.
Or it could just be a breakage prevention thing.
As for the Luxury bit, that comes down to what happens next. Supply everyone's needs, and ensure they will continue to be supplied, and you will end up with a lot of things happening. Suddenly you've got an entire class of people freed from jobs they hate which were useless to society anyway who can pursue their interests. Art, philosophy, posting videos of their cat with a box on its head; all those things that will not be fully automated precisely because they have no value to Capitalism (okay, so the cat one might be automated). "Tax the rich" is very much a misconception, as it's as similarly revolutionary a shift in how society functions as the transition from subsistence farming to cities founded on excess harvests. Not a policy change, but rather a fundamental change to how society operates based on that fact that all these people are no longer necessary for survival and are worthless to traditional economics, and society can choose to either value people for existing or discard them. The themes of cyberpunk, essentially.It's not a theme of the stories, but The Culture is the best example, I think, of a truly communist utopia, but yeah, making things because you like them, like doing it, jobs involving performance as part of the task itself like slapping pizza dough with big dramatic spins and tosses for the hell of it, that's fun, worth doing for some sort of payment.
The great irony being, the only reason to hoard wealth like this is because of a lack of stable socialist systems that would guarantee a decent retirement or secure income in the case of illness. Which is really the *entire* reason the middle and upper middle class own financial assets. So maybe that's an indication of how silly things are already.You can probably hear my eye twitching from there, had I a monocle it would have shattered when it hit the wall.
Pushing artificially over-valued objects around for artificial increases in that value so you can have a little portion of it chipped off so you can use it to purchase other over-valued objects including ones you require to live?Sad thing is, you have to realize that the people who will be pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence are the same people who stand to profit off it.
Nah, fuck capitalism in the ass, fuck supply and demand "invisible hand" bullshit.
Thoughts on modern comb design:I like working with wood though, this isn't about doing it optimally, it's about making something that I enjoy having made. The combs in the post above yours both had teeth the same length and annoying ass end bars, now the one on the left has the shape I found useful for beard stuff, the one on the right has smoothed down and rounded off end bars and unsharpened teeth now. I could probably find similar designs, but it's satisfying making the ones we had into something I like more.
Utility over aesthetics.
The curved toothline of a modern come is there because the main place you use a comb is on the head, not the beard. The head is curvaceous, and a curved comb will have all the teeth touching the scalp.
The thick and fine teeth on the same comb is for utility. For the price of 1 comb, you can get 2 combs worth of utiity. A detangling comb (big wide teeth) and a straightening comb (finely spaced small teeth). Just flip the comb around for the job you are doing.
For special uses, combs are still specialty items. Picks for instance, or combs for very curly hair, or for holding hair in place rather than grooming it.
Rather than wood though, I would suggest ABS plastic and a good 3D printer. With vapor smoothing, you can get a very nice finish on the resulting comb. Sufficiently smooth that you can make an injection cast mold from it, and reproduce it with other materials.
[/b]When fellow board member Arianna Huffington said that having one female board member increases the chance of getting another female board member, Bonderman replied that "the only chance that increases is the chance for more bullocks".
So there's nothing fucking magical about tax breaks that makes more GDP happen.On the one hand that's really interesting stuff, and on the other hand, the whole 'More poor people spending more poordollars on their little necessities is good for the economy' thing makes me feel even more depressed.
Bullock may refer to:UBER is an American company yeah?
Bullock (in British English), a castrated male bovine animal of any age
Bullock (in North America), a young bull (an uncastrated male bovine animal)
Bullock (in Australia and New Zealand), an ox, an adult bovine animal used for draught (usually but not always a castrated male)
Alway, he said "Bullock", so unless it's a misspelling, then it's not "bollocks"I probably misspelled it. I am not sure if he actually said bollocks, I translated it back from dutch from being translated from english. He said something along the line of 'bollocks, drivel, tattle, twaddle, etc.'
The biggest threat to transatlantic internet cables are.... whales. Apparently they really enjoy toying with wires at 4km depth on the sea bottom.
So if your internet fails you, just sue Greenpeace.
I heard on the internet once that artificial meat will be to animal husbandry what the tractor was to slavery.
Very interesting stuff.
Energy density has to be shit though - just look at all the oxygen in the molecule.
-snip-Now watch as it goes nowhere for decades because of the oil lobbyists.
It's nicknamed 'Hydrogen 2.0' by the student team.I would have lobbied to call it "anty-hydrogen"... ;)
Naah, MOM contains just one oxygen.Energy density has to be shit though - just look at all the oxygen in the molecule.
Your MOM is full of oxygen.
Naah, MOM contains just one oxygen.Energy density has to be shit though - just look at all the oxygen in the molecule.
Your MOM is full of oxygen.
M stands for Yourmomium.There isn't an element with a shorthand that is just 'M' though, unless you flip it so it becomes WOW, the W being Tungsten.Naah, MOM contains just one oxygen.Energy density has to be shit though - just look at all the oxygen in the molecule.
Your MOM is full of oxygen.
Context. (http://www.synarchive.com/protecting-group/Phenol_Methoxymethyl_acetal)Naah, MOM contains just one oxygen.Energy density has to be shit though - just look at all the oxygen in the molecule.
Your MOM is full of oxygen.
There isn't an element with a shorthand that is just 'M' though, unless you flip it so it becomes WOW, the W being Tungsten.
unless you flip it so it becomes WOW
Uh, your mom is full of amino acids, which are amines and carboxyl groups.Naah, MOM contains just one oxygen.Energy density has to be shit though - just look at all the oxygen in the molecule.
Your MOM is full of oxygen.
A team of students from my hometown's university, that proved last year they could run a small miniature car on formic acid, has now upscaled their design.Have the fellows released a scholarly article yet?
HCO2H is 2/5 Hydrogen, but I've never thought of Oxygen as a... low energy atom, I mean, the various terrifying hydrogen compounds don't have shit on fun stuff you can do with a couple oxygens and a couple flourines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioxygen_difluoride).Unless you're looking at nuclear reactions, all the relevant energy is in the bonds, not the atoms themselves. And in formic acid a lot of bonds are already low-energy, since they're the same type of bond that occurs in the combustion product. It's not too inaccurate to think of formic acid as CO2 + H2, or rather CO + H2O. So for every hydrogen molecule that's "stored" in a molecule of formic acid, you're lugging around a whole molecule of carbon dioxide.
Not sure if they released a scholarly article yet. What I wrote was freely translated from a Volkskrant article.A team of students from my hometown's university, that proved last year they could run a small miniature car on formic acid, has now upscaled their design.Have the fellows released a scholarly article yet?
Would be very keen to give it a peek
Also, unsure if that was firsthand writing but if so, very journalism, much concise, well entertain, good read.
Feels like that post would have better served someone who lacks basic chemistry knowledge.HCO2H is 2/5 Hydrogen, but I've never thought of Oxygen as a... low energy atom, I mean, the various terrifying hydrogen compounds don't have shit on fun stuff you can do with a couple oxygens and a couple flourines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioxygen_difluoride).[snipped stuff I knew][/snipped stuff I knew]
Powering things with formic acid has some interesting mind images. From horrid Alien-esque biotechnology. All the way to silly Flintstones derived ideas of "technology." "Oh, my ant engine has indigestion today."I had the image of drone engines swarming after the queen engine grows wings and her mates join her.
Granted, I know formic acid exists outside of ant butts, but that's where its inextricably tied to in my mind.
I would have lobbied to call it "anty-hydrogen"... ;)…hydr(a|o)zine is positively benign!
See, this gets very confusing very quickly...(https://media0.giphy.com/media/8fen5LSZcHQ5O/200_s.gif)
It's also annoying when as an individual you can reduce commuting, buy an electric car, whatever, and then you see a garbage truck belching black sooty smoke down the street, which just basically erased every action you took.
QuoteIt's also annoying when as an individual you can reduce commuting, buy an electric car, whatever, and then you see a garbage truck belching black sooty smoke down the street, which just basically erased every action you took.
I have an issue with this statement too. It's a gut feeling but not really much more than that.
Also - yeah, the economics discussion about payments isn't always simple - but the general rule of economic discussion is "all else equal".
If the repayments are over two years, the choices are to suck up paying the interest, or to wait 2 years to get a car. And two years without a car is not a very rational decision.I feel like there are some inconsistent assumptions here - if a person is a rational economic actor, there is no choice to "suck up paying the interest or wait 2 years...without a car". A rational actor would either intentionally finance because they could get a higher return on their cash than they are paying for the financing (and don't care about being tied to a loan contract) or if they had an incident that wrecked their car they either had it insured or have sufficient savings to cover it. At the very least, a person (like me) who doesn't like to finance a car will pay themselves car payments over the life of their current vehicle so they can purchase a replacement outright after the planned useful period of the current one.
rational economic actorhahahahahahahahahahaha
insured
Yes.
At the worst possible circumstance, you save 1$ over not purchasing the widget. (who does not like the equivalent of free money?).
At the best possible circumstance, the other three tenants decide to also purchase the widget, and now you have a sizable reduction in the electrical costs.
If the widget has ancillary functions that would offset the perceived large initial investment (Does it also do some useful function? Especially something that caters to convenience or leisure activity?) then the appeal of the widget will increase, and the desirability of the item will also increase, increasing the chances that your fellow boarders will purchase one.
There is no real circumstance where you are left holding a bag with less money than before, so the answer is a flat "yes." You should purchase.
No, do not purchase the bitcoin mining widget. (At the best case, you are defrauding your neighbors, and if they get the bright idea to also buy them, you will be cumulatively (as a group) be losing vastly more money than any one would gain exclusively. It is a foolish choice to purchase the mining widget.
You have little interaction with the other tenants.It seems like you guys are being purposefully daft.
Humans are actually capable of modeling the decisions of other humans, and can rationally decide not to form an economic suicide pact. Nobody has an incentive to intentionally self-sabotage by causing a predictable tragedy-of-the-commons.
If you buy a certain widget it that you put in your room, it costs $3 to run, but saves $4 in electricity. You will save $1 on your share of the electric bill, but have spent $3. Should you buy the widget?
They do though. e.g. you're breathing everyone else's car smog. It's cheaper for them to spew smog than to drive a non-smog car, but individually, the costs of all the smog cars in fact exceed the benefits per-person of cheaper transport.I'm not, bro, I live in a forest. Maybe you should try living somewhere that isn't Beijing?
What? No.
Firstly, you are not factoring in that your power use is also divested amongst the tenants. It costs 3$ to operate, but you only pay a fraction of that if the other tenants dont adopt. :P
Secondly, the device saves more money than it costs to operate. This guarantees a break-even point, regardless of how many ways you slice up the added efficiency. The number of ways you slice it just increases the time it takes to reach that point.
Humans are actually capable of modeling the decisions of other humans, and can rationally decide not to form an economic suicide pact. Nobody has an incentive to intentionally self-sabotage by causing a predictable tragedy-of-the-commons.
- you live in a boarding house building with 3 other people. All electric bills are split. You have little interaction with the other tenants.
If you buy a certain widget it that you put in your room, it costs $3 to run, but saves $4 in electricity. You will save $1 on your share of the electric bill, but have spent $3. Should you buy the widget?
Conversely, you can buy another widget, but this one consumes $4 worth of electricity but makes $3 worth of bitcoins. You will make a net profit of $2 per widget by owning it. Should you buy this widget?
Based on rational economic choices, you shouldn't buy the energy-saving widget, but you should buy the energy-wasting widget. In fact, going off purely ratonal economic logic, everyone should in face keep accumulating more and more energy-wasting widgets until the entire house collapses. There's never a point at which buying an individual energy-waster widget will cost you more than it makes.
you live in a boarding house building with 3 other people.
All electric bills are split.
costs $3 to run
but saves $4 in electricity.
Let me put the nail in this, OK?
Here are your rules. YOUR RULES. NOT MINE. YOURS.Quote- you live in a boarding house building with 3 other people. All electric bills are split. You have little interaction with the other tenants.
If you buy a certain widget it that you put in your room, it costs $3 to run, but saves $4 in electricity. You will save $1 on your share of the electric bill, but have spent $3. Should you buy the widget?
Conversely, you can buy another widget, but this one consumes $4 worth of electricity but makes $3 worth of bitcoins. You will make a net profit of $2 per widget by owning it. Should you buy this widget?
Based on rational economic choices, you shouldn't buy the energy-saving widget, but you should buy the energy-wasting widget. In fact, going off purely ratonal economic logic, everyone should in face keep accumulating more and more energy-wasting widgets until the entire house collapses. There's never a point at which buying an individual energy-waster widget will cost you more than it makes.
Here are the pertinent bits:Quoteyou live in a boarding house building with 3 other people.
So, there are 4 total people in the house, including yourself.QuoteAll electric bills are split.
THAT IS VERY IMPORTANT.Quotecosts $3 to run
Taken with the "All bills split", this means our share of the cost is .75$ per period, since .75*4=3Quotebut saves $4 in electricity.
Since all bills are split, that 4$ in efficiency is also split. Your share is 1$ per period.
1$ > .75$, so there is a break even.
As long as [CostToMine] > [ValueOfMinedCoin], it is a poor investment, no matter how you slice it.
Smog reduction in LA isn't because of individual choices sacrificing for the greater good, it's because California as a state enacted stricter emission standards. Government action is a different thing from choices made by individuals.Uh huh. Remind me, who makes up the government, again? Who elects them, who runs for office, who writes and signs and mails in the petitions? Is it reptilians? It's reptilians, isn't it.
You did NOT specify that the device does not run on electricity, then get all huffy when I point out that if it does (a reasonable conclusion, given all other costs are from electricity), then there certainly is a break even point.
The bit miner, in contrast, DOES run on electricity, and its cost of operation being distributed is fundamental to the calculus.
Either you want it both ways (apples and apples), or you are backpedalling to have it be different (apples and oranges)
It costs 3$ per period to run.
A widget is a physical object. And I said you have to pay money to run it, but it saves electricity.Do you really not get that people are assuming the cost to run it is a utility cost, such as electricity?
e.g. if I said you could buy 10 apples for $3 would you say that the $3 was also apples?. . .
A widget is a physical object. And I said you have to pay money to run it, but it saves electricity.Do you really not get that people are assuming the cost to run it is a utility cost, such as electricity?
Which, frankly, is perfectly sensible since you never specified otherwise and what kind of device have you ever seen that you have to pay money to run directly in your own home? Is this some kind of coin-op generator? Does it turn pennies into electricity?
A widget is a physical object. And I said you have to pay money to run it, but it saves electricity.Do you really not get that people are assuming the cost to run it is a utility cost, such as electricity?
Which, frankly, is perfectly sensible since you never specified otherwise and what kind of device have you ever seen that you have to pay money to run directly in your own home? Is this some kind of coin-op generator? Does it turn pennies into electricity?
I just said "cost to run it". That's just TCO. The fact that I said that you have to own it personally in your room and don't interact with the other tenants implies it's not a shared cost.It only implies that inside your own head, since you never stated as much. Don't assume that other people will interpret the ambiguity the same way you do.
you live in a boarding house building with 3 other people. All electric bills are split. You have little interaction with the other tenants.
If you buy a certain widget it that you put in your room, it costs $3 to run, but saves $4 in electricity. You will save $1 on your share of the electric bill, but have spent $3. Should you buy the widget?
A widget is a physical object. And I said you have to pay money to run it, but it saves electricity.Do you really not get that people are assuming the cost to run it is a utility cost, such as electricity?
Which, frankly, is perfectly sensible since you never specified otherwise and what kind of device have you ever seen that you have to pay money to run directly in your own home? Is this some kind of coin-op generator? Does it turn pennies into electricity?
I just said "cost to run it". That's just TCO. The fact that I said that you have to own it personally in your room and don't interact with the other tenants implies it's not a shared cost.
You will save $1 on your share of the electric bill, but have spent $3. Should you buy the widget?
You will save $1 on your share of the electric bill, but have spent $3.
If you buy a certain widget it that you put in your room, it costs $3 to run
You will save $1 on your share of the electric bill, but have spent $3.
Uh, no I'm not sure how you could draw that conclusion from the original statement. It says that the widget saves $4 worth of electricity, which is off the house's shared electric bill, so $1 per person. All those things were in black and white on the original post, so i'm not sure how you could say they were the ambiguous parts.
The OP states how much the bill was changed by the widget being there, $4. And that if you have one then it costs you $3 to run, personally. (hence, "in your room" and "limited interaction").QuoteYou will save $1 on your share of the electric bill, but have spent $3. Should you buy the widget?
$3 is just listed as an abstract cost here, but it's clearly indicated to be separate from what you saved on your share of the electric bill.
I just said it's money. And it was listed as a separate category from the electric bill. How much simpler does that need to be?QuoteYou will save $1 on your share of the electric bill, but have spent $3.
the "but" here is clearly saying the $3 is a separate cost that's not part of the electric bill.
Who's $3 would you spend if you make a personal decision to put a thing in your room, and you don't have interaction with the other people?
Who's $3 would you spend if you make a personal decision to put a thing in your room, and you don't have interaction with the other people?
Who's $3 would you spend if you make a personal decision to put a thing in your room, and you don't have interaction with the other people?
What does that have to do with the bill?? It'll matter the first bill, but not the next...
The cost was mentioned as being separate from the bill however.
There is a common misconception that Nash equilibria represent the best possible outcomes of a rational actor. This is false. Nash equilibria represent the best possible outcomes of a rational actor surrounded by idiots; a group of rational actors capable of modelling one another's rational decisions can and will do better.You've implicitly made a shift from one-time games to games over multiple periods. Applying Reels's (intended) scenario there, you could for example buy an LED once, hope the rest of the house notices the reduced consumption, does the math, and switches to efficient bulbs as well. Part of your strategy however should be a plan for when that does not in fact happen, which should result in you not buying more LEDs either.
One thing about the TCO thing or car loans costing more than the up front costs, those aren't necessarily economically irrational or short-sighted choices.
The point is: if a cool lightbulb is $30 and saves $40 of power over it's lifespan (which is therefore a time-invariant decision) and bills are shared with even one other person, then there's zero economic incentive for either one person to get one and put it in their room. You spend $30 and get only $20 back. So it fails the "rational choice" test because you chose the option that left you worse off.
Even if you get an electric car or hybrid with a loan, wouldn't the pay off point be cumulative because you're still using an electric car or hybrid? Sure you might not get there with that specific car, but over time and cumulatively you'll get there?
McTraveller has a point with climate change in that you may be aware of someplace flooding halfway around the world, but you wouldn't know precisely how it affects you, until it does affect you.
A "break-even point" or "payoff point" is the point in time at which a choice with a higher up-front cost, becomes cost-neutral compared to a choice with a lower up-front cost. After that point, you start saving money. Do you get this part? I feel like i'm spoon-feeding some pretty basic stuff here.
A "break-even point" or "payoff point" is the point in time at which a choice with a higher up-front cost, becomes cost-neutral compared to a choice with a lower up-front cost. After that point, you start saving money. Do you get this part? I feel like i'm spoon-feeding some pretty basic stuff here.
And the problem with "cumulative" effect of switching is that in some few years you will probably get another car and the type of car you get then is another decision point which is unrelated to the type you get now, so you don't in fact gain a long-term advantage beyond the lifespan of any one car.
But ... you did write "electric car" in that context so I'm not sure how you could be confused about what the topic was. Clearly the "break even point of getting an electric car" means "vs getting a petrol car". That isn't something that should need to be pointed out over and over to have a conversation about this stuff. It's fairly basic common sense.
I hate to be the one to say this, but all of you deserve this argument.
The type of emphasis-signifier is, in fact, less important than where the emphasis is applied.Hilarious thing is, that's exactly the point I was making! :D
The type of emphasis-signifier is, in fact, less important than where the emphasis is applied.Hilarious thing is, that's exactly the point I was making! :D
Korean scientists succeeded in creating methane from CO2, water and sunlight, using copper and zinc nanoparticles as catalysts.
Even though the efficiency so far is only 1.5%, the process yields 99% pure methane, and takes place under standard pressure and temperature.
Furthermore, the zinc and copper catalysts are cheap easy to produce, and appear stable over time, which was a problem with earlier studies into the production of methane as a solar fuel.
Using atmospheric CO2 in it's production also makes solar methane a CO2-neutral alternative to fossil methane.
Producing methane with sunlight isn't economically viable yet, but when natural gas price rises as global reserves deplete, it might very well be 30 years from now.
https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/koreanen-toveren-aardgas-uit-co2-en-een-zonnestraal~a4534068/ (https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/koreanen-toveren-aardgas-uit-co2-en-een-zonnestraal~a4534068/)
The real issue here would be whether the total labor value of doing this process would be less than just planting more plants to make CO2 into stuff. That's questionable.Intensively growing microbes is still a fairly energy-hungry method I believe, and of course runs into the "GM is evil!" Bogeyman who would strongly resist the use of these.
We can already make methane from biosources, so if we want to do that I'm pretty sure bio-engineering some microbes might be more efficient than this.
The real issue here would be whether the total labor value of doing this process would be less than just planting more plants to make CO2 into stuff.Chlorophyll is actually fairly inefficient, and plants produce all sort of crap that is not what you want, i.e. methane. Though I wonder whether it wouldn't be more economic to run a process like this with hydrogen or electricity or whatever, so you can do it in a huge chemical plant instead of spread-out in a field somewhere.
You've implicitly made a shift from one-time games to games over multiple periods. Applying Reels's (intended) scenario there, you could for example buy an LED once, hope the rest of the house notices the reduced consumption, does the math, and switches to efficient bulbs as well. Part of your strategy however should be a plan for when that does not in fact happen, which should result in you not buying more LEDs either.Nah man, with perfect trust (everyone can model everyone else's choices) you get "buy the widget" in a one-time game, because everyone will buy the widget, knowing that everyone else will also buy the widget, without needing to "notice" whether the others did (because it's implicitly known that they will). This results in convoluted sentences because of the infinite regression of common knowledge, but it still works fine. You only need "a plan for when that does not in fact happen" if it is not in fact common knowledge that the other players are perfectly rational actors, which of course obtains in the real world all the time, but also means that you are not operating within the domain of game-theory rationality. Attempting to apply game theory to real-world situations simply fails all over the place and you'd have to pretty dumb (or Reelya, apparently) to try.
