If it is not forced or for lack of a reasonable alternative for survival, I am all for legalizing and regulation of prostitution and sites that facilitate sexual hookups. I even applaud the women her wilfully serve in such roles and they make life better for over stressed and depressed men. It's a good thing.
However, Craigslist and others should be held responsible when they know that a good amount of the hookups going on are with women who have been abducted and forced into sexual slavery. The Internet has caused a massive growth in that crime/industry in the United States. The fact that willing prostitutes rely upon such sites to pre-screen their clients for their own safety does not make up for the criminal use... which frankly, I think is more common--but even if it wasn't.
What's worse, to me as a software engineer, is that it seems to be largely those in the tech industry that take most advantage of these services. Where are most abducted girls taken to service paying men? Silicon Valley, Seattle--near large hubs of tech workers. Paying for prostitution with girls forced into service is worse than mere rape, as if rape isn't bad enough. It is institutionalized rape and rape for which the victims often go to jail, when caught. And it is a huge and horrific stain on the tech industry in the United States.
Scientists hypothesize and critically test. They don't really engineer except for the experiments themselves. Their nature, by profession, is to be pessimistic. They try to determine what is or isn't true and why or why not. Scientists are frequently telling engineers and other what will or will not work..
Engineers design things to solve problems. By profession, they must be optimistic. They certainly benefit from knowledge and theories developed by scientists. However, they also need to blow off the scientists' views of what will or will not work. The engineer's work is not to determine what will or will not work but to make work what they need to make work.
Scientists are narrow, dogmatic, and deterministic. Engineers are open minded, creative, and determined.
I think many slashdotters are upset because it's taking away a service they rely on.
Who are the customers of sex workers in Silicon Valley.. in Seattle near Amazon.. In these places, there are now very few families left. And nerds not only struggle more to find women but have little time, as focused as we are on creating.
I have never used the services of a sex worker, myself but I certainly can see the lure and the practicality of it. If we could ensure sex workers are willingly in the business and not for lack of other opportunities then I think it's a good and appreciable business. In fact, I would strongly support legalization and regulation.
Imagine a mesh network of protocols, where by you can use whatever client you want (web, gui, or text application) with whatever look 'n feel you want. Want to post some thoughts, post them tagged for relevance. Want to see some thoughts, query them based on relevance.. recency.. individuals or whatever.
It is a travesty that we have given others control of our user interfaces and computing resources so they can show us what they want us to see and they can use our computational power and memory for what they want... How did we get here?
AI driven defensive and offensive weapons systems are crucial to the survival of any power in the future world. We need to redouble efforts into making them more efficient. It's as simple as if we don't, they will and we will be lost to what little time is left for mankind to be written into any history books.
That said, we could focus hard solving the problems of differentiating between legitimate and illegitimate targets. We could focus on systems to save lives and win the hearts and minds of local populations. The only way an enemy is truly defeated is if you either killed them all (which is possible) or win over their hearts and minds (which is harder).
Above all, it would be extremely beneficial to focus on non-lethal weapons systems. For example, small drones with tranquilizer darts or slime bombs that make an area so slick that enemy troops cannot traverse enabling a battle win by maneuver. Catch enemy soldiers with nets... Whatever it is--war technologies require extreme innovation and creativity, be they lethal or not. The non-lethal approaches add the advantages of:
1. Capturing provides people to interrogate, leading to information that is key to more wins. 2. Non-harm is far more effective at winning the hearts and minds of an enemy. 3. Non-harm is far better for Public Relations. 4. Non-harm is morally superior, when and where it is reasonably possible.
Seriously, just build a mobile PVC extruder and extrude a big long tube.. Make the mobile extruder sit on a computer controlled magnetic cushion, on long poles large wheels. This can provide smooth elevation changes with sub-millimeter precision over very diverse terrain. The extruder will require a large tank of PVC resin, a plasticizer, heating element, and extrude likely about 1 to 1 and half inch thick walls. It should probably drive and power by a common liquid fuel, such as diesel.
As for stability, you could just lay in on the ground. Extrude a ridge on the sides and drive piers through it and into the ground every so often as it extrudes.
As for the carriage, make sure it is self-powered (probably battery electric). It just needs to suck in the front and blow in the back... For safety, it should have redundant laser range finders on front and back and emergency oxygen/nitrogen tanks, and a radio, just in case..
To make it more profitable, you could lease space for cell and other radio antenna at points. You could also extrude the top in such a shape as to have a bicycle path and raised gardens on both sides, for farming potential.
Not only are Energy and Matter interchangeable but aso Information. Imagine a brain region prosthetic were placed onto the brain to replace a region expected to die from alzheimer's. Interconnected to the same brain regions as that which it replaces, it learns to imitation the same output patterns as per the same input patterns to that when the replaced region dies, the prosthetic takes over (such things are under development today). Now let's suppose the disease spreads and you eventually replace every part of your brain, one region at a time. At what point did you become no longer you?
So the Soul is: one's sense of unique and continued existence.
They say every cell in the body is replaced every seven years. To my knowledge this is true with the exception of neurons. However, would it matter if it included neurons? So long as you copy one's personality and one's memories, I think most of us would consider that to be pretty much what defines us. Perhaps some would include also one's innate drives or perhaps emotional/chemical balance, if not considering those part of the personality already.
If a person walks through a quantum replicator (assume such a thing existed) and two of him or her walked out the other side. They would be the same person until that moment from which time they would start being separate Souls. The reason being, uniqueness split at that point.
It is the information that defines us, not the matter.. The concept "1+1=2" works the same no matter where you write it. It exists outside of the world of matter and energy but it does exist because it remains the same. The matter and energy in which information is implemented brings it into the world the same regardless so long as the information is the same. The same with a person.
Also, is it not accurate to say that we are a slightly different person with each moment that passes? And over time, we come to be more different. Are you the same person at 45 as you were at 25, or at 15, or at 5 years old? The Soul is a concept inclusive of one's life's narrative. It is your story.
This sounds very much like military map coordinates used the by U.S. military... In fact, I wonder if it corresponds identically?
However, the city navigation part is interesting to me. I haven't read how that part works yet but from the description, I am imagining that even if a city crosses over the line partly into another "area code", the coordinates are still useful... For example, if the left of an area starts at 0 and goes right to 1000 then one could speak of negative numbers to mean so far to the left of the area (or over 1000 for the right).. hence giving coordinates relative to the area of focus, even when not in that area.
