Slashdot Mirror

First, for anyone wishing to read the full study, here is the link.

Second, for those claiming the study may be biased, either through the researcher or its funding, I see no evidence of such. The study came from Amy Orben, a researcher at the University of Oxford, and Andrew Przybylski, a research professor at the University of Oxford.

That being said, here's the problem with this study: it used an open data set. In other words, the researchers did not gather and collect the data themselves, but rather looked through and analyzed publicly-accessible statistical data sets. The two data sets used were "Growing up in Ireland", collected in Ireland between August 2011 and March 2012, from students aged 12-14. The other came from "United States Panel Study of Income Dynamics", collected between 2014 and 2015, where the data contained statistics from children ages 8-17, though the study isolated the data to students ages 12-15 to match the other data set. (More thorough description of the data set can be found in the study, page 6-7.)

Now, in statistics, open data sets -can- be useful. When done correctly, the data can be unbiased, as the data collection is separate from its analysis. Researchers can focus more attention on data analysis and conclusion. But, it has some major downfalls. In particular, if a researcher is not disciplined in understanding what the data sets are measuring, and the data measurements don't align with what the research is trying to measure, well, you're comparing apples and oranges. Such is the case here.

So, let's look at the data sets in this study. "Growing up in Ireland" stats were collected in 2011 through 2012. The most glaring problem is the period of time in the data set. The digital universe was very different eight years ago; far fewer percentages of children had smartphones, modern social media website designs didn't exist (in particular, the infinite scroll), and there was less digital-engagement per day. With the other data set, ""United States Panel Study of Income Dynamics", the data set itself is flawed, because it is not randomized. From the study: "The sample was collected by involving all children in households already interviewed by the PSID who descended from either the original families recruited in 1968 or the 1997 new immigrant family sample. Those participants in the child supplement that were selected to receive an in-home visit, were asked to complete two time-use diaries on randomly-assigned days." So, the data sample was collected from families who were already involved in a previous data sample. I don't have the time to look for an explanation as to how this PSID organization recruited families back in 1968, but my hunch says that there's a strong chance there's serious bias in who they recruited for their study. (I'm picturing white middle-class suburbia.) So, limiting your data sample to descendants of a biased sample leads to another biased sample.

And if the data is corrupt, so goes the study.

In fact, I find it so humorous how the study cities multiple studies that go against this studies conclusions. From the study: "Previous
research found negative effects when adolescents engage with digital screens 30 minutes (Levenson, Shensa, Sidani, Colditz, & Primack, 2017), 1 hour (Harbard, Allen, Trinder, & Bei, 2016a) and 2 hours (Orzech, Grandner, Roane, & Carskadon, 2016) before bedtime. This could be due to delayed bedtimes (Cain & Gradisar, 2010; Orzech et al., 2016) or difficulties in relaxing after engaging in stimulating technology use (Harbard et al., 2016a)." That much research does indicate a s

First, for anyone wishing to read the full study, here is the link.

Second, for those claiming the study may be biased, either through the researcher or its funding, I see no evidence of such. The study came from Amy Orben, a researcher at the University of Oxford, and Andrew Przybylski, a research professor at the University of Oxford.

That being said, here's the problem with this study: it used an open data set. In other words, the researchers did not gather and collect the data themselves, but rather looked through and analyzed publicly-accessible statistical data sets. The two data sets used were "Growing up in Ireland", collected in Ireland between August 2011 and March 2012, from students aged 12-14. The other came from "United States Panel Study of Income Dynamics", collected between 2014 and 2015, where the data contained statistics from children ages 8-17, though the study isolated the data to students ages 12-15 to match the other data set. (More thorough description of the data set can be found in the study, page 6-7.)

Now, in statistics, open data sets -can- be useful. When done correctly, the data can be unbiased, as the data collection is separate from its analysis. Researchers can focus more attention on data analysis and conclusion. But, it has some major downfalls. In particular, if a researcher is not disciplined in understanding what the data sets are measuring, and the data measurements don't align with what the research is trying to measure, well, you're comparing apples and oranges. Such is the case here.

