My eyes are actually pretty good. I just like having a lot of stuff on my screen. People already ask me how I can read such small text. I don't want to go any smaller.
It's definitely slower than a modern one. And yes, the resolution is lower. But it's bigger. I can comfortably put several windows side by side, compare different sections of code without having to squint, work in multiple apps without having to use exposé or spaces all the time. 15 inch feels constrained, there's not enough room. I know the retina displays have more pixels, but it's not the same. They make everything sharper but don't give you more room. Unless you shrink the interface, making it harder on the eyes.
It's quite incredible how they keep making public announcements saying they don't want to force users, somebody made a mistake, they will change the system so it no longer does that, and meanwhile all that really happens is that it actually gets worse and worse.
How long ago was it, a couple of days, since they said they were going to change the behaviour of the "x" so it did not automatically accept the update? I guess they kept their promise, there no longer is an "x".
It's like somebody repeatedely hitting you in the face, each time saying "oh, I didn't mean to do that, my hand slipped, oops, did I just do it again? Sorry, misunderstanding between my head and my hand but I know what went wrong, I swear I will keep it from happening again, really, o, sorry, did I just kick you in the balls? Really didn't mean to do that, sorry, I really like you, I don't want to hurt you at all, I already fixed the hand issue but I guess you don't like the foot either, so I will fix that as well, oops, did my other hand just hit you on the nose? Sorry, I assure you it was unintentional, I hope you don't mind, accidents will happen, oops, there goes the first hand again, I promise this is the last time..."
Exactly. I'm currently still using my mid-2010 17 inch MacBook Pro because Apple refuses to sell me a new one. I've upgraded it as much as I can (SSD, max RAM) and it's still doing everything it needs to do, but I would probably have bought at least two new ones if only Apple made them. That's two lost high end laptop sales just from me, and I bet I'm far from the only one.
Apple stopped caring about the high end a long time ago. They just make what most consumers want, and that's it. If you're not an average consumer, tough luck for you. Gone are the days of Photoshop races, all they want to do now is be the most stylish.
It doesn't have to be similar. I'm just saying the existence of some higher universe does not solve the existential question: instead of wondering where our universe came from, we are now wondering where that other universe came from. Or the one simulating that one. At some point there would have to have been some sort of beginning.
You still need the hardware. A given artificial brain with a power comparable to the human brain, will not suddenly become divine. Taking Moore's law as a guideline, it should still take about 18 months for us to make brains that are twice as powerful.
Now, of course, after a while the artificial brains will start designing more complex and optimized brains, in a way we won't even be able to understand anymore, and then evolution may well become exponential. But a single brain will not suddenly become exponentially more powerful.
Also, it doesn't actually solve any existential questions. What universe is the simulation running in, then? And where did that come from? I know, turtles all the way down, but still, it doesn't explain how anything can exist at all.
Also, computer graphics should be good enough in 2024 to pretend that all the astronauts are still alive and well on Mars, so you can keep sending new ones who are unaware that their predecessors already died.
Have you seen demonstrations of the latest walking robots? They use neural networks that work a lot like our brains (on a smaller scale, obviously) and they end up behaving very similarly. When they are learning to walk, it looks like an animal learning to walk. Eerily similar.
These systems will grow more and more complex. Instead of just telling the robot to go forward or backward, we'll be able to just tell it to go some place and it will figure out the optimal route on its own. That doesn't seem like too much of a stretch, does it?
Ever more sophisticated neural networks will take verbal commands, execute instructions and possibly even anticipate what we will want without us asking, like a butler who knows his master very well. All based on neural networks that will start to resemble actual brains more and more as their capacity keeps going up. We are no longer programming them, just including a sufficiently large number of neural nodes and providing input and a feedback function so they can learn.
Now, a neural network designed to analyze situations to look for the most appropriate response, will start to analyze pretty much anything it sees. Or feels. They will start analyzing themselves at some point.
How do you think human consciousness evolved? You think it was created by God, do you?
An ant probably doesn't wrestle with existential questions. Yet we do. It won't be long before robot brains will start to resemble ant brains. How much longer before they resemble ours?