Seriously though, this sounds like the military map coordinate system which is also usually used up to 10 digits with lesser accuracies at lower digits.. like 6 digits. And maps are made at different scales like 1:50,000 to fit the coordinate system seamlessly. Using the metric system, you can also seamlessly go down to whatever level of precision you like, by expanding it beyond 10 digits. It's just 6 or 10 are standards.
The Machine Learning systems used in those games still have significant limitations. For one, they do not have Free Will. They only seek the measures they are coded to seek. If you feed them or trick them into thinking they are being fed those then you are good. They have no reason "why" and no purpose.. No actual "will" but just targets and goals.
Second, their abilities at contemplation are exceptionally poor. They develop more so methods that act against predicted adversarial actions. They do not actually think ahead. There is no consciousness.
None of the measures mentioned actually track innovation. The measures specified can be pretty subjective and not necessarily relevant to innovation although I can see how some old schoolers would assume them to be indicators of potential for innovation. Post-Secondary and Tertiary graduates in the workforce, for example. Investment in Research and Development, for example. Much of the microcomputing technology was born in the U.S. by college dropouts. Furthermore, the qualities of engineers in some of these countries are pretty controversial, such as the very high rate of cheating on exams and even peer review papers from Chinese. Moreover, in the U.S. (and I think likely the world), most R&D money is spent by large corporations but it springs up predominantly from small businesses. That fact alone pretty much kills the validity of calling this a measurement of Innovation by different countries. In any case, it's all indirect and will be very hard to argue any correlation with actual innovative output.
Gold's other various uses do add some inherent value but only a fraction of it's valuation. Most of its valuation is about rarity and tradition.
Ethereum has an infinite number of other possible uses with contracts and sub-currencies. It also has rarity. The contracts can actually by any kind of programming. Sub-currencies can be any kind of blockchain thing, as Crypto-Kitties have shown.
I view Ethereum as the future of blockchain currencies. The others are essentially immortal but may likely reduce or at least hold more still in value in the long term. Another exception might be those that target anonymity for the sake of things like, illegal transactions or highly private transactions.
While we want privacy and anonymity, we don't want it used for nefarious purposes. Such things tend to serve people generally but also terrorists, pedophiles, drug cartels, etc. I strongly believe we need a system that provides accountable anonymity, such as a Reputational Identity Service.
That is, create an identity that enables others it interacts with to rank its reputations along a rubric. This could be used for determining if the identity is a good citizen on comment boards, doesn't cheat people in business, etc. It could act as a form of credit check... Does the entity have a strong reputation for dependability in paying what it owes? Just like with ordinary credit, an identity would begin with no reputation and slowly build one over time. If the identity has a long history of being a certain way then the risk is low that that will change any time soon. This is true, even if the same person holds two identities--one for good and one for evil. You will know which one is safe to deal with, and how much it is..
Each person's must have a limit as to how much he/she can give to others, to prevent undue reputation inflation or deflation. So each time you score another, you have a percentage of your total to give and that takes away proportionally from those you have already given to. So one's reputation can build but it will also fade over time. One's reputation score is measured by its average over time... This is LIKES++.
On message boards, filter and allow privileges based on reputations. Do business based on reputations. Deny certain information based on reputation. Reputation may always be earned or lost.
I would be far better if users could simply define what they'd like to see and pick or create the look and feel for how to see it.
It frustrates me to no end that others take over my browser windows, showing ads and videos to me that I do not want to see. Also, why do I have to learn a different system for every single website? Different colors, styles, menu types, etc..
I really want control over my own system.
I would prefer just define what content I am looking for, have the browser query for that and display it in the panels that I setup for them (horizontal/vertical orientation, fonts, font sizes, colors, etc). For example, I might want to setup a menu with options for common activities. Each option would include criteria by which to query the web for data and a layout description as for how to present it on the screen. Let's say I want to see funny, fail, and cat videos plus daily xkcd and dilbert cartoons and tech news. I might setup the layout to present one video at a time in the upper right corner (not autoplaying) that would enable skipping through them or further filtering the types. The cartoons would be in a similar panel on the left but say about 3 at a time oriented vertically. The lower right would then show the tech news vertically scrolling..
Imagine also the commercial implications of this. If my queries to the web can also be seen (which should be optional) then not only could I write the criteria for what kinds of products and services i am interested in but retailers could see what kinds of products and services people are seeking. The criteria would include any factors of relavance. For example, the following heuristic search:
laptop computer: price $100 battery life > 8 hours memory > 64 megabytes hard disk size > 200 gigabytes include unknowns
This should be a heuristic search. So if I said "hard disk > 200" it could reasonably infer the size in gigabytes. The results can add the specifics so I could modify the criteria if it's not what I am seeking. Also, "include unknowns" if for cases where the requested data isn't provided. If the vendor didn't list the memory of a laptop, include it also because I added "include unknowns" but by default unknowns should be left out of the results.
The Semantic Web is a terrible basis for this. It is too rigid and complex. Schema's demand only specific sets of fields each with a highly specific definition. This inevitably leads to a plethora of new schemas each very similar to others and horrific levels of misuse of fields.
Also, we cannot expect the world to instantly convert their databases to this network. It must be very easy, quick, flexible, and extensible. As JSON and non-type-safe languages demonstrate, flexible and extensible usually leads to easy and quick. This and heuristic methods lubricate programs interactions with each other, as well as internally. It would be a good idea to build crawlers to common retailer sites for data.
However, I also believe that if even just a few hundred people began making queries for commercial products in such a system, that retailers would be more than willing to start using it. Frankly, I bet even 10 users would interest a retailer. So selling this should be no hassle.
It would be more challenging for news sites and other non-retailers. However, it would act as meta-news. That is, people tagging and categorizing interesting content from elsewhere. One could choose go to their conventional web pages or not, from there. However, I'd suggest that ultimately retailers would much prefer this system to paying for advertising everywhere in everyone's faces. Eventually, perhaps you'd pay for access to investigative journalism. Perhaps you'd be satisfied with citizen journalism and government and non-profit resources. In any case, it would be a free market with no ability of monopolistic control. So free market principles could work as ideally envisioned and not as the growing conglomerates have taken us, lately.
