I have a Mac and have therefore had compressed swap for some time now. Theoretically, it's much faster than swap, even if you have an SSD. But there's a tradeoff. When swapping, the disk is busy, but the CPU is free to do other work, although things bog down a lot when thrashing happens. When doing compressed swap, the memory management hogs the CPU, which means it's not free to run other programs, and the system slows down. And thrashing still happens. It's just that your laptop heats up more when it's happening, and things don't get any less sluggish.
Of course, the biggest problem is Safari. I'll get Safari Web Content processes taking up 10GB or more. There's obviously some kind of run-away memory leak going on. Always when my system bogs down, it's Safari that's taking up too much RAM. Quit Safari, and the system becomes responsive again.
If you look at Newegg and Amazon reviews, you'll find that perhaps the most reliable drives are 1TB in capacity and somewhat behind the cutting edge. Sure, you can get 6TB drives, but they're ticking timebombs. They have unacceptably high failure rates. As such, we're already on course for flash SSDs to overtake mechanical drives, because a 1TB SSD is approaching the price of an enterprise mechanical drive. The instant an even cheaper alternative comes out, mechanical drives are dead. They won't be cheaper by the megabyte anymore, and you can't trust them. Manufacturers COULD try to make them more reliable, but that would require more testing of individual units before shipping, which would increases costs even further. Indeed, the only reason mechanical drives are as cheap as they are is because MANUFACTURERS DO NOT TEST THEIR DRIVES. They are specifically designed so that they don't NEED to be tested. They have all kinds of failsafe mechanisms, vibration management, power management, temperature management, sector remapping, and they're over-engineered. A drive can be half broken, but you won't know because it's likely to keep working just fine. The ones that are DOA or die right away are really the worst of the lot and far more broken than you realize. The designers put all their efforts in at design time so as to cut manufacturing costs. But the end is very very near.
Sometimes, the 16GB I have in my MacBook Pro isn't enough. However, that's primarily due to Safari being a horrible memory pig. I've had "safari web content" processes baloon up to 14GB.
Heh. You're right. Airline food is evil. And imagine having celiac disease and being able to eat anything they serve on the plane. Hell, you'd have trouble finding gluten-free food at an airport!
I did not by any means imply that the airlines give any thought to nutrition AT ALL. They just want to save money, and they have noticed some diversity in passenger weight. Like any psychopatic entity hell-bent on optimizing profit margins, they're going to latch onto that.
I'm sure I'll get modded down for this. But the iPhone 6+ has enormous battery life. The 6 is kindof anemic, but the 6+ will last 2 or 3 days of normal usage before needing a recharge, including plenty of Angry Birds. As others have said here, the operating system is part of the equation, and iOS does a pretty good job.
The US is pretty bad, but it's not exactly awesome elsewhere. People are just not educated about nutrition. They know nothing about protein, carbohydrates, fats, sugars, vitamins, minerals, food sensitivies/allergies, intestinal flora, pollutants and contaminants, or any of those things. People just eat whatever the hell they want, which is primarily junk food, they get fat, slow down their brains, and get even dumber. The biggest offenders are actually the MDs who have all knowledge of nutrition ripped out of their brains upon entering med school. They're dangerously ignorant and, as representatives to most people of how they should take care of themselves, the MDs pass on their ignorance to the rest of the population. The FDA isn't a lot of help either with so much bullshit in their recommendations. Contrary to what most doctors will tell you, mineral and vitamin deficiencies abound among Americans, because they eat such as shitty diet. Trust me, the trace amounts of iodine you get in your salt just aren't enough, and people have magnesium deficiencies left and right, just to mention two.
Some fat people will tell you that they have a "glandular problem." Maybe some don't, but this is actually fairly common. However, if you eat right, you can compensate for a lot of these problems, and there are ways of treating it. But people don't even TRY. They don't listen to what little nutritional advice they do get, so they just keep getting fatter and sicker. They don't take resposibility for their bodies.
So, you know, I don't think it's a problem that airlines micro-optimize their operations to account for passenger weight. People should take responsibility for their own personal health and learn to eat right. If they don't, the rest of shouldn't have to suffer. The thing is, this airline is from Uzbekistan, a part of the world where discrimination is accepted as part of their culture, so they'll actually have an easier time getting away with this sort of thing. If an airline in the US did this, they'd get all sorts of flak over it, although I still think they should be within their rights to do it.
