Sudoku is not Math. It's something that happens to have numbers in it (but they could be any other kind of symbols, and it would work in exactly the same way).
Debateable. The fact that it uses numbers, rather than arbitrary symbols or letters, certainly doesn't make it some kind of arithmetic workout; but Sudoku puzzles are special cases of Latin squares, and there is(as with most puzzles that anybody cares about) active mathematical futzing with algorithms for generating puzzles, algorithms for solving them, and proofs of various things about solution sets for various variants(NxN grids, more than two dimensions, etc.)
What I don't know is the degree to which the sudoku-solving population at large is consciously involved with this, unconsciously has latched on to some reasonably optimal algorithms but wouldn't recognize them if it saw them formalized, or is basically just plugging numbers into the Sunday paper...
The abstract says "The results show that novel word combinations, in the form of expressions that contain semantic violations, become conscious before expressions that do not contain semantic violations".
Does anybody have access through the paywall, or suitable knowledge of what researchers in this field mean by 'semantic' to say what sorts of malformations they are talking about?
Do their results suggest that we can unconsciously recognize grammatically well-formed sentences that fail at actually meaning something; or do we flag grammatical trouble(This sentence no verb.) regardless of specific word meanings; or do we flag extreme novelty(as in the 'I ironed coffee' example, which is grammatically fine and something that you could actually do; but not a sentence that would come up very often)?
It (in my probably naive understanding) seems like significantly different unconscious capabilities would have to be at work depending on what sorts of 'semantic violations' we are capable of flagging, ranging from some unconscious grasp of grammar up to a fairly sophisticated access to the meanings of the words we know.
I just adore the way that the school's PR weasel manages to word it as though those cruel journalists are tearing innocent readers 'away from that experience', rather than admit the obvious "apparently following the game on twitter is more engaging than watching or listening to it, at least as broadcast by our paying partners"...
Just a simple flaw? That's what they want you to believe. Hard-coded passwords are NOT a flaw, they are an intention back door for... company engineers... company spies... the government... Just sayin'!
It isn't an either/or.
Hard-coded credentials are a backdoor, whether covert or just buried in fine print; but they are a flawed backdoor because they are far too trivial for malicious 3rd parties to exploit on top of the intended malicious users.
Something like, say, an SSH client with a hardcoded public key, to which The Man holds the matching private key, is a non-flawed intentional backdoor; because it keeps unintended 3rd party malice to a minimum, while still letting the backdoor users in.
Neither is desirable, from the user point of view; but they are very different things.
I didn't intend to assert that startups are useless; just that if a VC can't make money by funding startups without a ready supply of 'exits', this suggests that the VC is doing a poor job of picking and cultivating startups that are either worth buying or capable of becoming profitable in their own right.
In theory, part of the value-add that a VC, rather than an ordinary loan, provides is some combination of expert judgement(so a good VC should theoretically be backing a better-than-average set of startups) and management/strategy/etc. guidance(so a startup with a good VC should theoretically be better off than an equivalent startup with a generic loan). If a VC can only perform well when the market is loaded with 'exits', and even lousy startups are managing to IPO or get sold, that suggests that they aren't actually any good at picking or building good startups.
(The other thing that makes me doubt the 'regulatory uncertainty' theory is this consideration: If I am a company sitting on a big pile of cash, and there is the possibility that inflation or heavier taxation might strike, wouldn't I be rushing to turn my dollars(which are likely to be devalued or easy prey for the tax man) into products and patents and similar things that are less likely to suffer inflation and are much easier to value creatively when the IRS comes calling?)
Assuming you do it correctly, you should be able to twiddle the brain's reward systems so as to produce sensations more pleasurable and fulfilling than any lesser stimulus.
That sounds like one of the myriad benefits, to me...
It would probably be fairer to say that they are moving somewhere else, rather than drying up entirely.
From TFA ""Limited partners are getting fatigued from giving money to venture capital and getting back less than they give," said Tracy Lefteroff, global managing partner of the venture capital practice at PWC."
and
"Joe Dear, CalPERS' chief investment officer, told Reuters: "Venture has been the most disappointing asset class over the past 10 years as far as returns. ""
Suckers do sometimes catch on, eventually. This is unlikely to cure them in an absolute sense; but it makes it more likely that they will move to being suckers about some other flavor of asset.