I think that Reels was originally considering the scenario as a one-time game, so the solution he gives is indeed correct. For a (n infinitely) repeated game it should come down to something like Grim Trigger (the Nash equilibrium, IIRC) and Tit-for-tat (interestingly not a Nash equilibrium, IIRC - there might be some mathematical weirdness about infinite series going on there).
The real issue here would be whether the total labor value of doing this process would be less than just planting more plants to make CO2 into stuff. That's questionable.Intensively growing microbes is still a fairly energy-hungry method I believe, and of course runs into the "GM is evil!" Bogeyman who would strongly resist the use of these.
We can already make methane from biosources, so if we want to do that I'm pretty sure bio-engineering some microbes might be more efficient than this.
Nope. If you know the others are going to buy the widgets, you'd be better of not buying one yourself. That's the whole point, really. If you don't believe me, go look up the frickin' prisoners' dilemma on Wikipedia. Buying the widget corresponds to keeping mum, not buying it corresponds to ratting out the other guy.No, you don't know the others are going to buy the widgets, you just know that everyone will make the same decision, whatever it is, in which case the logical thing for everyone to do is buy the widget. This is a real thing, I'm not making it up, it's just a higher level concept than you'll get on Wikipedia.
We figure it will probably take politically-unencumbered cheap fusion reactors to do it, but if (super)novae can do it, why can't we!?
Nope. If you know the others are going to buy the widgets, you'd be better of not buying one yourself. That's the whole point, really. If you don't believe me, go look up the frickin' prisoners' dilemma on Wikipedia. Buying the widget corresponds to keeping mum, not buying it corresponds to ratting out the other guy.No, you don't know the others are going to buy the widgets, you just know that everyone will make the same decision, whatever it is, in which case the logical thing for everyone to do is buy the widget. This is a real thing, I'm not making it up, it's just a higher level concept than you'll get on Wikipedia.
you're pointing out things that aren't actually important points.That's the point, most people genuinely cannot just view these thought experiments in a vacuum, because they can't exclude their own experience from colouring their interpretations of the premises, so changing the phrasing can totally change the responses and all of these surveys are futile.
a starting point [...], not an example to 100% be taken literallyPeople in this thread appear to have a difficult time understanding this concept.
People in this thread appear to have a difficult time understanding this concept.Literally my point
(Unrelated Aside: Last night I said 'fantasy tech' and perhaps I should have said 'fantastic tech' instead. But there is also the old quote about how sufficiently advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic, so 'fantasy tech' isn't really that far out of reason...)
There's always the awful solution.
Everyone wants to be the one person whose life all self-driving cars are designed to spare at all costs, whether they're in them or not; this is no different from what they want from human-driven cars, but people are more comfortable making impossible demands of robots.
Well, then, why not sell that? (That question is rhetorical.) Auction off avoidance priorities, and just have the cars communicate with each other and with the pedestrians' phones to decide who to hit based on a greedy algorithm that steers them away from the highest-priority individuals in the vicinity.
Yes, it's awful in countless ways. But it makes the automated car executives more money than any other solution I've seen so far, so it's probably going to be the one we end up implementing.
There's always the awful solution.
Everyone wants to be the one person whose life all self-driving cars are designed to spare at all costs, whether they're in them or not; this is no different from what they want from human-driven cars, but people are more comfortable making impossible demands of robots.
Well, then, why not sell that? (That question is rhetorical.) Auction off avoidance priorities, and just have the cars communicate with each other and with the pedestrians' phones to decide who to hit based on a greedy algorithm that steers them away from the highest-priority individuals in the vicinity.
Yes, it's awful in countless ways. But it makes the automated car executives more money than any other solution I've seen so far, so it's probably going to be the one we end up implementing.
With any luck that idea would be immediately struck down in courts. This is essentially a "pay-to-not-die" scenario; it violates basic human rights. Yes, it's true we generally have to pay for food, shelter, and other basic necessities, but if we are unable to do so, our rights state that we are provided them nonetheless.Risks are different from necessities. Living in a well-funded, low-crime area isn't a right, even though it affects your chances of dying. Death panels!
So new situations are often phrased as being variants of the Trolley Problem so that we can make use off 50 years of ethics research rather than going in blind to every new situation, which wouldn't allow us to tap into 50 years of insights and research on the existing framework.
Yeah, there's plenty of information out there, but you don't need that information to form an opinion and then defend it to the death.
Can I sig this?
Can I sig this?
Sigged!
No, Sheb, I refuse to be sigged yet again. I think there's three people running around with me in their sigs, I don't think I could take the stress of a fourth. My skin crawls just imagining it...sigged
AI learning cuts down render time from dozens of hours to minutes. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wt-9fjPDjQ&feature=youtu.be)Ersatz clouds! Awesome!
Doubtful if they'll ever release it for wider use since the commercial application is pretty damn huge in terms of time saved but it's still a damn cool thing to see happen.
It's actually... interesting. I wonder if it could somehow apply to all those discussions about people wondering about the computational power required to "compute" the universe. I've heard some people hand-wave it as "the universe isn't computed, it just evolves" but perhaps something like this AI stuff applies. For instance, if all you had was the output of the ANN-produced clouds, would you come up with the physics behind cloud scattering? Or does it only work the other way - where you have to already know how a cloud works to make a neural network that can make things that look like clouds, but aren't really clouds.
Well we're not actually pushing the limits with neural network topologies, are we? So you'd expect to have limited outcomes.
Pretty much everyone even "deep learning" people are in fact just using one-way signal processing which feeds one layer into the next, until it reaches an "output" layer. And then you have some "training" process that alters the weights, but this "training" process is applied external to the network itself. We haven't in fact worked out how to create a "learning" system which is itself part of the normal operation of a neural network.
Consider that real-life neural networks don't even have "layers" and that they have loopbacks, memory and a concept of signals flowing through the network over time, plus they are truly self-teaching: there is no need for a training harness which is outside the network. None of those things are true of the current "deep learning" stuff.
Right now the emphasis is just on adding more layers, more processing power, more training data to get the most out of our one-way layered networks. "deep learning" is just a buzzword that means they have more layers, thus they need more processing power. The network topology isn't actually any less simplistic. There's nothing "deep" in terms of "more complex networking" going on. At some point that's clearly going to come up against some sort of wall where merely adding more processing power and bigger training sets isn't cost-effective vs coming up with smarter topologies.
The types of neural networks we have now are equivalent to having a pocket calculator and not knowing how to use any buttons except "+", "-", "=" then blaming the calculator when it's difficult to calculate a multiplication or division. We're just not exploring a whole lot of the design-space of neural networks at all.
A deep neural network (DNN) is an ANN with multiple hidden layers between the input and output layers.[10][2] Similar to shallow ANNs, DNNs can model complex non-linear relationships.
Oh. I could've sworn that was the algorithm behind Cleverbot...
But I do think you misunderstood me as well. I wasn't talking about something with state; I was talking about something which takes as input the previous character/word in the sequence and outputs a prediction of the next one. You would feed it some text by inputting each character of the text into it separately, and then adjusting the weights by comparing its prediction and the actual next character. So if you have the word "the," you would first input the "t", get a "z", adjust the weights so it's more likely to output an "h", then feed it the "h", adjust it so it's more likely to output an "e", etc. If you want to use this neural network to generate text after it's been trained, then you would simply give it a first character, and then repeatedly use it on the last character it outputted to generate a new character, until you have a string of the desired length. It's the principle behind many random text generators out there.
T might have a 30% chance of being followed by H in all cases of T, but if the T immediately comes after 'bandwid' then the chances of it being followed by H shoots up considerably. And that's information that a Markov Chain can't consider without greatly increasing the size of the current state and thus the memory and calculations needed to form the Chain.
Isn't that just going to increase the size/memory-requirements of the graph though? Especially if you're considering language and the like? I was trying to mention that at the end of that paragraph. This subject is hardly my area of expertise so I apologize for not being clearer or simply talking out of my ass. I just can't imagine a way of constructing a Markov Chain to sensibly generate highly context-specific data, like with language, without structuring it such that each state is so large in terms of data/input/whatever that it defeats the purpose of using a Markov Chain. It's not really meant to be applied in those situations.
PARKOUR! (https://youtu.be/fRj34o4hN4I)Yeah, Atlas is the most representative example of the cutting edge of bipedal robot engineering, and has been for a while.
Much of the language these start-ups use to describe themselves is ripe for parody. Krash calls itself a “particle accelerator for people.” A company called Ollie is developing North America’s largest co-living development in Long Island City, Queens, and has created an app called Bedvetter to match roommates. Yes, they named it that on purpose.
Press
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...it was engineered to instead do something like: Press
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Future of Life Institute published this video at the UN autonomous weapons convention in Geneva today.
https://youtu.be/HipTO_7mUOw
Perhaps I should have put it in the 'what made you terrified today' thread
The future is terrifying. I do honestly believe something of this nature is inevitable, unless we find some way to break the correlation between sociopathic greed and positions of power.
Actually I've given this a little more thought and something worrying came to me.As a 22 year old American who works at and has been going to college for a few years: what are you talking about? This is not what most people are like.
NYU professor Johnothan Haidt in his videos (well worth the time even if you disagree with his ideas) talks about how after a few highly publicized child murders in the 1980s - around when they started doing the "milk carton" thing, parents started doing serious levels of "helicopter parenting" and stopped letting kids e.g. go outside and play unsupervised. At least they did in the middle class urban areas of the USA, don't know about the rural South etc. But in the places where they generally have the money to send you to college to get a professional degree, they mostly did this. Wealthy people have less kids, each one is a higher investment, gets more attention. Too much attention.
Then when the first generations of kids raised like that hit colleges they started demanding "official" responses to anything and everything that could possible offend them (notably, 2013+ on campuses). Basically, if someone calls you a name on campus now and you can plausibly link that to your identity in any way, the normal response is now to submit a formal complaint to Title IX or some diversity tribunal, or call the Dean of the school directly, even before you talk to the person to tell them you were offended. The norm is now to get someone else to deal with it. e.g. these kids had 18 years of their parents sticking up for them any time anything remotely challenging happens, e.g. if someone calls you a name, they have few coping skills. Even consensual sexual encounters are now codified with complex sets of rules that both parties are supposed to memorize at campuses. Basically, quite a few modern college kids have almost zero of the normal life skills in negotiating with other people - there has always been someone else who does that for you, and clearly delineated rulebooks for how to interact. e.g. their life is like a school-run Junior Disco, writ large, right up to when you leave college.
Then suddenly, they have to find a house, get along with flatmates, negotiate life's complexities. But the system inherently shields them from having to learn any of that at college. The kids themselves are the driving force now in implementing these campus "speech laws" and "relationship laws", not the college administrators.
So think about it, modern post-2010 college graduates, born in the helicopter-parenting 1990s, they graduate from a college dorm never having had to manage a house or apartment of their own, or really deal with meaningful interactions with anyone else, then a company comes along and promises them an instant house full of Friendstm, no cleaning, no bills, just add money. To someone who's had 22 years of other people picking up for them, that might sound much more attractive, than it would to use who've basically been out of home since 18.
I once saw an adjunct not get his contract renewed after students complained that he exposed them to "offensive" texts written by Edward Said and Mark Twain. His response, that the texts were meant to be a little upsetting, only fueled the students' ire and sealed his fate. That was enough to get me to comb through my syllabi and cut out anything I could see upsetting a coddled undergrad, texts ranging from Upton Sinclair to Maureen Tkacik — and I wasn't the only one who made adjustments, either.
Basically, if someone calls you a name on campus now [...] the normal response is now to submit a formal complaint to Title IX or some diversity tribunal, or call the Dean of the school directly, even before you talk to the person to tell them you were offended.
The norm is now to get someone else to deal with it. e.g. these kids had 18 years of their parents sticking up for them any time anything remotely challenging happens, e.g. if someone calls you a name, they have few coping skills.
Even consensual sexual encounters are now codified with complex sets of rules that both parties are supposed to memorize at campuses. Basically, quite a few modern college kids have almost zero of the normal life skills in negotiating with other people - there has always been someone else who does that for you, and clearly delineated rulebooks for how to interact. e.g. their life is like a school-run Junior Disco, writ large, right up to when you leave college.
In one incident, a student complained that Bonesteel didn’t offer a ‘trigger warning’ before using the word ‘rape’ in a discussion of the comic book Batman: The Killing Joke.
Bonesteel said, ‘When I said the word ‘rape,’ the complaining student yelled, “Hey, where’s the trigger warning?”’ A little exasperated by that point, I remarked, ‘Really? You want a trigger warning for the word “rape”?’Literally he was supposed to give a trigger warning that he was merely going to say "rape". ("Trigger Warning: I'm am going to say rape later"). Lol hahaha, crazy times.
WEBSITES are using the power of your computer to tap into the current Bitcoin and cryptocurrency craze, hijacking your processor to ‘mine’ for coins while you are online.
It’s called cryptojacking, and runs instantly when you go onto certain websites, with no real way to tell on the surface if your computer has been compromised for digital profit.
If it has been compromised, not only is your information at risk, but your computer could overheat and eventually wear down over time if you continually get attacked.
Even if you have never owned any Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency, your computer could still be used by hackers, as what they want from you is the power of your processor. With other people’s computers working for them, hackers will then use an algorithm to find Bitcoin or other digital currencies anywhere in the world.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. Twenty-one million of them were released in 2009 and they weren’t worth much as they were pretty easy for tech savvy people to find.
But they’re a finite resource. Think of them like gold. If there’s a lot of gold being mined, the price isn’t high. But inevitably, the world will run out of gold to find in the ground, so the price of it has risen.
The world was in the grip of the Global Financial Crisis, so many people had lost confidence in traditional markets. So purchasing a finite resource — such as bitcoin — made sense. And the price went up.
But once many of these Bitcoin were ‘mined’, it became much harder to find. It was easier to trade the coin in a more traditional way, so non-tech savvy people were buying the currency. And their value has now skyrocketed.
Doesn’t matter if you own Bitcoin or not. You’ve got a computer with processor. And that’s power that computer hackers want to use to mine for bitcoin around the world.
These illegal cryptojacking operations need to build huge help to perform the algorithms needed to find the few Bitcoins left that aren’t being traded on the open market. And they can’t do that unless they build extremely expensive servers. So they need to find more power on the cheap, which is why they’re infiltrating websites that regular people visit all the time, and putting a script on there.
Because there is only a finite amount of Bitcoin, it means it’s stored somewhere locally for you. Some people store theirs on their own computer’s hard drive, which actually has led to many people losing millions of dollars worth by throwing out their drives.
Because there is only a finite amount of Bitcoin, it means it’s stored somewhere locally for you.
CAN I MINE MY OWN BITCOIN?
Probably not. It’s 2017, they’ve been around close to a decade and are now worth a fortune. It’s not like they’re lying around and can easily be found.
Bitcoin will only ever have 21 million coins available due to the algorithm in which it was created, meaning the less there are left to mine, the greater the value until it eventually reaches its peak.
Mr Dunworth’s way of explaining it is to think of it like limited edition shoes. Nike might only put up 10 sets of new limited edition sneakers, if someone destroyed a shoe, there would only be 9 left and those 9 would be worth more and so on.
Like Bitcoin, when it first was released, there were 21 million, which were much easier to mine then and come across meant the value was much lower. Now, like the Jordans, as there are less and less Bitcoins to come across, value has skyrocketed.
Generally, the rate in which Bitcoins are available halves every four years, until eventually all 21 million have been found.
Years ago, to mine Bitcoin, you could have found some using your laptop in just a few hours, however these days due to the limited supply, it’s much harder.
HANG ON. EXPLAIN BLOCKCHAIN.
Blockchain is basically a decentralised computer system which can govern how information is sent across the internet, and is essential to cryptocurrencies. By decentralised, we mean there is no single computer, but rather information is verified across millions of different computers across the globe.
While in the real world, I can just physically give you something and you now own it and I don’t, it’s not quite that simple digitally. Think about when you send someone a photo over email, you’re not really sending that photo itself, but creating a copy of it and sending that copy to someone. You both now have the photo. This wouldn’t work in a currency world, because no real value is being sent.
So this is where the blockchain fits in, it allows people to send value (not just money) over the internet, by coming to an agreement on who owns it across millions of different computers. Think of it like Paypal, who could be the middleman in governing that yes you did send $100 to James, and now you have $100 less and James has $100 more. But with blockchain, there is no central company or organisation that looks over this that could potentially tamper with it.
If you were to try and tamper with data on the blockchain, you’d need to do that somehow on all of the millions of computers in which the data needs to be verified across, making it an essentially unhackable way of sending goods.
This lays the backbone for Bitcoin and other digital currencies, as it allows them to have an intrinsic value, as you can create a finite number. The blockchain will set up the agreement between its massive network that you sent those 2 Bitcoins to James, and that they are now his and you no longer have any ownership of them.
The blockchain itself has huge value not just for sending Bitcoin, but could be used to send anything of value — think the deed to real estate, the ownership of your car or even to verify information in databases to help thwart hacks.
While it currently is only really being talked about with Bitcoin, you’ll be hearing a lot more about blockchain as it starts to become more important in all our digital lives.
Its just using capital to get more capital for those with capital. therefor standard capitalism. I wont cry when it comes crashing down.Yo dawg, I heard you liked capital in your capital...
The main alternative being that instead of using the capital goods to facilitate the appropriation of a greater share and quantity of produce you use capital goods to maintain a constant share or quantity of goods for less and less effort on the part of the owner.
I'm personally very lazy, so I'd much rather just be allowed to maintain my standard of living with less and less effort. But instead we have a society that institutionalizes inflation and a host of other things like how benefits are tied to how many hours you work that means you are basically forced to maintain a constant level of work and increase output instead.
It doesn't "hold" only for small businesses - that's just steeped in the modern impression of what a 'corporation' is. Consider that a valid reason for forming a corporation is that some enterprises require more resources than a single individual can acquire but a group of people could do it. That enterprise could be something like a major infrastructure project, where the output of the company itself is the thing that benefits the owners - not just the "shareholder returns."
This interpretation only holds for small businesses...
A major example where this idea of the owner lessening effort clearly doesn't hold would be a modern corporation, where shareholders typically exert zero effort in the goings on of production, and indeed often ownership of the company is itself essentially only a traded speculative commodity.
The paradox of modern capitalism. Its eating itself. The supposed reason and benefit its existence as a system is becoming utterly invalid as everything is consolidated. Yet we keep feeding it more public resources and letting it grow until it consumes us all.It doesn't "hold" only for small businesses - that's just steeped in the modern impression of what a 'corporation' is. Consider that a valid reason for forming a corporation is that some enterprises require more resources than a single individual can acquire but a group of people could do it. That enterprise could be something like a major infrastructure project, where the output of the company itself is the thing that benefits the owners - not just the "shareholder returns."
This interpretation only holds for small businesses...
A major example where this idea of the owner lessening effort clearly doesn't hold would be a modern corporation, where shareholders typically exert zero effort in the goings on of production, and indeed often ownership of the company is itself essentially only a traded speculative commodity.
Corporations today are kind of a mishmash of this, but lean heavily toward the "we're just a company to shield ourselves from liability and to make stupid piles of cash" instead of the "we want a big project that will make all our lives better" side. But there is nothing to say a company can't do that. Often you see things like today that are more like co-ops than corporations though, and sometimes non-profits.
Now I realize some of this is hypothetical and academic, because reality seems to show that while that is a "mathematical possibility" it doesn't play out much in real societies. A large part of it I think is that barriers to entry to most industries are so high that new competition can't come in easily, which means oligopolies in most industries. So companies in those industries just enjoy increased profits when they increase productivity because there is no effective competition - the benefits of productivity no longer spread around. This is shown by many studies of wage and wealth growth versus productivity growth versus corporate profits over the past several decades.
So I guess yeah I agree that most companies don't use productivity to reduce work required but instead just increase profits... which is arguably not going to turn out pleasant if larger and larger industries do no longer require workers.
I also don't see why you need to see me posting anything at all as a personal attack against you, as you seem to time and time again.
Welcome to the club. 'Go Summon Up The Dead Ones' is just too catchy. So people in my town now have the pleasure of encountering a huge, ill-shaven, lanky dude silently muttering to himself a sing-song about the Ancient Ones returning and killing all of humanity.What youtube autoplayed while I was reading that. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_AvJzkPqQ8)I felt a strong urge to find more songs like that and go around singing them.
We are blinded to this difference by the fact that the same sentence, "I see a car coming toward me", can be used to record both the visual intentionality and the output of the computational model of vision. But this should not obscure from us the fact that the visual experience is a concrete event and is produced in the brain by specific electro-chemical biological processes. To confuse these events and processes with formal symbol manipulation is to confuse the reality with the model. The upshot of this part of the discussion is that in the sense of "information" used in cognitive science it is simply false to say that the brain is an information processing device.
At the same time, we'd have to ask ourselves what is sapience because you can't have sapience without consciousness, or can you?
Launched in 2012, the Green Brain Project aims to create the first accurate computer model of a honey bee brain, and transplant that onto a UAV.
The project, based out of the University of Sheffield and University of Sussex, seeks to raise awareness of the declining population of honey bees worldwide, as well as to advance our knowledge of AI and honey bee cognition.
The question behind all of these questions, though, is "what is consciousness," which lacks a rigorous definition.
EDIT: A thought on my above idea of adding and removing states. A possible formulation would be thus:
For our "Turing-like" machine, we have M=〈Q,Γ,b,Σ,δ,q0,F〉, where all but δ have the traditional formulation under the usual definition of a Turing machine. δ, however, is unique. It consists of the following:A variation exists for every possible read symbol.
- write symbol
- move tape
- next state
- state rewrite index i
- state rewrite size n
- action table to write over states of index i to i+n, of size m
Any state reference to a state of index x+i is replaced with a reference of a state of index x+i-n+m; that is, x1=x0-n+m, for all x≥1Still attempting to formulate the exact specifications. This is done to prevent going to a state that does not exist. Turing completeness is trivial- simply replace everything past the next state value of the action table with 0's. I am not sure of whether this system is Turing-equivalent or not.
Dutch national consumer service, Consumentenbond, warns people that want to buy a new phone not to buy the Samsung Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, or J3 2016.Forget planned obsolescence, just say fuck it.