It's shitty nutrition that I think is part of the increase in autism we observe (assuming it's not *just* an increase in diagnosis). But idiots want to blame vaccines instead, because it's easy to not get a vaccine, but it takes proper discipline to change your diet.
And discipline is just not something that's encouraged in most parts of the world.
I could be misinterpreting, but I teach a lot of masters students from India and China. The Indians in particular seem to have a massive entitlement complex. In particular, they feel entitled to cheat with impunity. I'll give an assignment with an old problem I borrowed from a previous year, but with the numbers changed. Six of them will turn in exactly the same assignment, with exactly the same formatting, with all of the wrong answers, because they copied the older question's answer without even bothering to look at it. And then they get angry when they get a zero for the assignment. This semester, I'm going to just fail the cheaters out completely. (With ample and repeated warning about the rules, of course.)
It has been suggested that Tesla should get into the battery business, as a product. They've done a lot of work to improve battery energy density. If they were to market these to laptop and cell phone vendors, would they be able to use that cashflow as a means to prop up the rest of the business?
Yes. And the genetic markers we're seeing may actually be related to FODMAP sensitivity instead. Either way, my wife and I have to avoid wheat. Interestingly, she does NOT have the genetic markers for gluten sensitivity, so why her throid goes into a rage when she has the tiniest amount of gluten is something we're still trying to figure out. Hashimoto's antibodies are involved.
That wouldn't surprise me. I don't suppose you'd remember the name of the scientist. I've done some googling on this and will continue reading. We're already familiar with FODMAPs and are eating a low-FODMAP diet to see what happens.
My wife is another interesting case. When she gets gluten, her thyroid goes into a rage, within an hour. Celiacs typically have GI effects from gluten, like immediate vomiting, diarrhea, etc. She doesn't. Instead, she has a massive thyroid rage. We assumed all this time that it was celiac, because it's not that uncommon for celiacs to have these symptoms too. However, gluten doesn't cause the GI problems for her.
One hypothesis we have is that it's not celiac. Instead it's a combination of leaky gut and some other auto-immune disease. She tests positive for the Hashimoto's antibodies. So the idea is that her immune system recognizes some food protein (possibly gluten) and produces antibodies that also attack the thyroid. It's kinda like celiac, but attacks the thyroid instead of the gut lining.
Something else could also be stimulating the antibody production, but it's probably a food protein, and wheat contains it. She reacts badly to the tiniest amounts of cross-contamination.
We've not rules out celiac, however. When she first got off of gluten, she had major nutrient deficiencies. She tested low for a variety of vitamins and minerals and didn't absorb them well. After being off gluten for like a year, there seemed to be a significant improvement in her nutrient absorbtion. Some aspect of her digestive system healed. Did villi grow back? Was her mucosal lining restored? Not sure about any of that.
I don't think so. However, I did 23andme and imported the data into Nutrahacker. It reported a homozygous defect that is correlated with gluten sensitivity. Also, I have urticaria, and years ago, an allergist told me to get off of gluten. Since I've been off, the itching hasn't changed, but my concentration and energy have been gradually but noticably improving (I have chronic fatigue).
I'm not sure that pre-mixed is the most economical move. Water is very heavy by volume and makes the nutrients takes up a lot more space. This is why dried beans, concentrated fruit juice, and powdered supplements are cheaper. (Powdered milk is dirt cheap, but it tastes spoiled, so there are exceptions.) With the powdered formula, they could keep the costs down. With the liquid formula, shipping is going to wreck the economics of it. I could see having some liquid formula in the fridge for when you're occasionally in a hurry in the morning, but I wouldn't make it a staple.
I'd be eating Soylent now were it not for the oats. I have a genetic sensitivity to gluten. Although pure oats are technically gluten free, it's often contaminated, and some very sensitive people react to a similar gluten-like protein in oats. I'm not taking the risk.
Now, MAYBE, we'll have rapid-charging technology and much more energy-dense batteries soon enough. But currently, I (living in New York) would be unable to drive to visit my parents in Florida in an electric car.
I'm not the only one with the problem. Ground-based shipping is what will keep the petrol stations alive, at least along the highways, at least for diesel. Does this mean that in the US, people are going to be forced to buy diesel cars to drive long distances?
I had trouble with my social development as a child. Some of it's clearly genetic. My father isn't completely socially incapable (although he did benefit from 1950's parenting methods and two older sisters who were not socially handicapped in any way), but he shows signs of high-functioning autism. But it isn't just that. My father shows signs of having at least mild narcissistic disorder, and my mother is unmistakably borderline. (Not sure what my father's excuse is, but my mother was the victim of child abuse, and her parents were much worse than mine.) So my parents didn't do a good job of teaching me social skills. Mostly, I just got into trouble for things I just didn't understand. Even after I developed empathy in around the 8th grade, I didn't know how to use it, and there was nobody I could talk to who was insightful enough to help me figure it out.