The other thing that really gives me the 'yeah, it's a bubble that's starting to pop, go cry." feeling is the assertion that "So what's wrong with the VC industry? The problems are many and complex. But they can be boiled down to this: Not enough exits.".
You have an industry that is basically the tech-jockey equivalent of flipping houses with borrowed money. During the expansion phase of a bubble, that can work out rather well. At other times, you find yourself facing the tougher challenge of "actually producing houses people want to live in" and "living on the margins of a renovation contractor; because that's actually the only value you are adding".
The VC guys apparently aren't willing(or perhaps aren't capable) to build companies that actually make money, and earn their returns that way, and they apparently aren't capable of building companies attractive enough that firms with cash on hand would rather buy them out than just do it in house or do without. They've run out of suckers and apparently aren't good enough to cater to customers...
Much of the VC activity(and startup acquisition by larger outfits) in the valley has been based on absurd speculative bullshit only slightly less risible than pets.com. Now, with the supply of bigger suckers on which to unload your worthless stock in some 'disruptive' Web2.0/mobile/social/bullshit apparently drying up a bit, non-idiots are staying away.
My impression is that there are two basic schools of problem:
1. The SCADA-related stuff is, in fact, properly air-gapped. Then the contractor who has to update the firmware on widget Z shows up and plugs in or a stupid and/or malicious insider manages to find a working USB port.
2. You install a fancy Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system. Your Boss says "WTF, why can't I supervise and manage from the comfort of my iPad like in the vendor demo?" You proceed to punch one or more holes in your precious security.
Honestly, it's difficult to see this as anything but too little, too late (for non-high school students, at least) when the Wolfram Alpha app on smartphones is so much more powerful.
Too powerful. TI, cynically but effectively, has targeted the overwhelming majority of their calculators at the educational market, roughly in the middle school to undergrad range, depending on local and instructor policies. To this end, they gimp the devices hard enough that teachers and standardized test admins mostly don't freak out about them.
Yeah, for everything except keyfeel(which could be solved by a $20 USB or BT HID keypad with a calculator layout), the ship has sailed long ago in terms of power, performance, features, even price; but it'll be a cold day in hell before "So, I'm just going to bring this internet connected device in to the test and connect to one or more gigantic outside databases(and possibly a confederate who is helping me with the questions), that's ok by you, right?" goes over well. That is TI's target market, over which they enjoy a substantial grip.
grrlscientist writes with news of a cockatoo named Figaro, who was observed to construct and use his own tools
That's just epic. When the economy doesn't support the First World manufacturing industry, you can rely on parrots take over. I think I'll sleep much better now.:-)
Just you wait: Next week, I hear that a team will be publishing their work on a vulture who established a shell company, oversaw a hostile buyout of Figaro's Tools, and then outsourced production to China while exploiting the artisinal brand appeal of Figaro's lovingly handcrafted tradition... That's the bird you want to watch out for...
I remember reading an article about how dragonflies were using stones to tap down their nests making it harder for predators to find. The result was a reclassification on what constituted a tool removing the dragonflies from being classified as tool users.
Many animals use tools. So, I don't really see how this is news worthy other than that the bird learned to build them on its own without help from other birds.
I think that that is the noteworthy bit:
In a sufficiently broad sense, every lifeform on earth has been a 'tool user' since the first proto-membrane structure in some billion-year-old primordial ooze first managed to modify the concentration gradients of some useful molecule(tools don't have to be big, do they?) across its membrane. What we are looking for, when classifying 'tool use' is cognitive development of novel uses for environmental objects, because that demonstrates something about mental capacity, rather than execution of uses for environmental objects(however sophisticated and interesting as a different object of study).
Something like a leafcutter ant, say, has an evolved relationship with fungi rather more sophisticated than most human brewers; but we don't see experimentation, learning, cultural transmission, novel improvisation, etc. This bird, on the other hand, apparently came up with some(crude) tools that birds of its kind don't normally use, purely on its own, to deal with local problems.
The extended relationship between organisms and their environment(extending, in many cases, far enough that you really have to consider the organism as being an element of a larger structure) is indeed fascinating; but it doesn't really do conceptual clarity much good to combine complex environmental manipulations that don't show evidence of being cognitively acquired from those that do...