So, let's look at the data sets in this study. "Growing up in Ireland" stats were collected in 2011 through 2012. The most glaring problem is the period of time in the data set. The digital universe was very different eight years ago; far fewer percentages of children had smartphones, modern social media website designs didn't exist (in particular, the infinite scroll), and there was less digital-engagement per day. With the other data set, ""United States Panel Study of Income Dynamics", the data set itself is flawed, because it is not randomized. From the study: "The sample was collected by involving all children in households already interviewed by the PSID who descended from either the original families recruited in 1968 or the 1997 new immigrant family sample. Those participants in the child supplement that were selected to receive an in-home visit, were asked to complete two time-use diaries on randomly-assigned days." So, the data sample was collected from families who were already involved in a previous data sample. I don't have the time to look for an explanation as to how this PSID organization recruited families back in 1968, but my hunch says that there's a strong chance there's serious bias in who they recruited for their study. (I'm picturing white middle-class suburbia.) So, limiting your data sample to descendants of a biased sample leads to another biased sample.

And if the data is corrupt, so goes the study.

In fact, I find it so humorous how the study cities multiple studies that go against this studies conclusions. From the study: "Previous
research found negative effects when adolescents engage with digital screens 30 minutes (Levenson, Shensa, Sidani, Colditz, & Primack, 2017), 1 hour (Harbard, Allen, Trinder, & Bei, 2016a) and 2 hours (Orzech, Grandner, Roane, & Carskadon, 2016) before bedtime. This could be due to delayed bedtimes (Cain & Gradisar, 2010; Orzech et al., 2016) or difficulties in relaxing after engaging in stimulating technology use (Harbard et al., 2016a)." That much research does indicate a s

First, for anyone wishing to read the full study, here is the link.

Second, for those claiming the study may be biased, either through the researcher or its funding, I see no evidence of such. The study came from Amy Orben, a researcher at the University of Oxford, and Andrew Przybylski, a research professor at the University of Oxford.

That being said, here's the problem with this study: it used an open data set. In other words, the researchers did not gather and collect the data themselves, but rather looked through and analyzed publicly-accessible statistical data sets. The two data sets used were "Growing up in Ireland", collected in Ireland between August 2011 and March 2012, from students aged 12-14. The other came from "United States Panel Study of Income Dynamics", collected between 2014 and 2015, where the data contained statistics from children ages 8-17, though the study isolated the data to students ages 12-15 to match the other data set. (More thorough description of the data set can be found in the study, page 6-7.)

Now, in statistics, open data sets -can- be useful. When done correctly, the data can be unbiased, as the data collection is separate from its analysis. Researchers can focus more attention on data analysis and conclusion. But, it has some major downfalls. In particular, if a researcher is not disciplined in understanding what the data sets are measuring, and the data measurements don't align with what the research is trying to measure, well, you're comparing apples and oranges. Such is the case here.

So, let's look at the data sets in this study. "Growing up in Ireland" stats were collected in 2011 through 2012. The most glaring problem is the period of time in the data set. The digital universe was very different eight years ago; far fewer percentages of children had smartphones, modern social media website designs didn't exist (in particular, the infinite scroll), and there was less digital-engagement per day. With the other data set, ""United States Panel Study of Income Dynamics", the data set itself is flawed, because it is not randomized. From the study: "The sample was collected by involving all children in households already interviewed by the PSID who descended from either the original families recruited in 1968 or the 1997 new immigrant family sample. Those participants in the child supplement that were selected to receive an in-home visit, were asked to complete two time-use diaries on randomly-assigned days." So, the data sample was collected from families who were already involved in a previous data sample. I don't have the time to look for an explanation as to how this PSID organization recruited families back in 1968, but my hunch says that there's a strong chance there's serious bias in who they recruited for their study. (I'm picturing white middle-class suburbia.) So, limiting your data sample to descendants of a biased sample leads to another biased sample.

And if the data is corrupt, so goes the study.