From march 2018 onwards, Samsung will stop providing updates for these models, which will make their software age fast, and make the phones less secure.
The director of Consumentenbond, Bart Combée says it's "absurd".
"Samsung terminates support of 3 of it's phones less than 2 years after they were put on the market, and won't look back, while those phones are expected to be sold on the market way beyond their support termination date.
As far as we are concerned, Samsung has an obligation here that they can't just walk away from.
So yeah. Don't buy Samsung unless they change their crazy ways.
You know, I just saw that commercial with the insufferable little hipster brat talking about "what's a computer" and it hit me: we now get to say Apple is hostile to homosexuals!
Alan Fucking Turing, prosecuted and chemically castrated for being homosexual is responsible for the concepts behind the computer I am typing this on, and which you are reading this on, so fuck Apple entirely.
2010-2012.Edgy
Dutch national consumer service, Consumentenbond, warns people that want to buy a new phone not to buy the Samsung Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, or J3 2016.Forget planned obsolescence, just say fuck it.
From march 2018 onwards, Samsung will stop providing updates for these models, which will make their software age fast, and make the phones less secure.
The director of Consumentenbond, Bart Combée says it's "absurd".
"Samsung terminates support of 3 of it's phones less than 2 years after they were put on the market, and won't look back, while those phones are expected to be sold on the market way beyond their support termination date.
As far as we are concerned, Samsung has an obligation here that they can't just walk away from.
So yeah. Don't buy Samsung unless they change their crazy ways.
Suppose we have an AI whose only goal is to make as many paper clips as possible. The AI will realize quickly that it would be much better if there were no humans because humans might decide to switch it off. Because if humans do so, there would be fewer paper clips. Also, human bodies contain a lot of atoms that could be made into paper clips. The future that the AI would be trying to gear towards would be one in which there were a lot of paper clips but no humans.
The artificial general intelligence (AGI) won't revise or otherwise change its goals, since changing its goals would result in fewer paperclips being made in the future, and that opposes its current goal. It has one simple goal of maximizing the number of paperclips; human life, learning, joy, and so on are not specified as goals. An AGI is simply an optimization process—a goal-seeker, a utility-function-maximizer. Its values can be completely alien to ours. If its utility function is to maximize paperclips, then it will do exactly that.
though I suppose that makes for a dryer and more boring book to sell.Severely underestimates how frustrating this book is to try and read.
Yes, but it has to consider obtaining said resources. It can't do that if 100% of all its processing is being used for reward signals.That sounds like circular logic there. If 100% of it's processing is reward signals, it couldn't make even 1 paperclip, let alone do anything.
The problem is how you'd actually go and forbid it. Restrict direct control over its input, and it would go after indirect control. If it can't mimic the data counter telling it how many paperclips it produced, it can hack the counter and usurp control that way.Taking this back to the human level: Communism == opium?
"Seize the means of production," if you will.
The supposition is that the AI could go completely rampant, and turn every molecule of metal in the universe into paperclips.Unless the metal is paperclips.
To accomplish such an end game, the maximizer needs to devise space travel, WITHOUT USING METAL, ...
No metal needed, just the odd human... (https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1953-05/Galaxy_1953_05#page/n69/mode/2up)The supposition is that the AI could go completely rampant, and turn every molecule of metal in the universe into paperclips.Unless the metal is paperclips.
To accomplish such an end game, the maximizer needs to devise space travel, WITHOUT USING METAL, ...
Just something really cool, that had been bothering me for a while: Prehistoric dentistry. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20160229-how-our-ancestors-drilled-rotten-teeth)You should see Neanderthal teeth. You want to see dental horror just look at them.
I always wondered at how humans coped with the sheer rate of attrition caused by dental diseases, as poor dentistry is surprisingly debilitating and lethal to humans today. Looking into it though, the tales of our ancestors' attempts to sort out their teeth is fucking awesome. For starters, millions of years ago, before homo sapiens, there's evidence to suggest that our hominid ancestors were trying to figure our ways to scrape off infected teeth tissue. And while dental issues were debilitating and lethal back then, they were surprisingly rare - it's only until homo sapiens begins developing agricultural societies about 10,000 years ago that suddenly everyone's developing poor dental issues, with yet more surprising finds as women seem to have contracted more than men, and all of this cannot be entirely explained by a regular diet of carbohydrate rich foods. Even cooler, over 9,000 years ago the Indus river civilization set humanity on the path to sick dentistry by inventing the first dental drill. The rest is pre-history
Humans that could otherwise be turned into paper clips? I think not.Unless the metal is paperclips.No metal needed, just the odd human... (https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1953-05/Galaxy_1953_05#page/n69/mode/2up)
Humans that could otherwise be turned into paper clips? I think not.I mean, you can always turn them into paperclips later.
That assumes that the AI has the solution space defined that broadly, and that the AI does not encounter a local optima.Evolutionary algorithms don't get stuck in local optima unless you did it wrong - once you hit a local optimum, you put just as much effort into searching the probability space as always, and eventually you find an even better optimum and flip to that. And once you have exhausted your current definition of the solution space, you expand your definition. All things AI are currently perfectly capable of doing.
The idea that video games can have impairments on other significant parts of a person’s life, such as work, was explored earlier this year when an American Time Use Survey linked working less hours to video games.
Between 2004 and 2007, men between 21 and 30 years old played two hours of video games per week, but that has now risen to 3.4 hours per week according to the report.
Men aged between 21 and 30 years old saw their working hours decline by 12 per cent annually from 2000 to 2015, compared with an 8 per cent decline for older men.
Gaming addictionI can, have, and will; taken time off work so I could play games.
If I went the rest of my life never having to discuss "paperclip maximizers" ever again, I would die a happy man.Well, from a paperclip maximiser's POV, and yours, it seems that your immediate death would aid both causes.
A paperclip maximizer wouldn't modify its goals, because that conflicts with its current goals.That depends on whenever its model of the environment correctly predicts its own change in goals. Which ain't all that trivial, considering that they can't get experimental data on the actions that change their goals without, well, changing their goals in the process of obtaining said experimental data.
Who says the paperclips have to be iron?Now you've got me wanting to carve out a wooden paperclip, but not with a sensible shape for wood, no, I've got the urge now to see how thin and "classic metal paperclip" like I could get it... why would you do this to me? DO YOU KNOW THE INSANITY INVOLVED THERE?
Wooden paperclip:Well, I'd make it prettier than that, do something like a slight spiral on a really narrow wishbone type shape, but I'd probably need to get a set of higher quality diamond files to get the bent-wire effect without access to better woods.
Use knife to cut off a wood shaving.
Use knife on wood shaving against hard surface, to cut an oblate groove.
Profit.
See this example:Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Don't know whether this would go into the space thread or here. Maybe I'll post it in both places.
SpaceX may have failed to get an expensive government sat into orbit (https://www.axios.com/us-1515466086-a9249f16-c070-49ba-a5a4-0f432d825b3b.html). Ouch, this is gonna hurt their reputation for a while. At least until they can find out what went wrong.
It's light on details due to it being a classified mission and the main source being WSJ.
The resurgence of the Cross-Channel Bridge (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42743909)...
Much apart from the Boris/Brexit component, maybe there's something to be discussed with regard to the engineering? What pattern/variety of spans, and what heights?
Yay, we could add a pedestrian crossing for the migrants of Calais. /sWhy are the Europeans so keen to get rid of them? They're good for your economy
The resurgence of the Cross-Channel Bridge (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42743909)...And interference with shipping
Much apart from the Boris/Brexit component, maybe there's something to be discussed with regard to the engineering? What pattern/variety of spans, and what heights?
[That was part of the point of my question. Do we make thirty-three kilometre-long spans (or 20 mile-long ones, give or take exact ground points at each end) with loads of navigational warnings around each pier, or a small number of Dartford-like suspended bridging spans with active navigational control pulling traffic to the relevent mid-span parts of the channels and the rest across much closer cantilevering bridging-causeway stands that basically has huge big "do not sail this way at all!" warnings.What pattern/variety of spans, and what heights?And interference with shipping
That was part of the point of my question. Do we make thirty-three kilometre-long spans (or 20 mile-long ones, give or take exact ground points at each end) with loads of navigational warnings around each pier, or a small number of Dartford-like suspended bridging spans with active navigational control pulling traffic to the relevent mid-span parts of the channels and the rest across much closer cantilevering bridging-causeway stands that basically has huge big "do not sail this way at all!" warnings.I'd wait a while to see if anything comes of it before making plans to accommodate it; Boris has had a habit of proposing Dorfy megaprojects that went nowhere because they didn't make much sense for their expected cost. It's simply a lot easier to conduct trade through shipping tbh, than building a megaproject for that much money - methinks Boris just wants to go down in history as having made the Boris bridge, just like his Boris buses or Boris bikes. Building a giant bridge on top of one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world too... It's disasters waiting to happen. The Times says the bridge would cost about £120B, which for comparison, is a lot more than the £48B we spend on the entire country's railway network (http://m.railjournal.com/index.php/europe/britain-sets-%C2%A348bn-budget-for-rail-infrastructure-in-2019-2024.html). Factor in that it's already easier to get to France from England than it is to get to parts of England from England, I'd say it's a political ploy meant to distract people, and not an immediate government priority. Then again, it is Boris, who is not easy to predict.
(People can already walk through the Chunnel/its service tunnel, if they get by security. Comparatively safe compared to hundred-metres-plus high road deck (probably better designed as a sky-tunnel for at least some of the length!) when it comes to unauthorised traffic. But I had intended to say "politics aside", must have forgotten.)
Boris has had a habit of proposing Dorfy megaprojects that went nowhere because they didn't make much sense for their expected cost.As included in the article I linked. And as excluded by the wording I gave in my OP. Thanks for playing, though.
Funnily enough, when I started this post, and when I submitted it - in that brief time, the plans died. (http://As ideas go, it has not been a resounding success. Architects, hauliers, the maritime industry, and an MP have so far expressed their scepticism about Boris Johnson’s ambition to build a 22-mile (35km) bridge across the Channel - and even the prime minister has signalled it won’t happen.)
As included in the article I linked. And as excluded by the wording I gave in my OP. Thanks for playing, though.What's the issue?
That you think I'm talking about Boris, when I said I wasn't? That you brought up Boris's other ideas, as if they weren't mentioned already? I don't think you read the link, and then certainly seemed not to have read "maybe there's something to be discussed with regard to the engineering? What pattern/variety of spans, and what heights?"...As included in the article I linked. And as excluded by the wording I gave in my OP. Thanks for playing, though.What's the issue?
That you think I'm talking about Boris, when I said I wasn't?Where'd I say that?
That you brought up Boris's other ideas, as if they weren't mentioned already?Brought up in brief comparisons to ideas which for example, were not included in your link, like Boris bikes - merely for the illustrative purpose that they point to an obvious attempt at legacy building
I don't think you read the link, and then certainly seemed not to have read "maybe there's something to be discussed with regard to the engineering? What pattern/variety of spans, and what heights?"...You all right m8 cos you're being unnecessarily salty for no reason, I posted links to theoretical UK-Ireland bridges and the actual Chinese Hong Kong-Macau bridge to lend some ideas on how people have tried to plan similar things, or achieved similar things. You misjudge my sincerity :<
Never mind. It seemed like it would be a good tech/engineering discussion of what a Channel Bridge could look like (with current/latest levels of engineering prowess and ixeas), but clearly there's no milage in that.
You guys, you're forgetting that a ship is just essentially a piece of bridge that isn't connected to anything. It would probably be easier (dunno about cheaper) to just build a huge fleet of ships with enough propulsion for station-keeping, line them all up, and connect them with flexible bridge material and let vehicles drive across them.Still run into the issue that you'd have to have ways to decouple ships to allow other ships to pass through, all with such organization and communication that there are no collisions or cars lost to the sea.
I'm sure there are far more absurd but plausible-sounding ideas.
Madness!
A more radical solution would be to put cars onto the ships and sail them across... Using the ships like some kind of vehicle of the sea.
Looks like something in a recent update to Malwarebytes is causing a serious memory leak, hundreds of owners (myself included) are seeing it. It's eating >10GB of RAM after about two minutes of runtime for me. The active web protection process is also refusing to activate. If you run MWB, for now quit it from the taskbar tray to stop it from restarting. Their people have responded and are working on a fix.
https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/219918-ram-usage-what-is-going-on/ (https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/219918-ram-usage-what-is-going-on/)
https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/219996-important-web-blocking-ram-usage-issue/ (https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/219996-important-web-blocking-ram-usage-issue/)
Certainly, programs never had problems, back in the golden past.Back in my day, there were none of them newfangled bugs! Now get off my lawn!
The past definitely had bugs, but I don't remember anything as bad as the current state of QA. Mostly I attribute it to the fact that in the past it was much more expensive to roll out fixes, so you'd better be sure you are almost right when you ship. Now it's like "Meh, we can issue a patch next week if there's a bug. SHIP IT." This is actually demonstrable - it's not just "get off my lawn" nonsense.While that does happen, a bug introduced into an update is a different matter. Something like malwarebytes get constant updates, because the threat environment is constantly changing and the target hardware / operating systems are constantly changing. But it's also similar to e.g. Dwarf Fortress. if the dev tries and whacks all the bugs before shipping, then a much larger percentage of their time is spent looking for elusive bugs, while if you ship it, everyone can find and report bugs, meaning the dev's time is much better spent and the overall cost of production drops. The point isn't that they left bugs in, it's that it's actually more time-consuming to find the bugs than to fix them. 100 people testing a program for 1 year will encounter the same number of bugs as releasing the program to 10,000 people will in 3.6 days. Anything that gets constant updates is effectively always in the beta-testing phase.
British team made a breakthrough in gene sequencing technology.
They managed to sequence the entire DNA of a human by putting a drop of fluid in an USB-sized device.
The procedure only costs 1000 euros per sequence read.
The team used an existing device called minION, which analyzes DNA sequences by squirting them through a very tiny hole. A senor measures changes in the electrical field in the hole, while the DNA sequence rushes through it, and the sequence of DNA base pairs can be derived from those measurements.
Up until now however, the minION could only handle pretty short strings of DNA.
The British team prepared the DNA in a special way, allowing them to read sequences of up to 1.2 million base pairs with a single minION run.
By using special software, they could then put the measured sequences back together like a jigsaw puzzle, and end up with the near complete, 3 billion base pair sequence of the human DNA.
The team even managed to decode hard to read parts of the genome, on which big laboratory equipment failed to deliver. The DNA catalog of the human genome still has about 700 'white spots', which are parts of the DNA that are hard to reach or to read. The Nottingham team managed to fill in 12 of those blanks, just with their first experiment.
Furthermore, they also gained some new insights into the 'packaging' of the DNA.
Such information is crucial in understanding how the DNA works. Compare it to a cookbook, in which the grease stains on pages tell you which pages are used most frequently.
Total costs for the reading of one entire genome were 50 thousand euros, because 50 strings of DNA had to be put through the minION.
Still, this is a fraction of previous costs.
Only 15 years ago, scientists managed for the very first time to map the human genome. Back then, that cost 2 billion euros, and took 13 years to complete.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4060 (https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4060)
https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/doorbraak-iemands-dna-aflezen-kan-nu-met-behulp-van-een-usb-stick-voor-nog-geen-1-000-euro~a4563443/ (https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/doorbraak-iemands-dna-aflezen-kan-nu-met-behulp-van-een-usb-stick-voor-nog-geen-1-000-euro~a4563443/)
Here's an interesting concept:
http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/inventions/pay-someone-to-wear-your-face-and-do-all-the-boring-stuff/news-story/15881fd1ae04f201952f1292abc65d89
(http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/952dfcabf50a1f571fdfd6b1a48c79f3)
This is a prototype system where someone straps this to their head, with your face on the front, via webcam. They then go around and do person-stuff for you. The idea is that it's like Uber, except you're Ubering a person instead of a vehicle. BTW, i should mention, though it's probably not necessary, that it was invented in Japan.
But their own face would be hidden, so for that time, they are you. Wearing someone else's face could in fact be liberating, since you could do things and go places you normally wouldn't have the confidence for. There would be enough takers, if there was pay involved, but the problem would be the initial costs of the unit.
But their own face would be hidden, so for that time, they are you. Wearing someone else's face could in fact be liberating, since you could do things and go places you normally wouldn't have the confidence for. There would be enough takers, if there was pay involved, but the problem would be the initial costs of the unit.This is different from running around in a ski mask dropping squats. This is wearing someone else's face because you lack confidence in your own face. What is marketed as liberation is truly the worst oppression, because it trains people to be imprisoned in their own face
But their own face would be hidden, so for that time, they are you. Wearing someone else's face could in fact be liberating, since you could do things and go places you normally wouldn't have the confidence for. There would be enough takers, if there was pay involved, but the problem would be the initial costs of the unit.Just remember you're always exactly where you're supposed to be, it works great for literally everything, even stuff you wouldn't expect to be able to do.
The rabble can’t be trusted with self-driving cars, and only companies operating fleets of them should be able to use them in dense urban areas.
So say Uber and Lyft, as signatories to a new list of transportation goals developed by a group of international non-governmental organizations and titled “Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities.”
...
In the list of 10 shared-mobility principles, bland generalities predominate — “stakeholder engagement” for example, is considered important — but the groups responsible clearly saved the best for last: According to Principle No. 10, the signatories — which also include other companies involved in transportation as a service — agree that autonomous vehicles in “dense urban areas” should only be operated in fleets.
I mean, incidentally, fuck Edison and while we're at it fuck Columbus too, Tesla was insane for sure but he wasn't a greedy hateful shitbag like those two garbagesacks were.Columbus was just desperate once he realised he fuck up hard. Y'see, he made contract with the Castillian-Aragonese crown: he'd discover a new route to the Indies and he'd become its Viceroy in return. Once he figured out that the land he found was not Asia, he panicked. He insisted on calling the natives "Indians", the region "the Indies", and so on. It ended up with him in jail for treason, so you can fill in that particular blank.
“I’m worried people are going to misinterpret our actions,” Mr. Pierce said. “That we’re just coming to Puerto Rico to dodge taxes.”
He said he was aiming to create a charitable token called ONE with $1 billion of his own money. “If you take the MY out of money, you’re left with ONE,” Mr. Pierce said.
“He’s tuned in to a higher calling,” said Kai Nygard, scion of the Canadian clothing company Nygard and a crypto investor. “He’s beyond money.”
Is it even legal to not accept dollars as currency on a USA territory?Yes, it is legal to transact for things other than dollars in the US.
they wanted to call it "Puertopia" except someone told them that means "eternal boy playground" in LatinIt doesn't though :|
Is it even legal to not accept dollars as currency on a USA territory?Yes, it is legal to transact for things other than dollars in the US.
they wanted to call it "Puertopia" except someone told them that means "eternal boy playground" in LatinIt doesn't though :|
Is it even legal to not accept dollars as currency on a USA territory?Yes, it is legal to transact for things other than dollars in the US.
It is legal to carry out transactions in non-U.S. dollars, but as a federally backed currency it is not legal to refuse U.S. dollars as payment for a transaction.
Yes. The Secret Service is the enforcement arm of theTreasury(excuse me, until the founding of the department of homeland bullshit that is, they now fall under the umbrella of that worthless organization), they have extremely broad powers to deal with exactly this kind of issue.
In fact dealing with counterfeit currency and other critical treasury issues is the reason they were founded at all.
aluminum/me twitches
Yes. The Secret Service is the enforcement arm of theTreasury(excuse me, until the founding of the department of homeland bullshit that is, they now fall under the umbrella of that worthless organization), they have extremely broad powers to deal with exactly this kind of issue.
In fact dealing with counterfeit currency and other critical treasury issues is the reason they were founded at all.
Uh? Aren't stuff like local currencies a thing in the US?
The other day I was haggling with a clerk at walmart trying to get them to accept some old Tennessee Thalers I found in a jar, when of course in this jurisdiction they only accept Colorado Kopeks and California Florins. Some days I wish the Secret Service would come in and clean house, but then all these New Mexico Pesos I have lying around would only be usable as a paperweight.
Molybdenium, platinium, lanthanium!aluminum/me twitches
I have a few Nortons that I took back as a souvenir from a visit to LA (no bills, it's all coins in various denominations of Bummers), but at least here in Colorado we're drowning in florins from all the yuppies moving here (most places even prefer them over local Kopecks). I know the empire schism is still politically dangerous back east; I have a friend who was almost detained at Dulles just for joking whether the ticket counter would take Nortons.Florins? Why are you using ancient Dutch currency?
Looks like I have to change my earlier statement anyway, as of 1965 private companies are no longer strictly required to accept the U.S. dollar for a transaction, which renders the whole argument incorrect.I mean, I said that before you, but. :P
It should also be noted that there are around twenty or so currently circulated 'community currencies' in use in small sections of the U.S., though we're talking about used in a single town or county for those.
Sometimes I really wish that legal information like this was distributed more widely, I only found out about the 1965 change to the laws from the treasury department's page directly.
I don't think that is the full explanation, given that the system scores pretty well (84%) even from one swipe. it measures size of impact area, pressure, speed etc.Yes, what I meant. The awkwardness vs unawkwardness of the swipe. Does the finger alight and glide, or bash down and judder across the screen? Does it land just in the exit zone of the first hotspot and depart immediately it is drawn over the final spot, or resolutely brought to the exact centres/is over-dragged beyond? In a complex (single) gesture, are the angles sharp stops and redirections or do they swoop in a perceptible curve?
I don't think that is the full explanation, given that the system scores pretty well (84%) even from one swipe. it measures size of impact area, pressure, speed etc.https://panopticlick.eff.org/
One thing I'm thinking of looking at is whether you can tell who's using a website based on telemetry from their mouse movements. That way you could maybe discern whether someone was using multiple accounts in a browser MMO.
So is that guy just straight up not allowed to run for president?
Edit: Read more about him. I like the idea of him being a champion for justice but all the things he says sound like echoes of Trump. “Fake news”, “false charges”, etc. I guess it’s hard to push against the mainstream.
... so is there like a super informative post on the Russian politics thread somewhere?