I suspect that, for the 'national security' types, the bigger issue is not so much the changing value of real estate, or even the cost of mopping up a few more hurricanes per decade; but the sort of really wacky social dysfunction that can be reasonably expected in the large areas of the world where people enjoy limited mobility, paltry incomes, and a somewhat tenuous record of liking us.
Even modest price shocks in the cost of essential food items cause the bottom billion or two to get(quite understandably) jumpy. Shifts in climate and precipitation are, of course, ideal causes for serious disruptions in agriculture, and likely a certain amount of mayhem, migration of desperate people to slightly less screwed places that really don't want them coming in(if you think nativist sentiment in Greece is on the rise now...), and so forth.
As an incumbent major power, that's the sort of thing that is unlikely to be fatal; but entirely likely to make dealings with large areas of the planet just that much messier, bloodier, and more expensive...
With the ever present wireless tech availible, and a relatively small country like NK next to super-teched SK, it's only a matter of time before enough information spills over to either forcibly induce change or through cooperation with the leadership.
That might work for broadcast media; but it'd be a nervy(or foolish) North Korean who operates an unauthorized radio transmitter that would allow for any sort of bidirectional networking... Some radio receivers are noisy enough to detect(see the BBC's old-school TV detector vans); but any transmitter running at useful power, unless using some sort of extremely tight directional antenna, is just asking for a knock on the door...
A GB is total excess; but one of their excuses for going 'cloud' was the zOMG! Future awesome features are just too big for onboard storage!!!, so it seemed worth adding enough to make that fully irrelevant...
I would be interested to see an informed EULA-violating teardown of the new driver arrangement; but I'm inclined to operate on the provisional assumption that an untrusted program with enough local access to modify nonstandard settings(ie. Not just twiddling the numlock LED) of USB HID devices and internet access is a keylogger until proven innocent.
". USER GENERATED INFORMATION
“User Generated Information” means any information made available to Razer through your use of the Software. Subject to the Privacy Policy mentioned above, you expressly grant Razer the complete and irrevocable right to use, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, and publicly display and perform the User Generated Information and derivative works thereof in any form, anywhere, with or without attribution to you, and without any notice or compensation to you of any kind."
With that little puppy in their service agreement, they certainly appear to be asserting a claim over absolutely anything that their software(or any later version) is technologically capable of grabbing...
Adding a gigabyte of flash might increase the BOM cost by a dollar! Also, we won't be able to track all your keyboard and mouse activity and monetize your little consumer ass. One of those...
I, for one, can't think of any reason why having a driver that enjoys unfettered(and low level) access to one or more of my computer's human input devices also being internet connnected at all times could possibly pose a problem...
In fact, I'm fairly sure that the Razer Synapse2 system will make Bonzibuddy 83% more fun to be with, and any future updates that allow me to log my keystrokes to the cloud will be a lifesaver when I forget the password to my AOL account!
He's an ex-CIA guy, wow. So, he's really good at smuggling cocaine? And selling weapons to dictators?
Honestly, if I were ex-CIA, I'd try to be a little less hubristic about my ability to deal with former allies who are now being unfriendly... Have they ever had luck in that department?
Kind of creepy to hear of "ex" CIA officers in top Cisco positions... advertising this must do wonders for foreign (and domestic) sales...
And ah... continually beating wardrums about an issue which only *reminds* customers of cost issues with Cisco products and services is no winning proposition for Cisco either.
Don't worry. It's only those chinamen at Huwei who have sinister links to clandestine entities. You can Pay More with Confidence(tm) with your friends at Cisco!
Given that wacky incident where Cisco instigated the arrest (in Canada) of a former executive who had the temerity to testify against them in an antitrust case, I'd bet that they have some nontrivial pull, and certainly don't seem to be afraid of using it.
I'm thinking there is some UL or ISO or Euro standard that makes it difficult to make server chassis out of flammable materials, and stack dozens of them in a rack, while running 240VAC through them and with lots of cooling air to fan the flames.
Don't worry, we can just add halogenated flame-retardants to our environmentally friendly chassis until it passes code...
Slashdot Mirror
Sudoku is not Math. It's something that happens to have numbers in it (but they could be any other kind of symbols, and it would work in exactly the same way).