In fact, I find it so humorous how the study cities multiple studies that go against this studies conclusions. From the study: "Previous
research found negative effects when adolescents engage with digital screens 30 minutes (Levenson, Shensa, Sidani, Colditz, & Primack, 2017), 1 hour (Harbard, Allen, Trinder, & Bei, 2016a) and 2 hours (Orzech, Grandner, Roane, & Carskadon, 2016) before bedtime. This could be due to delayed bedtimes (Cain & Gradisar, 2010; Orzech et al., 2016) or difficulties in relaxing after engaging in stimulating technology use (Harbard et al., 2016a)." That much research does indicate a s

This wasn't covered in the video, but in the DeepMind Blog about the match, they link to a paper describing a custom network architecture specifically designed to do "micro" during a battle, where each individual unit is acting as its own miniature agent. From the paper:

In this paper, we focus on the problem of micromanagement in StarCraft, which refers to the low-level control of individual units’ positioning and attack commands as they fight enemies. This task is naturally represented as a multi-agent system, where each StarCraft unit is replaced by a decentralised controller. We consider several scenarios with symmetric teams formed of: 3 marines (3m), 5 marines (5m), 5 wraiths (5w), or 2 dragoons with 3 zealots (2d 3z).

There's no way any human can get their "micro" to the level where they're calculating optimal behavior for individual units on the battlefield.

University of Oxford Style Guide

Found the report: https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/w...

Exactly! In Germany, such cooperation is in fact a regular part of corporate governance called co-determination. Here is a good summary of the legal premise.

False. Read the paper directly. Read who wrote it, their background, the purpose of the project, and the methodology.

Then note this is a memo, not even submitted for peer review.

Well he is an Oxford professor.

That actually got me thinking...

https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/

Academics at FHI bring the tools of mathematics, philosophy and social sciences to bear on big-picture questions about humanity and its prospects.

So... not actual scientists... even the mathematicians are most likely probability and statistic guru's, which means again, not scientists.

Did you reply to the wrong comment? 52/48 being much closer to 50/50 than 100/0 is not an individual perception, and nor is the Sun and Mail being pro-Leave.

Hopefully this can be applied to anti-shake filters where existing solutions do a really poor job of inventing blurry missing data.

The data is actually still there, not missing. It's just smeared across several pixels instead of each point in space corresponding to a single pixel. You can use a deconvolution filter to un-smear it. Same goes for out-of-focus photos.

In the case of camera shake, if the camera would record its movements while the photo was being taken and included that info in the photo, you could apply a perfect deconvolution filter that would almost completely eliminate the blur (it becomes less accurate near the edges because you've permanently lost info when parts of the photo moved out of the frame).

Photoshop CC already includes this filter. I suspect the only reason it isn't yet built into phones to automatically de-blur photos with camera shake is because it's fairly processor intensive, making it easier just to take another photo. (Samsung's strategy is to take multiple photos held in a temporary memory buffer, then the phone determines which is sharpest, and lets you choose if you want to keep it, then deletes the others.)

It's listed as an excel in the report. "seed list" http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/re...
http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp...

"Hard right wing junk news":
Daily Caller?
Drudge?
gatewaypundit?
National Review?

Yet no democraticunderground.com? slate.com? wonkette.com?

Seems like that list is pretty fuckin' hard-skewed by selection bias.

It's listed as an excel in the report. "seed list" http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/re...
http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp...

"Hard right wing junk news":
Daily Caller?
Drudge?
gatewaypundit?
National Review?

Yet no democraticunderground.com? slate.com? wonkette.com?

Seems like that list is pretty fuckin' hard-skewed by selection bias.

At least from the most top moderated comments. The study is a biased hack job, and anyone with an ounce of objectivity can see it.

Essentially, they picked 91 sites that they deemed "junk", through 5 criteria (3 of which had to be met). The problem is that they picks do not normalize for traffic and breadth, and they didn't study the actual content being shared. You might not like Breitbart, but it's not much worse than Vox/Mic/Buzzfeed and heck, even CNN, which also met at least 3 of the criteria on their list of "junk". Breitbart is also not all fake and junk. Without bias, it's hard to say they don't get some things correct. And they do offer corrections when they are wrong.

Look at the actual list of sites, it's funny Breitbart is picked (a popular right wing biased site), but not the aforementionned "popular" left sites :

http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp...

DailyCaller, Breitbart, Hannity (you can not like the guy and his "tick tocks, it annoys everyone)... where are the big left sites ?

So a popular right site gets shared more than a bunch of unknown left sites ? Color me shocked. The study is about how a website with a larger audience gets more interaction on social media. It has nothing to do with their premise.

IE : they set out to prove something, and picked their sample to confirm their own bias. Next time include Vox and Mic and buzzfeed and let's see how balanced this truly is.