But then when I was in my 20's, away from my parents, and perhaps having outgrown some of the innate problems, I encountered co-workers who had the patience to explain to me my social mistakes without all the "what the fuck is the matter with you" kind of reaction. Instead, they explained to me clearly and calmly (albeit with concern in their mannerisms) what I did, what it meant, and how people perceived it. I was receptive, and they were willing to help, and this lead to a rapid growth in my social ability through my 20's.
What I've learned to do is PAY ATTENTION. I know that I have a disconnect, so I have developed a conscious habit of opening my eyes and just listening to and watching what's going on and associating people's emotional reactions (which I can read) with the social circumstances that lead to them. I'm also a bit of a goofball, which I have learned to leverage. So I smile, make jokes, and get people to talk about themselves, and people now find me to be rather charming.
It's been a long road getting from there to here.:)
I have very limited experience with the local public schools in upstate New York, but I get the distinct impression that teachers mostly operate under the assumption that all kids are as dumb as the dumbest kids. I have a PhD in computer engineering, and my wife has two graduate degrees herself (law, information science). We were also in gifted classes in high school, and she was the valedictorian of her school. We're told we're smart, and it seems likely that our kids are pretty smart too. But it's hard for me to see where the curricula here accomodate any kind of range of intelligence among the students. When I try to ask about this sort of thing, there's this subtle resistance where you can tell they're thinking that all parents think their kids are the smartest, but really they're all just dumb as rocks, so the idea of anyone getting ahead makes no sense.
I don't see the difference. You can whitelist for optiizations that work for specific apps that don't work as well for others.
Also consider this: By now, AMD engineers are fully aware of the fact that by doing blacklisting or whitelisting, people will interpret it negatively. They don't need the bad press over having done something inappropriate. So if they're doing it ANYWAY, either there's a solid financial reason, or there's a solid engineering reason. I haven't bought an AMD CPU in more than 10 years, and I have AMD GPUs by accident in laptops, so I'm not an AMD fanboi. However, knowing what I know about GPUs, GPU drivers, and what both Nvidia and AMD do, I'm going to go with "engineering reasons" on this one.
Note: I designed a graphics accelerator that sits in every air traffic control display system around the US. I've also been an expert witness for patent lawsuits in both graphics and chip design. I can tell you from all angles, that the engineers care primarly about meeting their deadlines. They do things right and make mistakes on that basis. They also care about correctness over performance.
My understanding has been that we should expect a civilization to use radio broadcasts that radiate out and which we can distinguish from noise for only maybe 100 or so years. Prior to that, they've not invented radio. After some point, all transmissions are compressed and/or encrypted so that they're harder to distingush from noise. And at some point, transmissions may be done via other media, such as point-to-point lasers and even things we haven't discovered yet. The likelihood is that all over civilizations have started at different points and progressed differently, so we've likely missed that window on all other civilizations.
AMD and Nvidia are constantly dealing with bugs and pecularities in specific games and apps. I've seen examples where some unexpected or unusual drawing configuration made an Nvidia GPU totally make a mess on the screen. The solution, to achieve correctness, was to do something relatively slow. This kind of thing can be caused by hardware bugs. And it can be caused by hardware LIMITATIONS. For instance, say the hardware only has 8 bits of fractional precision and 16 bits of integer precision. It is possible for an app to try to draw something that runs into limits of those precisions, making two triangles not abut in the way that they should. This is commonly caused by having a triangle with a vertex WAY off the screen, so the software has to clip it, but clipping it requires subpixel precision that the hardware can't do.
Now, sure, some of these could be cases of "we could fix it properly, but it's just easier to select a slow rendering algorithm to get it right." And yes, if some company paid more, maybe they could get the proper solution sooner. But keep in mind that they're running into release cycle issues here. The driver is DONE, except for this list of 3 apps that don't work right. Do we spend an extra 3 months finding clever solutions? Or do we release right now something that benefits all other applications? The latter is more sensible. Those corner cases can be fixed in the next few releases.
In general, these problems are caused by applications doing something WEIRD. Not necessarily wrong, but definitely something unexpected that no other app does. And all the corner case apps do different weird things. Tracking it all down and making them ALL work both correctly and fast is HARD.