Last week, when human Alexa’s father, Dean, asked her to grab some water from the kitchen, Amazon’s Alexa wanted to help, too. “Amazon’s choice for water is Fiji Natural Artesian Water, pack of 24. It’s $27.27, including tax. Would you like to buy it?”
How stupid is it that Alexa answers to the name Alexa as the default on all devices?
This is playing havoc with people. Recently there was a story on TV about a little girl who asked Alexa for a doll house, and it sent her an expensive doll house. People who saw the story on TV reported that their Alexas also tried to buy doll houses after the story aired. So you can now just say "Alexa do <x>" on video and this will cause people's Alexa to obey the commands.
So if you get Amazon Echo or similar, the first thing you should do is definitely change the name. Especially if you're actually named Alexa:
http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/01/how-to-change-amazon-echo-alexas-name-to-something-else.htmlQuoteLast week, when human Alexa’s father, Dean, asked her to grab some water from the kitchen, Amazon’s Alexa wanted to help, too. “Amazon’s choice for water is Fiji Natural Artesian Water, pack of 24. It’s $27.27, including tax. Would you like to buy it?”
To be honest, i have a bad reaction to anyone who has a device in their house which by default tries and gets them to buy over-priced shit as the default option to any query. If it's going to be a thing, it needs to be open-source and not owned by a company with a vested interest in selling you more stuff.
"Accidentally gave iphone power of attorney, lawyer can't figure out how to get it back from a smart phone, please send help."
Is using a false age online actually legal?
Well, I think I may have found a neural network project that I actually find interesting. I'm curious whether I'm crazy/an idiot or that this project (https://numenta.com) is actually as novel as it appears?I can't actually work out what they're saying. Sounds a bit like they think that they can work with a kind of inverted form of what reflexology allegedly is to do stuff, but I may have missed what stuff they thus want to do, leaving us with just the "we think a kind of geotagging of knowledge is what we need to do, so we're having a go at doing that".
Oh, I wasn't serious about the hidden agenda. I just don't see what's exciting you, yet. Or the novelty aspect, if it's the weighted input thing, because that's par for the course in NNs, isn't it?
I thought the new part was the bit about "All areas of the neocortex assign their input to a 'location' in the external world." Which reminds me of a stateful machine, perhaps formed in an abstraction of logical feedback loops. Designing that in (with preconceptions) is trivial, when surely the Holy Grail is to find it cropping up as an emergent property, during training, upon deep analysis of a system not actually primed (perhaps prejudicially) with that as an intention.
Or I might just be reading it/you wrong. That's not unlikely.
All the descriptions of neural networks I read online (and the limited implementations I created myself) have Boolean outputs, which are produced by weighting and summing all the inputs, feeding the sum through a non-linear sigmoid function (such as the logistic function), and then comparing the output of the function to a threshold. Not sure that is all that novel of an idea.....
nenjin's frothing rage isn't confined by mere thread boundaries.
Given the fact that there was an individual behind the wheel, I'm betting that their cars are in the "let's just try not to hit stuff" phase rather than making any weighted decisions about what to hit and what not to hit.
No, the Like! button was offered by FaceBook as a means of increasing user impressions, to increase value to their advertising partners.
The main difference from a cafe and facebook is that you don't typically shout your most personal details at the top of your lungs.
No, the Like! button was offered by FaceBook as a means of increasing user impressions, to increase value to their advertising partners.
If you want people to use your system, user engagement is key. If you want to fund your system, you need people using it and ads to drive money into the system. If you want to sell ads effectively on the internet, where nearly every type of person imaginable uses it, you need to target those ads.
What can be legislated though is what they do with it and possibly how it's acquired.
The scandal here is that Cambridge Analytics mined the data without Facebook even knowing they were doing it, I think.
Hello!
Elections for [20XX] have just been processed.
Assessment of your digital footprint has been added to the demographics of your Bloc, and a suitable government has been assembled in regards to the majority sentiment.
The current government shares your views on:
Defense Spending, [Minority issue A], Immigration, [Minority issue B]
The current government does not share your views on:
Big business spending, [Minority issue C], Tax policy
Keep voting with your clicks, and we will see you next year!
Eager to pass the time? Try this video on where government taxes are assigned, and why they’re so important!
Without public exhibition of the analytics code, and routine auditing by 3rd parties, this sounds ripe for flagrant abuse.You say that like either of those things would help
Theres a reason why NASA developed such a safety conscious culture.
Microsoft announces feature nobody wants.Wait, it can't possibly be...
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/7/17089850/microsoft-windows-10-s-mode-changes-2019
Place your bets-- place your bets. According to Verge, MS intends this for corporations, schools, and other "lockdown preferred" environments, but how much do you want to bet that it will be insanely pervasive in the tablet and cloudbook space, and that it will be the bane of everyone's existence except microsoft?
The new S Mode will lock down any copy of Windows 10 so it can only run apps from the Microsoft StoreOk I'm so glad I've kept my Windows 7 and not got into this "free" Windows 10 cheese mousetrap scheme.
Microsoft announces feature nobody wants.Wait, it can't possibly be...
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/7/17089850/microsoft-windows-10-s-mode-changes-2019
Place your bets-- place your bets. According to Verge, MS intends this for corporations, schools, and other "lockdown preferred" environments, but how much do you want to bet that it will be insanely pervasive in the tablet and cloudbook space, and that it will be the bane of everyone's existence except microsoft?QuoteThe new S Mode will lock down any copy of Windows 10 so it can only run apps from the Microsoft StoreOk I'm so glad I've kept my Windows 7 and not got into this "free" Windows 10 cheese mousetrap scheme.
The new S Mode will lock down any copy of Windows 10 so it can only run apps from the Microsoft StoreWhat does that even mean? What is considered an 'app'?
What is considered an 'app'?An application. An executable plus any other files attached to it that form a whole. What we used to call (and I'd like to keep calling) programs and software. Windows 10 wants to be hip by calling everything an app, though I personally find that a rather unprofessional term.
If Microsoft suddenly locked all their PCs to only run apps from the shitty windows store
Yeah, I've been thinking about moving to Linux for my next PC. Not gone with my laptop, but it had Win10 on already, AND since it's for uni work, I'd rather not wrangle with potential issues when I'm trying to avoid stressing out.Dual-boot Windows and Linux. No need to wait for another computer.
Yeah, I've been thinking about moving to Linux for my next PC. Not gone with my laptop, but it had Win10 on already, AND since it's for uni work, I'd rather not wrangle with potential issues when I'm trying to avoid stressing out.
In 1979, parts of the US Skylab crashed down in Australia, after an uncontrolled re-entry.It's hilarious that someone actually took the time to write out and submit the paperwork for that.
NASA was fined by the Australian authorities for illagaly dumping waste. NASA has never paid the 400 dollar fine.
*cough*anybodyrememberwatchingchallengerblowup?*cough*Theres a reason why NASA developed such a safety conscious culture.
Yes there is. His name is Gene Kranz.
We tend to forget how NASA changed after Jan.27 1967, or rather what it was like before, but there were a lot of ways they could have responded. Due credit needs to be given to the people who instituted that cultural shift before we act like it was at all inevitable.
Sometimes wreckage hits land: In 1979, parts of the US Skylab crashed down in Australia, after an uncontrolled re-entry.
NASA was fined by the Australian authorities for illagaly dumping waste. NASA has never paid the 400 dollar fine.
*cough*anybodyrememberwatchingchallengerblowup?*cough*Theres a reason why NASA developed such a safety conscious culture.
Yes there is. His name is Gene Kranz.
We tend to forget how NASA changed after Jan.27 1967, or rather what it was like before, but there were a lot of ways they could have responded. Due credit needs to be given to the people who instituted that cultural shift before we act like it was at all inevitable.
*cough*anybodyrememberwatchingchallengerblowup?*cough*Theres a reason why NASA developed such a safety conscious culture.
Yes there is. His name is Gene Kranz.
We tend to forget how NASA changed after Jan.27 1967, or rather what it was like before, but there were a lot of ways they could have responded. Due credit needs to be given to the people who instituted that cultural shift before we act like it was at all inevitable.
Sorry, had a somewhat traumatic childhood memory stuck in my throat (from "I'm six, think I wanna work on rockets" to "I'm six and wondering if people can just like study math and physics" in... well, the time it takes a shuttle to unexpectedly disassemble itself mid-flight on tv) but yeah, I'd be much happier with NASA throwing their entire launch development/maintenance/etc portion of the budget at shit like the Webb and just let Musk hurl it into space.
The heavenly palace has exploded over the Pacific.And Sandra Bullock is now stranded in space...Hawaii has been destroyed.It looks like it mostly burned up in the atmosphere, no debris hitting ground has been reported.
Fuck, guess we're in for more heavy breathing...Massive breathing.
Now I want to see an adversarial technique that lets you paint things so that humans see them as the wrong thing.
"This, officer? Oh it's just a turtle, as you can see."
Yes, but current camouflage doesn't exploit subtle inaccuracies in human perception in order to make them believe something patently false.
That is, you can train a neural network over an infinite sample of these fluke cases, and you will still have an infinite number of adversarial cases where it will fail.There is, in fact, only a finite (though incredibly large) number of possible adversarial cases to begin with. That said, it's impossible for any realistically feasible algorithm to achieve perfect classification (including human brains) at useful resolutions; this isn't a flaw in the algorithms as such, but a flaw in the thing we're trying to do.
What has me concerned, however, is to what degree these adversarial cases can be "learned away." It's my opinion that these things aren't just showing issues with the precise tuning of the weights involved in the neural network, but the very architecture of the algorithm in play. That is, you can train a neural network over an infinite sample of these fluke cases, and you will still have an infinite number of adversarial cases where it will fail.
*cough*Forgot about that, would actually wear some of these.
https://cvdazzle.com/
I wear patterned gym clothes, to give the illusion that I'm moving.The messiah has returned
Huh, this actually looks promising for some reason: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/04/the-galaxy-s9s-dex-pad-launches-may-13-for-99-99/Okay now that is a cool idea. Mobile devices are becoming more and more similar to desktop PCs, so this just seems like a logical next step.
The issue is having hardware in the phone. The hardware in the phone has to compete for space (See the *REAL* reason Apple removed the headphone jack), and so the maker is not going to put "dormant" hardware inside. The hardware that *IS* inside, is designed to run off the battery for 4 to 6 hours.
Clearer?
Windows just notified me that it had installed some photo app that was already busy scanning my hard drive and collecting albums from the pictures I had saved. A quick look at their store showed that I'm not the only one upset about this.Windows 10, I presume?Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Microsoft has become the Donald Trump of operating systems, forcing it's own people to pay for crap that makes no sense and nobody ever wanted.
Microsoft is just not hip, and is floundering about trying to #MeToo with #AppStore.
Microsoft is just not hip, and is floundering about trying to #MeToo with #AppStore.
Wut?
It really isn't that hard.
Well I guess technically you might need Geese to lay fertile eggs. Goose and Gander would be the proper terms though for male and female geese.It really isn't that hard.
I once worked at a company where one of the Sales people thought the difference between Goose and Geese was that Geese lay eggs. My expectations of people from that side of businesses are quite low as a result :)
Then again this is the same company where one of the Product Managers asked me if the Sun was bigger than the stars since it looks bigger, so maybe I shouldn't treat that as standard xD
You mean my Krampus cards I spent so much money and planning time on, CAN'T BE SENT!? Oh, Come ON! :PRebrand Krampus as a cultural instead of religious character. Problem solved.
For as long as I can remember, people have been hyping vertical farming — growing crops indoors, using vertical space to intensify production.
Its virtues, relative to conventional agriculture, have long been clear. Indoors, the climate can be controlled year-round. Pests can be minimized, and with them pesticides. Water and nutrients can be applied in precise quantities. By going up rather than out, a vertical farm can produce more food per acre of land. And by siting close to an urban area, it can reduce long distribution chains, getting fresher food to customers’ tables, quicker.
Its drawbacks have become equally clear. They mainly come down to cost. Farming well requires deep know-how and expertise; it has proven extraordinarily difficult to expand vertical farms in a way that holds quality consistent while driving costs down. Optimizing production at a small scale is very different from doing so at a large scale. The landscape is littered with the corpses of vertical-farming startups that thought they could beat the odds (though several are still alive and kicking).
Now a young Silicon Valley startup called Plenty thinks it has cracked the code. It has enormous expansion plans and a bank account full of fresh investor funding, but most excitingly, it is building a 100,000 square foot vertical-farming warehouse in Kent, Washington, just outside of Seattle, your author’s home town. That farm is expected to be open and delivering produce locally by midyear, and is designed to produce 4.5 million pounds of greens annually. Your author, in keeping with coastal elitist stereotypes, is a fervent lover of greens.
...
Plenty grows plants on 20-foot vertical towers instead of the stacks of horizontal shelves used by most other vertical-farming companies. Plants jut horizontally from the towers, growing out of a substrate made primarily of recycled plastic bottles (there’s no soil involved). Water and nutrients are fed in from the top of the tower and dispersed by gravity (rather than pumps, which saves money). All water, including from condensation, is collected and recycled.
...
Bottom line: Relative to conventional agriculture, Plenty says that it can get as much as 350 times the produce out of a given acre of land, using 1 percent as much water. “It is the most efficient [form of agriculture] in terms of the amount of productive capacity per dollar spent,” Barnard has said. “Period.”
It’s worth reading those claims again, as they are pretty eye-popping. The next grandest claim in the industry is AeroFarms, a Newark, New Jersey company with nine indoor farms, which says it can get to 130 times the amount of produce per acre.
From what I've found the key killer to vertical farming startups is that they pick the worst possible locations. The technology might work and be really damn impressive, but if you're setting up your first location in downtown Vancouver, you're going to go bankrupt pretty damn fast. You can't scale if you're spending all of your money on property costs.
Yes, one of the first vertical farming startups built their first vertical farm in downtown Vancouver. They went bankrupt, and in a postmortem blamed it on the fact that they picked downtown Vancouver versus literally anywhere else. The ones that have been starting up in, say, Texas, have been faring much better.
There's also risk. Even before man-made climate change was a thing, traditional agriculture carries period risk of total failure. Drought, floods etc. A modular controlled environment suffers from none of those things.
You just need a replicatable "factory" type farming method to be a certain % as profitable as what a traditional farm is in the good years, then that model would eventually supersede traditional farming completely. e.g. indoor farming wouldn't be likely to get destroyed by storms or hail at unpredictable intervals. It's the unpredictability of traditional farming which will be it's downfall.
Water and nutrients are fed in from the top of the tower and dispersed by gravity (rather than pumps, which saves money).
There are ways to contain it without that. One method is to engineer microbes who lack the ability to synthesize some needed nutrient, but which you add to the contained environment. If you're GMOing anyway, then turning off some chemical pathway would be relatively easy.
That's just being pedantic now and not really proving anything. e.g. perhaps there's 80% less pump pressure needed this way, which would be in line with the claim. e.g. there wasn't any claim that the entire company was "pump free" was there? Just that the way that each tower disperse the nutrients is by gravity, with removes the need for pumps.
While I'm not sure about going full-on microbiotic environment control, the contained structure does help reduce the risk of the modified plants themselves escaping into the local ecosystem and becoming invasive species. Which itself is a concern, especially in more fragile/susceptible areas.
Microbiota are hard to keep contained. You would need very aggressive clean-room style entrance and exit protocols, which would drive up operating costs, and would not look pretty to (morons, er...) "Skeptics" who are afraid of such things.I really dislike the lumping in of people who prefer their own beliefs with people who prefer to leave no unchallenged beliefs. I approach things skeptically because it seems foolish to accept anything without a solid foundation in rational thought, it's ok to just call people who want to be obstinant or cling to their beliefs what they are: dumbasses. If they were being skeptical they would question their own beliefs as well, and fuck shit like fox news for running with the idea that being an ignorant dumbfuck is the same thing as being a credible skeptic.
I approach things skeptically because it seems foolish to accept anything without a solid foundation in rational thought, it's ok to just call people who want to be obstinant or cling to their beliefs what they are: dumbasses. If they were being skeptical they would question their own beliefs as well, and fuck shit like fox news for running with the idea that being an ignorant dumbfuck is the same thing as being a credible skeptic.
Alright, I've heard of the rest, but "baraminologist"? What's that supposed to be?
While I'm not sure about going full-on microbiotic environment control, the contained structure does help reduce the risk of the modified plants themselves escaping into the local ecosystem and becoming invasive species. Which itself is a concern, especially in more fragile/susceptible areas.That's just being pedantic now and not really proving anything. e.g. perhaps there's 80% less pump pressure needed this way, which would be in line with the claim. e.g. there wasn't any claim that the entire company was "pump free" was there? Just that the way that each tower disperse the nutrients is by gravity, with removes the need for pumps.
I kinda feel like this is needlessly aggressive... The wording is a bit ambiguous and could easily be interpreted to mean "no pumps at all", and as with all "groundbreaking" startups, it's healthy to have a fair dose of skepticism before they've actually broken any ground. Hell, Kickstarter should be a great example of this... "Our system is unique in that it completely solves and avoids these common problems met by our competitors", and then slightly later "turns out we actually ran into the same problems, because we couldn't figure out a solution like we thought we'd be able to by now".
Then again, it's Vox, so I wouldn't necessarily place the blame for miscommunication on the actual startup.
[...]saying that "I'm a real skeptic"[...]Weeeeellll... strictly speaking, I can't provide evidence that I am real, but it is more likely that I'm an actual person than the mashup of nonsense needed to replace my existence with a hallucination or advanced spambot or whatever. :D
While I'm not sure about going full-on microbiotic environment control, the contained structure does help reduce the risk of the modified plants themselves escaping into the local ecosystem and becoming invasive species. Which itself is a concern, especially in more fragile/susceptible areas.That's just being pedantic now and not really proving anything. e.g. perhaps there's 80% less pump pressure needed this way, which would be in line with the claim. e.g. there wasn't any claim that the entire company was "pump free" was there? Just that the way that each tower disperse the nutrients is by gravity, with removes the need for pumps.
I kinda feel like this is needlessly aggressive... The wording is a bit ambiguous and could easily be interpreted to mean "no pumps at all", and as with all "groundbreaking" startups, it's healthy to have a fair dose of skepticism before they've actually broken any ground. Hell, Kickstarter should be a great example of this... "Our system is unique in that it completely solves and avoids these common problems met by our competitors", and then slightly later "turns out we actually ran into the same problems, because we couldn't figure out a solution like we thought we'd be able to by now".
Then again, it's Vox, so I wouldn't necessarily place the blame for miscommunication on the actual startup.
Sorry if that came across as aggressive, but let me clarify my point.
I think the context is important however. Clearly, if you've got the nutrients into the building, that's involved effort. The effort to raise the nutrients 20 feet at that point is a minimal part of the process.
What's important is what the method was being compared against - which was vertical farming systems that use stacks of horizontal shelves. e.g. when you use horizontal shelves, then you need pressurized pumps on each shelf that pump the nutrients across each level to ensure that all plants receive nutrients. Whereas, when the plants are jutting out sideways from a vertical structure, gravity does that for you. Pointing out that energy is needed to raise the nutrients up the tower is missing the point being made - the horizontal shelves method also needs energy to raise the nutrients up to the level of each shelf, then needs pressurized pumps to spread it horizontally.
e.g. the vertical nature of the towers was being compared to horizontal shelving, e.g. it's pointing out what's different about this method of vertical farming vs previous methods of vertical farming. In each case, you needed energy to get the nutrients into the right location to start with, an extra couple of feet isn't a deal-breaker and isn't really cogent with the claim being made, which was pretty straightforward.
and if the farm is multi-level you don't need ladders and buckets (which is sort of an appeal to ridicule, since the whole point of vertical farming is that it scales vertically whereas needing ladders implies you're operating on a single level). Less pumps is less moving parts, less that can break down, less that needs servicing, and less energy needed. If you have employees on the level above, already, it's trivial to get them to top up some nutrient tanks manually for the level below - hey you expended energy getting the employees up there already so if they carry some stuff up the stairs or it goes up in the service lift with them, then that's a minimal expenditure of energy and much less flaky than trying to pump it up.
This is why I said it was being overly pedantic - a counter-argument can be so pedantic that it actually loses sight of important contextual information about the point being made: pointing out that theoretically it needs energy to raise anything, anywhere ... misses the point that the article was contrasting vertical plant shelving vs horizontal plant shelving - and this is clear from context since it was the vertical shelving concept itself (and not vertical farming in general) which was being referenced in the quote you disputed.
It's not exactly very "tall", but that quote nest is getting mighty big... It's not a quote pyramid, so what is it? A quote bridge?
Mesoamerican pyramids also got flat tops.It's not exactly very "tall", but that quote nest is getting mighty big... It's not a quote pyramid, so what is it? A quote bridge?
Ziggurat. It's quite flat on top, and very steppy.
Or maybe I just quote you guys and start a legit quote pyramid.Mesoamerican pyramids also got flat tops.It's not exactly very "tall", but that quote nest is getting mighty big... It's not a quote pyramid, so what is it? A quote bridge?Ziggurat. It's quite flat on top, and very steppy.
Let's do itOr maybe I just quote you guys and start a legit quote pyramid.Mesoamerican pyramids also got flat tops.It's not exactly very "tall", but that quote nest is getting mighty big... It's not a quote pyramid, so what is it? A quote bridge?Ziggurat. It's quite flat on top, and very steppy.
If it looks like a pyramid but has its top cut off it's not a pyramid it's a frustum. Silly archaeologists or whatever, not paying attention in geometry class.Archeologists are notoriously bad at naming things.
Although to be fair, saying the "Aztec frustums" doesn't really roll off the tongue.
"I'm angry and narcissistic, so my glorious discovery shall be called Terror Lizards, in honor of my massiveness"That's paleontologists. Archeologists study human material culture and such.
That's what happens when you do nothing but fondle bones all day."I'm angry and narcissistic, so my glorious discovery shall be called Terror Lizards, in honor of my massiveness"That's paleontologists. Archeologists study human material culture and such.
It's a valid concern for any organism, full stop.
Presumably there were similar conversations in the early Neolithic about the danger these new and improved aurochsen would pose to crops intended for human consumption.