Here is a list of the sites (page 6 onwards): http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp...

As you can see, it does include a number of left leaning sources. However, it does have to be said, most of the junk "news" is coming from the right, particularly sites like Infowars, Hannity etc, and there are simply not left leaning equivalents. The left just doesn't have conspiracy theorists with TV show/online soy pill shops pumping this crap out.

A whole community of pretend news sites and blogs has built up around sites like Infowars, dedicated to spreading and amplifying that content and getting it distributed on social media. It was a deliberate effort, and it wasn't replicated on the left.

So basically in their methodology, the effluence of semi-official propaganda organs is described as "real news"; and dissenting views are labeled "fake news".

No, that's not even close. They didn't describe "real news" at all, only "fake news" which had to fit a set of very specific criteria, including 1) the lack of transparency in listing the names of the authors, 2) whether they illustrated their stories with lots of capital letters, memes, emotional language, etc., 3) Not listing sources or giving attribution, 4) whether the site has a distinction between news and opinion 5) whether the stories were "counterfeit". For example, several of the sites used linked to web sites that were designed to look like a well-known news source, including using a URL that mimicked the well-known source. Basically, spoofing. The sites had to meet all of these criteria in order to qualify for the seed group.

The methodology is entirely laid out in the study's text and in the supplemental documentation provided.. Your characterization isn't even close to the methods that they used. In a way, your willingness to misrepresent what the study said is a pretty good example of what the study showed: The desire to spread mis-information in order to try to advance a right-wing agenda.

Again, here is the link to the full peer-reviewed study:

http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/re...

Surely you are not suggesting that only so called educated people engage in critical thinking every day just doing their jobs day in day out?

It's not about education. It's about political orientation. This peer-reviewed article from Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project, would seem to indicate, very specifically, that when it comes to fake news, people on the Right are less likely to engage in critical thinking and more likely to "listen and believe". That's not me saying that, it's the study (which you can read here and also learn about their methodology). And that's just the most charitable interpretation. It's also possible that they know the fake news they are sharing is fake, but just don't care.

http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/re...

"For this study, a seed of known propaganda websites across the political spectrum was used"

Start with a bias end with a bias.

Surely you are not suggesting that only so called educated people engage in critical thinking every day just doing their jobs day in day out?

It's not about education. It's about political orientation. This peer-reviewed article from Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project, would seem to indicate, very specifically, that when it comes to fake news, people on the Right are less likely to engage in critical thinking and more likely to "listen and believe". That's not me saying that, it's the study (which you can read here and also learn about their methodology). And that's just the most charitable interpretation. It's also possible that they know the fake news they are sharing is fake, but just don't care.

http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/re...

There is a version of that story in the Sumerian literature too. Here is the Electronic Text Corpus of the Sumerian Language (ETCSL) link:

http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.8.2.3#

See: http://www.migrationobservator...

Significant numbers of Indians, Pakistanis and peoples of ex-colonies and British commonwealth countries like South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago were welcomed into the UK in WW2 and after, both to fight and help rebuild. Many that are in the UK today have been there for multiple generations already.

I am quite aware of that, but here we have some numbers from 2015: The top country of origin was China (46,000 arrivals). Second place is shared by Spain and India, at 33,000 a piece. A further 11,000 came from Pakistan, 29,000 from Australia, and 20,000 from the USA. Yes, the UK could not do anything about controlling the flow of Spaniards, Poles, Germans, and other EU nationals - but it could have accepted the Chinese in triple digits if it wanted to, not in the tens of thousands. Ditto for the Indians.

Furthermore, here it says that EU nationals accounted for 49% of non-British inflow in 2015 - meaning that a majority of immigrants to the UK in 2015 - 51% - were not EU citizens, i.e. the decision to admit half the immigrants was completely under British control and these people were admitted purely under the discretion of the UK government. It was rather disingenuous of the Brexit camp (esp. UKIP) to blame immigration on the EU, when most of it was a result of UK government policy that had nothing to do with free movement.

Take for instance, this article on forbes. (Yes, I know. Have noscript ready.)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/k...

It is rather short on details, but makes the salient point about alpha-go creating a wholly original move, through machine "creativity."

It is not really that big of a change in tactics required to train similar AIs to do, for instance, market trading strateges-- which has already caused a mass exodus of humans from stock trade floors.