He has rigor, peer review, refutational intent, and falsification or confirmation (i.e. proof of falsehood but never proof of truth). It's better than most people. And he is correct about most people's tendency to not change their thinking. The firmly a belief is held, the more one tends to accept all new information as it fits in with the existing belief... often snowballing one's confidence in a falsehood.
I just keep wonder why NASA has this fixation on trying to do space in weightlessness? Why not use centrifugal force to simulate gravity... Why not use plants and other natural processes for breathable air and self-sustenance?
I believe the answer lies in that it's scientists, and not engineers, setting the agendas. Scientists are trained to be scepticle. They ask what is and isn't. Engineers focus on solving problems. They ask how it can be done, not if. Scientists are seeking tests to publish articles in peer review journals for their interests and their carreers. Engineers are solving puzzles to achieve practical results. Their carreers depend on tangible products that result in new capabilities.
A nobel prize does not exempt him from giving some reasoning. All I can find in all those links is name calling, "bubble". The tech bubble was clearly over-inflated startups with absurdly dubious business plans and investors just trying pull one off on each other before the inevitable bust. The housing bubble was clearly something similar, although there was more value in homes, bankers were clearly trying to make money off selling loans they knew couldn't be repaid. They'd get their bonuses without recourse, so it didn't matter.
Bit arguing that bitcoin has is over-valued because it has no value is ridiculous. Neither does paper money... Gold really doesn't have much, either. It's just yellow rocks. Bitcoin has already proven itself by surviving numerous grandiose falls and subsequent restorations. I'm sure it bubbles all the time but ultimately prevails even beyond former values.
It just really gets me that this guy gives no reasoning for his claim. An economist should know better.. No Ph.D., title, or prize entitles you to make grandiose vague claims without reasons or evidence of some kind.
The fundamentals making bitcoin strong are clear: it's limited in quantity, decentralized control, and has proven resilient against extreme volatility over time. I am sure it will crash but it will rise again, as it always has unless some so-far unmentioned fundamental has changed. One fundamental weakness is that over time, transactions become slower. This certainly could reduce its value with age but that should be a slow process that also stabilizes it. Sheer volume should also stabilize it, more or less. It might be that he feels investors are just playing a game with it--buying high and selling low regardless of any intrinsic value. However, that's not at all unique to securities of various kinds. The thing that would render bitcoin more of a true currency is if people actually buy and sell goods and services with it.... This is currently limited..
Etherium, on the other hand, could well find more intrinsic value over time. Not only will its transactions remain swift over time and volume but transaction contracts can add substantial safety in buying and selling goods and services. For example, a transaction could depend on concurrent exchange values with other currencies. Let's say we developed a movie streaming service on a mesh network. Each study could submit movies that could be played to customers but only when etherium value is at a sufficient level for compensation. Of course, there would be incentives for both etherium highs and lows. If it's high, you could make an immediate exchange to dollars. If low, you could hold onto the etherium until it rises again, earning even more when it does. So such a service could be substantially more profitable then using U.S. dollars or any conventional currency.
Ray Kurzweil is basing his arguments on patterns of the past. Patterns are derived from fundamentals at play. The fundamental that always led to new kinds of jobs is now changing diametrically--therefore the pattern must also change. With Artificial Intelligence and robotics, there is ultimately no new job that the robots cannot do, ultimately better, safer, and for less. Revolutions in productivity lead to growing economies that, awash in new money, enables whole new categories of work. But in this case, the robot will be there to take the new job faster than he came to take the old one.
And a fundamental flaw in the whole thing is that the magic so many are seeking that they call "True AI" is really not intelligence. I will argue it is Free Will. Intelligence is just a detail along the way... a detail that is pretty well solved but cannot by itself be human-like. Free will is to perceive possibilities, weight them against each other, and execute the preferred. Our world is filled with patterns and we are able to affect them through actions. Our minds therefore receive interaction patterns, learns them and classifies them. At every moment, some of those known patterns are partially fulfilled, meaning the full patterns are predictable possibilities. We weight each based the sum of how likely it is and how desirable (+) or undesirable (-) it is. We then focus on (expect) our preference (highest sum) to occur. This is also known as top-down attention whereby a signal is sent to the next parts of the pattern, amplifying it. If these are actions, they execute. In either case, the same signal is sent to an Inhibitory Attention Barrier, that blocks any signals weaker than it from entering into awareness (the place where all possibilities are weighed against each other). Also by default, the mind is in simulation mode. That is, actions are blocked from reaching the muscles but otherwise act as if they had occurred. This enables consciousness to ponder (test) the possibilities in advance of turning off simulation mode to really do it.
I think AI should simply refer to any kind of man-made system to solve problems (get from condition A to condition B)--but I will not claim that is human-like. Every so often, I notice the definition of AI on wikipedia changes. I don't think there is any consensus. Perhaps that is why people use the terms "True AI" or "Artificial General Intelligence" (AGI). The field legitimately doesn't know what it's seeking. It has a vague notion and differing beliefs on what should qualify. Expert Systems were originally sold as a product of AI (and largely accepted as such). I remember back in the 1980's just shaking my head to that--it's just if.. then.. else hierarchies with crude pattern matching for natural language interfaces. Some might be a little more than that but not much. Similarly, AGI seems to be people trying to produce an intelligence that can learn and increase its abilities at playing any game. Even having fully succeeded, that is still a far cry from human-like cognition (as falsely assumed). True AI is kept vague so many different ideas can be thrown at it. There are many ego's in this space, all fiercely believing they have the right approach.
The money isn't there currently but the fact that they did not let them stop working in that direction is worthy of praise. Be strong and hang in there, NASA. Stay the course and I will certainly write my congressmen about funding.
On the other hand, why not try open sourcing design work.. I am absolutely sure you will find an extraordinary wealth of interested people offering ideas and assistance exploring them. Most will be unqualified but it will be an excellent learning experience inspiring a new generation of aerospace engineers. Some will be qualified and will do exceptional work at peer review, engineering calculations, secondary materials research, etc. And the enthusiasm at this site will illustrate the support the American people have for this project. Embrace it.
Like many, I am excited about what SpaceX is trying to do. I am often trying to fill in the blanks they've left, though. Here are a few:
1. Gravity. I've long advocated a broad pill-shaped vessel for distant space travel. Spin can be used to simulate gravity but too much will create an uncomfortable corealis effect (dizziness, and the feeling of being pushed walking one way, pulled walking the other). Zero corealis is when the spin is 2 rpm or less but even at 8 rpm, the effects are reasonably negligible. For 2 rpm and Earth-like gravity, the craft would have to be 400 meters in diameter.