Debateable. The fact that it uses numbers, rather than arbitrary symbols or letters, certainly doesn't make it some kind of arithmetic workout; but Sudoku puzzles are special cases of Latin squares, and there is(as with most puzzles that anybody cares about) active mathematical futzing with algorithms for generating puzzles, algorithms for solving them, and proofs of various things about solution sets for various variants(NxN grids, more than two dimensions, etc.)
What I don't know is the degree to which the sudoku-solving population at large is consciously involved with this, unconsciously has latched on to some reasonably optimal algorithms but wouldn't recognize them if it saw them formalized, or is basically just plugging numbers into the Sunday paper...
The abstract says "The results show that novel word combinations, in the form of expressions that contain semantic violations, become conscious before expressions that do not contain semantic violations".
Does anybody have access through the paywall, or suitable knowledge of what researchers in this field mean by 'semantic' to say what sorts of malformations they are talking about?
Do their results suggest that we can unconsciously recognize grammatically well-formed sentences that fail at actually meaning something; or do we flag grammatical trouble(This sentence no verb.) regardless of specific word meanings; or do we flag extreme novelty(as in the 'I ironed coffee' example, which is grammatically fine and something that you could actually do; but not a sentence that would come up very often)?
It (in my probably naive understanding) seems like significantly different unconscious capabilities would have to be at work depending on what sorts of 'semantic violations' we are capable of flagging, ranging from some unconscious grasp of grammar up to a fairly sophisticated access to the meanings of the words we know.
I just adore the way that the school's PR weasel manages to word it as though those cruel journalists are tearing innocent readers 'away from that experience', rather than admit the obvious "apparently following the game on twitter is more engaging than watching or listening to it, at least as broadcast by our paying partners"...
Just a simple flaw? That's what they want you to believe. Hard-coded passwords are NOT a flaw, they are an intention back door for... company engineers... company spies... the government... Just sayin'!
It isn't an either/or.
Hard-coded credentials are a backdoor, whether covert or just buried in fine print; but they are a flawed backdoor because they are far too trivial for malicious 3rd parties to exploit on top of the intended malicious users.
Something like, say, an SSH client with a hardcoded public key, to which The Man holds the matching private key, is a non-flawed intentional backdoor; because it keeps unintended 3rd party malice to a minimum, while still letting the backdoor users in.
Neither is desirable, from the user point of view; but they are very different things.
I didn't intend to assert that startups are useless; just that if a VC can't make money by funding startups without a ready supply of 'exits', this suggests that the VC is doing a poor job of picking and cultivating startups that are either worth buying or capable of becoming profitable in their own right.
In theory, part of the value-add that a VC, rather than an ordinary loan, provides is some combination of expert judgement(so a good VC should theoretically be backing a better-than-average set of startups) and management/strategy/etc. guidance(so a startup with a good VC should theoretically be better off than an equivalent startup with a generic loan). If a VC can only perform well when the market is loaded with 'exits', and even lousy startups are managing to IPO or get sold, that suggests that they aren't actually any good at picking or building good startups.
(The other thing that makes me doubt the 'regulatory uncertainty' theory is this consideration: If I am a company sitting on a big pile of cash, and there is the possibility that inflation or heavier taxation might strike, wouldn't I be rushing to turn my dollars(which are likely to be devalued or easy prey for the tax man) into products and patents and similar things that are less likely to suffer inflation and are much easier to value creatively when the IRS comes calling?)
Assuming you do it correctly, you should be able to twiddle the brain's reward systems so as to produce sensations more pleasurable and fulfilling than any lesser stimulus.
That sounds like one of the myriad benefits, to me...
And Facebook was a smashing success, that certainly brightened the mood...
It would probably be fairer to say that they are moving somewhere else, rather than drying up entirely.
From TFA ""Limited partners are getting fatigued from giving money to venture capital and getting back less than they give," said Tracy Lefteroff, global managing partner of the venture capital practice at PWC."
and
"Joe Dear, CalPERS' chief investment officer, told Reuters: "Venture has been the most disappointing asset class over the past 10 years as far as returns. ""
Suckers do sometimes catch on, eventually. This is unlikely to cure them in an absolute sense; but it makes it more likely that they will move to being suckers about some other flavor of asset.