Further refinements of such methods could eventually lead to radical shifts in how things like aircraft are designed, or computer chips are laid out. Skilled human minds that rely on intuition can be replaced with purely logically founded iterative software agents, with billions of prior tested design strategies to work with behind them.

To get an idea of how quickly the fallout of a major paradigm shift can rattle through an economy, take a look at this Atlantic article from last year.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...

It also has the following gem in it:

In 2013, Oxford University researchers forecast that machines might be able to perform half of all U.S. jobs in the next two decades.

which is on par with my initial statement. Since it was called out specifically, let's see if we can find it.

And here it is. (warning, pdf)

http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac....

Like I said, the linked story is not the only group that has looked at this issue. I am vaguely recalling at least 2 others that have reached similar conclusions to Oxford and PwC, and who have given a rough estimate of hitting the tipping point within the next 20 years, give or take.

I have no reason to argue against people better trained in trend analysis than myself.

There shouldn't be any such thing as a 'safety net'

Ah yes, what a glorious future it will be when 90 % of current low to minimum skill jobs are entirely automated and quite a large chunk of normal office jobs as well. Have you not followed the projections on the effects of technology to employment: there is no way there will be jobs for everyone in the future in industrialized nations, because pretty soon we'll reach a point in which a low-skill human is simply inferior/less efficient in most jobs compared to a machine. Do some actual reading::

According to our estimate, 47 percent of total US employment is in the high risk category, meaning that associated occupations are potentially automatable over
some unspecified number of years, perhaps a decade or two.

And that's just the estimate for the next couple of decades, the nu,ber will only increase as time goes on. Once we hit AI it will effectively make all human labor pretty much obsolete.

People should save on their own, it needs to be a fully personal responsibility

So where does this saving come from where the chances are that there simply isn't work available for a majority of non/low-educated individuals in a couple devades? How do they save when they have no marketable skills, and in your vision of plutocratic america I assume getting an education that would offer the a slightly better (but not guaranteed) employment also costs a fuckton of money?

If self reliance and family fail, then it's a charity case (if anybody wants to donate)

Ah, so in your vision of an idela society most people who aren't born into a wealthy family simply die off unless some rich asshole manages to have some pity for them. What a place to live in, truly.

but it must *never* be a case of government oppression for the sake of edge cases.

I live in a modern social-democratic country (Finland) in which my tax money is used to fund the education, health care and other basic needs of my fellow citizens. I don't consider this oppression in the least, and I fail to see why anyone sane would. I mean, firstly, the wealthy individuals who run companies here are only able to do so because they enjoy a population of highly educated, healthy individuals and a stable infrastructure. Without these things commerce itself would be impossible, so it makes complete sense, from a both indvidual as well as corporate perspective, to rpvide such base level fundamental services with tax-funds. There's nothing oppressive about societies pooling resources and collectively funding essential services, that's the very reason societies are born in the first place and we don't live in a state of anarchy.

I was born in the USSR, I am fully aware of how socialism works and I reject it fully as well.

Ah yes, the age old 'b-b-b-but the soviet union was horrible' card which conveniently ignores the last half a century of development in northern and western Europe in which socialism is implemented entirely differently from the soviet union and has by all possible metrics achieved vastly superior results.

Have you ever been to the Norodic countries? Germany? France?

Yeah, we aren't exactly living in the soviet union here you doofus, and just because countries like the USSR and others have managed to fuck up socialistic ideals by turning into tyranies doesn't mean that the only feasible way forward is some weird ancap plutocracy in which you have no social mobility whatsoever unless you suck enough rich CEO dick to make them fund your education/living..

Is that really your vision of an ideal society in an age when we're nearing the end of humans as the main factors of production? Because unless you're someone with a doctora

Our department is open slather.

Send anything you want to everyone@earth.ox.ac.uk.

Yes, we use exchange also. #1 university in the world in 2016 run by a pack of retards.

I started to read through the NYTimes article, and about half-way through realized that it's an opinion piece. I had to check the summary just to make sure I didn't get baited.