Got two Ivy Bridge dual-socket 12-core Xeon boxes a couple of years ago. I called up Red Barn. They helped me figure out what hardware would give me more bang for my buck (two dual-socket Ivy Bridge blades got me more cores than one Sandy Bridge with four sockets), built it up for me, installed the OS, and delivered it. Smooth as butter. IIRC, the whole deal cost me around $24000, for one compute/server node and one compute node. For $50K, if prices have scaled similarly to Haswell Xeons by now, you'd probably get that and another three compute notes. (Also, you'd probably get more cores -- IIRC, at one point we were expecting like 15-core Haswell Xeons to come out, but I haven't kept track.)
Hey, if they really want to fit more people, why don't they...
- Shrink the already narrow widths of the seats to fit four on each side of the aisle. (Anyone slightly larger than average has to buy two seats.) - Take out the seats and just make everyone stand. - Replace the seats with shelves only about 1 foot apart that everyone has to slide into. - Cram passengers into small boxes.
There are lots of very uncomfortable ways we can cram people into, next to smelly other passengers on the plane.
While I'm at it, I feel like ranting about how rude people are on planes. Small children don't bother me. That's not intentional or neglegent. The alternative is to drug toddlers, which I would never sanction. However, people do weird stuff:
- I've been next to people who smelled like they had done lawn work, not showered, and then got on the plane. - I've been next to people who just could not sit still, so every time I would just doze off, they would wake me up. - Some people insist on bringing strong-smelling food onto the plane and then eating it sloppily. Those smells can turn my stomach.
You know how broccoli, when cooked beyond a certain point emits hydrogen sulfide? One time, this one women brought on some food she'd gotten on the airport that apparently had breaded and deep-fried broccoli. For the first half hour, everyone near us in the back was trying to figure out how to get the bathroom door to close better. Until we realized that it was HER FOOD that smelled like farts. When we figured it out and people started looking at her, she was all indignant about it.
If you're going to join a large number of people in a confined space for four hours, could you please not be a self-centered asshole about it?
If you're in Silicon Valey or New York City, you basically can't survive without a salary over $100K. On the other hand, if you live, for example, in Ohio or anywhere in Michigan other than Troy or Detroit, you can so better on half that.
So what we really care to know is what are the salaries prorated for the local cost of living?
Now, most slashdotters are atheists, and I'm not going to debate about that one way or the other. I honestly have no concern what you believe, because I think there's a kernel of truth in all religions and non-religions (including humanism, satanism (whcih is another form of humanism), etc.). However, even if you are an atheist, you still have a sense of morality, and it is possible to get some inspiration from Christian tradition, as long as you don't get enmired in some kind of legalism. Although I think most Christian tradition is a bunch of hooey, I really like the *core principle* of Christianity, which is a religion of forgiveness. To everyone, we can apply this idea of "forgive those who realize they've wronged other people and wish to change their ways for the better." (There are other things about Christianity that I like, and even Dawkins will admit that Christianity is relatively benign.)
The author of this blog (T. E. Hanna) is a Christian (a Methodist minister, actually), but he's also a post-modernist, meaning that he rejects traditions that are out-dated, don't make sense, go counter to evidence, etc., and his perspective on God isn't some man in the sky with a white beard who hands down nonsensical rules. For instance, he's not a creationist, he's not a homophobe, and he believes in total equality of the sexes (mutual submission of partners rather than submission of the wife to the husband in some stupid way).
I've had personal conversations with this guy. I can't tell you just how annoying it is to try to have a discussion with so many Christians who have a narrow interpretion of their scriptures and want to force those beliefs on others. By contrast, all of my discussions with Thomas Hanna have been enjoyable and enlightening. He's all about philosophy, insight, intellectual discourse, and having an open mind. Any aspect of Christianity you learn from him is going to come from him being insightful and settng a good example.
So, even if you don't care much for Christianity, or many of the issues don't seem relevant to you, his blog is still a really interesting read. Here's what I would call an "expert on Christianity and other important moral concerns," and I have read his blog.
Well, one time, I had a problem with my land line, and I erroneously accused the wrong phone and threw that one out instead of the one that was causing the problem. Then I ended up throwing away two phones.
Since then I've solved the problem more generally by not having a land line anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a Mac and have therefore had compressed swap for some time now. Theoretically, it's much faster than swap, even if you have an SSD. But there's a tradeoff. When swapping, the disk is busy, but the CPU is free to do other work, although things bog down a lot when thrashing happens. When doing compressed swap, the memory management hogs the CPU, which means it's not free to run other programs, and the system slows down. And thrashing still happens. It's just that your laptop heats up more when it's happening, and things don't get any less sluggish.