The colonial transporter does seem to have bare walls in the lower occupiable deck. It looks like they may be able to put spinning crew quarters in there with perhaps a bit better than moon-like gravity. One could design a toilet to flush with splash-guards in that environment. If a curfew is put into effect, one could increase the rate of spin after lights out, such as to perhaps greatly reduce the long term effects of weightlessness... then slow it back down again just before wake-up time. The transition between a weightful and weightless environment can be disorienting but I presume one could reasonably adapt in low gravity to no gravity.
2. Carbon Monoxide. For the colony on Mars itself, nobody (not even NASA) seems to be talking about the CO risk. CO will inevitably find itself way into habitation chambers and at some point, silently kill. Mars CO levels are trace gas but in deadly percentages. CO is very small and is not easily contained--it will seep through most containment materials.
My solution would be to standardize on hydrogen combustion for heating, cooking, smelting, and other activities requiring high heat. The ambient air will draw in the CO with the oxygen destroying it. Of course, CO monitors must be kept in working order at all times. Hydrogen is easily obtainable through electrolysis of water--which is plentiful in the soils of Mars.
3. Oxygen Toxicity. This criticism has been made of the Mars One project's published plans. In order to grow enough food to feed a certain number of people, you will inevitably also create more oxygen than they can consume and convert to CO2 through breathing. When too much oxygen builds up, it ultimately freezes the lungs from which the crystalization causes irreparable cellular damage... and death.
My solution for Oxygen Toxicity is the same as for Carbon Monoxide--combust hydrogen to create heat. Any combustion will consume large amounts of oxygen but combusting hydrogen also solves the CO problem. Mars is very cold and heat it needed for many things.
4. Heat Dissipation. Most seem concerned with generating and retaining heat in Mars' cold environment. However, heat loss on Mars will not be as rapid as it is on Earth because the atmosphere is thinner. Yes, thin atmosphere equals cold. However, exchange of heat requires molecules to come in contact with each other and when the air density is 1% or even a bit less than on Earth, don't expect the freezing to happen within seconds. A well insulated habitat is likely to over-heat, if no cooling system is available... even perhaps from body heat.
I propose running cooling coils spread out into the Martian regolith, with ammonia as the heat exchange liquid. The regolith will be fully cooled and, mostly of silica, will very rapidly move heat away. Ammonia will not freeze at Martian temperatures and is readily made by the human body--in pee.
5. Mental and Emotional Well-Being. Elon Musk's claims that the voyages will be fun seems hopeful but naive. Zero-G games, crew quarters, movies, and lecture halls, and a restaurant (aka glorified cafeteria) will all become old, quickly. Although the privacy of personal quarters, the challenges of games, and various forms of leisure are highly saught after on Earth, that is because we work so much. The truth is, having the stress and feeling of importance of your activities are more essential for human happiness.
Python is becoming the dominant "Academic" language. It's clear as it adheres to how a human most ideally likes to model his/her designed processes. However, Python suffers the same ills as Java. It's really just Java 2.0 -- conventional Object-Orientation has failed in its goals. The wikipedia criticisms are very high level summary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming#Criticism) -- there is plenty else well documented.
However we are faced with a dilemma: we now have a generation of programmers trained and habituated in that one method of framing problems: OO. Most of them struggle (usually cannot) frame problems or design solutions in non-OO ways. This hinders their ability to think differently or to see solutions or more efficient design potential. They often don't understand or even think much about OO modeling for its fundamental limitations to size and performance. I am speaking from experience working with so many people over the decades and also having been an OO evangelist in the early 2000s.
I like the string and array functions in Python and the clear readability is nice. It does hit some of my pet peeves with its less conventional use of certain characters and terms, worse than Pascal did back in the 1980s but those are superficial things.
That said--Javascript's object model is true to the machine and I predict it will be (and is already becoming) the new C language. Python cannot be a systems language--it is functionally incapable for the same reasons as for Java. Javascript is much closer.
Python's standard documentation is incomplete and could be greatly improved. For example, it doesn't explain how to extract and translate text in strings but just finding patterns (or at least it didn't last time I tried to use them). This doesn't matter to most python developers because they focus on broad high level logic using libraries built for them and just accepting the limitations perpetually found within those libraries. This is the problem with C# and.Net. Regular expressions not only reduce hundreds of lines of code for pattern identification, extraction, and replacements/reogranizations, but also enable dynamic pattern building. To do this without regular expressions requires that you practically reinvent regular expressions. Regular expressions are one example of a computationally complete tool (Turing Complete for idol worshipers). Nearly all OO library objects or systems of objects I've come across have clearly not taking computational completion into account or even show any awareness of its importance.... they just ad hoc for a select set of use cases that its builders thought most useful or likely.
I think UnIx small tools and pipes are a more promising start for a solution to the problems for which OO was envisioned and the problems OO created. I've put a fair amount of thought to this over the years. It seems to me that providing a singular stream through each for data and control would be the best improvement, instead of data and error. Data would be pure data on which operations occur. Control would be a sectioned stream with parameters, history, and results (including errors). If one tool in a chain recognizes an error from a prior tool then it can try to intelligently accommodate... or use parameters to know how to behave on such contingencies. Intelligent behaviors could include seeking other tools to cure the problem or even computing process flows between sets of tools to cure problems. Intent could be issued.
A Dyson sphere, much less a partial Dyson sphere with sporadic orbit makes no sense. Why build such huge things? With technology so advanced, there are plenty other ways to gets lots of energy. They could harvest cosmic rays or put quantum entangled particles inside stars to generate energy from the paired particles. A lot more fissile material must exist in the parts of a solar cluster that failed to ignite.
However, an armada of spacecraft heading straight here from that star would not only dim it, from our perspective, erratically but also dim more and more of it, as it draws near to us. While also highly improbably, I prefer this alternative as it just seems way more exciting.
An academic degree is about the concepts and pushing the envelope--not specific job training like a vocational school. However, you do need to learn specific programming languages in order to not be detached from reality when dealing with them in theory. Theory gave us OO languages that are many multitudes more complex and harder to maintain than COBOL for the same data processing tasks. That's huge problem for which some background in COBOL might alleviate.