I looked up the author, Peter Wynn Kirby.
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff...
"Peter Wynn Kirby is an environmental specialist, ethnographer, and Research Fellow in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford"

So you'd think this guy would have a PhD in geology, chemistry, or one of the other physical sciences. Nope, his PhD is in Social Anthropology from Cambridge. I'm sure he's a smart guy, but that's hardly what I'd call a "nuclear specialist from the University of Oxford" as the summary states.

Not to mention that this falls under Betteridge's Law....

You are absolutely correct. Most people are not aware of the coming automation juggernaut; it will be unlike anything the labor sector has ever seen - and it will cause massive displacement. http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac....

Dear /.

the underlying doubt comes from Descartes' deliberations on how to obtain knowledge (chapter 3, "meditations"):

http://plato.stanford.edu/entr...

The re-loaded version for the 21st century can be found here:

http://www.simulation-argument...

The guy who wrote it got his own department at the University of Oxford (to study "existential risk" -- earth and life on it are threatened by the power button on a space-age playstation ...):

https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/

Best regards,

Oliver

So, here's are some relevant links to material published about Ada Lovelace during her bicentenary.

she still doesnâ(TM)t quite fit the mould of a traditional science heroine.
Intelligent she might have been, but she was also manipulative and aggressive, a drug addict, a gambler and an adulteress.
Alongside the character flaws,

I don't see those as character flaws. Makes her more interesting ; maybe challenging. "Flaws?" Only if she let them be flaws.

There was an Oxford symposium in 2015.

"An immediate issue would be restrictions on travel" What are they talking about? Being in EU is not a requirement to be part of the Schengen Area, see Norway.

You can find more information on the specifics here. In short summary, yes, there is an issue.

Have you ever tried to get a visa to immigrate to the UK from outside the EU? It's not at all easy

Yet over a hundred thousand people a year manage it.
http://www.migrationobservator...

There are over 2 million British people living in the EU who would be forced to apply for visas or return if we did. The flood of millions of unemployed, often retired and dependent on benefits, and in need of housing would cause some pretty severe problems.

There are over 2 million non-British people working in Britain at the moment, so even retaining your inherently flawed assumption that everybody would be kicked out of their current country of abode there'd be plenty of jobs to go around.

Net migration is at the 'over 300,000 people a year coming into the UK' level. Even if all 2 million return and nobody leaves it would represent less than five fucking years of net immigration.

So to recap: Your absolute worse-case doom laden scenario represents just five fucking years of 'keep doing what we do now' and you wonder why some people fancy trying a new approach.

I understand your confusion, this should explain how the European Union shapes UK immigration policy.

All this should be very familiar by now to anyone who is interested in nutrition. Gary Taubes, in particular, has explained the facts fully and clearly in his books, starting with "Good Calories, Bad Calories" (published, for some strange reason, under the title "The Diet Delusion" in the UK).

It should be obvious that the total chemical energy in a substance is by no means the same as the energy that the human digestive system extracts from it. Otherwise we could consume, and thrive on, hydrocarbons such as coal and oil. Incidentally, there is strong evidence that the potential calories in alcohol are not used by the normal human body for energy. (See Tony Edwards' book "The Good News About Booze" for many convincing citations). The confusing exceptions are beer and sweetened drinks, in which the energy is provided by carbohydrates not alcohol. If we did use alcohol for energy, I would certainly not have lost weight in the past year while eating a good balanced diet and drinking several bottles of wine a week. (Dry wine, of course).

Another ancient metric that is completely discredited is the Body Mass Index (BMI). Adolphe Quetelet proposed the standard formula "weight(kg)/height(m)^2" as a stopgap approximation in 1830! It is a marvellous example of how people will accept a standard, once it is exists, without ever asking how valid or accurate it is. A single glance should be enough to recognize that, as human beings are three-dimensional and not two-dimensional, there is something seriously wrong with Quetelet's BMI. He himself seems to have understood that an exponent of more like 2.5 would be more appropriate. Yet everyone, from doctors to actuaries, has simply gone on using it ever since. See https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/... for a better approximation, with a brief explanation and an "improved BMI calculator".

"No, my argument against your unnamed "study" (undoubtedly made by someone who got the result they were looking for and who published their study in a journal refereed by their fellow travelers) is that they had thumbs on the scale the whole way."