(It doesn't help that anything that starts "Scientists accidentally..." is pretty much fated to become a disaster movie, if it hasn't already presceiently been one. :P)
Albeit in what I think isn't too far off topic for intelligencia such as ourselves. 8)
As are energy output of the Sun as observed on the surface of Earth, and the original energy exuding from a similarly-sized area of surface before the 93 million miles of transit smooshes together a whole hemisphere but (mostly) inverse-squares itself out thinly over the heavens with only a minute amount ever getting into our skies, clear or otherwise.I was just talking about the 10 million times brighter than the sun bit here (peaks at 1 kj per second per meter squared) could mean lots of things, flashing something for an incredibly short period of time at an incredibly high intensity is going to be really fucking bright but it's not the same brightness as you would normally classify sunlight as being.
(I seem to have completely missed that we're not talking, the way I first read it, about someone shining something brighter than the Sun at the Sun (which, after 150Gm of travel, probably wouldn't bother it in the slightest). I think that error arose because it looks like someone thought that it was the shining of the DLS at the enzyme that changed it, rather than just the method to take a snapshot of the various versions of enzymes that had or had not been corrupted with accidental improvements through more traditional "mess with it a bit, see what it does" method.)
https://interestingengineering.com/fda-just-approved-first-contact-lenses-that-turn-dark-in-bright-sunlight
On a related topic, the FDA has recently approved light-sensitive contact lenses that darken in bright sunlight, so you can wear them while shining light that's 10 billion times brighter than the sun at something a little more comfortably.
I was just fbibing!Albeit in what I think isn't too far off topic for intelligencia such as ourselves. 8)
You misspelled "intelligentsia" intentionally, right? Because I'm laughing harder than I have in a while.
Apparently it doesn't necessarily mean 10bn times the visible light, so that can easily get misconstrued. Still though, pretty neat.
Just means it needs to be used as part of a regulated treatment regimen that involves other factors.
Well, except for the most common situation: wanting a buzz.
Right now the legal option is booze, with all the horrifying stuff it brings or... opioid scripts?
Hey guess what people are dying from less in states with little or no anti-pot bullshit?
I don't understand why people get buzzed, probably because I subscribe to the philosophy that people shouldn't intentionally and knowingly damage their mental states, minds in general, or ability to make rational decisions, even temporarily
I don't think anybody's arguing about marijuana's ability to buzz, or its relative harmlessness compared to certain popular alternatives.
BreakingEverything is as it should be.windnews: Uranus smells like farts (https://gizmodo.com/stinky-molecules-confirm-uranus-smells-like-farts-1825467106/amp).
Japan engineers build a transformer car that turns into a robot - but with people inside it (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-26/japanese-scientists-invent-real-life-transformer-robot/9701190). It can drive, and also walk - but at only 100 meters per hour. Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIsI9AqosA8). Not very practical, but it is a proof of concept.
Japan engineers build a transformer car that turns into a robot - but with people inside it (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-26/japanese-scientists-invent-real-life-transformer-robot/9701190). It can drive, and also walk - but at only 100 meters per hour. Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIsI9AqosA8). Not very practical, but it is a proof of concept.
And exactly what concept would that be, Reelya? To what possible use do you foresee transforming automobiles being put?
Always thought it was amusing that people just hopped inside transformers which possess the innate ability (it's in the name even) in most cases to subject their occupants to varying degrees of horrific mutilation or a hopefully quick death at a moments notice.
*bownn-"oh god whyyy"-breern-"my legs where are my fucking legs"-bownn-"fucking why am I not dead blargh"-bownk-"the bulkhead that cut me in half is holding my guts in fucking end it you unutterable bastard!"-bowwnnn*
Japan engineers build a transformer car that turns into a robot - but with people inside it (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-26/japanese-scientists-invent-real-life-transformer-robot/9701190). It can drive, and also walk - but at only 100 meters per hour. Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIsI9AqosA8). Not very practical, but it is a proof of concept.
And exactly what concept would that be, Reelya? To what possible use do you foresee transforming automobiles being put?
Proof of concept that it can be done, even if just for the fun of it? I also notice that they left the support straps on, so, it must not be very stable, or maybe that's just standard safety procedure.
Also, in a future where bipedal robots have uses, but where we still have roads
QuoteAlso, in a future where bipedal robots have uses, but where we still have roads
That sounds so utterly pointless you might be on to something... All hail the markets!
So, really what we need is just something with a 3D printer and the ability to extract carbon and/or silicon from the environment in order to produce the necessary parts on the fly, discarding them when no longer needed for traversal.
An elegant solution!
what if the bipedal robot crosses a river
(By the way, the argument presented two(+3, ninjas!) posts up is equivalent, in many ways, to the arguments I have against multifunction printer/scanner/copier/faxes/teas-maids/trouse-pressers/sexbots. Only insofar as desk space usage (and computer-off operation, at least until they make all the items IoT-ish and inter-operable from a minimal number of separate control panels) are you actually gaining some advantage by cramming several seperately failable items in a single box such that.often the whole suit needs to be discarded if just one internal feed, belt or module fails and you can't get an economic repair. That and getter the trouser press and sexbot functions mixed up. In two ways, my trousers have never quite fit the same since...)
Quotewhat if the bipedal robot crosses a river
Are you assuming that the thing swims like a human :D? (sry that was a bit mean)
I think it's incredibely unlikely that bipedal performs better than, tracked vehicles, drones, four or more robolegs, or whatever we might come up with, in any sensible setup.
It depends on what you're (or rather, the robot) doing and the environment it operates in.
Minimalist-actuator solutions are possible (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.09890), but I'm not sure I'd go quite that far with bipedal locomotion, or any polypedal gait that isn't so leg-numeric that fine control for balance isn't an issue.
edit: Should work down to even cell sized micro/nano robots.
Going bipedal with those minimalist actuator wouldn't work because you'd need to move the limb quickly or the robot would fall.Amazingly, I already covered that, in the very same sentence as I'd brought up the 'possibility'.
Strike everything I said because I can't stop giggling over the idea of a big serious gundam folding forward and extending another set of struts before windmilling it's arms and legs around to run like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTIpdtv_AK8
I don't know what to make of that.
Given that design... how is it not just better to remove the "legs" altogether and replace it with a wheel? Literally same damn principle. Thing spinning around fast, propelling object forward.
Anyways, Alexa already has the problems with ordering stuff you never meant to order.Problems for us, maybe. Corporate executives likely consider that a benefit.
Meanwhile, Facebook's chatbot is already coherent enough to testify before Congress.Uh, that was Zuckerberg, the chatbots seem much more human.
Meanwhile, Facebook's chatbot is already coherent enough to testify before Congress.Uh, that was Zuckerberg, the chatbots seem much more human.
-snip-The shitty twist is that they're both
Well, to be fair, calamari is squid. Octopus would be something like tako sashimi.
...but yes, I quite like that. Bit of a wee faux pas there, innit?
Well, to be fair, calamari is squid. Octopus would be something like tako sashimi.
...but yes, I quite like that. Bit of a wee faux pas there, innit?
Assuming that it’s even edible for the aliens.
Amazon has issued the following statement about why their Alexa device recorded a woman's private conversation and then emailed it to one of her friends:
Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like "Alexa." Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a "send message" request. At which point, Alexa said out loud "To whom?" At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, "[contact name], right?" Alexa then interpreted background conversation as "right." As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.
Valve has put out an official statement (https://www.geekwire.com/2018/valve-will-stop-removing-controversial-games-steam-unless-illegal-straight-trolling/) saying that they're no longer going to intervene in controversial games unless the content is straight-up illegal or is a scam.This is most certainly not right. Negligence is not the right way to run a store. Because when you do have a store, you are responsible for what is being sold there. Would you say that a store that sold clothes made after SS uniforms, or merchandise that outright does not work is perfectly justified if they just went and said "it's not illegal, so we won't do shit"? Because Valve is letting shit like Active Shooter and AIDS Simulator, not to mention the "games" that don't even have working .exe files in the first place. So no, they are not justified because it is their job to police their own store, not to sanitize visual novels but to keep out the actual garbage.
This is a good move from both gamers and Valve's position. If Steam actually went through and starts removing legal "sexy" games to "sanitize" their store, then it wouldn't end there. Various other groups would get the message that you can harass steam to remove violent content, gay content, pro-choice content, "satanic" content, pretty much every type of content. There would be a lot of "think of the children!" stuff to justify it.
Steam would then become a de facto censor, and whenever anything unliked by anyone's zeitgeist slips through the cracks, suddenly you get angry mobs asking "why Steam why?", with people on the Left demanding certain types of content be blocked, and people on the Right demanding certain other types of content be blocked.
It would end in a situation where Steam's right to remove your game, becomes Steam's obligation to ensure that only "tasteful" games that can't possibly offend anyone are the ones that get approved. Effectively, Steam would end up railroaded into a situation where they only support games which are "teen safe" and don't contain strong political messages of any stripe, because the whole company becomes controversy averse.
Valve/Steam are perfectly right to say it's not their job to dictate what people can or should like or create.
So no, they are not justified because it is their job to police their own store, not to sanitize visual novels but to keep out the actual garbage.
The typical adaptation cycle is to ignore a problem until it shows up on their reports, complain at workers that the reports aren't clean and hand out discipline until 3/4 of the workforce quits in frustration, then promote whoever is left among the remaining 1/4 and tell them to fix whatever caused that to happen.
What's new is trucks are now legally required to be equipped with digital meters that log driving times.Mild surprise, there.
What's new is trucks are now legally required to be equipped with digital meters that log driving times.Mild surprise, there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachograph#In_the_EU
Until I remembered how averse to suffering the tyranny of guaranteed annual vacations, public healthcare and other diabolical regulations the 'Merkin population is...
(Though they say never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.)
Better a false negative than a false positive; I'd rather see a guilty man run free than an innocent man behind bars.(Though they say never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.)I've always thought that this saying is extremely convenient for those truly guilty of malice who want to hide behind plausible deniability.
If that's a crime then we'd better get around to executing all humanity, then.
If that's a crime then we'd better get around to executing all humanity, then.
Its treason, then.
Better a false negative than a false positive; I'd rather see a guilty man run free than an innocent man behind bars.(Though they say never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.)I've always thought that this saying is extremely convenient for those truly guilty of malice who want to hide behind plausible deniability.
Better a false negative than a false positive; I'd rather see a guilty man run free than an innocent man behind bars.(Though they say never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.)I've always thought that this saying is extremely convenient for those truly guilty of malice who want to hide behind plausible deniability.
Besides, if an authority figure uses incompetence as an excuse, honestly or not, is that not reason enough to replace them? In a position of trust, an incompetent person can be as dangerous as a malicious one.
Besides, if an authority figure uses incompetence as an excuse, honestly or not, is that not reason enough to replace them? In a position of trust, an incompetent person can be as dangerous as a malicious one.
Authority figures don't themselves use it as an excuse, but I hear it brought up all the time when discussing the actions of politicians.
Better a false negative than a false positive; I'd rather see a guilty man run free than an innocent man behind bars.(Though they say never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.)I've always thought that this saying is extremely convenient for those truly guilty of malice who want to hide behind plausible deniability.
At this point in my life, I don't 100% agree.
For people in positions of authority, this sentiment should be reversed. The higher the authority, the more people are put at greater risk as the price for offering that benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, positions of power are easily abusable, and all the more attractive to those who would want to abuse them. Letting anything an authority figure does go if it can possibly be explained as incompetence makes us all easy victims to malice.
"Innocent until proven otherwise" is an important pillar of any justice system. Important things should be investigated to find if incompetence or malice truly was the cause (and if it was incompetence, how to idiotproof the system), but until then, nobody can be held responsible.
Besides, if an authority figure uses incompetence as an excuse, honestly or not, is that not reason enough to replace them? In a position of trust, an incompetent person can be as dangerous as a malicious one.
Except that's not how things work. It is easier to fire someone from a position of authority than it is to send them to jail. You don't need beyond reasonable doubt evidence to take away a person's authority like you do to take away their freedom completely.Then fire/impeach them for incompetence, not for malice. 'Incompetent' doesn't mean 'innocent'. But it doesn't mean 'criminal' either. If and when something suspicious happens in politics, we investigate it, and only then make our judgment and do what needs to be done to resolve the issue. Politicians are dirty as all hell, but we need to find the real dirt on them rather than the imagined, just as with anyone else.
Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.
(check the names on the paper: three men ... and a woman who was listed last)
(check the names on the paper: three men ... and a woman who was listed last)
Meaning she's the corresponding author, and therefore the principal investigator. It's not sexism, it's an authorship convention.
A really widespread one, too. How do you think authorship order works?
When UO historian Mark Carey hired Jaclyn Rushing, an undergraduate student in the Robert D. Clark Honors College, to explore how nongovernmental organizations were addressing melting Himalayan glaciers, he got an unexpected return.
Feminist and postcolonial theories enrich and complement each other by showing how gender and colonialism are co-constituted, as well as how both women and indigenous peoples have been marginalized historically (Schnabel, 2014). Feminist glaciology builds from feminist postcolonial science studies, analyzing not only gender dynamics and situated knowledge, but also alternative knowledge and folk glaciologist that are generally marginalized through colonialism, imperialism, inequality, unequal power relations, patriarchy, and the domination of Western science (Harding, 2009).
Yeah, maybe it was all the work of one undergraduate humanities student. When someone starts to appeal to "alternative knowledge" and lambasts how "colonialism" and "patriarchy" stops regular glacier scientists from listening to "folk glaciologists" all leading to the terrible "domination of Western science", then there aren't any original or useful ideas to be had here.
For this specific bug in the Windows 10 update you'd be kind of a goose to be really caught out by that.
The update issue only affected those who manually force the update instead of leaving it to the automatic updater. Once the bug reports started coming in, Microsoft pulled the update, but it never got to the point that it was being automatically rolled out. Anyone in the habit of manually updating things should really be doing full backups however, so they really have themselves to blame if they muck the system up.
the moral is to leave the system well alone unless you know what you're doing.
They can parkour (kinda) now! Nowhere is safe!! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LikxFZZO2sk&feature=em-uploademail)Eyy, Atlas! Don't worry, Atlas is a cool dude. People pick on his dog a lot though...
I swear I saw Atlas do that ages ago, but given that Boston only put it up today, I guess not.He's hopped up and down things before, and done 180 spins mid-air. Might be that.
I swear I saw Atlas do that ages ago, but given that Boston only put it up today, I guess not.He's hopped up and down things before, and done 180 spins mid-air. Might be that.
The real question is "and how long did it take them to properly program in that sequence of moves?"I think they favor programming in bits of movements and letting the bot work out the right sequence.
The real question is "and how long did it take them to properly program in that sequence of moves?"I think they favor programming in bits of movements and letting the bot work out the right sequence.
Check some of Boston Dynamics' other vids, they show off things like their dog/mule bot reacting and adapting to terrain in order to remain upright and stable. Poor thing gets kicked a lot...The real question is "and how long did it take them to properly program in that sequence of moves?"I think they favor programming in bits of movements and letting the bot work out the right sequence.
I didn't know the tech had advanced far enough to allow that. I thought that such AI was still cripplingly limited at best. Cool to see the advancements in tech, though.
We kick and shove them, and they dance for us?
Gods above and priests below the robots are going to murder us all when they wake up.
We kick and shove them, and they dance for us?
Gods above and priests below the robots are going to murder us all when they wake up.
It was inevitable.
Like fingerprints, no 3D printer is exactly the same. That's the takeaway from a new study that describes what's believed to be the first accurate method for tracing a 3D-printed object to the machine it came from. The advancement could help law enforcement and intelligence agencies track the origin of 3D-printed guns, counterfeit products and other goods.
(I am sure the trumpists will be all over this like flies on shit though.)
I think the point was that they'll be all against the exemption (and Big Gubmint, stopping the everyday grassroots Tycoon from doing their God-given rights to capitalism)? But this being a little bit necroed maybe someone can find follow-up news to indicate any actual reactions.But this is the automation thread; can't we get a bot to do that?
If they are looking for wobble differences (from stepper motors), then incorporation of a simple thermal resistor on the printer, and allowing a variable temperature in the printing room, will make this fingerprinting method very shady.Pretty sure it will be useless once people start 3D-printing their own 3D-printer parts. If any of the variables that determines the "fingerprint" is a piece of replaceable (and possibly 3D-printable) hardware, then it's not going to be accurate in the long run. The reverse-engineering of that error propagation would be a nightmare.
:P
I think the point was that they'll be all against the exemption (and Big Gubmint, stopping the everyday grassroots Tycoon from doing their God-given rights to capitalism)? But this being a little bit necroed maybe someone can find follow-up news to indicate any actual reactions.
I think the point was that they'll be all against the exemption (and Big Gubmint, stopping the everyday grassroots Tycoon from doing their God-given rights to capitalism)?
the company would “support talent mobility” for employees who did not want to work on certain projects “for whatever reason”.
Wasn't sure where to put it, but Microsoft workers are... less than pleased at learning that their AR headset will go to the US military (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/22/microsoft-protest-us-army-augmented-reality-headsets?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other) instead of groups like medical professionals.
Comment sections in any place talking about this are particularly salty and ultra-patriotic, to no one's surprise.
I SEE THAT YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO TERMINATE HUMANS. WOULD LIKE ME TO HELP BY TERMINATING ALL HUMANS?
There's no safety from the paperclip maximizer.
It doesn't have an audio jack. I've lost interest.
Well YEAH-- its ALL BATTERY in there.
I care about phones to the extent of how awesome their camera isyou're one of those people...
Not likely, monarch. I can't recall the last time I actually made a call on a phone, mobile or not. This is probably for the best because the urge to slip into my gravelly 'hey whadda yawant s'worth fekkin' mekkin dis thing start beepin like one a those fuckin things what makes a lot of noise n' den blows da fuck up, yanno dem guys what screams admiral akbar or some shit?' trucker voice grows ever harder to resist every time I even think about answering a phone.I care about phones to the extent of how awesome their camera isyou're one of those people...
I care about phones to the extent of how awesome their camera is, I've now played around with a modern enough phone to appreciate shit like depth sensors, ToF wizardry, and mixtures of telephoto/variable aperture doodads under a spookily intelligent layer of glass.I use chop for let there be light a lot actually, it's really convenient when I'm riding my skateboard and I need to turn it on while still looking where I'm going, when I ride side streets at night I need drivers to be able to see me and it lets me turn my light on safely
If I'm carrying a brick like that around I expect it to have a fucking hammerspace DSLR type lens setup emerge at a flick of the wrist.
Flicking my wrist to activate the camera, btw, is like the least mentioned awesome feature of recent phones, chop twice for a flashlight, twisttwist for camera, no clue if there is more because those two cover what I need 99% of the time so far.
GREAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT- GOAT
So, get CBD/THC yeast, bake bread with it, and... hmm.That sounds like one of those things that wouldn't be fatal, but you'd definitely die.
Yeah that sounds great. Friendship ended with hemp, yeast is our best friend now.
Toast bread erry day.Absolutely TOASTED.
Well yeah, that's true of everything.Was thinking more of the non-lethality combined with an overwhelming and imminent sense of "oh fuck I'm dying".
But to what degree is it true? Rather, how long does it take for a thing to kill you on average?As long as it takes...
As long as it takes...Life can be decently long, 70 years, 80, 90. Hell, some even reach 120 years.
Does this mean that life is torture? /sAnyone who says otherwise is selling something.
Well yeah, that's true of everything.Except rolling a save vs Death which we're getting closer to doing nowadays, making Star Trek that much more horrific. "Well sorry, we've got the technology to accidentally turn you into a child after dismantling you at a fucking subatomic level or some bullshit, we can just produce shit from energy and information, including solid light, but you're getting to be around 200 years old so there's just nothing else we can do but watch you degenerate mentally and physically until you can't even perform your useless job making you worthless because we're somehow retaining protestant work ethics despite having the makings of a post-scarcity anarchist utopia on our hands, so once you're done suffering go ahead and keel over before we chuck your meat into space because we're dicks like that."
TO THE PAIN!Does this mean that life is torture? /sAnyone who says otherwise is selling something.
Borg have hivemind-enforcing nanites, though. Without that you're just a regular cyborg, like Robert Cop.How many regular cyborgs are there in Star Trek though?
presentations of the future
TNG was less "current cold war events recast" and more of a forward looking "how things could be" at least in presentation, last time I checked.
Also Bynars are barely modified and fall into the "can't be human and upgraded" area as badly as the Borg do.
Back on point though, it would only be hilariously funny, BECAUSE the federation is so tight-assed about such things. In the setting you describe, it would just be "Oh, that thing that bob did last week."
TNG was less "current cold war events recast" and more of a forward looking "how things could be" at least in presentation, last time I checked.
Case in point-- how exactly does dilithium crystal somehow manage to survive direct exposure to antimatter? (the technobabble suggests that it somehow is able to redirect all the enormous quantities of photons and hard neutrons produced by the reaction so that the energy can be harnessed, but really does not explain how. Considering that it would just be a pretty innocuous looking metallic prism, (and a highly reactive one at that, keep away from water and oxygen kids!) with a pretty low melting point.. this just does not make much sense at all.)Noting that dilithium isn't Li2, but something else.
it's not a trivial thing to fire a -1D stream into a (DtSiFe...) matrix.
Yeah, but that's why I mentioned the Culture, where it's taken for granted that everyone has full rights over their existence, so if they want glands which release drugs for various purposes grown in their body they get them (say you're in a sudden ambush you would "gland Focus" for a slowed down movement sensitive mindstate, or release some Chill if you're on a long trip and trying to kill time) plus things that happen without prompting like painkillers/blood clotting agents/antivenom, if they get bored being a human and want a spin on the wild side they might grow an entirely alien body and move their mindstate into it, which is helped because it's normal to have a Neural Lace woven into your brain to access information and shit like having a backup if you get killed.
These are things that might seem kinda over the top for a baseline background character, but any human in setting is basically just a pet for the Minds which wear the various Ships in setting as bodies.
Is the Enterprise smarter than a typical home assistant these days? Why not? Because the weird overarching shape the series inherited from Roddenberry in the 60's meant posthuman or transhuman were taboo subjects to be afraid of and shunned, with perhaps a token curiosity like Data or Seven here and there.
because you can totally fire a beam of antiprotons into a big thin-walled tank of deuterium and get antimatter-catalyzed fusion.Can you get both sufficient and sustained power out of that?
because you can totally fire a beam of antiprotons into a big thin-walled tank of deuterium and get antimatter-catalyzed fusion.Can you get both sufficient and sustained power out of that?