Slashdot Mirror
If it is not forced or for lack of a reasonable alternative for survival, I am all for legalizing and regulation of prostitution and sites that facilitate sexual hookups. I even applaud the women her wilfully serve in such roles and they make life better for over stressed and depressed men. It's a good thing.
However, Craigslist and others should be held responsible when they know that a good amount of the hookups going on are with women who have been abducted and forced into sexual slavery. The Internet has caused a massive growth in that crime/industry in the United States. The fact that willing prostitutes rely upon such sites to pre-screen their clients for their own safety does not make up for the criminal use... which frankly, I think is more common--but even if it wasn't.
What's worse, to me as a software engineer, is that it seems to be largely those in the tech industry that take most advantage of these services. Where are most abducted girls taken to service paying men? Silicon Valley, Seattle--near large hubs of tech workers. Paying for prostitution with girls forced into service is worse than mere rape, as if rape isn't bad enough. It is institutionalized rape and rape for which the victims often go to jail, when caught. And it is a huge and horrific stain on the tech industry in the United States.
Scientists hypothesize and critically test. They don't really engineer except for the experiments themselves. Their nature, by profession, is to be pessimistic. They try to determine what is or isn't true and why or why not. Scientists are frequently telling engineers and other what will or will not work..
Engineers design things to solve problems. By profession, they must be optimistic. They certainly benefit from knowledge and theories developed by scientists. However, they also need to blow off the scientists' views of what will or will not work. The engineer's work is not to determine what will or will not work but to make work what they need to make work.
Scientists are narrow, dogmatic, and deterministic. Engineers are open minded, creative, and determined.
Engineers built these robots--not scientists.
I think many slashdotters are upset because it's taking away a service they rely on.
Who are the customers of sex workers in Silicon Valley.. in Seattle near Amazon.. In these places, there are now very few families left. And nerds not only struggle more to find women but have little time, as focused as we are on creating.
I have never used the services of a sex worker, myself but I certainly can see the lure and the practicality of it. If we could ensure sex workers are willingly in the business and not for lack of other opportunities then I think it's a good and appreciable business. In fact, I would strongly support legalization and regulation.
I would like to have a yacht..
Imagine a mesh network of protocols, where by you can use whatever client you want (web, gui, or text application) with whatever look 'n feel you want. Want to post some thoughts, post them tagged for relevance. Want to see some thoughts, query them based on relevance.. recency.. individuals or whatever.
It is a travesty that we have given others control of our user interfaces and computing resources so they can show us what they want us to see and they can use our computational power and memory for what they want... How did we get here?
AI driven defensive and offensive weapons systems are crucial to the survival of any power in the future world. We need to redouble efforts into making them more efficient. It's as simple as if we don't, they will and we will be lost to what little time is left for mankind to be written into any history books.
That said, we could focus hard solving the problems of differentiating between legitimate and illegitimate targets. We could focus on systems to save lives and win the hearts and minds of local populations. The only way an enemy is truly defeated is if you either killed them all (which is possible) or win over their hearts and minds (which is harder).
Above all, it would be extremely beneficial to focus on non-lethal weapons systems. For example, small drones with tranquilizer darts or slime bombs that make an area so slick that enemy troops cannot traverse enabling a battle win by maneuver. Catch enemy soldiers with nets... Whatever it is--war technologies require extreme innovation and creativity, be they lethal or not. The non-lethal approaches add the advantages of:
1. Capturing provides people to interrogate, leading to information that is key to more wins.
2. Non-harm is far more effective at winning the hearts and minds of an enemy.
3. Non-harm is far better for Public Relations.
4. Non-harm is morally superior, when and where it is reasonably possible.
Seriously, just build a mobile PVC extruder and extrude a big long tube.. Make the mobile extruder sit on a computer controlled magnetic cushion, on long poles large wheels. This can provide smooth elevation changes with sub-millimeter precision over very diverse terrain. The extruder will require a large tank of PVC resin, a plasticizer, heating element, and extrude likely about 1 to 1 and half inch thick walls. It should probably drive and power by a common liquid fuel, such as diesel.
As for stability, you could just lay in on the ground. Extrude a ridge on the sides and drive piers through it and into the ground every so often as it extrudes.
As for the carriage, make sure it is self-powered (probably battery electric). It just needs to suck in the front and blow in the back... For safety, it should have redundant laser range finders on front and back and emergency oxygen/nitrogen tanks, and a radio, just in case..
To make it more profitable, you could lease space for cell and other radio antenna at points. You could also extrude the top in such a shape as to have a bicycle path and raised gardens on both sides, for farming potential.
Matthew
Not only are Energy and Matter interchangeable but aso Information. Imagine a brain region prosthetic were placed onto the brain to replace a region expected to die from alzheimer's. Interconnected to the same brain regions as that which it replaces, it learns to imitation the same output patterns as per the same input patterns to that when the replaced region dies, the prosthetic takes over (such things are under development today). Now let's suppose the disease spreads and you eventually replace every part of your brain, one region at a time. At what point did you become no longer you?
So the Soul is: one's sense of unique and continued existence.
They say every cell in the body is replaced every seven years. To my knowledge this is true with the exception of neurons. However, would it matter if it included neurons? So long as you copy one's personality and one's memories, I think most of us would consider that to be pretty much what defines us. Perhaps some would include also one's innate drives or perhaps emotional/chemical balance, if not considering those part of the personality already.
If a person walks through a quantum replicator (assume such a thing existed) and two of him or her walked out the other side. They would be the same person until that moment from which time they would start being separate Souls. The reason being, uniqueness split at that point.
It is the information that defines us, not the matter.. The concept "1+1=2" works the same no matter where you write it. It exists outside of the world of matter and energy but it does exist because it remains the same. The matter and energy in which information is implemented brings it into the world the same regardless so long as the information is the same. The same with a person.
Also, is it not accurate to say that we are a slightly different person with each moment that passes? And over time, we come to be more different. Are you the same person at 45 as you were at 25, or at 15, or at 5 years old? The Soul is a concept inclusive of one's life's narrative. It is your story.
This sounds very much like military map coordinates used the by U.S. military... In fact, I wonder if it corresponds identically?
However, the city navigation part is interesting to me. I haven't read how that part works yet but from the description, I am imagining that even if a city crosses over the line partly into another "area code", the coordinates are still useful... For example, if the left of an area starts at 0 and goes right to 1000 then one could speak of negative numbers to mean so far to the left of the area (or over 1000 for the right).. hence giving coordinates relative to the area of focus, even when not in that area.