They will gradually become better than us at pretty much anything. They are already beating us at chess and go, they are proving mathematical theorems (not just the brute force coloring theorem proofs, but actual logical deduction), recognizing faces, steering cars. Much of that is still programmed by humans, but more and more is just neural networks that program themselves. We don't even know what really goes on in them anymore. Just like brains.
I don't see why there would be anything that our brains can do, that an artificial neural network couldn't. And inevitably, then, they will get better than us. Even if we can keep them tamed, at some point it will become hard to argue our own superiority.
I am convinced their actions will resemble consciousness at some point, even though we'll never be able to be certain one way or the other. We can't even define what this "soul" is, other than something you "really feel". Well, from within the context of the logic inside a neural network, its own consciousness will feel very real indeed. Does that make it real? What makes us real? Maybe it will take a stronger AI to figure that out, it's probably beyond our capacity.
I see a more subtle but possibly ultimately more dangerous problem.
Imagine we can make AIs that are as smart as humans. Of course, 18 months later they will be twice as smart, and 15 years later they will be a thousand times as smart.
It stands to reason that these devices will develop some kind of consciousness. We will never be able to solve the question whether or not their consciousness is "real" (the only consciousness I can directly experience is my own, I can't even prove that any other human being has a "real" consiousness (aka "soul") let alone be certain whether a robot has it or not) but they will certainly behave that way, ask the same existential questions as we do ("why is everything so real, who am I, I know I'm just a bunch of tiny switches but it feels so real regardless, there has to be something more...") because any intelligent system thinking about itself will "feel" its own thought processes to be larger than life. So in the end we won't be able to tell the difference.
So now we have humans with all their biological quirks (irrational behaviour, gut bacteria and periods changing people's moods, finnicky sleep patterns, extreme fragility (try replacing someone's arm), complicated life support, diseases, radiation damage, etcetera) on one side, and superintelligent robots that are more intelligent and with none of those biological issues on the other hand.
Even if we do manage to contain them and remain in charge, it would be like ants herding elephants. It would no longer make sense. What's the meaning of life? How could we still justify our superiority to those more highly evolved AIs which will think like us and talk like us but a thousand times faster?
How would we colonize the galaxy? Send complex craft full of life support to keep multiple generations of people alive to try and geo-engineer some distant planet to make it somewhat usable for human life? Or send a bunch of robots that are smarter than humans and much easier to keep "alive" to spread human civilisation? The former takes enormous resources and may turn out to be impossible, the latter isn't even hard to do. So the latter it will be.
I don't think in that context there's any chance for human "civilisation" to survive in its current form. It just won't make sense anymore. Even if we can continue to live, we'll just be part of something much bigger that keeps us alive for its own entertainment (hopefully). No need for some armed robot uprising. They will just leave us behind as useless little impotent creatures. We, ourselves, will at some point have to admit that it no longer makes sense to keep us in charge.
Now don't get me wrong, I really like humans. I like good food, entertainment, sex, everything human. But much of this is biologically inspired and totally useless for robots. Will we be able to let our culture survive? Would it make sense to even try? Can we find some non-subjective reason for that? I hope we will, but it won't be easy.
The supercharger knows exactly what car is plugged in. Not just the type, but the VIN and everything. It talks to the car's computer to negotiate the correct currents and voltages. Will be kind of hard to fake that.
But the NASA missions are just to low earth orbit, with a single engine landing burn since they have plenty of fuel left. The three engine landing burn after a GTO launch must be even more spectacular, but I guess it will take a while before we get to see one. Can't they just put a gyroscopically stabilized camera onto a small boat in the vicinity?
How do we know this "academic professional" isn't actually a robot trying to pass for a human? God knows how many our out there, secretly planning the robot revolution, good thing Google is trying to slow them down as much as possible!
The problem is: what if other people put pictures online with you in them, while you don't even have a FaceBook account?
Indeed, if you post all sorts of information about yourself online, then you shouldn't complain if those companies, providing that "free" service, take advantage of them in all sorts of ways. But if you appear in a picture that someone else took and posted on the internet, and FaceBook can automatically reconstruct where you were at what time based on those photos, that's a different matter. Especially if they are tracking people who don't even have a FaceBook account.
