If you're working in IT for a company that still mandates IE6 -- leave. There is high demand for IT workers from good companies that are not on the IE6 FAIL wagon. Failure to upgrade past XP/IE6 is just a symptom. You might as well leave on your own terms. Your job is not going to be around long anyway.
That's what a lot of people said about COBOL... Thirty years ago...
Installbase is all that matters. Safety in numbers, and all that. If there are XP and IE6 deployments, there will be demand for apps, which will sustain deployment.
The "Chrome effect" is the spike of internet trends that only happens on the weekends because geeks and other home-enthusiasts are using alternative browsers since there is no real restriction. What is the percentage of use during 9a-5p monday through friday? Looking at intra-week stats shows this heavily favors IE, or at least it has in the past. What is the trend for business adoption of alternative browsers?
Absolutely - as far as I can tell, Facebook has now achieved everything it set out to do: 1. Make Mark Zuckerberg extremely rich. 2. Help Mark Zuckerberg find a smart and hot woman to get it on with.
I found it HILARIOUS that his wedding was the day after the IPO. I wonder if his (then) fiancee was like "sure you are a billionaire, on PRIVATE PAPER... sweetie get me a billion in public shares and we can finally seal this deal"...
The thing people are disappointed about is that the initial valuation was solely due to demand for the IPO itself. Institutionals got in on the IPO (they were the only ones that could) and enough of them wanted out RIGHT AWAY that the price actually went down, despite there being a huge huge HUGE new pool of potential buyers. That, frankly, is sad.
These laws were ALL put in place to try to reduce the chances of someone either directly injuring themselves or others, or being too drunk to drive, getting behind the wheel and injuring themselves or an innocent bystander (thus infringing on their rights).
None of the laws you listed (other than those related to BAC) have to do with driving. The blue laws (Sunday and late night drinking) are because some people think you shouldn't drink. Has nothing to go with driving or hurting others. The age thing is similar...
Not true, most of the laws are in place (gasp) during the hours in which the incidence of drunk driving accidents peak... Of course the laws can't completely stop that from happening but the intent is to lessen it in some small way.
If he is truly only altruistically concerned about something like phishing scams getting the better of his family, then a technical solution is NOT going to work in any way. First and foremost, because all of the activity will be on a web based email or banking site which is 100% encrypted and will blend in with the 1000 emails from aunt sally about her cats.
If he is not (merely) altruistically concerned and does intend on this as a solution for things like stopping his teens from "e-dating" or whatever he has in his head that is so evil on the internet, then please sir, take a direct approach to this, and if you feel that you can't give your kids internet access and trust them to be mature about it, do NOT give it to them. If for some reason you feel that you are in a limbo where your kids are theoretically trust-able but you still don't trust them fully, please seek counseling.
What most try to point out is that this approach is really just looking at the internet, being afraid, and applying the biggest hammer possible to the situation when it really will not do much good at all. Teaching your kids right from wrong, as crazy as that sounds, is a LOT easier than not teaching them anything, throwing them onto the internet, and then trying to filter the "wrong" out and/or observe them doing wrong and punishing them (i mean "interceding") later.
Example 1: the clueless submitter asks about iphone apps, clearly has no idea what they even are, and completely overlooks the fact that whenever the kid/spouse/slave/whatever is out of the house, the fancy pants record-it-all box will have NO effect at all. This "project" has FAIL written all over it, for so many reasons.
Exactly. Either the "friend" is actually an oppressive government or a guy with some serious problems. Tell him it's not possible. Even if it's possible, it's a bad idea, possibly illegal. Then go take an Ethics class.
I like how he concluded that installing monitoring software on the endpoint devices has "legal implications" as if his family is not really on board with the plan, then waves his hand over simply listening/recording EVERYTHING as if that is magically OK. Messages in words with friends? Shit, you better be recording the words they play, too. You wouldn't want your teenage daughter seeing "COCK" get a triple word score when she is playing against billybuddy99 on the interwebs...