The other thing that really gives me the 'yeah, it's a bubble that's starting to pop, go cry." feeling is the assertion that "So what's wrong with the VC industry? The problems are many and complex. But they can be boiled down to this: Not enough exits.".
You have an industry that is basically the tech-jockey equivalent of flipping houses with borrowed money. During the expansion phase of a bubble, that can work out rather well. At other times, you find yourself facing the tougher challenge of "actually producing houses people want to live in" and "living on the margins of a renovation contractor; because that's actually the only value you are adding".
The VC guys apparently aren't willing(or perhaps aren't capable) to build companies that actually make money, and earn their returns that way, and they apparently aren't capable of building companies attractive enough that firms with cash on hand would rather buy them out than just do it in house or do without. They've run out of suckers and apparently aren't good enough to cater to customers...
Much of the VC activity(and startup acquisition by larger outfits) in the valley has been based on absurd speculative bullshit only slightly less risible than pets.com. Now, with the supply of bigger suckers on which to unload your worthless stock in some 'disruptive' Web2.0/mobile/social/bullshit apparently drying up a bit, non-idiots are staying away.
Good heavens, whatever shall we do?
My impression is that there are two basic schools of problem:
1. The SCADA-related stuff is, in fact, properly air-gapped. Then the contractor who has to update the firmware on widget Z shows up and plugs in or a stupid and/or malicious insider manages to find a working USB port.
2. You install a fancy Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system. Your Boss says "WTF, why can't I supervise and manage from the comfort of my iPad like in the vendor demo?" You proceed to punch one or more holes in your precious security.
Honestly, it's difficult to see this as anything but too little, too late (for non-high school students, at least) when the Wolfram Alpha app on smartphones is so much more powerful.
Too powerful. TI, cynically but effectively, has targeted the overwhelming majority of their calculators at the educational market, roughly in the middle school to undergrad range, depending on local and instructor policies. To this end, they gimp the devices hard enough that teachers and standardized test admins mostly don't freak out about them.
Yeah, for everything except keyfeel(which could be solved by a $20 USB or BT HID keypad with a calculator layout), the ship has sailed long ago in terms of power, performance, features, even price; but it'll be a cold day in hell before "So, I'm just going to bring this internet connected device in to the test and connect to one or more gigantic outside databases(and possibly a confederate who is helping me with the questions), that's ok by you, right?" goes over well. That is TI's target market, over which they enjoy a substantial grip.
Shivs are among the first tools produced in prison environments, so I'd watch my back...
grrlscientist writes with news of a cockatoo named Figaro, who was observed to construct and use his own tools
That's just epic. When the economy doesn't support the First World manufacturing industry, you can rely on parrots take over. I think I'll sleep much better now. :-)
Just you wait: Next week, I hear that a team will be publishing their work on a vulture who established a shell company, oversaw a hostile buyout of Figaro's Tools, and then outsourced production to China while exploiting the artisinal brand appeal of Figaro's lovingly handcrafted tradition... That's the bird you want to watch out for...
I remember reading an article about how dragonflies were using stones to tap down their nests making it harder for predators to find. The result was a reclassification on what constituted a tool removing the dragonflies from being classified as tool users.
Many animals use tools. So, I don't really see how this is news worthy other than that the bird learned to build them on its own without help from other birds.
I think that that is the noteworthy bit:
In a sufficiently broad sense, every lifeform on earth has been a 'tool user' since the first proto-membrane structure in some billion-year-old primordial ooze first managed to modify the concentration gradients of some useful molecule(tools don't have to be big, do they?) across its membrane. What we are looking for, when classifying 'tool use' is cognitive development of novel uses for environmental objects, because that demonstrates something about mental capacity, rather than execution of uses for environmental objects(however sophisticated and interesting as a different object of study).
Something like a leafcutter ant, say, has an evolved relationship with fungi rather more sophisticated than most human brewers; but we don't see experimentation, learning, cultural transmission, novel improvisation, etc. This bird, on the other hand, apparently came up with some(crude) tools that birds of its kind don't normally use, purely on its own, to deal with local problems.
The extended relationship between organisms and their environment(extending, in many cases, far enough that you really have to consider the organism as being an element of a larger structure) is indeed fascinating; but it doesn't really do conceptual clarity much good to combine complex environmental manipulations that don't show evidence of being cognitively acquired from those that do...