Seriously though, this sounds like the military map coordinate system which is also usually used up to 10 digits with lesser accuracies at lower digits.. like 6 digits. And maps are made at different scales like 1:50,000 to fit the coordinate system seamlessly. Using the metric system, you can also seamlessly go down to whatever level of precision you like, by expanding it beyond 10 digits. It's just 6 or 10 are standards.
Matthew
The Machine Learning systems used in those games still have significant limitations.
For one, they do not have Free Will. They only seek the measures they are coded to seek. If you feed them or trick them into thinking they are being fed those then you are good. They have no reason "why" and no purpose.. No actual "will" but just targets and goals.
Second, their abilities at contemplation are exceptionally poor. They develop more so methods that act against predicted adversarial actions. They do not actually think ahead. There is no consciousness.
None of the measures mentioned actually track innovation. The measures specified can be pretty subjective and not necessarily relevant to innovation although I can see how some old schoolers would assume them to be indicators of potential for innovation. Post-Secondary and Tertiary graduates in the workforce, for example. Investment in Research and Development, for example. Much of the microcomputing technology was born in the U.S. by college dropouts. Furthermore, the qualities of engineers in some of these countries are pretty controversial, such as the very high rate of cheating on exams and even peer review papers from Chinese. Moreover, in the U.S. (and I think likely the world), most R&D money is spent by large corporations but it springs up predominantly from small businesses. That fact alone pretty much kills the validity of calling this a measurement of Innovation by different countries. In any case, it's all indirect and will be very hard to argue any correlation with actual innovative output.
Gold's other various uses do add some inherent value but only a fraction of it's valuation. Most of its valuation is about rarity and tradition.
Ethereum has an infinite number of other possible uses with contracts and sub-currencies. It also has rarity. The contracts can actually by any kind of programming. Sub-currencies can be any kind of blockchain thing, as Crypto-Kitties have shown.
I view Ethereum as the future of blockchain currencies. The others are essentially immortal but may likely reduce or at least hold more still in value in the long term. Another exception might be those that target anonymity for the sake of things like, illegal transactions or highly private transactions.
While we want privacy and anonymity, we don't want it used for nefarious purposes. Such things tend to serve people generally but also terrorists, pedophiles, drug cartels, etc. I strongly believe we need a system that provides accountable anonymity, such as a Reputational Identity Service.
That is, create an identity that enables others it interacts with to rank its reputations along a rubric. This could be used for determining if the identity is a good citizen on comment boards, doesn't cheat people in business, etc. It could act as a form of credit check... Does the entity have a strong reputation for dependability in paying what it owes? Just like with ordinary credit, an identity would begin with no reputation and slowly build one over time. If the identity has a long history of being a certain way then the risk is low that that will change any time soon. This is true, even if the same person holds two identities--one for good and one for evil. You will know which one is safe to deal with, and how much it is..
Each person's must have a limit as to how much he/she can give to others, to prevent undue reputation inflation or deflation. So each time you score another, you have a percentage of your total to give and that takes away proportionally from those you have already given to. So one's reputation can build but it will also fade over time. One's reputation score is measured by its average over time... This is LIKES++.
On message boards, filter and allow privileges based on reputations. Do business based on reputations. Deny certain information based on reputation. Reputation may always be earned or lost.
I would be far better if users could simply define what they'd like to see and pick or create the look and feel for how to see it.
It frustrates me to no end that others take over my browser windows, showing ads and videos to me that I do not want to see. Also, why do I have to learn a different system for every single website? Different colors, styles, menu types, etc..
I really want control over my own system.
I would prefer just define what content I am looking for, have the browser query for that and display it in the panels that I setup for them (horizontal/vertical orientation, fonts, font sizes, colors, etc). For example, I might want to setup a menu with options for common activities. Each option would include criteria by which to query the web for data and a layout description as for how to present it on the screen. Let's say I want to see funny, fail, and cat videos plus daily xkcd and dilbert cartoons and tech news. I might setup the layout to present one video at a time in the upper right corner (not autoplaying) that would enable skipping through them or further filtering the types. The cartoons would be in a similar panel on the left but say about 3 at a time oriented vertically. The lower right would then show the tech news vertically scrolling..
Imagine also the commercial implications of this. If my queries to the web can also be seen (which should be optional) then not only could I write the criteria for what kinds of products and services i am interested in but retailers could see what kinds of products and services people are seeking. The criteria would include any factors of relavance. For example, the following heuristic search:
laptop computer:
price $100
battery life > 8 hours
memory > 64 megabytes
hard disk size > 200 gigabytes
include unknowns
This should be a heuristic search. So if I said "hard disk > 200" it could reasonably infer the size in gigabytes. The results can add the specifics so I could modify the criteria if it's not what I am seeking. Also, "include unknowns" if for cases where the requested data isn't provided. If the vendor didn't list the memory of a laptop, include it also because I added "include unknowns" but by default unknowns should be left out of the results.
The Semantic Web is a terrible basis for this. It is too rigid and complex. Schema's demand only specific sets of fields each with a highly specific definition. This inevitably leads to a plethora of new schemas each very similar to others and horrific levels of misuse of fields.
Also, we cannot expect the world to instantly convert their databases to this network. It must be very easy, quick, flexible, and extensible. As JSON and non-type-safe languages demonstrate, flexible and extensible usually leads to easy and quick. This and heuristic methods lubricate programs interactions with each other, as well as internally. It would be a good idea to build crawlers to common retailer sites for data.
However, I also believe that if even just a few hundred people began making queries for commercial products in such a system, that retailers would be more than willing to start using it. Frankly, I bet even 10 users would interest a retailer. So selling this should be no hassle.
It would be more challenging for news sites and other non-retailers. However, it would act as meta-news. That is, people tagging and categorizing interesting content from elsewhere. One could choose go to their conventional web pages or not, from there. However, I'd suggest that ultimately retailers would much prefer this system to paying for advertising everywhere in everyone's faces. Eventually, perhaps you'd pay for access to investigative journalism. Perhaps you'd be satisfied with citizen journalism and government and non-profit resources. In any case, it would be a free market with no ability of monopolistic control. So free market principles could work as ideally envisioned and not as the growing conglomerates have taken us, lately.