Of course, the biggest problem is Safari. I'll get Safari Web Content processes taking up 10GB or more. There's obviously some kind of run-away memory leak going on. Always when my system bogs down, it's Safari that's taking up too much RAM. Quit Safari, and the system becomes responsive again.
If you look at Newegg and Amazon reviews, you'll find that perhaps the most reliable drives are 1TB in capacity and somewhat behind the cutting edge. Sure, you can get 6TB drives, but they're ticking timebombs. They have unacceptably high failure rates. As such, we're already on course for flash SSDs to overtake mechanical drives, because a 1TB SSD is approaching the price of an enterprise mechanical drive. The instant an even cheaper alternative comes out, mechanical drives are dead. They won't be cheaper by the megabyte anymore, and you can't trust them. Manufacturers COULD try to make them more reliable, but that would require more testing of individual units before shipping, which would increases costs even further. Indeed, the only reason mechanical drives are as cheap as they are is because MANUFACTURERS DO NOT TEST THEIR DRIVES. They are specifically designed so that they don't NEED to be tested. They have all kinds of failsafe mechanisms, vibration management, power management, temperature management, sector remapping, and they're over-engineered. A drive can be half broken, but you won't know because it's likely to keep working just fine. The ones that are DOA or die right away are really the worst of the lot and far more broken than you realize. The designers put all their efforts in at design time so as to cut manufacturing costs. But the end is very very near.
Sometimes, the 16GB I have in my MacBook Pro isn't enough. However, that's primarily due to Safari being a horrible memory pig. I've had "safari web content" processes baloon up to 14GB.
Heh. You're right. Airline food is evil. And imagine having celiac disease and being able to eat anything they serve on the plane. Hell, you'd have trouble finding gluten-free food at an airport!
I did not by any means imply that the airlines give any thought to nutrition AT ALL. They just want to save money, and they have noticed some diversity in passenger weight. Like any psychopatic entity hell-bent on optimizing profit margins, they're going to latch onto that.
I'm sure I'll get modded down for this. But the iPhone 6+ has enormous battery life. The 6 is kindof anemic, but the 6+ will last 2 or 3 days of normal usage before needing a recharge, including plenty of Angry Birds. As others have said here, the operating system is part of the equation, and iOS does a pretty good job.
The US is pretty bad, but it's not exactly awesome elsewhere. People are just not educated about nutrition. They know nothing about protein, carbohydrates, fats, sugars, vitamins, minerals, food sensitivies/allergies, intestinal flora, pollutants and contaminants, or any of those things. People just eat whatever the hell they want, which is primarily junk food, they get fat, slow down their brains, and get even dumber. The biggest offenders are actually the MDs who have all knowledge of nutrition ripped out of their brains upon entering med school. They're dangerously ignorant and, as representatives to most people of how they should take care of themselves, the MDs pass on their ignorance to the rest of the population. The FDA isn't a lot of help either with so much bullshit in their recommendations. Contrary to what most doctors will tell you, mineral and vitamin deficiencies abound among Americans, because they eat such as shitty diet. Trust me, the trace amounts of iodine you get in your salt just aren't enough, and people have magnesium deficiencies left and right, just to mention two.
Some fat people will tell you that they have a "glandular problem." Maybe some don't, but this is actually fairly common. However, if you eat right, you can compensate for a lot of these problems, and there are ways of treating it. But people don't even TRY. They don't listen to what little nutritional advice they do get, so they just keep getting fatter and sicker. They don't take resposibility for their bodies.
So, you know, I don't think it's a problem that airlines micro-optimize their operations to account for passenger weight. People should take responsibility for their own personal health and learn to eat right. If they don't, the rest of shouldn't have to suffer. The thing is, this airline is from Uzbekistan, a part of the world where discrimination is accepted as part of their culture, so they'll actually have an easier time getting away with this sort of thing. If an airline in the US did this, they'd get all sorts of flak over it, although I still think they should be within their rights to do it.
It's shitty nutrition that I think is part of the increase in autism we observe (assuming it's not *just* an increase in diagnosis). But idiots want to blame vaccines instead, because it's easy to not get a vaccine, but it takes proper discipline to change your diet.
And discipline is just not something that's encouraged in most parts of the world.
So more of our boys can grow boobs. That's just great.