I suspect that, for the 'national security' types, the bigger issue is not so much the changing value of real estate, or even the cost of mopping up a few more hurricanes per decade; but the sort of really wacky social dysfunction that can be reasonably expected in the large areas of the world where people enjoy limited mobility, paltry incomes, and a somewhat tenuous record of liking us.
Even modest price shocks in the cost of essential food items cause the bottom billion or two to get(quite understandably) jumpy. Shifts in climate and precipitation are, of course, ideal causes for serious disruptions in agriculture, and likely a certain amount of mayhem, migration of desperate people to slightly less screwed places that really don't want them coming in(if you think nativist sentiment in Greece is on the rise now...), and so forth.
As an incumbent major power, that's the sort of thing that is unlikely to be fatal; but entirely likely to make dealings with large areas of the planet just that much messier, bloodier, and more expensive...
With the ever present wireless tech availible, and a relatively small country like NK next to super-teched SK, it's only a matter of time before enough information spills over to either forcibly induce change or through cooperation with the leadership.
That might work for broadcast media; but it'd be a nervy(or foolish) North Korean who operates an unauthorized radio transmitter that would allow for any sort of bidirectional networking... Some radio receivers are noisy enough to detect(see the BBC's old-school TV detector vans); but any transmitter running at useful power, unless using some sort of extremely tight directional antenna, is just asking for a knock on the door...
You saw how many references to 'the family' there were in the VP's internet tough guy email...
A GB is total excess; but one of their excuses for going 'cloud' was the zOMG! Future awesome features are just too big for onboard storage!!!, so it seemed worth adding enough to make that fully irrelevant...
I would be interested to see an informed EULA-violating teardown of the new driver arrangement; but I'm inclined to operate on the provisional assumption that an untrusted program with enough local access to modify nonstandard settings(ie. Not just twiddling the numlock LED) of USB HID devices and internet access is a keylogger until proven innocent.
". USER GENERATED INFORMATION
“User Generated Information” means any information made available to Razer through your use of the Software. Subject to the Privacy Policy mentioned above, you expressly grant Razer the complete and irrevocable right to use, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, and publicly display and perform the User Generated Information and derivative works thereof in any form, anywhere, with or without attribution to you, and without any notice or compensation to you of any kind."
With that little puppy in their service agreement, they certainly appear to be asserting a claim over absolutely anything that their software(or any later version) is technologically capable of grabbing...
Adding a gigabyte of flash might increase the BOM cost by a dollar! Also, we won't be able to track all your keyboard and mouse activity and monetize your little consumer ass. One of those...
I, for one, can't think of any reason why having a driver that enjoys unfettered(and low level) access to one or more of my computer's human input devices also being internet connnected at all times could possibly pose a problem...
In fact, I'm fairly sure that the Razer Synapse2 system will make Bonzibuddy 83% more fun to be with, and any future updates that allow me to log my keystrokes to the cloud will be a lifesaver when I forget the password to my AOL account!
He's an ex-CIA guy, wow. So, he's really good at smuggling cocaine? And selling weapons to dictators?
Honestly, if I were ex-CIA, I'd try to be a little less hubristic about my ability to deal with former allies who are now being unfriendly... Have they ever had luck in that department?
Kind of creepy to hear of "ex" CIA officers in top Cisco positions... advertising this must do wonders for foreign (and domestic) sales...
And ah... continually beating wardrums about an issue which only *reminds* customers of cost issues with Cisco products and services is no winning proposition for Cisco either.
Don't worry. It's only those chinamen at Huwei who have sinister links to clandestine entities. You can Pay More with Confidence(tm) with your friends at Cisco!
Given that wacky incident where Cisco instigated the arrest (in Canada) of a former executive who had the temerity to testify against them in an antitrust case, I'd bet that they have some nontrivial pull, and certainly don't seem to be afraid of using it.
I'm thinking there is some UL or ISO or Euro standard that makes it difficult to make server chassis out of flammable materials, and stack dozens of them in a rack, while running 240VAC through them and with lots of cooling air to fan the flames.
Don't worry, we can just add halogenated flame-retardants to our environmentally friendly chassis until it passes code...