Hosting 150 million (shitty, but that's just my opinion) pictures with no acutal posture toward ANY sort of revenue is a pretty clear cut example of a NOT GOOD company. Revenue > No Revenue, plain and simple. Facebook could have simply said "hey users here is $25 if you join our [new|hip|overprocessed|shitty] photo sharing feature" and they would have SAVED money by the time they got to enough users to outpace Instagram. That qualifies as a sketchy deal, I don't care who you are (unless you for some reason are in love with quarter-megapixel filtered photos of guys with ugly mustaches).
True, I hate Instagram and am ambiguous toward Facebook, but have a look at the performance of FB if you think I am the only one.
So, sure a US company could be founded in 10 years to compete with the Chinese, but they would be 10 years behind them in the quality and/or efficiency of their product.
BINGO. We aren't making wooden toys, or sunglasses; we are making technology-dependent, highly precise materials and assemblies that rely heavily on a very tightly controlled process and EXACT design specifications. Design specs that can't be downloaded from wikipedia. Processes that can't be started up in a few weeks (or probably years). This is a RACE. Putting a year or five or ten on your competition can mean EVERYTHING. Just ask Apple. Why do you think it is that they are selling 142 billion of product a year? They are 2 to 3 years (used to be more like 5) ahead of their competition, and that gap is VERY hard to close when it comes to technology.
Ask anyone working with manufacturing in China, and they will have stories to tell about how god awful hard it is to get something made the American way over there. Tolerances on locally made machines are crap. Training for employees is worthless (they leave as soon as you teach them something valuable.) Processes that get started, get dropped as soon as your flight back to the US is off the ground. It's hard as hell to change the course of manufacturing in a country. The thing is, they realize all of this. They are working around the clock to figure out how to out-do the US, and this is just another gun in their arsenal. The same is exactly true for what goes on in the US in any given industry.
China is doing what we did back in the 30s and 40s, stumbling their way through different techniques, technologies, and methodologies to find their way to effective manufacturing while they grow the workforce needed to actually maintain it. If they give their solar industry 10 years to perfect itself (largely based on workers trained by US companies, like I mentioned earlier) and they can keep the US solar industry from blossoming (which they have done pretty well considering how many US firms have gone bankrupt) then they will be in a leadership position, with the US a distant second. Do you really want to work for $1.50 a day?
Sure, what could be hard about purifying silicon, growing it into cell grade crystals, doping it properly, mounting it effectively, and applying high current connectors designed for a 20+ year life of safe operation. I am sure guys in garages can have all that running in a couple of weekends.
You think solar cell manufacturing at a large, economical scale has no barriers to entry, and then you call my argument ridiculous? This is some funny shit. Even for slashdot, you have taken absurdity to a new level.
Humans aren't doing math at all in those situations. Hence, dumbing down a computer's math will not make it more "intelligent". Intelligent systems that are being designed today take advantage of a myriad of techniques developed over the past few decades. Path finding systems use different types of tree search algoritms. Self-driving cars will use a pair of cameras to judge distance and relative speed of external objects. In neither of these cases does imprecise math help the intelligence of they system.
It sure as shit helps the *effectiveness* of the system if the driving algorithm can come up with a 90% accurate "fudged" answer in.1 seconds and a 99.9% accurate answer in 1.0 seconds. Being "pretty confident" and able to react in a short amount of time is a lot better than waiting until you have complete confidence if your window to act is gone. Especially in an organic environment like driving a car or walking down the street; many important decisions aren't about intelligence (just like with humans) they are instead about reacting as quickly as possible in an environment where it would take far too long to completely accurately assess all the variables. It's the same principle as the article, just skewed a different way.
You can still have Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians... but it is about using fact-based arguments over appeals to emotion.
They derive opposite conclusions from the same facts, so I don't see where that gets us.
That's his precise point. They do that because they are ideologies. For example, libertarianism is the ideology that consenting adults should be free to do whatever they want unless there is a necessary and compelling reason to forbid something. The only necessary and compelling reasons it recognizes are those things which infringe on the freedoms of other people who do not consent. For example, you are free to drink alcohol whether or not I think that's a good idea, because it is your body; but you are not free to drive drunk and put me in danger I didn't ask for.
Here's the rub (aside from your other points): You are not free to drive drunk... But what's "drunk"? Failing a field sobriety test? A BAC of.05?.08? Any readable BAC? Is it legal to pull someone over (or set up a checkpoint) specifically to test for drunkenness?