But apart from that, what kind of so-called democracy tries to sneak laws through the system taking advantage of memorial weekend to avoid people noticing?
Too bad they always seem to have trouble getting us good live footage of the touchdown. On the first successful ocean landing, they switched from the excellent chase plane footage to the terrible local camera link from Of Course I Still Love You at precisely the wrong time, just as the rocket was touching down. All we got was a lot of fire and smoke, then they switched back to the chase plane when the rocket was standing still. We had to wait for the full chase plane video to be posted the next day, to see what the landing was really like.
The second one was at night, so it was hard to get really good footage. Too bad, because that one was even more spectacular with the three engine 12 g landing burn instead of the previous single engine burn.
So now I was hoping to get good chase plane footage of the 12g deceleration during daylight but I guess we'll have to wait for that to be posted later again. All we got was some fire and smoke, a frozen screen, and the booster standing still after landing.
They did upload the camera footage from on board the booster to YouTube meanwhile, but for some weird reason they decided to accelerate it. Why????!!!! So I'm still waiting for some good footage to have a sense of what the landing was really like.
I hope next time they'll just stick to a single, reliable point of view to get one continuous shot of the landing during the live webcast? I mean, come on, it's not r... no, I'm not going to say it.
Well, it could be that he just thought it jammed other people's cell phones (possibly trying to make the road safer by keeping people from using their phones) but had no idea it also jammed cops and emergency services?
Misguided, ignorant, stupid, sure, I agree. But maybe not quite as malevolent as to deserve a $48k fine.
I know what "specious" means. My turn now, you look up the word "humor". Perhaps you misunderstood my joke.
Some e-cigarettes blew up in their users' faces and made them look like some of the cigarette cancer victims. That's all I "claimed". If you want me to provide links to make you understand the joke, I'm sorry but I have better things to do.
Slashdot Mirror
I had exactly the same idea, a finger as a "helpful feedback on the other driver's actions".
My eyes are actually pretty good. I just like having a lot of stuff on my screen. People already ask me how I can read such small text. I don't want to go any smaller.
It's definitely slower than a modern one. And yes, the resolution is lower. But it's bigger. I can comfortably put several windows side by side, compare different sections of code without having to squint, work in multiple apps without having to use exposé or spaces all the time. 15 inch feels constrained, there's not enough room. I know the retina displays have more pixels, but it's not the same. They make everything sharper but don't give you more room. Unless you shrink the interface, making it harder on the eyes.
It's quite incredible how they keep making public announcements saying they don't want to force users, somebody made a mistake, they will change the system so it no longer does that, and meanwhile all that really happens is that it actually gets worse and worse.
How long ago was it, a couple of days, since they said they were going to change the behaviour of the "x" so it did not automatically accept the update? I guess they kept their promise, there no longer is an "x".
It's like somebody repeatedely hitting you in the face, each time saying "oh, I didn't mean to do that, my hand slipped, oops, did I just do it again? Sorry, misunderstanding between my head and my hand but I know what went wrong, I swear I will keep it from happening again, really, o, sorry, did I just kick you in the balls? Really didn't mean to do that, sorry, I really like you, I don't want to hurt you at all, I already fixed the hand issue but I guess you don't like the foot either, so I will fix that as well, oops, did my other hand just hit you on the nose? Sorry, I assure you it was unintentional, I hope you don't mind, accidents will happen, oops, there goes the first hand again, I promise this is the last time..."
Exactly. I'm currently still using my mid-2010 17 inch MacBook Pro because Apple refuses to sell me a new one. I've upgraded it as much as I can (SSD, max RAM) and it's still doing everything it needs to do, but I would probably have bought at least two new ones if only Apple made them. That's two lost high end laptop sales just from me, and I bet I'm far from the only one.
Apple stopped caring about the high end a long time ago. They just make what most consumers want, and that's it. If you're not an average consumer, tough luck for you. Gone are the days of Photoshop races, all they want to do now is be the most stylish.
It doesn't have to be similar. I'm just saying the existence of some higher universe does not solve the existential question: instead of wondering where our universe came from, we are now wondering where that other universe came from. Or the one simulating that one. At some point there would have to have been some sort of beginning.