I could be misinterpreting, but I teach a lot of masters students from India and China. The Indians in particular seem to have a massive entitlement complex. In particular, they feel entitled to cheat with impunity. I'll give an assignment with an old problem I borrowed from a previous year, but with the numbers changed. Six of them will turn in exactly the same assignment, with exactly the same formatting, with all of the wrong answers, because they copied the older question's answer without even bothering to look at it. And then they get angry when they get a zero for the assignment. This semester, I'm going to just fail the cheaters out completely. (With ample and repeated warning about the rules, of course.)
It has been suggested that Tesla should get into the battery business, as a product. They've done a lot of work to improve battery energy density. If they were to market these to laptop and cell phone vendors, would they be able to use that cashflow as a means to prop up the rest of the business?
Yes. And the genetic markers we're seeing may actually be related to FODMAP sensitivity instead. Either way, my wife and I have to avoid wheat. Interestingly, she does NOT have the genetic markers for gluten sensitivity, so why her throid goes into a rage when she has the tiniest amount of gluten is something we're still trying to figure out. Hashimoto's antibodies are involved.
That wouldn't surprise me. I don't suppose you'd remember the name of the scientist. I've done some googling on this and will continue reading. We're already familiar with FODMAPs and are eating a low-FODMAP diet to see what happens.
My wife is another interesting case. When she gets gluten, her thyroid goes into a rage, within an hour. Celiacs typically have GI effects from gluten, like immediate vomiting, diarrhea, etc. She doesn't. Instead, she has a massive thyroid rage. We assumed all this time that it was celiac, because it's not that uncommon for celiacs to have these symptoms too. However, gluten doesn't cause the GI problems for her.
One hypothesis we have is that it's not celiac. Instead it's a combination of leaky gut and some other auto-immune disease. She tests positive for the Hashimoto's antibodies. So the idea is that her immune system recognizes some food protein (possibly gluten) and produces antibodies that also attack the thyroid. It's kinda like celiac, but attacks the thyroid instead of the gut lining.
Something else could also be stimulating the antibody production, but it's probably a food protein, and wheat contains it. She reacts badly to the tiniest amounts of cross-contamination.
We've not rules out celiac, however. When she first got off of gluten, she had major nutrient deficiencies. She tested low for a variety of vitamins and minerals and didn't absorb them well. After being off gluten for like a year, there seemed to be a significant improvement in her nutrient absorbtion. Some aspect of her digestive system healed. Did villi grow back? Was her mucosal lining restored? Not sure about any of that.
I don't think so. However, I did 23andme and imported the data into Nutrahacker. It reported a homozygous defect that is correlated with gluten sensitivity. Also, I have urticaria, and years ago, an allergist told me to get off of gluten.
Since I've been off, the itching hasn't changed, but my concentration and energy have been gradually but noticably improving (I have chronic fatigue).
I'm not sure that pre-mixed is the most economical move. Water is very heavy by volume and makes the nutrients takes up a lot more space. This is why dried beans, concentrated fruit juice, and powdered supplements are cheaper. (Powdered milk is dirt cheap, but it tastes spoiled, so there are exceptions.) With the powdered formula, they could keep the costs down. With the liquid formula, shipping is going to wreck the economics of it. I could see having some liquid formula in the fridge for when you're occasionally in a hurry in the morning, but I wouldn't make it a staple.
I'd be eating Soylent now were it not for the oats. I have a genetic sensitivity to gluten. Although pure oats are technically gluten free, it's often contaminated, and some very sensitive people react to a similar gluten-like protein in oats. I'm not taking the risk.
Now, MAYBE, we'll have rapid-charging technology and much more energy-dense batteries soon enough. But currently, I (living in New York) would be unable to drive to visit my parents in Florida in an electric car.
I'm not the only one with the problem. Ground-based shipping is what will keep the petrol stations alive, at least along the highways, at least for diesel. Does this mean that in the US, people are going to be forced to buy diesel cars to drive long distances?
I had trouble with my social development as a child. Some of it's clearly genetic. My father isn't completely socially incapable (although he did benefit from 1950's parenting methods and two older sisters who were not socially handicapped in any way), but he shows signs of high-functioning autism. But it isn't just that. My father shows signs of having at least mild narcissistic disorder, and my mother is unmistakably borderline. (Not sure what my father's excuse is, but my mother was the victim of child abuse, and her parents were much worse than mine.) So my parents didn't do a good job of teaching me social skills. Mostly, I just got into trouble for things I just didn't understand. Even after I developed empathy in around the 8th grade, I didn't know how to use it, and there was nobody I could talk to who was insightful enough to help me figure it out.