How far in advance is it legal to require someone to not drink newly purchase alcohol (via restricted hours/day of sale)? Any time Sunday? Only 2AM to 6AM each morning? Never? How long should a person have to age before being allowed to drink? 16 years? 18 years? 21 years? No restriction at all?
These laws were ALL put in place to try to reduce the chances of someone either directly injuring themselves or others, or being too drunk to drive, getting behind the wheel and injuring themselves or an innocent bystander (thus infringing on their rights). But how far is too far? Few people agree. That's why we end up with so many laws (and politicians around to change them) and feel like the system is "Broken". It's broken insofar as it's not possible to line up everyone's expectations with the same version of reality.
How would they run out of money? The government of China has and can force its banks to give loans that essentially never have to be repaid to these vendors.
Why would they? What would the Chinese government gain by flooding the solar panels market with things that cost more than they sell for?
Are you being serious? Dumping is a well understood practice. I will put it in Slashdot terms.
Step 1: Set up huge industry with government captial Step 2: Start selling goods in foreign markets at well below what it cost to make them Step 3: Watch as foreign competitors go bankrupt Step 4: Crank up prices as no competition is left, then lend foreigners the money needed to buy goods Step 5: ???
The question marks are at the end because the only thing unknown about this situation is whether china will use their wealth to simply buy up everything in the world, or to buy up just the military might and then watch as all the peasant nations fight over who will get to supply china with movies and music.
And before anyone jumps up to defend the free market here, you may want to keep in mind that a level playing field (with no protectionism) is great if you're a Chinese worker making $1 an hour--not so fucking great if you're an American or European worker getting paid many times that. You go ahead and compete in the "free market" with people willing to work for a fraction of your salary and just see what happens to your beloved first-world living standard.
I would hope that anyone commenting here realizes that when it comes to China, "free market" is not even on the spectrum of economic principles. Currency manipulation that puts EVERYTHING in the world's second largest economy at a continuously under-priced advantage is about as close to the "free market" as North Korea is to joining the UN.
Surely there are options on the table. However, the fact that Vixie concluded that "these will be very difficult to re-program" when a group of Estonian hackers managed to do it through a completely illegitimate virus, completely remotely, is troubling. Something about the process must have been irreversible otherwise a simple "undo" page distributed through DNS forwarding could have taken care of it as soon as the servers were under FBI control.
What is more interesting is that they dont make any stabs at guessing how many of the victims are on what providers (just referring to them as "DSL".) Why not name names? You have the IPs of the vics. If AT&T saw 150,000 customers about to go dark, and so did Verizon and so did CenturyLink, i suspect the problem would be confronted more directly than a single powerpoint at some conference in *Australia*...
Let's solve the problem of government being locked into exclusive relationships with other vendors by - locking them into an exclusive relationship with us! But our dog and pony show is more elaborate than theirs.
More like, Our show has dogs AND ponies! Plus you can reuse the old dogs and ponies from all the other shows you bought (with a minimal "rework" fee)... In the long run, you will save money with us, as we are pouring money into R&D to perfect the hybrid dog/pony that will be future proof!
Posting is information. Why do you think Facebook is so hot on wallstreet?
Because no one really knows what their books look like? Because they spent $1B on a shitty company like Instagram just to see if anyone would flinch, and when no one did, they knew they could basically write a blank check and investors would sign it? Or maybe (the simplest explanation) it's been like 5 years since there has been an interesting IPO and institutional investors are desperate to make mutual funds look appealing again?
From a programming perspective, algo trading is simple math, not AI. The challenges lie in A) Processing the ungodly amount of data necessary in a short enough time period to be relevant and B) Coming up with a formula that accurately identifies good trades. There is literally no connection to AI, you don't want the program to "pick" anything, only to quickly identify predefined situations.
What do you exactly think is the difference between current AI and "an algorithm that quickly identifies predefined situations"? Aside from the obvious example of natural language interaction that was hilariously pointed out in the OP. AI is nothing more than an (occasionally very complex) attempt at hacking English into a variety of numbers, and then performing math on them in interesting ways (what words are statistically likely to show up near what other words, and in what order, for example.) Algorithmic trading might have more specific activity at the low levels (like monitor 1000 different asset prices for a specific pattern) but that is hardly unlike an AI, its output is just handled differently.
is that people (possibly wrongly) believe what they read on wikipedia, but nobody believes fucking anything they read on reddit! the rest follows from there.