So on one hand you're complaining about not being given the study, but on the other you're professing to be able to discredit it anyway? I know UKIPers like you are anti-intellectual, but must you really persist in arguments that don't make sense? There isn't just one study, there are many:

Oxford University's Migration Analysis Centre:
http://www.migrationobservator...

University College London's Migration Research Centre:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/new...

I know it's inconvenient to your foreigner hating viewpoint, but these aren't fly by night vested interests. These are real actual top of the league table universities doing real actual analysis into the causes, impacts, and effects of immigration across the globe. The whole point in their existence is to analyse the facts of migration, whether it's positive or negative.

Once again, your entire argument boils down to "I hate foreigners so everyone that has studied this properly is wrong because I say so.".

Even outside of academia, there are corporations doing similar studies and that want the facts so that they can guide their business:

https://www.rapidformations.co...

For them it's not about some political leaning, it's about profit.

Like it or not, you're wrong and you're a typical UKIPer- you simply cannot accept the fact that the real problem is that you are a xenophobic hatemonger so instead you just tell yourself people who have actually put effort into it, rather than people like you that have just decided, are wrong, because that makes you feel uncomfortable and ruins your attempt at blame gaming.

Incidentally, the original article is here:

http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/...

The potential for extinction obviously wasn't due solely to a tsunami. What is being referred to is this:

Toba had erupted a number of times previously (one of these, about 840,000 years ago, was itself a super-eruption). What was significant about the event 74,000 years ago was the coincidence that an important period in human evolution was occurring at the same time. The Earth was already inhabited by a number of species closely related to us, such as Homo neanderthalensis (the Neanderthals) in Europe, and Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis (sometimes called the ‘hobbits’) in southeast Asia. All of these survived Toba, but some archaeologists have claimed that almost all the anatomically modern humans (our direct ancestors) were killed by the environmental effects the volcano caused, with the remaining people surviving in refuges in Africa. This scenario is based on data from genetics, and because it suggests that people were narrowed down from many to very few numbers, it is known as a genetic ‘bottleneck’.

The proportions aren't assumed to be the same over time.

I'm kind of surprised that Microsoft isn't using the acceleration and magnetic sensors in the phone to help determine the camera position. It's one of the features that phone cameras have that DSLR's don't.

Actually they do. Fig.2 in the paper, where the IMU output is used to refine the camera pose estimated by purely image based means.

I don't know how many read this (probably not many, came from a link, from a link in the automated semi article last month). Its a study from Oxford where they went through the various industries, and the results were pretty scary. http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.... From the summary, since I know 98% won't RTFA: "We distinguish between high, medium and low risk occupations, depending on their probability of computerisation. We make no attempt to estimate the number of jobs that will actually be automated, and focus on potential job automatability over some unspecified number of years. According to our estimates around 47 percent of total US employment is in the high risk category. We refer to these as jobs at risk – i.e. jobs we expect could be automated relatively soon, perhaps over the next decade or two."

According to the summary (and linked article): "What job is hardest for a robot to do? Mental health and substance abuse social workers (found under community and social services)."

If you bother to read the actual research paper, the authors concluded that "recreational therapists" were the least likely jobs to be computerized, with a probability of 0.0028 (0.28%). Plus, there are two other jobs ("first-line supervisors of mechanics, installers, and repairers" and "emergency management directors") that also have lower probabilities of computerization than "mental health and substance abuse social workers". For an article that contains barely more than 10 sentences, one would think that they could have at least bothered to get their main point correct.

That's only because TFA == TFS due to sheer laziness by the submitter and editor. Try looking at the paper (PDF warning) it's based on, which at least seems like an interesting (~50 page) read.

Except that this substrate is not being used for Si based semiconductors, but for GaAs instead

Apart from that, there is the whole, emerging, organic and printable semiconductor industry:

http://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/r...
http://www.fastcompany.com/114...

These things are not necessarily meant for servers or even consumer electronics as we know it; there is a huge number of things that different industries are interested in using computer technology for, where things like price, flexibility and low power consumption are crucial factors. Just imagine if it were possible to print something like thousands of largely autonomous computers on stickers for, say, $.01 each; I think this may very well be possible quite soon. In that situation, you want electronics that are bio-degradable.

Taxes on profits affect quite a few bad things, but mostly not related to prices.

First, they reduce wage payments (75% of the amount of tax changes paid for that way according to http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/ideas-... but estimates vary).