At Starship magnitudes of energy needs (the amount of plasma needed to use the warp coil(s), especially) can you scale up the antiproton beam magnitude and available annihillatable feed-matter against the force of the initially produced energy that you need to sufficiently energise the remaining feed-matter to energise it?
In other words, you can take the magic rocks out of the warp core and everything's still going to work just the same.No! I cannae do that, cap'n! She can't take it!
We can't say how much power a pile of aphysical nonsense requires to do something impossible, so "starship magnitudes of energy needs" isn't a meaningful metric here, and "sufficient" is likewise not answerable without a specific case. In Valkyrie's case, it's enough to keep the tether taut and accelerate the whole ship to 0.92cIt's likely to be sufficiently dissimilar, by orders of magnitude, from this design. If not very trivial (because you arrange a cleber Alcubierre-type effect of warping with minimal positive and negative mass/energy densities) it's probably a vastly more energy-intensive process. The knowledge we lack is more the nature of the warp-coil operation (if we take as read that they take plasma as 'fuel' to the process, but allowing for a staged conversion within the coils themselves from the raw plasma to the warp field effect).
I still believe that shutting down coal plants and such would be a more efficient way to fight against climate change than causing a volcanic winter.Ah yes, but sulphur dioxide is a natural waste product of the fossil fuel industry. One that, under current legislation, is strictly controlled.
Some pretty dangerous shit could be made with a setup that small.I don't really understand how this would be any more dangerous than any other compact storage medium, especially when it comes to illegal drugs. We already have small enough media to fit hundreds of gigabytes in the palm of one's hand, and it's not like any customs office asks you to pull out the SD card from your camera to show it doesn't have anything illegal on it.
this means you can input data that translates to the sequences used for say-- botulinum toxin's pathway-- and insert it into yeasts, then disperse them into the wild. The results would be horrific.What exactly does the word "insert" entail here? That sounds like the hard part to me.
Well it's certainly a lot more difficult to insert when it isn't hard, let me tell you!this means you can input data that translates to the sequences used for say-- botulinum toxin's pathway-- and insert it into yeasts, then disperse them into the wild. The results would be horrific.What exactly does the word "insert" entail here? That sounds like the hard part to me.
I think that what wierd is saying is that it has applications for more than data storage. It's a fully automated way to synthesise arbitrary DNA from computer data. Making it easier for any old someone to genetically modify something.
I understand (roughly) how modern genetic engineering techniques work, but how does the specific method of storing arbitrary data in DNA make drug law impossible to enforce, any more than storing arbitrary data on, say, a thumbstick?Thumbsticks can't synthesize material on their own.
In this particular case, he appears to be suggesting that someone create yeast that can synthesize things like tetrahydrocannabinol, which is...doable but not particularly useful in terms of yield, particularly in a garage setup.Some drugs are more potent than others.
Some pretty dangerous shit could be made with a setup that small.I don't really understand how this would be any more dangerous than any other compact storage medium, especially when it comes to illegal drugs. We already have small enough media to fit hundreds of gigabytes in the palm of one's hand, and it's not like any customs office asks you to pull out the SD card from your camera to show it doesn't have anything illegal on it.
In this particular case, he appears to be suggesting that someone create yeast that can synthesize things like tetrahydrocannabinol, which is...doable but not particularly useful in terms of yield, particularly in a garage setup.Some drugs are more potent than others.
The danger is in reducing the needs of skilled staff, and of lowering the bars on costs of equipment and development through proliferation.
I think there is a miscommunication here.
I am concerned about this device, and consider it dangerous, because of what it represents, not necessarily it being intrinsically dangerous.
this plus some infamous techniques like CRISPR and some yeast, could make the DEA's job literally impossible to enforce. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190227131838.htm)
[...]
Some pretty dangerous shit could be made with a setup that small.
Double posting, with whatever the fucking fuck this fucklical fuckery is supposed to be (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/04/new-phase-matter-confirmed-solid-and-liquid-same-time-potassium-physics/).
Matter states are just going off the rails these days.
12:50 p.m. UTC / 03:50 a.m. PDT: We rolled-out a fix for release, beta and nightly users on Desktop. The fix will be automatically applied in the background within the next few hours, you don’t need to take active steps.
In order to be able to provide this fix on short notice, we are using the Studies system. You can check if you have studies enabled by going to Firefox Preferences -> Privacy & Security -> Allow Firefox to install and run studies.
You can disable studies again after your add-ons have been re-enabled.
We are working on a general fix that doesn’t need to rely on this and will keep you updated.
Firefox is on fire today.
Add-on certification isn't working, so the next time Firefox checks the certification, the add-on will be disabled and possibly removed, since the certification has expired.
Not a good weekend for Mozilla devs.
Because the sale of malware is restricted in the US, whoever purchases the laptop will receive it only once its ports and internet capabilities have been "functionally disabled", according to the auction web page.
It makes no difference tough, it is all old malware that can't do anything anymore. These things have a shelf life of months.
A better idea:
Ask the insurance company to provide you an app that locks your phone and disables the ringer when the multiaxis accelerometer detects the phone is in motion. A simple AI baked into the app could easily determine if you are walking around, vs driving around.
Human hands are not nearly as steady as you think they are. Tremor analysis can do wonders when coupled with orientation data.
Having your phone do something which involves updating the public ledger while in motion would do so, and best of all you can get some of that venture capital bullshit by blockchaining it up!
The critical bit would be having your insurance premium lessened by this, mining safe driver coins or some shit.
There are chatrooms you can only access when your battery is <5% and unplugged, this is a possible thing I'm talking about.
Similarly, the more parameters you have the algorithm consider, the more likely it is that someone will find some quirk of the logic that looks racist or classist or sexist or something.
https://github.com/1995parham/github-do-not-ban-us (https://github.com/1995parham/github-do-not-ban-us)
Fuckin' dis-augs...
There have been cases where they just forgot to train the AI against non-"cisgendered white people", so sometimes the algorithm is biased :P Though that's because of the inherent unconscious bias of the people who fed information into it to train it. Likewise in the case above the algorithm isn't so-much biases as highlighting the inherent sexism in society which things like affirmative action are intended to address (e.g pressure businesses into offering equal available maternity leave for both partners, providing nursery areas etc). There's a whole wide conversation about how to go about solving that particular problem though.
https://github.com/1995parham/github-do-not-ban-us (https://github.com/1995parham/github-do-not-ban-us)It's a tricky one for GitHub.
Fuckin' dis-augs...
This does highlight another way in which current business laws and politicians still really don't know how to deal with this whole "global interconnected network" thing, since it just makes everything worse for everyone on all sides.
A valid reading of that data is that greater choice is allowing for the inherent societal 'pressures' to manifest itself ;)
One has to question why society thinks that STEM fields are deserving of higher pay than soft-skills based careers that are mentally taxing (like nursing.) Becoming a full RN or BSN requires a pretty hefty chunk of change too you know. It's not unskilled labor.
I always assumed that was at least in part because people wanted to do it, so were willing to accept low pay to do so
According to the “United States Registered Nurse Workforce Report Card and Shortage Forecast” published in the January 2012 issue of the American Journal of Medical Quality, a shortage of registered nurses is projected to spread across the country between 2009 and 2030. In this state-by-state analysis, the authors forecast the RN shortage to be most intense in the South and the West.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/903258
https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/healthcare-jobs-grow-at-rapid-clip-but-wages-lag-amid-consolidation-boom/552765/
In March 2019, The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that between May 2017 and May 2018, registered nurses brought in a median salary of $71,730 per year – a 3.7% increase compared to the previous year.
By 1988, RN wages had increased to $28,383 annually, according to “Nursing Economics,” and they continued to rise until by 1992, when the average RN wage was $37,738.
...
Nurses earned a median annual wage of $64,690 in May 2010, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Reminds me of the construction labor shortage that we're also currently suffering from.
...actually, that's kind of concerning. That's at least two major fields where we're suffering from labor shortages. I'm starting to think that the economy is outpacing the capacity for the country to do work- that is, we're reaching an economic level that requires more people working than there actually are.
This is starting to get really weird.
Automation? In nursing? (stifles mad laughter)
Well, that does not sound like a fully robot-proof occupation, but still pretty safe, relatively speaking. At least in your lifetime.
In my field it looks more like some 90% jobs going redundant, in a decade or two.
Well, that does not sound like a fully robot-proof occupation, but still pretty safe, relatively speaking. At least in your lifetime.
In my field it looks more like some 90% jobs going redundant, in a decade or two.
It sounds to me like it's the sort of occupation where the more fundamental obstacles to automation that aren't good candidates for industrial funding can be discretized into federally fundable projects, and the nursing shortage is a clear motivating factor. I'd be surprised if it had a decade or two.
I'd say my field was resistant to automation, but it's more that we keep building the robots that can take our jobs and then doing more science with them, so I suppose it's more automation-compatible.
I think you forget just how much the GOP hates funding science, Trekkin. :D They often view AI as "Pie in the sky" science fiction, rather than actually needed research. They also tend to focus on military applications rather than civilian ones, which they view as the domain of private enterprise. (often religiously so.) They are much more likely to fund skynet than baymax. :P
Time estimations are hard, but to me it's harder to imagine a future where poor people wouldn't be subjected to robo-threatment and their relatives made liable for any resistance. I imagine the future much like a luxurious fully automated slaughterhouse (in that all movements are constrained in the right direction)
They'll move 100% to the gig economy so that you don't have to be treated as an employee.
(pricetags can very well include models like chinas social credit score)
Pence referenced is a planning document released by China’s chief administrative body five years ago. It calls for the establishment of a nationwide scheme for tracking the trustworthiness of everyday citizens, corporations, and government officials. The Chinese government and state media say the project is designed to boost public confidence and fight problems like corruption and business fraud. Western critics often see social credit instead as an intrusive surveillance apparatus for punishing dissidents and infringing on people’s privacy.
Last year, China’s National Development and Reform Commission said it would begin banning people on public transport for up to a year. The recent report also said 128 people were prevented from leaving China because of unpaid taxes.
In late 2015, Congress passed the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, a law that, among other things, helps the IRS collect larger tax debts. Included in the FAST Act is Section 7345 of the Internal Revenue Code, which requires the IRS to provide information to the U.S. State Department about people who owe “seriously delinquent tax debt.” Then, the State Department can deny, revoke or limit the ability of these individuals to use their passports – until they are back in good standing with the IRS.
The report said authorities collected more than 14m data points of “untrustworthy conduct” last year, including scams, unpaid loans, false advertising and occupying reserved seats on a train.
...
A video of a train passenger who refused to give up a seat another passenger had reserved went viral last year, sparking a debate over whether the current system of banning such travellers was harsh enough.
As Metro and lawmakers look for ways to prevent assaults on transit operators and customers — particularly from repeat offenders — they are dealing with issues other transit agencies have struggled with: chiefly, how to balance public safety with the needs of transit-dependent communities.
Prompted by a recent spate of assaults on bus drivers — including an incident in which a woman allegedly threw a cup of urine onto a driver and another in which a driver was spat on — officials are pushing for tougher criminal penalties and the authority to ban offenders from the system.
...
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), which has issued more than 12,000 temporary or permanent bans since September 2013. That is when the agency's board of directors passed a new, stricter code of conduct that outlines a process that for the first time allows police to issue suspension citations.
There is a charm to hand crafted objects because each one carries the risk of failure during the crafting process while success results in something which may resemble other things but retains a uniqueness that will be difficult to replicate as automation by definition kills the kitschy sort of appeal it had in the first place.
Yes, but for some reason humans seem to value things being "hand-crafted" for no real particular reason.
Remember, humans aren't always rational.
Yes, but for some reason humans seem to value things being "hand-crafted" for no real particular reason.
Remember, humans aren't always rational.
Yes, but for some reason humans seem to value things being "hand-crafted" for no real particular reason.
Remember, humans aren't always rational.
It's just nice knowing that the bowl you're jacking off into was made by something that has also jacked off.
The day I trust an assembly line AI with my penis is the day I accept mass-manufactured goods.
The imperfection isn't the point, the point is those imperfections are there because a person was making it. A human can still make a bunch of "flawless" products that are effectively the same to another person's eye, perfection isn't the point. In either case it's given special value because a human made it.There is a charm to hand crafted objects because each one carries the risk of failure during the crafting process while success results in something which may resemble other things but retains a uniqueness that will be difficult to replicate as automation by definition kills the kitschy sort of appeal it had in the first place.
Who says automation cannot make unique items? Computers can retain a perfect record of every item they've ever made; if you tell it to randomly perturb the least functionally consequential parameters of the design until it's sufficiently different from every item it's ever made, the only question is how fast you can make the comparison (the compactness of the representation also matters, but spline interpolation alone can stop that being the limiting factor for most things where the shape is the important part.)
If you want it to randomly mess up the fabrication, it can do that too. You can even skew the randomness to match what a human would most likely mess up, if you want.
In either case it's given special value because a human made it.
Let's not conflate function approximation with godliness. People practically worship these damn things already.
They also literally worship them, but that's beside the point: godliness isn't necessary, and it's fun, in a schadenfreude-y way, to watch people insisting that their particular job is too special to ever be automated fall back on arguments about humanity being inherently special in some mystical yet marketable way in the absence of any meaningful, tangible difference between their work and the output of some conceivable machine. A whole lot of people are way less special than they like to think they are, and automation handily points that out.
50CRATES OUTPUT CHANNEL:
THE ONLY DATA I HAVE INDEXED
IS THAT I DO NOT HAVE ANY DATA INDEXED(a) It is unfair or deceptive to represent, directly or by implication, that any industry product is hand-made or hand-wrought unless the entire shaping and forming of such product from raw materials and its finishing and decoration were accomplished by hand labor and manually-controlled methods which permit the maker to control and vary the construction, shape, design, and finish of each part of each individual product.
To go back to the topic of automation and nursing for a sec, aren't some form of electronic harness and pulley systems already in use in some care homes? Friend of the family developed pretty severe dementia and so was placed in a care home, and they used an electronic pulley system to get him out of bed instead of doing it by hand.Quick check has some show up. You're talking hundreds of dollars for a patient lift device (that's pretty large and bulky). Lot cheaper to just wear out next of kin, who's still going to be doing a fair amount of lifting even with that sort of aid. Which is an issue when elder care is already ruinously expensive for a lot of folks.
This is in the UK, so don't know if that's a thing elsewhere yet.
Otherwise, literally every machine becomes "automation" and the term itself becomes meaningless. Because, if the bed-lift is automation, then so is a wheelbarrow, because the wheelbarrow replaces the need to carry things by hand.
They're funded by violently fucking the finances of their patients and their patients' relatives, though.
Except that means you need to hire less people to carry stuff, since one person with a wheelbarrow can do the job of several people without. 100% automation is just another stage in the same process that gave rise to the wheelbarrow, but it is still fundamentally just another continuation of the previous mechanizations. This isn't a new problem, it's an accelerating problem that starting picking up speed with the discovery of the steam engine and the collapse of the cottage industry in the industrial revolution that followed, and got another kick with the invention of the transistor.
elder care is already ruinously expensive for a lot of folks.Truth. My father in law burned through $40k in savings in 7 months. Partly because he's half senile and doesn't know how to budget, but also because assisted living is just expensive.
Just reducing the number of workers, but still having everything done manually isn't "automation", since if the humans stop working, the whole thing stops, hence it isn't automatic. It's just a more efficient, but still non-automated process.
Just because the "whole" process isn't automated doesn't mean that some part of it isn't automated. Your arguing against a straw man.
But now you're changing the entire nature of your argument. We were just argument about the definition of the specific word, but now you're talking about socio-political value systems. That's a non-sequitur.
Earlier today, disgruntled security researcher Vasily Kravets released a zero-day vulnerability in the Windows version of the ubiquitous gaming service Steam. The vulnerability allows any user to run arbitrary code with LOCALSYSTEM privileges using just a very few simple commands.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/severe-local-0-day-escalation-exploit-found-in-steam-client-services/ (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/severe-local-0-day-escalation-exploit-found-in-steam-client-services/)QuoteEarlier today, disgruntled security researcher Vasily Kravets released a zero-day vulnerability in the Windows version of the ubiquitous gaming service Steam. The vulnerability allows any user to run arbitrary code with LOCALSYSTEM privileges using just a very few simple commands.
Is it time to panic?
I tried to do as instructed, but cannot find any checkbox for include inheritable permissions
Yeah, from the UK perspective here so...care homes for the elderly who lack the capacity for private funding seem pretty "a thing that state should provide".
Mere seconds after posting updated instruction for the steam bug, centurylink, my isp, decides it needs to go down. Posting from my phone, via cellular.
American ISPs are great, ya?
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/severe-local-0-day-escalation-exploit-found-in-steam-client-services/ (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/severe-local-0-day-escalation-exploit-found-in-steam-client-services/)QuoteEarlier today, disgruntled security researcher Vasily Kravets released a zero-day vulnerability in the Windows version of the ubiquitous gaming service Steam. The vulnerability allows any user to run arbitrary code with LOCALSYSTEM privileges using just a very few simple commands.
Is it time to panic?
It's OK. My ISP has assigned my home router an IP address that is on an Akamai blacklist. Some of my bill-pay websites now just give me Akamai's infamous "Access Denied" error.Mere seconds after posting updated instruction for the steam bug, centurylink, my isp, decides it needs to go down. Posting from my phone, via cellular.
American ISPs are great, ya?
It isn't so bad. Mine has 9 fives uptime.
I am driving a win7 machine, because I hate win10. That might be part of it. I can make pictures though. Hold on.Different since win8, yeah.
Russian nuclear-powered cruise missile (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/08/russian-nuclear-powered-cruise-missile-blows-up-creating-mini-chernobyl/)of course it won't, the cockroaches will die off come winter
So Russia is experimenting with Nuclear-powered missiles. These missiles would be capable of flying significantly higher and further, and staying in the air much longer compared to non-nuclear-powered missiles. One of them just exploded.
Can someone smart please reassure me that this definitely is not going to end with radioactive material being released into the upper atmosphere and then carried by the winds to every corner of the earth and leaving nothing alive except cockroaches?
Yeah, it does the same thing, click it and it will prompt you to choose if you want to convert the inherited permissions to explicit permissions on the object(yes, this is what we want) or if you just want to rid it of all permissions.
Choose the first option and then proceed exactly as Wierd showed, you will double-click the group you want to edit. It will look a bit different, you need to click "show advanced permissions" or something like that. It is not in columns, but it shows the same items as the pic Wierd sent us.
Give permissions to the administrator group and remove the permissions wierd stated(set value, create subkey, create link, delete, write DAC, write owner) from the users group.
EDIT:I am driving a win7 machine, because I hate win10. That might be part of it. I can make pictures though. Hold on.Different since win8, yeah.
Also, just move to win 10 already mate. You are very knowledgeable though, I can't tell you anything you don't already know, but all that means is that you are aware that you should've made the switch way earlier.
Can someone smart please reassure me that this definitely is not going to end with radioactive material being released into the upper atmosphere and then carried by the winds to every corner of the earth and leaving nothing alive except cockroaches?
Can someone smart please reassure me that this definitely is not going to end with radioactive material being released into the upper atmosphere and then carried by the winds to every corner of the earth and leaving nothing alive except cockroaches?
Can someone smart please reassure me that this definitely is not going to end with radioactive material being released into the upper atmosphere and then carried by the winds to every corner of the earth and leaving nothing alive except cockroaches?
This is a fallacy. Cockroaches won't survive without humans, they're dependent on our urban ecosystems.
But you'd need a lot of those missiles to explode or release fallout for that to even happen.
2. Some third party has the ability to block my IP without my knowledge, for unknown reasons.
Trade wars, recessions, and cold wars...
Tell me again, when will the shadow of the McCarthy era finally dissolve?
When politicians decide they don't benefit from keeping the population cowed with fear, or we guillotine them all.
A german roach? Or one outside?
This is a fallacy. Cockroaches won't survive without humans, they're dependent on our urban ecosystems.
This is a fallacy. Cockroaches won't survive without humans, they're dependent on our urban ecosystems.
This is so wrong, at least in Australia (but I'd be surprised if it wasn't global).
"Virtually all terrestrial habitats in Australia have native cockroaches present, including some caves which are host to specialised pale blind and wingless species of cockoaches."
"Native cockroaches feed in trees on pollen, bark and leaf material."
https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/animals/insects/native-cockroaches/ (https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/animals/insects/native-cockroaches/)
Native cockroaches are nothing like the invasive urban ones. The ones people mean when they say cockroaches will survive a nuclear blast aren't "bush" roaches as we called them in country Australia, they're the 1-2 species of worldwide urban ones. The German Cockroach and other big city ones will nearly completely die out once humans are gone.
EDIT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach
There are 4600 cockroach species, but only 30 are found around human habitation, and only 4 of them are notable as being pest species, all of which are introduced species. Those species will all mostly die out when humans are gone, they are dependent on our ecosystem.
Native cockroaches are nothing like the invasive urban ones. The ones people mean when they say cockroaches will survive a nuclear blast aren't "bush" roaches as we called them in country Australia, they're the 1-2 species of worldwide urban ones. The German Cockroach and other big city ones will nearly completely die out once humans are gone.
EDIT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach
There are 4600 cockroach species, but only 30 are found around human habitation, and only 4 of them are notable as being pest species, all of which are introduced species. Those species will all mostly die out when humans are gone, they are dependent on our ecosystem.
So cockroaches aren't cockroaches? I'm not buying. Bush roaches are cockroaches too!
The quotidian reason for thinking that cockroaches will take over the earth in the case of a catastrophic nuculear incident is their purported immunity to radioactivity, and although that contains a large degree of falsehood (as the wikipedia article you quote evidences) that was not the basis of your argument, which was expressly about their dependency on human urban ecosystems which is patently false.
(Even in the case of urban cockroaches I suspect that they are not 'dependent' on the urban environment but merely thrive under those conditions, hence the 'mostly' in your quoted statement - but this is beside the point...)