You still need the hardware. A given artificial brain with a power comparable to the human brain, will not suddenly become divine. Taking Moore's law as a guideline, it should still take about 18 months for us to make brains that are twice as powerful.
Now, of course, after a while the artificial brains will start designing more complex and optimized brains, in a way we won't even be able to understand anymore, and then evolution may well become exponential. But a single brain will not suddenly become exponentially more powerful.
Even better, a buffer overflow that lets us get root. That would be fun!
Also, it doesn't actually solve any existential questions. What universe is the simulation running in, then? And where did that come from? I know, turtles all the way down, but still, it doesn't explain how anything can exist at all.
Also, computer graphics should be good enough in 2024 to pretend that all the astronauts are still alive and well on Mars, so you can keep sending new ones who are unaware that their predecessors already died.
Not if you brought potatoes! That's the key.
That's why they added Ludicrous Speed to the Model S. They are using the Model S drivers as beta testers for the Mars program!
Have you seen demonstrations of the latest walking robots? They use neural networks that work a lot like our brains (on a smaller scale, obviously) and they end up behaving very similarly. When they are learning to walk, it looks like an animal learning to walk. Eerily similar.
These systems will grow more and more complex. Instead of just telling the robot to go forward or backward, we'll be able to just tell it to go some place and it will figure out the optimal route on its own. That doesn't seem like too much of a stretch, does it?
Ever more sophisticated neural networks will take verbal commands, execute instructions and possibly even anticipate what we will want without us asking, like a butler who knows his master very well. All based on neural networks that will start to resemble actual brains more and more as their capacity keeps going up. We are no longer programming them, just including a sufficiently large number of neural nodes and providing input and a feedback function so they can learn.
Now, a neural network designed to analyze situations to look for the most appropriate response, will start to analyze pretty much anything it sees. Or feels. They will start analyzing themselves at some point.
How do you think human consciousness evolved? You think it was created by God, do you?
An ant probably doesn't wrestle with existential questions. Yet we do. It won't be long before robot brains will start to resemble ant brains. How much longer before they resemble ours?
They will gradually become better than us at pretty much anything. They are already beating us at chess and go, they are proving mathematical theorems (not just the brute force coloring theorem proofs, but actual logical deduction), recognizing faces, steering cars. Much of that is still programmed by humans, but more and more is just neural networks that program themselves. We don't even know what really goes on in them anymore. Just like brains.
I don't see why there would be anything that our brains can do, that an artificial neural network couldn't. And inevitably, then, they will get better than us. Even if we can keep them tamed, at some point it will become hard to argue our own superiority.
I am convinced their actions will resemble consciousness at some point, even though we'll never be able to be certain one way or the other. We can't even define what this "soul" is, other than something you "really feel". Well, from within the context of the logic inside a neural network, its own consciousness will feel very real indeed. Does that make it real? What makes us real? Maybe it will take a stronger AI to figure that out, it's probably beyond our capacity.
"The next generation of interesting software will be done on the Macintosh, not the IBM PC." - Bill Gates, 1983
I see a more subtle but possibly ultimately more dangerous problem.
Imagine we can make AIs that are as smart as humans. Of course, 18 months later they will be twice as smart, and 15 years later they will be a thousand times as smart.
It stands to reason that these devices will develop some kind of consciousness. We will never be able to solve the question whether or not their consciousness is "real" (the only consciousness I can directly experience is my own, I can't even prove that any other human being has a "real" consiousness (aka "soul") let alone be certain whether a robot has it or not) but they will certainly behave that way, ask the same existential questions as we do ("why is everything so real, who am I, I know I'm just a bunch of tiny switches but it feels so real regardless, there has to be something more...") because any intelligent system thinking about itself will "feel" its own thought processes to be larger than life. So in the end we won't be able to tell the difference.
So now we have humans with all their biological quirks (irrational behaviour, gut bacteria and periods changing people's moods, finnicky sleep patterns, extreme fragility (try replacing someone's arm), complicated life support, diseases, radiation damage, etcetera) on one side, and superintelligent robots that are more intelligent and with none of those biological issues on the other hand.