Second, they reduce investment (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/263560/4069_CT_Dynamic_effects_paper_20130312_IW_v2.pdf guesses at a 2.5-4.5% change from the 28% to 20% reduction in the UK - and about £500 more per household per year in wages).

Finally, they distort stuff. Companies borrow more and raise less in equity (no corporate tax in interest), and become less stable. They distort their operations and do pointless paperwork to exploit tax loopholes. This is waste.

This paper gives an interesting summary of different assumptions about how detailed a brain simulation needs to be and what they mean for when simulating a brain would be feasible (assuming Moore's Law continues indefinitely, which is obviously not guaranteed). The classical estimates go as late as 2201 depending on what assumptions you accept. See the tables on pages 79-81 for the summary. The quantum estimate is just a question mark; they didn't even bother computing the cost of using classical computers to simulate an entire human brain as a quantum system.

I am sure its not that rare, the Wikipedia entry is because its Harward. Also Wikipedia is heavily unbalanced when it comes to geographic coverage Wikipedia Geographic Bias

To back this up, here's a paper on the effect of corporate taxes on wages: http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/ideas-...

It says that a $1 increase in corporate taxes reduces the wage bill by $0.75.

However, exactly where the taxes fall is quite opaque and estimates vary a lot. That's one reason politicians can't/won't get rid of the taxes: everybody thinks someone else pays them.

An American company can make a profit in Norway using Danish workers and pay it out to a shareholder in Brazil, and yet pay US taxes. Also, you might think that corporate taxes are paid by shareholders, but mostly they come out of wages. This paper comes to a figure of 75% out of wages: http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/ideas-... . Why should Danish workers and Brazilian shareholders pay US taxes on work done in Norway?

Defining 'profit', never mind 'profit in country x', is difficult and this is easy to abuse. It's not progressive (it doesn't depend on the income of whoever pays it) and is one of the easier taxes to avoid.

A better system would be to use your income tax system to tax the dividends received by your residents and scrap corporate taxes. It removes a whole layer of bureaucracy, avoidance and international tax competition. With a very small number of exceptions, most people will not emigrate to avoid tax in the way that companies do. And it's fairer: labour income is far more heavily taxed than other kinds and there should be some equalization (it should, of course, be combined with equalization with taxes on interest, capital gains and so on).

• 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell"...It is located in a corridor adjacent to the foyer of the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford, England, and is still ringing, though inaudibly, because it is behind two layers of glass ..."
• 2. http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/history.asp?page=exhibit1"...It is seen but not heard as the ringing is muffled, in the ground floor display cabinet near the main entrance of the Clarendon Laboratory..."

The case is seen clearly in a photograph in the Wikipedia article, and once you know the bell(s) are inside a glass case you can clearly see the case in the photograph on the motherboard.vice.com page.

the (already weak) genetic influence of genes on height has an effect 20 times greater

Wait... did I just read that genes only have a weak influence on height?????

Googling "genes for height"

...about 60 to 80 percent of the difference in height between individuals is determined by genetic factors...

Height clearly has a lot to do with genetics - shorter parents tend to have shorter children, and taller parents tend to have taller children...

...Over 80 per cent of the variation within a given population is estimated to be attributable to genetic factor...

Okay, phew! I must have misinterpreted the meaning of "already weak genetic influence." Also, each of those articles do go on to explain that nutrition, including fetal nutrition, have a significant impact as well.

the (already weak) genetic influence of genes on height has an effect 20 times greater

Wait... did I just read that genes only have a weak influence on height?????

Googling "genes for height"

...about 60 to 80 percent of the difference in height between individuals is determined by genetic factors...

Height clearly has a lot to do with genetics - shorter parents tend to have shorter children, and taller parents tend to have taller children...

...Over 80 per cent of the variation within a given population is estimated to be attributable to genetic factor...

Okay, phew! I must have misinterpreted the meaning of "already weak genetic influence." Also, each of those articles do go on to explain that nutrition, including fetal nutrition, have a significant impact as well.

They are using PTAM package from Uni of Oxford
http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~gk...

Whats more they are using off the shelf ardrone-PTAM package

https://github.com/nymanjens/a...

and replicating something done TWO YEARS AGO by Jens Nyman (from Belgian uni)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

so W T F