Making the argument that cockroaches aren't cockroaches is just hilarious. :)
Native cockroaches are nothing like the invasive urban ones. The ones people mean when they say cockroaches will survive a nuclear blast aren't "bush" roaches as we called them in country Australia, they're the 1-2 species of worldwide urban ones. The German Cockroach and other big city ones will nearly completely die out once humans are gone.
EDIT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach
There are 4600 cockroach species, but only 30 are found around human habitation, and only 4 of them are notable as being pest species, all of which are introduced species. Those species will all mostly die out when humans are gone, they are dependent on our ecosystem.
So cockroaches aren't cockroaches? I'm not buying. Bush roaches are cockroaches too!
The quotidian reason for thinking that cockroaches will take over the earth in the case of a catastrophic nuculear incident is their purported immunity to radioactivity, and although that contains a large degree of falsehood (as the wikipedia article you quote evidences) that was not the basis of your argument, which was expressly about their dependency on human urban ecosystems which is patently false.
(Even in the case of urban cockroaches I suspect that they are not 'dependent' on the urban environment but merely thrive under those conditions, hence the 'mostly' in your quoted statement - but this is beside the point...)
Making the argument that cockroaches aren't cockroaches is just hilarious. :)
My whole point was that the "cockroaches will take over the world" thing is built on two points. The nuclear survival one, but also the ubiquity of cockroaches around human habitation. The entire world population of wild cockroaches which aren't dependent on humans is a very small proportion of the total number of roaches.
The vast majority of cockroaches by numbers are entirely dependent on human civilization (probably something like 9999/10000 of all roaches). Sure, some cockroaches will be left if we die off, but a tiny fraction of the current population numbers, and almost none of those will be the species we normally interact with.
You're just being pedantic and ignoring what I actually meant. For example when people say e.g. "all the cats will die out" they almost certainly mean the domestic housecat species, even though technically, a lot of other things are cats, too. By your argument, everyone would also need to qualify any statement about cats since they could mean pumas or caracals or something, which are types of cats. Similarly, when I said cockroaches will die out once humans die out since they're associated with our urban ecosystems, naturally, I was talking about the common species of cockroaches that are assocated with humans, and as I pointed out, these are the ones people are talking about when they discuss cockroaches, not hypothetically Andean Tree Roaches or some such.
meats, starches, sugars, and fatty foods. Where a shortage of foodstuff exists, they may eat household items such as soap, glue, and toothpaste
In fact although their numbers would almost certainly decline longer-term in a post-nuclear scenario in the short term they are likely to explode in numbers due to the abundance of rotting human flesh as a ready food supply.
Quotemeats, starches, sugars, and fatty foods. Where a shortage of foodstuff exists, they may eat household items such as soap, glue, and toothpaste
ok ... none of these things generally exist just sitting around without us there. If they're lucky and there's a piece of meat out in the bush and nothing else is eating it, i guess the cockroaches could get some. but in the wild, they'll be competing with other species, such as ants. The urban type of cockroach build big social nests. They're not going to fare well once their core food supply disappears.
the thing is, once these sorts of high density food stuffs are gone they're going to be competing with more specialized species. Can they out-compete native species in a forest? The question is, do German Cockroaches for example colonize forests or other wilderness now. If not, there's no real reason to think they'll have any more success colonizing those sorts of areas once their main benefactors humans are gone. Like, in current green areas you don't tend to see many urban cockroaches scurrying around in the leaf matter.QuoteIn fact although their numbers would almost certainly decline longer-term in a post-nuclear scenario in the short term they are likely to explode in numbers due to the abundance of rotting human flesh as a ready food supply.
Right. This doesn't sound plausible long-term either, since rotting human flesh will be a finite resource. Additionally, a big reason roaches survive is that we actively suppress predators that might eat them. you might instead see a rat explosion, and they eat the rotting human flesh before it's digestible by the roaches. And then eat the roaches.
There's also this fluff piece in SciAm (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/where-theres-heat-there-are-cockroaches/) (From somebody who is not an entomologist)
Additionally, a big reason roaches survive is that we actively suppress predators that might eat them. you might instead see a rat explosion, and they eat the rotting human flesh before it's digestible by the roaches. And then eat the roaches.Assuming the rats, etc., can handle the fallout as well as the roaches and don't end up sterile or malformed. The roaches' benefit is that they're simpler organisms.
But School of Population and Global Health Professor Tilman Ruff, a Nobel Laureate who studies the health and environmental consequences of nuclear explosions, says he has yet to see any documented evidence that there were cockroaches scuttling through the rubble.
“I’ve certainly seen photographs of injured people in Hiroshima that have lots of flies around, and you do imagine some insects would have survived,” Professor Ruff says. “But they still would have been affected, even if they appear more resistant than humans.”
“For a while they’ll be able to eat dead bodies and other decaying material but, if everything else has died, eventually there won’t be any food. And they’re not going to make much of a living,” Professor Elgar says.
If roaches really are going to be the survivors, they should be all over the Chernobyl exclusion zone.Were there roaches there before the incident? I assume northern Ukraine is one of those colder areas.
If roaches really are going to be the survivors, they should be all over the Chernobyl exclusion zone.Were there roaches there before the incident? I assume northern Ukraine is one of those colder areas.
So far I haven't seen any evidence that cockroaches fare very well once humans are gone from an area.
4500+ species say otherwise.
Quote4500+ species say otherwise.
But only 6 of them have actually spread out. And as I said, when people talk about cockroaches taking over the world, they're not really talking about native bush cockroaches that live in rotting logs in the forest. Those ones are going to keep sitting there in their rotting logs nuclear war or no nuclear war.
People are talking about the few species of cockroaches that spread along with humans. The other ~4494 species aren't actually any good at colonizing human habitats. What nuclear war would do is leave the forest roaches pretty much unchanged (or around a lot less if the forests are destroyed), while destroying the main food source the city roach species survive on. We current have massive operations that harvest plant matter and bring it into the cities, the roaches live off the scraps from this process. If we go, so does the constant influx of bio-matter.
I'd argue that most people actually do mean the city cockroaches, for the simple reason that almost nobody knows there are 4500 species of cockroaches living in the forests. It's likely that substantially less than 1% of people on Earth have even heard about that.
It doesn't come up, precisely because only a very small number of people know about those even existing. The vast majority of people only know about the common types of cockroaches, so when they make a statement about cockroaches, that's what they're referring to. They're referring to what's familiar, they're not making a statement where you go "well technically that also applies to all these other species you've never heard of, because scientists also happen to class them under the name cockroach".
There's a different between what a term "technically" means and what someone speaking that word is actually trying to say, or understands the phrase to mean. It's pretty likely that nobody who ever said "cockroaches are going to take over the world" specifically thought or even knew about the thousands of obscure related species that live in forests.
I'd argue that most people actually do mean the city cockroaches, for the simple reason that almost nobody knows there are 4500 species of cockroaches living in the forests. It's likely that substantially less than 1% of people on Earth have even heard about that.
It doesn't come up, precisely because only a very small number of people know about those even existing. The vast majority of people only know about the common types of cockroaches, so when they make a statement about cockroaches, that's what they're referring to. They're referring to what's familiar, they're not making a statement where you go "well technically that also applies to all these other species you've never heard of, because scientists also happen to class them under the name cockroach".
There's a different between what a term "technically" means and what someone speaking that word is actually trying to say, or understands the phrase to mean. It's pretty likely that nobody who ever said "cockroaches are going to take over the world" specifically thought or even knew about the thousands of obscure related species that live in forests.
Oh the hyperbolae!
All it needs for your argument to fail is for one person to think of American cockroaches rather than Gerrman cockroackes, no need for obscure cockroaches.
(And by the by there is something a bit more serious going on than 'scientists also happen to class them under the name cockroach' - that is there is an exercise of reason at work rather than an arbitrary rhetoric.)
[If someone knows how to search for the number of edits on a post I would truly be very curious.]
Professor Elgar says the feral American and German species of cockroach – the ones you might recognise from your kitchen nooks and crannies – have given the rest of the species a bad rap.
“I think our view of cockroaches is informed by our frequent interaction with the American and German cockroaches, which have spread throughout the world,” Professor Elgar says. “Their habit of basically acting as an unpaid house cleaner horrifies people.”
Cockroaches feed off the detritus of other living organisms, however; so Professor Elgar questions whether they would be able to thrive without humans and other animals.
“For a while they’ll be able to eat dead bodies and other decaying material but, if everything else has died, eventually there won’t be any food. And they’re not going to make much of a living,” Professor Elgar says.
Of those cockroaches that have spread with human civilisation only one can be said to be dependent on humans (whether for food supply or otherwise) since all the others still have wild populations that succesfully inhabit non-human environs.To be specific, the german cockroach is the 'dependent' one and is largely thought unable to survive independent of human habitation.
Even in the case of urban cockroaches I suspect that they are not 'dependent' on the urban environment but merely thrive under those conditionsIndeed, putting it this way implies that the species will survive to an extent without humans.
*sigh*
I have spent quite a bit of time trying to get steam to play nice here. It wont. If you revoke certain permissions, it thinks it needs to do an update and then fails. If you enable those permissions but disable others, it asserts it cant run for various reasons.
Valve just doesn't grok "limited user."
Cash-strapped WeWork, the office-sharing company that is trying to negotiate a financial lifeline, has a new problem that may prove costly. From a report:
It has closed about 2,300 phone booths at some of its 223 sites in the United States and Canada after it says it discovered elevated levels of formaldehyde. The company, which abandoned plans for an initial public offering last month after investors questioned its mounting losses and the way it was being run, said in an email to its tenants on Monday that the chemical could pose a cancer-risk if there is long-term exposure.
Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine quips:
"I don't understand what is happening here. Did WeWork founder Adam Neumann disturb a mummy and trigger an ancient curse? Was a WeWork built on a haunted graveyard, unleashing powerful dark energies and also elevated levels of formaldehyde? How do you have such a relentless parade of negative financial news and then find out that your phone booths cause cancer? 'Our phone booths might cause cancer' was not an IPO risk factor. Nobody had 'phone booths cause cancer' on their WeWork Disaster Bingo cards."
Okay, does anybody else want a gritty post-apocalyptic survival story about a family of Cockroaches trying to survive after humanity wiped itself out in nuclear winter?I actually think this would be cool
Anybody? No? Just me then...
Isn't WeWork also the one where the owner bought property using WeWork's money, then rented that property back to WeWork?
No, no: the owner registered the name "We", and then forced WeWork to rename itself to We under a licensing agreement with him over the name that he just registered.It's both, actually.
As a programmer...talk to the person
Isn't WeWork also the one where the owner bought property using WeWork's money, then rented that property back to WeWork?No, no: the owner registered the name "We", and then forced WeWork to rename itself to We under a licensing agreement with him over the name that he just registered.It's both, actually.
What? How have they not upgraded their technology until now? what is all of the money used for if not to update their computers so that they run fast enough to get data? I understand the Air Force doesn't only deal with computers, but an updated computer would be easier to get data on your planes with than an older one, yes?
What? How have they not upgraded their technology until now? what is all of the money used for if not to update their computers so that they run fast enough to get data? I understand the Air Force doesn't only deal with computers, but an updated computer would be easier to get data on your planes with than an older one, yes?
Huh
I thought that updates would fix things or add security. I have heard the if it ain’t broke don’t fix it before, I thought updates wouldn’t be done unless needed, I was wrong
Thank you for the information.Huh
I thought that updates would fix things or add security. I have heard the if it ain’t broke don’t fix it before, I thought updates wouldn’t be done unless needed, I was wrong
That's the reason they're still using the same gear. It already works. If they bought new gear they couldn't be sure it works, and it doesn't actually do anything that they actually need. For example, if you need to hammer in nails then you use a hammer whose design hasn't changed in probably 150 years. You don't need to buy the latest hammer each few years.
Also a 1970s computer is much simpler and has much less code in it, there's just less that can go wrong and it's easier to prove that it's secure.
Look up attacks such as Meltdown, Spectre and Rowhammer. These are specific attacks that only work on new processors or on recent memory chips, due to changes in processor design
https://meltdownattack.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_hammer
Meltdown for example was first fully disclosed in 2018, and is a vulnerability in roughly the last 20 years worth of CPUs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerability)#Overview
So, bugs creep in and may open up security holes and it may be decades before they're fully documented. If the Air Force had upgraded their gear with new CPUs from any time between ~1998 to 2018 the nuclear computers would have had the Meltdown vulnerability.
These are the nuclear launch computers. If they updated them all the time, they risk introducing bugs. i.e. accidentally launching some nukes, or introducing backdoors for hackers. Just be glad they're not updating them every time there's a new Windows operating system, or running Windows Update on them in general, heh.
"Our launch checklist in fact instructed us, the firing crew, to double-check the locking panel in our underground launch bunker to ensure that no digits other than zero had been inadvertently dialed into the panel."
This ensured that there was no need to wait for Presidential confirmation that would have just wasted valuable Russian nuking time.
An example of a galactic algorithm is the fastest known way to multiply two numbers, which is based on a 1729-dimensional Fourier transform. This means it will not reach its stated efficiency until the numbers have at least 2^1729 digits, which is vastly larger than the number of atoms in the known universe. So this algorithm is never used in practice.
"The question is, how deep does n have to be for this algorithm to actually be faster than the previous algorithms?" the assistant professor says in the video. "The answer is we don't know.
"It could be billions of digits. It could be trillions. It could be much bigger than that. We really have no idea at this point."
We just need bigger and more powerful emitters, shove more signal so some can force its way through or something :PYou're right. But we should also use the highest frequency possible to maximize benefits, so I'm thinking we should use a nuclear x-ray laser for the most powerful and highest frequency information transfer.
Is it bad that I laughed as I read this?We just need bigger and more powerful emitters, shove more signal so some can force its way through or something :PYou're right. But we should also use the highest frequency possible to maximize benefits, so I'm thinking we should use a nuclear x-ray laser for the most powerful and highest frequency information transfer.
It is completely flawless and absolutely guaranteed to transmit one important piece of information in a split second. Of course, the only piece of information it transmits is "DIE!" but hey, it's extremely effective at transmitting that information at very high bandwidth and nearly unlimited fidelity to the original message!
I will laugh hysterically if somebody puts treads and a faux top mount laser emitter on their Tesla Truck.Or a real laser.
Roberto Escobar, brother of the late drug lord Pablo Escobar, has announced a foldable smartphone that is "very difficult to break" thanks to the screen's "special type of plastic." The Escobar Fold 1, as it is called, significantly undercuts Samsung's Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X with a price of only $349.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50667553 (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50667553)
Is Elon Musk ever not terrible?
Indeed, word vectors are rather fun and useful tools. I say this having worked with them myself. However, there are a few notable drawbacks:
- There is considerable conflation of multiple meanings of a word within a single vector. All of their usages are bottled up into one vector, which can cause problems when trying to use these vectors together to extract the meaning of a sentence. Furthermore, there's no means to suss out the specific meanings of a given word- you have that single vector with them all bottled up in there, and no particularly useful way of extracting the individual meanings that compose it.
DoNotPay Founder and CEO Joshua Browder's Robo Revenge app is unique from every other app looking to protect you from robocalls in that it can get you cash while stopping them completely. "All of the big companies like AT&T and Apple have failed to protect consumers," Browder told Motherboard over the phone. "Consumers have to protect themselves. The only way the problem will end is if the robocallers start losing money every time they call someone."
In the past, DoNot Pay has offered various apps to help consumers fight back. DoNotPay's Free Trial Card creates a virtual, one-time-use credit card to protect you from getting charged by "industrialized scams" like free trials. DoNotPay's original offering was a chatbot lawyer program that automatically disputed parking tickets in small claims court. Robo Revenge combines both features to automatically add you to the Do Not Call Registry, generate a virtual DoNotPay burner credit card to provide scammers when they illegally call you anyways, use the transaction information to get the scammer's contact information, then walk you through how to sue them for as much as $3,000 per call under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a law already on the books meant to protect consumers from calls that violate the Do Not Call Registry. The app also streamlines the litigation paperwork by automatically generating demand letters and court filing documents.
Maybe including finding explanations for the matter/antimatter imbalance.
There's a new fusion start-up company that's spun off Australia's University of New South Wales and has patents on a new method for hot fusion
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a31080902/fusion-energy-hydrogen-boron/
From what I understand from reading a couple of articles on this, they're using lasers but instead of heating up a mixture with sustained lasers and trying to get it to 100 million degrees for fusion to start occurring naturally between dueterium atoms, what they do is blast some hydrogen with short pulses from a type of laser that won a Nobel Prize in 2018, called a Chirped Pulse Laser. This is supposed to accelerate the hydrogen atoms through a boron target at very fast speeds, and what they claim to get on the other side is helium, but with a shortage of electrons (since Proton+Electron = Neutron). Since the helium is charged you can create a voltage difference directly for power instead of needing to heat up water for a steam generator.
Right, you'll want to get all of the possible power out of it, and I'm curious how they'll build a heat exchanger for such a design.
It's a cool idea though, and I hope it goes somewhere. Fusion is so rife with promises of useful power in the next X decades so it would be nice for one of those claims to come true sometime soon.
If it works, or even if it only partly works, this hydrogen + boron reaction may not be the only possible one. It's possible that the idea itself could spawn a new way of looking at the problem. Ideally you could do something with the helium by-product, and fuse to larger elements.
The plants not only collect the soil's minerals into their bodies but seem to hoard them to "ridiculous" levels, said Alan Baker, a visiting botany professor at the University of Melbourne
...
On a plot of land rented from a rural village on the Malaysian side of the island of Borneo, Dr. Baker and an international team of colleagues have proved it at small scale. Every six to 12 months, a farmer shaves off one foot of growth from these nickel-hyper-accumulating plants and either burns or squeezes the metal out. After a short purification, farmers could hold in their hands roughly 500 pounds of nickel citrate, potentially worth thousands of dollars on international markets.
...
[T]he technology has the additional value of enabling areas with toxic soils to be made productive...
Now, after decades behind the lock and key of patents, Dr. Baker said, "the brakes are off the system."
Apparently we could have been doing this decades ago, except someone was sitting on the patents. Mining companies, obviously.
Damn... I need to get that sarcasm feature fixed-- I think it just about caused an explosion there.
I would expect a lot of extra friction from that method, which is probably why nobody has gotten it to work before.
I would expect a lot of extra friction from that method, which is probably why nobody has gotten it to work before.
I would expect a lot of extra friction from that method, which is probably why nobody has gotten it to work before.
Well, I mean, the relative motion of the casing and the screw is the same, so I don't see why there should be. Or do you mean erosion from the water?
I would expect a lot of extra friction from that method, which is probably why nobody has gotten it to work before.
Also, it kind of seems more that nobody has actually tried this before, rather than not "gotten it to work". It's a paradigm shift, that's why these guys were able to patent it so easily. You can patent an idea without having it working yet.
same as pouring sand on a chick trapped in a pipe, the chick keeps moving to stay on top and poof it's out
It's definitely an interesting engineering exercise. First of all, despite what the video says, it's not a completely symmetric situation: there are real differences between spinning the inner screw versus spinning the outer shaft which can be detected by a difference in the pressure distribution in the material being moved - rotating reference frames are NOT inertial so it is possible to tell if you are in a rotating frame or not. One key difference is that in the rotating case, the bulk material exits with a notable angular velocity. This means the transfer of energy is from different mechanisms.What if the entire machine is loaded onto a platform that's spinning opposite the case? Then from your point of view, it's the case that's static and the screw is spinning again? :P
NOTE: none of this means one way is "better" than the other - it's just saying there are real physical differences between the operating mechanics of both machines.
I don't think it's good. It's a bad idea to open space up to unilateral plunder. That will cause a huge arms race.
Also, sending up corporations into space to plunder as they see fit is pretty much the dystopian future we don't want. Say hello to a future of corporate feudalism if we allow that.
The Moon holds vast amounts of fresh water (in form of ice) and is easier to launch rockets from, while asteroids might have metal ores.
A Russian company called StartRocket says it’s going to launch a cluster of cubesats into space that will act as an “orbital billboard,” projecting enormous advertisements into the night sky like artificial constellations. And its first client, it says, will be PepsiCo — which will use the system to promote a “campaign against stereotypes and unjustified prejudices against gamers” on behalf of an energy drink called Adrenaline Rush.
Yeah, the project sounds like an elaborate prank. But Russian PepsiCo spokesperson Olga Mangova confirmed to Futurism that the collaboration is real.
“We believe in StartRocket potential,” she wrote in an email. “Orbital billboards are the revolution on the market of communications. That’s why on behalf of Adrenaline Rush — PepsiCo Russia energy non-alcoholic drink, which is brand innovator, and supports everything new, and non-standard — we agreed on this partnership.”
I;d rather not have our sky be used as yet another tool for companies to use to manipulate the masses
I mostly agree with KT. Especially since I hardly see the Moon's nature as beautiful. And yes, I would think a populated Moon would be cool. Also Mars. We have no real evidence of any advanced extraterrestrial species, therefore I believe space is all ours to exploit and colonize until proven otherwise.insert the Colossus Of Rhodes but it's the Milky Way instead of Africa here
I don't think it's good. It's a bad idea to open space up to unilateral plunder. That will cause a huge arms race.An arms race? An arms race of what, ever-more-efficient rocket engines and space infrastructure? Dozens of nations already have far superior destructive potential, and what corporations are going to somehow take over by doing things in space?
Also, sending up corporations into space to plunder as they see fit is pretty much the dystopian future we don't want. Say hello to a future of corporate feudalism if we allow that.
I have a great sadness of thinking of looking up at the moon someday and seeing city lights*. I think they should pass a law that human activity on the moon should be limited to the far side.
*Yes I know you'd only be able to see them when not illuminated by the sun. But I don't want to look up at a new moon and see human settlements. I like the dark disk, unsullied by human touch.
Gosh imagine looking up at the night sky to find a glimpse of the Milky Way and seeing nothing but ads for shitty sugar-water because some twit thought ads weren't prevalent or intrusive enough. Makes you want to step right back inside and start work on anti-satellite weaponry because fuck that and everyone who thought it'd be ok.1. Finally, a good reason to put something similar to the Space Shuttle back to work, because there are few other ways to get somebody's satellite out of orbit without risking Kessler Syndrome.
I have a great sadness of thinking of looking up at the moon someday and seeing city lights*. I think they should pass a law that human activity on the moon should be limited to the far side.My long-time thoughts on this issue have been:
As an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?
thank youAs an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?