He has rigor, peer review, refutational intent, and falsification or confirmation (i.e. proof of falsehood but never proof of truth). It's better than most people. And he is correct about most people's tendency to not change their thinking. The firmly a belief is held, the more one tends to accept all new information as it fits in with the existing belief... often snowballing one's confidence in a falsehood.
I just keep wonder why NASA has this fixation on trying to do space in weightlessness? Why not use centrifugal force to simulate gravity... Why not use plants and other natural processes for breathable air and self-sustenance?
I believe the answer lies in that it's scientists, and not engineers, setting the agendas. Scientists are trained to be scepticle. They ask what is and isn't. Engineers focus on solving problems. They ask how it can be done, not if. Scientists are seeking tests to publish articles in peer review journals for their interests and their carreers. Engineers are solving puzzles to achieve practical results. Their carreers depend on tangible products that result in new capabilities.
Sincerely,
Matthew C. Tedder
A nobel prize does not exempt him from giving some reasoning. All I can find in all those links is name calling, "bubble". The tech bubble was clearly over-inflated startups with absurdly dubious business plans and investors just trying pull one off on each other before the inevitable bust. The housing bubble was clearly something similar, although there was more value in homes, bankers were clearly trying to make money off selling loans they knew couldn't be repaid. They'd get their bonuses without recourse, so it didn't matter.
Bit arguing that bitcoin has is over-valued because it has no value is ridiculous. Neither does paper money... Gold really doesn't have much, either. It's just yellow rocks. Bitcoin has already proven itself by surviving numerous grandiose falls and subsequent restorations. I'm sure it bubbles all the time but ultimately prevails even beyond former values.
It just really gets me that this guy gives no reasoning for his claim. An economist should know better.. No Ph.D., title, or prize entitles you to make grandiose vague claims without reasons or evidence of some kind.
The fundamentals making bitcoin strong are clear: it's limited in quantity, decentralized control, and has proven resilient against extreme volatility over time. I am sure it will crash but it will rise again, as it always has unless some so-far unmentioned fundamental has changed. One fundamental weakness is that over time, transactions become slower. This certainly could reduce its value with age but that should be a slow process that also stabilizes it. Sheer volume should also stabilize it, more or less. It might be that he feels investors are just playing a game with it--buying high and selling low regardless of any intrinsic value. However, that's not at all unique to securities of various kinds. The thing that would render bitcoin more of a true currency is if people actually buy and sell goods and services with it.... This is currently limited..
Etherium, on the other hand, could well find more intrinsic value over time. Not only will its transactions remain swift over time and volume but transaction contracts can add substantial safety in buying and selling goods and services. For example, a transaction could depend on concurrent exchange values with other currencies. Let's say we developed a movie streaming service on a mesh network. Each study could submit movies that could be played to customers but only when etherium value is at a sufficient level for compensation. Of course, there would be incentives for both etherium highs and lows. If it's high, you could make an immediate exchange to dollars. If low, you could hold onto the etherium until it rises again, earning even more when it does. So such a service could be substantially more profitable then using U.S. dollars or any conventional currency.
Ray Kurzweil is basing his arguments on patterns of the past. Patterns are derived from fundamentals at play. The fundamental that always led to new kinds of jobs is now changing diametrically--therefore the pattern must also change. With Artificial Intelligence and robotics, there is ultimately no new job that the robots cannot do, ultimately better, safer, and for less. Revolutions in productivity lead to growing economies that, awash in new money, enables whole new categories of work. But in this case, the robot will be there to take the new job faster than he came to take the old one.
And a fundamental flaw in the whole thing is that the magic so many are seeking that they call "True AI" is really not intelligence. I will argue it is Free Will. Intelligence is just a detail along the way... a detail that is pretty well solved but cannot by itself be human-like. Free will is to perceive possibilities, weight them against each other, and execute the preferred. Our world is filled with patterns and we are able to affect them through actions. Our minds therefore receive interaction patterns, learns them and classifies them. At every moment, some of those known patterns are partially fulfilled, meaning the full patterns are predictable possibilities. We weight each based the sum of how likely it is and how desirable (+) or undesirable (-) it is. We then focus on (expect) our preference (highest sum) to occur. This is also known as top-down attention whereby a signal is sent to the next parts of the pattern, amplifying it. If these are actions, they execute. In either case, the same signal is sent to an Inhibitory Attention Barrier, that blocks any signals weaker than it from entering into awareness (the place where all possibilities are weighed against each other). Also by default, the mind is in simulation mode. That is, actions are blocked from reaching the muscles but otherwise act as if they had occurred. This enables consciousness to ponder (test) the possibilities in advance of turning off simulation mode to really do it.
I think AI should simply refer to any kind of man-made system to solve problems (get from condition A to condition B)--but I will not claim that is human-like. Every so often, I notice the definition of AI on wikipedia changes. I don't think there is any consensus. Perhaps that is why people use the terms "True AI" or "Artificial General Intelligence" (AGI). The field legitimately doesn't know what it's seeking. It has a vague notion and differing beliefs on what should qualify. Expert Systems were originally sold as a product of AI (and largely accepted as such). I remember back in the 1980's just shaking my head to that--it's just if .. then .. else hierarchies with crude pattern matching for natural language interfaces. Some might be a little more than that but not much. Similarly, AGI seems to be people trying to produce an intelligence that can learn and increase its abilities at playing any game. Even having fully succeeded, that is still a far cry from human-like cognition (as falsely assumed). True AI is kept vague so many different ideas can be thrown at it. There are many ego's in this space, all fiercely believing they have the right approach.
The money isn't there currently but the fact that they did not let them stop working in that direction is worthy of praise. Be strong and hang in there, NASA. Stay the course and I will certainly write my congressmen about funding.
On the other hand, why not try open sourcing design work.. I am absolutely sure you will find an extraordinary wealth of interested people offering ideas and assistance exploring them. Most will be unqualified but it will be an excellent learning experience inspiring a new generation of aerospace engineers. Some will be qualified and will do exceptional work at peer review, engineering calculations, secondary materials research, etc. And the enthusiasm at this site will illustrate the support the American people have for this project. Embrace it.
Matthew
Like many, I am excited about what SpaceX is trying to do. I am often trying to fill in the blanks they've left, though. Here are a few:
1. Gravity. I've long advocated a broad pill-shaped vessel for distant space travel. Spin can be used to simulate gravity but too much will create an uncomfortable corealis effect (dizziness, and the feeling of being pushed walking one way, pulled walking the other). Zero corealis is when the spin is 2 rpm or less but even at 8 rpm, the effects are reasonably negligible. For 2 rpm and Earth-like gravity, the craft would have to be 400 meters in diameter.