But then when I was in my 20's, away from my parents, and perhaps having outgrown some of the innate problems, I encountered co-workers who had the patience to explain to me my social mistakes without all the "what the fuck is the matter with you" kind of reaction. Instead, they explained to me clearly and calmly (albeit with concern in their mannerisms) what I did, what it meant, and how people perceived it. I was receptive, and they were willing to help, and this lead to a rapid growth in my social ability through my 20's.
What I've learned to do is PAY ATTENTION. I know that I have a disconnect, so I have developed a conscious habit of opening my eyes and just listening to and watching what's going on and associating people's emotional reactions (which I can read) with the social circumstances that lead to them. I'm also a bit of a goofball, which I have learned to leverage. So I smile, make jokes, and get people to talk about themselves, and people now find me to be rather charming.
It's been a long road getting from there to here. :)
I have very limited experience with the local public schools in upstate New York, but I get the distinct impression that teachers mostly operate under the assumption that all kids are as dumb as the dumbest kids. I have a PhD in computer engineering, and my wife has two graduate degrees herself (law, information science). We were also in gifted classes in high school, and she was the valedictorian of her school. We're told we're smart, and it seems likely that our kids are pretty smart too. But it's hard for me to see where the curricula here accomodate any kind of range of intelligence among the students. When I try to ask about this sort of thing, there's this subtle resistance where you can tell they're thinking that all parents think their kids are the smartest, but really they're all just dumb as rocks, so the idea of anyone getting ahead makes no sense.
I hope I'm misinterpreting all of this.
I don't see the difference. You can whitelist for optiizations that work for specific apps that don't work as well for others.
Also consider this: By now, AMD engineers are fully aware of the fact that by doing blacklisting or whitelisting, people will interpret it negatively. They don't need the bad press over having done something inappropriate. So if they're doing it ANYWAY, either there's a solid financial reason, or there's a solid engineering reason. I haven't bought an AMD CPU in more than 10 years, and I have AMD GPUs by accident in laptops, so I'm not an AMD fanboi. However, knowing what I know about GPUs, GPU drivers, and what both Nvidia and AMD do, I'm going to go with "engineering reasons" on this one.
Note: I designed a graphics accelerator that sits in every air traffic control display system around the US. I've also been an expert witness for patent lawsuits in both graphics and chip design. I can tell you from all angles, that the engineers care primarly about meeting their deadlines. They do things right and make mistakes on that basis. They also care about correctness over performance.
My understanding has been that we should expect a civilization to use radio broadcasts that radiate out and which we can distinguish from noise for only maybe 100 or so years. Prior to that, they've not invented radio. After some point, all transmissions are compressed and/or encrypted so that they're harder to distingush from noise. And at some point, transmissions may be done via other media, such as point-to-point lasers and even things we haven't discovered yet. The likelihood is that all over civilizations have started at different points and progressed differently, so we've likely missed that window on all other civilizations.
AMD and Nvidia are constantly dealing with bugs and pecularities in specific games and apps. I've seen examples where some unexpected or unusual drawing configuration made an Nvidia GPU totally make a mess on the screen. The solution, to achieve correctness, was to do something relatively slow. This kind of thing can be caused by hardware bugs. And it can be caused by hardware LIMITATIONS. For instance, say the hardware only has 8 bits of fractional precision and 16 bits of integer precision. It is possible for an app to try to draw something that runs into limits of those precisions, making two triangles not abut in the way that they should. This is commonly caused by having a triangle with a vertex WAY off the screen, so the software has to clip it, but clipping it requires subpixel precision that the hardware can't do.
Now, sure, some of these could be cases of "we could fix it properly, but it's just easier to select a slow rendering algorithm to get it right." And yes, if some company paid more, maybe they could get the proper solution sooner. But keep in mind that they're running into release cycle issues here. The driver is DONE, except for this list of 3 apps that don't work right. Do we spend an extra 3 months finding clever solutions? Or do we release right now something that benefits all other applications? The latter is more sensible. Those corner cases can be fixed in the next few releases.
In general, these problems are caused by applications doing something WEIRD. Not necessarily wrong, but definitely something unexpected that no other app does. And all the corner case apps do different weird things. Tracking it all down and making them ALL work both correctly and fast is HARD.