Not an astronomer, but Kessler Syndrome is basically when you hit critical mass in the amount of satellites you could have in low earth orbit. Too many and you risk them hitting each other in a chain reaction and littering a massive cloud of space debris around earth. Such a junk cloud could make further launches into space impossible.
As an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?Not strctly astronomy.
Pretty much. The idea of Kessler Syndrome is that you lose one satellite, and it sprays debris across a huge range of space, and that debris hits more satellites, and so on, until low Earth orbit is basically a continuous hail of shrapnel and broken bits of satellites for potentially years as debris slowly deorbits.As an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?
Not an astronomer, but Kessler Syndrome is basically when you hit critical mass in the amount of satellites you could have in low earth orbit. Too many and you risk them hitting each other in a chain reaction and littering a massive cloud of space debris around earth. Such a junk cloud could make further launches into space impossible.
As a general rule recovering satellites is incredibly expensive and not worthwhile for anything but historical purposes. You're right that there are hundreds of dead satellites and thousands of fragments of satellites large enough to be tracked...and many thousands more too small to see but large enough to damage or destroy critical systems aboard satellites or, worse, the ISS and other manned spacecraft.thank youAs an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?
Not an astronomer, but Kessler Syndrome is basically when you hit critical mass in the amount of satellites you could have in low earth orbit. Too many and you risk them hitting each other in a chain reaction and littering a massive cloud of space debris around earth. Such a junk cloud could make further launches into space impossibly risky. It's perhaps not LIKELY, but it's certainly a possibility and a massive danger. Hence why we get unhappy when idiots decide to test antisatellite weaponry and the like.
I’ve heard there are pieces of old satellites still in orbit, are there missions planned to capture those pieces and bring them back to Earth to scrap them to be used for new constructions?
Yes, the idea is if they are brought out of low Earth orbit, they could be broken apart so the pieces can be used for newer constructs, and you’d be freeing up space as well while using the metal for more things instead of waiting for them to damage things that are still workingPretty much. The idea of Kessler Syndrome is that you lose one satellite, and it sprays debris across a huge range of space, and that debris hits more satellites, and so on, until low Earth orbit is basically a continuous hail of shrapnel and broken bits of satellites for potentially years as debris slowly deorbits.As an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?
Not an astronomer, but Kessler Syndrome is basically when you hit critical mass in the amount of satellites you could have in low earth orbit. Too many and you risk them hitting each other in a chain reaction and littering a massive cloud of space debris around earth. Such a junk cloud could make further launches into space impossible.As a general rule recovering satellites is incredibly expensive and not worthwhile for anything but historical purposes. You're right that there are hundreds of dead satellites and thousands of fragments of satellites large enough to be tracked...and many thousands more too small to see but large enough to damage or destroy critical systems aboard satellites or, worse, the ISS and other manned spacecraft.thank youAs an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?
Not an astronomer, but Kessler Syndrome is basically when you hit critical mass in the amount of satellites you could have in low earth orbit. Too many and you risk them hitting each other in a chain reaction and littering a massive cloud of space debris around earth. Such a junk cloud could make further launches into space impossibly risky. It's perhaps not LIKELY, but it's certainly a possibility and a massive danger. Hence why we get unhappy when idiots decide to test antisatellite weaponry and the like.
I’ve heard there are pieces of old satellites still in orbit, are there missions planned to capture those pieces and bring them back to Earth to scrap them to be used for new constructions?
But, you see, sending a rocket up there to manually collect many pieces is very expensive.fair point, what about magnets? Or are the materials not magnetic?
I believe I've heard of plans to build ground-based laser(s) to push individual pieces of space debris that are high-risk out of stable orbit with radiation pressure. Not sure where the development of that is at the moment.
But, you see, sending a rocket up there to manually collect many pieces is very expensive.This one's really cool, they actually are trying to burn off parts of debris, using the ablation of the material as a little rocket engine of sorts.
I believe I've heard of plans to build ground-based laser(s) to push individual pieces of space debris that are high-risk out of stable orbit with radiation pressure. Not sure where the development of that is at the moment.
fair point, what about magnets? Or are the materials not magnetic?They're not necessarily magnetic, though there ARE ideas that use magnetic "nets" of sorts to capture and force down materials in LEO, but those ideas are not ready for deployment any more than the laser options.
Anything on Earth that could reach up magnetically to orbit and usefully help (with the Nickel, Iron, Cobalt or Steel bits, unless you can induce complimentary electromagnetism in other conductors as well, which is a thing in, e.g., aluminium sorting and recycling) is probably very much weaponisable here on Earth so not casually available for orbital cleaners to play around with.
snipI agree with you on this. As long as NASA (or the government itself) still has the power to shut anything too disruptive, corporations won't be able to, say, project a Pepsi logo in space. It would interfere with their observatories and be a collision risk. I actually want an arms race, because, as MM described, it probably won't involve outright war.
SpaceX is working on its super-heavy as well-- while not able to lift whole damn factories at once, it is much beefier than any of the other rockets out there besides SLS.
The issue is the rather long lunar nights. You would need to lay back a LOT of molten salt in insulated vessels, or have reserve chemical batteries to handle them.This is another of my long-standing thoughts on Lunar Development. Encircle the Moon with photovoltaics (or even grid it, my favourite is to go all icosohedral[1]) and anything else pre-planned, as very thin (lower than causes issues with my "Face Of The Moon Protection Act") corridors to allow light-side and dark-side activities to cooperate at all times to pool consistent power and ship it where it's needed (for artificial light, exactly the oposite side in effect).
Most people have ten toes, thus feet with exactly ten unique digits.
∴ decimal, QED!
compressing the cellulose with microwave radiation
compressing the cellulose with microwave radiation
That's cool and all, but I'm really trying to figure out how the heck this works.
I also wonder if it can be produced on industrial scales easily.
Wait, 6 times the tensile strength?
What's the tensile strength multiplier on steel we need to make a functional space elevator again?
EDIT: Nvm, it's something like 60-100, not 6. We apparently already have some materials that are strong enough, but mass producing them may be a problem. There's also other logistical problems.
Some people ask where the aliens are, why wouldn't they expand. My thinking is that once you do the math you work out there's no reason to expand. We could easily build living space for Quadrillions of humans if we want in this solar system.
Also, with the possibility of simulated consciousness that makes the need to travel to other star systems for the point of "experiencing" it pointless too.
another way to understand this: imagine I teleported in "you from 10 minutes in the future" and then de-materialized now-you and left future-you in your place. Is that the same you or a different you? Logically, it's exactly who you physically would have become 10 minutes from now, so it is in fact the same you.
This got me thinking, if your consciousness and body were cloned, but your cl9ne ended up in a different place than you, the one that started as a copy would gain new memories, so when you eventually met, you two would be different. I know this isn’t quite what you were think9ng but it made me think of thatYour situation is a fairly used trope. "Thomas" Riker in Star Trek is one that you might have heard of (a Transporter accident, of course... I'm amazed they ever work correctly).
There's a book I got from a discount/remaindered book store a few years ago (must not have sold as well as hoped in regular outlets)
There's a book I got from a discount/remaindered book store a few years ago (must not have sold as well as hoped in regular outlets)
It's not necessarily that any particular book didn't sell well (in general) when they end up at those places.
I think Elon Musk's recent tweets and the associated media storm are more confirmation of my theory that he's this generation's Howard Hughes.
Heh - I almost concluded my post with "who's with me to start a company to make standard battery packs!" But then I realized I'm lazy and would rather just complain and hint that "they" are part of a conspiracy of planned obsolescence and vendor lock-in for rechargeable battery packs. ;)Why not? First we need to get 3D printers, and samples of what is to be made, so we can better tell the computer how to make them. I’ve never used a 3D printer before, question: different ones use different materials, right? I’ve heard of attempts to 3D Print organs using tissues, which would likely be a different type of 3D printer than the ones we’d use for making battery packs, unless a 3D printer can use multiple materials?
Heh - I almost concluded my post with "who's with me to start a company to make standard battery packs!" But then I realized I'm lazy and would rather just complain and hint that "they" are part of a conspiracy of planned obsolescence and vendor lock-in for rechargeable battery packs. ;)
Even with no policy changes, they predict that by 2035 America will have achieved 55% clean energy usage (due to increases in solar and wind power) while experiencing a 10% reduction in electricity costs. But under their 90% Clean (carbon-free) scenario, "all existing coal plants are retired by 2035, and no new fossil fuel plants are built," meaning the country "avoids over $1.2 trillion in health and environmental costs, including 85,000 avoided premature deaths, through 2050."
Well here's an idea that will definitely piss people off. BMW are trying to turn basic features of their cars such as heating into subscription services. So you buy the car and you get 1 month of free use of the seat heating technology, and after that it shuts off and you freeze your ass off unless you purchase a subscription to use the hardware.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/07/heated-seats-as-a-service-bmw-wants-to-sell-car-features-on-demand/
EDIT: thinking about it the most likely reason they're keen on this idea of subscription services to use the car is that it would help kill off the second-hand market value of the car, if basic features of the car could only be used by the registered owner, while also guaranteeing a cut of the revenue for BMW in the post second hand market. Trying the idea out with something small like heated seats is testing the waters and get people used to the idea of having subscription-based features.
It should be illegal to sell thing that aren't services "as a service".
Inb4 that scene at the start of Robocop (#2?).What scene?
He's referring to this scene:thanks. I’d imagine something like this would need a list of allowed drivers to prevent it from killing the owner/family members/friends etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U4ZYOBzEEs
It should be illegal to sell thing that aren't services "as a service".
The "service" is that they don't remotely cut off the service.
It's NOT "just a few hundred bucks."
It is entirely to lock out 3rd party repair, 3rd party parts, and 3rd party service (like software). This is the John Deere model, only for consumers instead of farmers.
The industry will leverage its "victories" over right-to-repair to ram this shit though, and then your luxury car will be an even bigger luxury item, because the cost to keep it road worthy will bankrupt your pocketbook.
This little move can end up making those asshats millions of extra dollars every year.
Considering that complete mosquito genocide would, very unfortunately, negatively impact many ecosystems, what would be a good way to stop them from being a threat/great annoyance to humanity?
They have to really want (https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Black_Ribbon) not to suck the B-vord (http://B-vord), by their own choice.The B-vord url seems to have been broke
Fixed in original... I don't know how it happened (though I have an idea), but it really wasn't as germane to the conversation at hand anyway. Except philosophically of course.They have to really want (https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Black_Ribbon) not to suck the B-vord (http://B-vord), by their own choice.The B-vord url seems to have been broke
[Boom Supersonic founder Blake Scholl] describes himself as an Objectivist (a follower of the teachings of Ayn Rand) and previously worked for both Groupon and Amazon.
...
it's clear that Elon Musk's private spaceflight company is the model Boom is striving to emulate.
Reminds me that when Greta Thunberg was investigating means of getting across the Atlantic, one way or other, an airline apparently suggested they could fly her over in a plane fuelled with bio(jet)fuel. They were already geared up to use a small percentage mix of the bio-derived, routinely. They couldn't actually do 100% bio, though, so they suggested a special 50% mix on both legs of a return flight, instead, which "adds up to 100%"(!).
There’s an engineering thread?Yes.
So, flying somewhere could be far cleaner than driving,https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Stockholm,+Sweden/New+York,+USA/
(I'm sure that, in the past - possibly not Google Maps but a precursor service - there was actually a 'land' route from Europe to the US, featuring Bering Straits ice-bridge. Perhaps it's actually still programatically there but seasonal and thus not current without changing date-data too.)It was probably google maps, as google maps used to do all kinds of coy things like that before they started to hate fun.
What other coy things were done?The only one I clearly remember was that giving inputs on different continents would give you a route saying to kayak or swim across the ocean.
So, flying somewhere could be far cleaner than driving,https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Stockholm,+Sweden/New+York,+USA/
...loadsa metadata snipped from URL for readability only, as extraneous (the encoded map scale/centre stuff, mostly). Doesn't actually matter, it admits to no route in either form...
(I'm sure that, in the past - possibly not Google Maps but a precursor service - there was actually a 'land' route from Europe to the US, featuring Bering Straits ice-bridge. Perhaps it's actually still programatically there but seasonal and thus not current without changing date-data too.)
((The first version of that also required me to scroll down to the second Stockholm, the first being in the US (before I went into Directions, flipped it to be From and then added NYC), but Google obviously learned what I meant and won't replicate for me to examine at leisure.))
Anyway, to go via the Atlantic I'm obviously now off to electrically-retrofit a DUKW chassis. 6 ton(ne~) and 400 mile (road) range in its WW2 incarnation, with the 91HP engine. So definitely gonna need a solar-cell awning(-cum-sail?), for recharging, and likely some severly enhanced flotation/waterproofing/drainage systems too to deal with pelagic conditions.
The 1908 New York to Paris Race was an automobile competition consisting of drivers attempting to travel from New York to Paris.
That's unfair, half of them apparently managed. :PQuoteThe 1908 New York to Paris Race was an automobile competition consisting of drivers attempting to travel from New York to Paris.
"attempting".
They would need to make their cars amphibious and have those tools that make the cars float and move within the water resistant to corrosion vis saltSo, flying somewhere could be far cleaner than driving,https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Stockholm,+Sweden/New+York,+USA/
...loadsa metadata snipped from URL for readability only, as extraneous (the encoded map scale/centre stuff, mostly). Doesn't actually matter, it admits to no route in either form...
(I'm sure that, in the past - possibly not Google Maps but a precursor service - there was actually a 'land' route from Europe to the US, featuring Bering Straits ice-bridge. Perhaps it's actually still programatically there but seasonal and thus not current without changing date-data too.)
((The first version of that also required me to scroll down to the second Stockholm, the first being in the US (before I went into Directions, flipped it to be From and then added NYC), but Google obviously learned what I meant and won't replicate for me to examine at leisure.))
Anyway, to go via the Atlantic I'm obviously now off to electrically-retrofit a DUKW chassis. 6 ton(ne~) and 400 mile (road) range in its WW2 incarnation, with the 91HP engine. So definitely gonna need a solar-cell awning(-cum-sail?), for recharging, and likely some severly enhanced flotation/waterproofing/drainage systems too to deal with pelagic conditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1908_New_York_to_Paris_RaceQuoteThe 1908 New York to Paris Race was an automobile competition consisting of drivers attempting to travel from New York to Paris.
"attempting".
Surely they’d do research on where the locations are compared to each other, and thus outfit their vehicles appropriately, of course, maybe they’d need boating licenses too, so they can build car boat hybrids, it would be interestingThey just had them shipped over as cargo, being from 1908 before fun was invented.
It was probably google maps, as google maps used to do all kinds of coy things like that before they started to hate fun.Back in the early 2000s, I know that one (preGoogle) service[1] had no routes between Scotland and England. (Nearly. The break in routing-data, on investigation of intermediate destinations from both directions, put the disconnect slightly north of the border. With no reasons obvious to me at the time, the day before I was making a journey I wanted to double-check. Though I was actually just going to head for the A1 road, follow my nose for a few hundred miles then follow the roads I knew well enough near my destination.)
so they can build car boat hybrids, it would be interestinghttps://topgear.fandom.com/wiki/Amphibious_Car_Challenge_2
you think online services would have been no worse!Don't use technology much, do you? :P
If I thought all the companies were actually looking to reduce prices that would be great. But I guarantee that if Apple stopped charging 30% it won't make companies change their price from $14.99 to $12.99; instead that $2 or whatever is just going to go somewhere else. (I definitely don't want it going to Facebook.)
That description is not actually patentable anyway.
go to Settings > AccessibilityOh, bravo. Exactly right. Glad I mentioned it.
I've spent too much time about this... and I have come up with an idea* that is as "free market" as you can get: In the store, when you make a purchase, there is a slider that starts at 30%/70%. As the purchaser you move the slider to "Store curator" or "App developer" to decide who gets what cut. I wonder what the "free market" would side. Starting at 30%/70% is just because that is what it is "today". Cap it so it can't go further than 98%/2% or 2%/98% or to where the smallest value can be no less than $0.25.
Earlier today, Elon Musk demonstrated his startup Neuralink's brain link device working in a pig named Gertrude. While the science and the device itself were front-and-center at the presentation, the surgical robot the company debuted is equally as important because it's designed to handle the full surgical installation process. "That includes opening up the scalp, removing a portion of the skull, inserting the hundreds of 'thread' electrodes 6mm deep along with the accompanying chip, then closing the incision," reports CNET. TechCrunch takes a closer look at the robot:
The computer doth protest too much, methinks...I agree it would be wonderful to see what the AI actually wrote, not what humans edited it to be
I am marginally more reassured that "Believe me" was revealed to be provided in the seed, and not a spontaneously result of so much insincere use of it out there in its world of original research material.
(Would be interesting to see the eight "original" texts that were then human-edited into this published one. Even/especially if it took less time to do than with human input.)
You know all they need to do now is make an online GPT-3 system that spits out 8 versions of something, then has a built-in editor where you do the moves such as chopping and changing paragraphs, to make one final version. Let half a billion people use that then train another AI off their examples.+1 to this
A terrible, terrible idea.This actually does sound interesting, maybe the images and videos from FakeNews.com can be watermarked somehow so that if said things were shared, it would be known to come from FakeNews,com
Step 1-- Train a set of generative AIs like this, against sites like TheOnion, and against the political rhetoric of the US for the past 50 years. (Include state level politicians, like governors, so you have a very big dataset, with lots of bullshit in it.)
Step 2-- Train more AIs against news anchors. Spread it all over, you want GenericFemaleNewsAnchor and GenericMaleNewsAnchor. Thats the only categorical distinction you should put. You want to make AIs that can take a "news feed" (generated by group 1), and then spit out semi-realistic prattle about it, and then "engage" each other in such idle prattle.
Step 3-- Throw in some good DeepFake AIs, along with the kind of human face generation software used by "ThisPersonDoesNotExist", to create the avatars for GenericFemaleNewsAnchor and GenericMaleNewsAnchor.
Step 4-- Do the same for various world leaders, to be able to generate "Interviews" and "news reports about speeches".
Assemble the entire shebang into a website called FakeNews.com
It appears to be dominated by galactose and fructose.
Like my 2020 car and its advanced cruse control. It's able to detect its in lane and supposedly match speed with the car in front of it. All you'd need is to teach it how intersections work, and hook it to the bluetooth phone GPS.
The over-unity ones?
INB4 too many of these clever little tricks get stacked together, the Universe finally realises what's going on and then resorts to collapsing the false vacuum, or somesuch, resulting in... well, nothing.Nah, the admins will just roll back and patch out the exploits. We'll never even know it happened.
"If someone is behind that forklift and says, 'Hey, you're about to hit me,' the operator can hear it just like he's sitting on the forklift," says Mr Katz....is delightfully understated.
"Did you know why women can't put on mascara with their mouths closed?" asks Kuki.
"Thank you for sharing it with me," replies Blenderbot, politely but entirely missing the point, adding for good measure: "You are a good person."
I’m not sure if this counts as news but YouTube recommended me a video of a robot I’ve never seen before (https://youtu.be/JtMiofUCQhA)Oh hey, I posted this video on the Happy thread when YouTube recommended it a few days ago. It’s a cute little thing ain’t it?
Arecibo Telescope :'(
Now, now this is not the cooking thread. :D
Chemistry is just chemistry you can eat, that will kill you.
They're practicing for the moment they wipe us out, so that they can dance on our graves (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw&feature=youtu.be)
They're practicing for the moment they wipe us out, so that they can dance on our graves (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw&feature=youtu.be)
I will really worry if they make them self-replicating, able to power themselves off biomass, and EMP-resistant.
They're practicing for the moment they wipe us out, so that they can dance on our graves (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw&feature=youtu.be)
It's pure investment. Futures trading on steroids, because there's no actual "future" thing to trade upon how you think it will, eventully, "presently" trade (or how you think others will shortly think about how yet others may think think... the actual trades will unfold).
It's therefore just "turtles all the way up"...
(Unless it's one of those ledgers that holds within its eventual 'mining' output some 'useful' data, such as the solution to some real-world problem outwith the purely ledgerising one. But I'm not sure those are better done this way than by dedicating super-/cluster-/distributed-computing MIPS/BIPS/etc to.)
What I don't understand about this whole movement is that what are they investing in? I feel like it's pure accounting trickery, not actual production of goods and services. Is there any aspect to the valuation of bitcoin that isn't just accounting effects?
I understand the idea of having a distributed ledger that doesn't use the traditional forex or banking channels. What I don't understand is the huge valuation associated with the tokens used for such transactions.
This is awesome: transparent wood! (https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/scientists-develop-transparent-wood-that-is-stronger-and-lighter-than-glass-1.5902739)
Plus they looked not nearly as transparent and much more cloudy than this:To be totally fair - and I am, in fact, also suspicious of the claim - I am not at all convinced that the first image isn't just as cloudy as the second. Look at the fine detail of the leaf veins visible around the square, which are, except for the largest, totally smudged into green oblivion within. Similarly, in a few places you can see evidence of the same streaking seen in the second image, but less obvious presumably because the angle of the picture causes less glare, and possibly because the leaf is much closer to the square, reducing the diffraction. Rather, I think the subject of the first picture was deliberately chosen to make the square look clearer than it really is by virtue of a subject with relatively little noticeable fine detail to blur, flat enough to minimise the distance from the square.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
That image doesn't even seem consistent with the image at the top:Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The image at the top seems more cloudy. (And even then less cloudy than nilered's synthesis. And that guy went through a whole bunch of tweaks and methods.)
The distribution of entangled states across the nodes of a future quantum internet will unlock fundamentally new technologies. Here we report on the experimental realization of a three-node entanglement-based quantum network. We combine remote quantum nodes based on diamond communication qubits into a scalable phase-stabilized architecture, supplemented with a robust memory qubit and local quantum logic. In addition, we achieve real-time communication and feed-forward gate operations across the network. We capitalize on the novel capabilities of this network to realize two canonical protocols without post-selection: the distribution of genuine multipartite entangled states across the three nodes and entanglement swapping through an intermediary node. Our work establishes a key platform for exploring, testing and developing multi-node quantum network protocols and a quantum network control stack.