The colonial transporter does seem to have bare walls in the lower occupiable deck. It looks like they may be able to put spinning crew quarters in there with perhaps a bit better than moon-like gravity. One could design a toilet to flush with splash-guards in that environment. If a curfew is put into effect, one could increase the rate of spin after lights out, such as to perhaps greatly reduce the long term effects of weightlessness... then slow it back down again just before wake-up time. The transition between a weightful and weightless environment can be disorienting but I presume one could reasonably adapt in low gravity to no gravity.
2. Carbon Monoxide. For the colony on Mars itself, nobody (not even NASA) seems to be talking about the CO risk. CO will inevitably find itself way into habitation chambers and at some point, silently kill. Mars CO levels are trace gas but in deadly percentages. CO is very small and is not easily contained--it will seep through most containment materials.
My solution would be to standardize on hydrogen combustion for heating, cooking, smelting, and other activities requiring high heat. The ambient air will draw in the CO with the oxygen destroying it. Of course, CO monitors must be kept in working order at all times. Hydrogen is easily obtainable through electrolysis of water--which is plentiful in the soils of Mars.
3. Oxygen Toxicity. This criticism has been made of the Mars One project's published plans. In order to grow enough food to feed a certain number of people, you will inevitably also create more oxygen than they can consume and convert to CO2 through breathing. When too much oxygen builds up, it ultimately freezes the lungs from which the crystalization causes irreparable cellular damage... and death.
My solution for Oxygen Toxicity is the same as for Carbon Monoxide--combust hydrogen to create heat. Any combustion will consume large amounts of oxygen but combusting hydrogen also solves the CO problem. Mars is very cold and heat it needed for many things.
4. Heat Dissipation. Most seem concerned with generating and retaining heat in Mars' cold environment. However, heat loss on Mars will not be as rapid as it is on Earth because the atmosphere is thinner. Yes, thin atmosphere equals cold. However, exchange of heat requires molecules to come in contact with each other and when the air density is 1% or even a bit less than on Earth, don't expect the freezing to happen within seconds. A well insulated habitat is likely to over-heat, if no cooling system is available... even perhaps from body heat.
I propose running cooling coils spread out into the Martian regolith, with ammonia as the heat exchange liquid. The regolith will be fully cooled and, mostly of silica, will very rapidly move heat away. Ammonia will not freeze at Martian temperatures and is readily made by the human body--in pee.
5. Mental and Emotional Well-Being. Elon Musk's claims that the voyages will be fun seems hopeful but naive. Zero-G games, crew quarters, movies, and lecture halls, and a restaurant (aka glorified cafeteria) will all become old, quickly. Although the privacy of personal quarters, the challenges of games, and various forms of leisure are highly saught after on Earth, that is because we work so much. The truth is, having the stress and feeling of importance of your activities are more essential for human happiness.
Python is becoming the dominant "Academic" language. It's clear as it adheres to how a human most ideally likes to model his/her designed processes. However, Python suffers the same ills as Java. It's really just Java 2.0 -- conventional Object-Orientation has failed in its goals. The wikipedia criticisms are very high level summary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming#Criticism) -- there is plenty else well documented.
However we are faced with a dilemma: we now have a generation of programmers trained and habituated in that one method of framing problems: OO. Most of them struggle (usually cannot) frame problems or design solutions in non-OO ways. This hinders their ability to think differently or to see solutions or more efficient design potential. They often don't understand or even think much about OO modeling for its fundamental limitations to size and performance. I am speaking from experience working with so many people over the decades and also having been an OO evangelist in the early 2000s.
I like the string and array functions in Python and the clear readability is nice. It does hit some of my pet peeves with its less conventional use of certain characters and terms, worse than Pascal did back in the 1980s but those are superficial things.
That said--Javascript's object model is true to the machine and I predict it will be (and is already becoming) the new C language. Python cannot be a systems language--it is functionally incapable for the same reasons as for Java. Javascript is much closer.
Python's standard documentation is incomplete and could be greatly improved. For example, it doesn't explain how to extract and translate text in strings but just finding patterns (or at least it didn't last time I tried to use them). This doesn't matter to most python developers because they focus on broad high level logic using libraries built for them and just accepting the limitations perpetually found within those libraries. This is the problem with C# and .Net. Regular expressions not only reduce hundreds of lines of code for pattern identification, extraction, and replacements/reogranizations, but also enable dynamic pattern building. To do this without regular expressions requires that you practically reinvent regular expressions. Regular expressions are one example of a computationally complete tool (Turing Complete for idol worshipers). Nearly all OO library objects or systems of objects I've come across have clearly not taking computational completion into account or even show any awareness of its importance.... they just ad hoc for a select set of use cases that its builders thought most useful or likely.
I think UnIx small tools and pipes are a more promising start for a solution to the problems for which OO was envisioned and the problems OO created. I've put a fair amount of thought to this over the years. It seems to me that providing a singular stream through each for data and control would be the best improvement, instead of data and error. Data would be pure data on which operations occur. Control would be a sectioned stream with parameters, history, and results (including errors). If one tool in a chain recognizes an error from a prior tool then it can try to intelligently accommodate... or use parameters to know how to behave on such contingencies. Intelligent behaviors could include seeking other tools to cure the problem or even computing process flows between sets of tools to cure problems. Intent could be issued.
A Dyson sphere, much less a partial Dyson sphere with sporadic orbit makes no sense. Why build such huge things? With technology so advanced, there are plenty other ways to gets lots of energy. They could harvest cosmic rays or put quantum entangled particles inside stars to generate energy from the paired particles. A lot more fissile material must exist in the parts of a solar cluster that failed to ignite.
However, an armada of spacecraft heading straight here from that star would not only dim it, from our perspective, erratically but also dim more and more of it, as it draws near to us. While also highly improbably, I prefer this alternative as it just seems way more exciting.
An academic degree is about the concepts and pushing the envelope--not specific job training like a vocational school. However, you do need to learn specific programming languages in order to not be detached from reality when dealing with them in theory. Theory gave us OO languages that are many multitudes more complex and harder to maintain than COBOL for the same data processing tasks. That's huge problem for which some background in COBOL might alleviate.