Got two Ivy Bridge dual-socket 12-core Xeon boxes a couple of years ago. I called up Red Barn. They helped me figure out what hardware would give me more bang for my buck (two dual-socket Ivy Bridge blades got me more cores than one Sandy Bridge with four sockets), built it up for me, installed the OS, and delivered it. Smooth as butter. IIRC, the whole deal cost me around $24000, for one compute/server node and one compute node. For $50K, if prices have scaled similarly to Haswell Xeons by now, you'd probably get that and another three compute notes. (Also, you'd probably get more cores -- IIRC, at one point we were expecting like 15-core Haswell Xeons to come out, but I haven't kept track.)
Hey, if they really want to fit more people, why don't they...
- Shrink the already narrow widths of the seats to fit four on each side of the aisle. (Anyone slightly larger than average has to buy two seats.)
- Take out the seats and just make everyone stand.
- Replace the seats with shelves only about 1 foot apart that everyone has to slide into.
- Cram passengers into small boxes.
There are lots of very uncomfortable ways we can cram people into, next to smelly other passengers on the plane.
While I'm at it, I feel like ranting about how rude people are on planes. Small children don't bother me. That's not intentional or neglegent. The alternative is to drug toddlers, which I would never sanction. However, people do weird stuff:
- I've been next to people who smelled like they had done lawn work, not showered, and then got on the plane.
- I've been next to people who just could not sit still, so every time I would just doze off, they would wake me up.
- Some people insist on bringing strong-smelling food onto the plane and then eating it sloppily. Those smells can turn my stomach.
You know how broccoli, when cooked beyond a certain point emits hydrogen sulfide? One time, this one women brought on some food she'd gotten on the airport that apparently had breaded and deep-fried broccoli. For the first half hour, everyone near us in the back was trying to figure out how to get the bathroom door to close better. Until we realized that it was HER FOOD that smelled like farts. When we figured it out and people started looking at her, she was all indignant about it.
If you're going to join a large number of people in a confined space for four hours, could you please not be a self-centered asshole about it?
Not every state is Iowa. There are lots of reasonably big cities throughout the midwest.
Columbus, OH
Cincinnati, OH
Cleveland, OH
Detroit, MI
Indianapolis, IN
Minneapolis, MN
These are just some that pop into my head. But then, you're an AC, so you don't really care about a real answer.
If you're in Silicon Valey or New York City, you basically can't survive without a salary over $100K. On the other hand, if you live, for example, in Ohio or anywhere in Michigan other than Troy or Detroit, you can so better on half that.
So what we really care to know is what are the salaries prorated for the local cost of living?
"Of Dust and Kings": http://tehanna.com
Now, most slashdotters are atheists, and I'm not going to debate about that one way or the other. I honestly have no concern what you believe, because I think there's a kernel of truth in all religions and non-religions (including humanism, satanism (whcih is another form of humanism), etc.). However, even if you are an atheist, you still have a sense of morality, and it is possible to get some inspiration from Christian tradition, as long as you don't get enmired in some kind of legalism. Although I think most Christian tradition is a bunch of hooey, I really like the *core principle* of Christianity, which is a religion of forgiveness. To everyone, we can apply this idea of "forgive those who realize they've wronged other people and wish to change their ways for the better." (There are other things about Christianity that I like, and even Dawkins will admit that Christianity is relatively benign.)
The author of this blog (T. E. Hanna) is a Christian (a Methodist minister, actually), but he's also a post-modernist, meaning that he rejects traditions that are out-dated, don't make sense, go counter to evidence, etc., and his perspective on God isn't some man in the sky with a white beard who hands down nonsensical rules. For instance, he's not a creationist, he's not a homophobe, and he believes in total equality of the sexes (mutual submission of partners rather than submission of the wife to the husband in some stupid way).
I've had personal conversations with this guy. I can't tell you just how annoying it is to try to have a discussion with so many Christians who have a narrow interpretion of their scriptures and want to force those beliefs on others. By contrast, all of my discussions with Thomas Hanna have been enjoyable and enlightening. He's all about philosophy, insight, intellectual discourse, and having an open mind. Any aspect of Christianity you learn from him is going to come from him being insightful and settng a good example.
So, even if you don't care much for Christianity, or many of the issues don't seem relevant to you, his blog is still a really interesting read. Here's what I would call an "expert on Christianity and other important moral concerns," and I have read his blog.
Well, one time, I had a problem with my land line, and I erroneously accused the wrong phone and threw that one out instead of the one that was causing the problem. Then I ended up throwing away two phones.
Since then I've solved the problem more generally by not having a land line anymore.