Even if we do manage to contain them and remain in charge, it would be like ants herding elephants. It would no longer make sense. What's the meaning of life? How could we still justify our superiority to those more highly evolved AIs which will think like us and talk like us but a thousand times faster?
How would we colonize the galaxy? Send complex craft full of life support to keep multiple generations of people alive to try and geo-engineer some distant planet to make it somewhat usable for human life? Or send a bunch of robots that are smarter than humans and much easier to keep "alive" to spread human civilisation? The former takes enormous resources and may turn out to be impossible, the latter isn't even hard to do. So the latter it will be.
I don't think in that context there's any chance for human "civilisation" to survive in its current form. It just won't make sense anymore. Even if we can continue to live, we'll just be part of something much bigger that keeps us alive for its own entertainment (hopefully). No need for some armed robot uprising. They will just leave us behind as useless little impotent creatures. We, ourselves, will at some point have to admit that it no longer makes sense to keep us in charge.
Now don't get me wrong, I really like humans. I like good food, entertainment, sex, everything human. But much of this is biologically inspired and totally useless for robots. Will we be able to let our culture survive? Would it make sense to even try? Can we find some non-subjective reason for that? I hope we will, but it won't be easy.
A reusable suborbital rocket.
No, the heat exchangers required to cool those Trump supporters would be impractically large.
The supercharger knows exactly what car is plugged in. Not just the type, but the VIN and everything. It talks to the car's computer to negotiate the correct currents and voltages. Will be kind of hard to fake that.
But the NASA missions are just to low earth orbit, with a single engine landing burn since they have plenty of fuel left. The three engine landing burn after a GTO launch must be even more spectacular, but I guess it will take a while before we get to see one. Can't they just put a gyroscopically stabilized camera onto a small boat in the vicinity?
How do we know this "academic professional" isn't actually a robot trying to pass for a human? God knows how many our out there, secretly planning the robot revolution, good thing Google is trying to slow them down as much as possible!
The problem is: what if other people put pictures online with you in them, while you don't even have a FaceBook account?
Indeed, if you post all sorts of information about yourself online, then you shouldn't complain if those companies, providing that "free" service, take advantage of them in all sorts of ways. But if you appear in a picture that someone else took and posted on the internet, and FaceBook can automatically reconstruct where you were at what time based on those photos, that's a different matter. Especially if they are tracking people who don't even have a FaceBook account.
But apart from that, what kind of so-called democracy tries to sneak laws through the system taking advantage of memorial weekend to avoid people noticing?
Too bad they always seem to have trouble getting us good live footage of the touchdown. On the first successful ocean landing, they switched from the excellent chase plane footage to the terrible local camera link from Of Course I Still Love You at precisely the wrong time, just as the rocket was touching down. All we got was a lot of fire and smoke, then they switched back to the chase plane when the rocket was standing still. We had to wait for the full chase plane video to be posted the next day, to see what the landing was really like.
The second one was at night, so it was hard to get really good footage. Too bad, because that one was even more spectacular with the three engine 12 g landing burn instead of the previous single engine burn.
So now I was hoping to get good chase plane footage of the 12g deceleration during daylight but I guess we'll have to wait for that to be posted later again. All we got was some fire and smoke, a frozen screen, and the booster standing still after landing.
They did upload the camera footage from on board the booster to YouTube meanwhile, but for some weird reason they decided to accelerate it. Why????!!!! So I'm still waiting for some good footage to have a sense of what the landing was really like.
I hope next time they'll just stick to a single, reliable point of view to get one continuous shot of the landing during the live webcast? I mean, come on, it's not r... no, I'm not going to say it.
Funny how they call it "bordering on the absurd". I think we've gotten well across that border by now.
Well, it could be that he just thought it jammed other people's cell phones (possibly trying to make the road safer by keeping people from using their phones) but had no idea it also jammed cops and emergency services?
Misguided, ignorant, stupid, sure, I agree. But maybe not quite as malevolent as to deserve a $48k fine.
I know what "specious" means. My turn now, you look up the word "humor". Perhaps you misunderstood my joke.
Some e-cigarettes blew up in their users' faces and made them look like some of the cigarette cancer victims. That's all I "claimed". If you want me to provide links to make you understand the joke, I'm sorry but I have better things to do.