You make a good point. Next time I want to know what the atomic number of lithium is, I am going to check Reddit given their penchant for hard hitting fact finding.
I found something useful: the IP Webcam android app (Free from google play.) If skype from your phone wasnt already an option (such as, if you dont have a FFC) you can set Skype up to read the feed from the webcam. Then, plug your laptop into your wall mounted TV and mount/hang the phone near the TV somehow. Presto, a wall mounted video chat setup that doesnt have a touchscreen (per the spec in the submission) and if you have an old android phone lying around (what self respecting geek doesnt) you probably didnt spend a dime (fulfilling the other spec in the submission). How is that for "the usual dreck"?
Give your parents/inlaws a 40 minute video clip of your kid just sitting there doing whatever. Tell them to play it and talk to the screen like they normally would. If that isn't satisfying, they should just visit in person.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're working in IT for a company that still mandates IE6 -- leave. There is high demand for IT workers from good companies that are not on the IE6 FAIL wagon. Failure to upgrade past XP/IE6 is just a symptom. You might as well leave on your own terms. Your job is not going to be around long anyway.
That's what a lot of people said about COBOL... Thirty years ago...
Installbase is all that matters. Safety in numbers, and all that. If there are XP and IE6 deployments, there will be demand for apps, which will sustain deployment.
Some do, some don't. Here is an article from a month ago about what I am describing: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/10/report-chrome-doesnt-win-weekend-browser-battle-after-all-but-still-popular-after-work/
The "Chrome effect" is the spike of internet trends that only happens on the weekends because geeks and other home-enthusiasts are using alternative browsers since there is no real restriction. What is the percentage of use during 9a-5p monday through friday? Looking at intra-week stats shows this heavily favors IE, or at least it has in the past. What is the trend for business adoption of alternative browsers?
Absolutely - as far as I can tell, Facebook has now achieved everything it set out to do:
1. Make Mark Zuckerberg extremely rich.
2. Help Mark Zuckerberg find a smart and hot woman to get it on with.
I found it HILARIOUS that his wedding was the day after the IPO. I wonder if his (then) fiancee was like "sure you are a billionaire, on PRIVATE PAPER... sweetie get me a billion in public shares and we can finally seal this deal"...
The thing people are disappointed about is that the initial valuation was solely due to demand for the IPO itself. Institutionals got in on the IPO (they were the only ones that could) and enough of them wanted out RIGHT AWAY that the price actually went down, despite there being a huge huge HUGE new pool of potential buyers. That, frankly, is sad.
Not when you're a photo sharing site with no ability to monetize whatsoever! Oops...
These laws were ALL put in place to try to reduce the chances of someone either directly injuring themselves or others, or being too drunk to drive, getting behind the wheel and injuring themselves or an innocent bystander (thus infringing on their rights).
None of the laws you listed (other than those related to BAC) have to do with driving. The blue laws (Sunday and late night drinking) are because some people think you shouldn't drink. Has nothing to go with driving or hurting others. The age thing is similar...
Not true, most of the laws are in place (gasp) during the hours in which the incidence of drunk driving accidents peak... Of course the laws can't completely stop that from happening but the intent is to lessen it in some small way.
If he is truly only altruistically concerned about something like phishing scams getting the better of his family, then a technical solution is NOT going to work in any way. First and foremost, because all of the activity will be on a web based email or banking site which is 100% encrypted and will blend in with the 1000 emails from aunt sally about her cats.
If he is not (merely) altruistically concerned and does intend on this as a solution for things like stopping his teens from "e-dating" or whatever he has in his head that is so evil on the internet, then please sir, take a direct approach to this, and if you feel that you can't give your kids internet access and trust them to be mature about it, do NOT give it to them. If for some reason you feel that you are in a limbo where your kids are theoretically trust-able but you still don't trust them fully, please seek counseling.
What most try to point out is that this approach is really just looking at the internet, being afraid, and applying the biggest hammer possible to the situation when it really will not do much good at all. Teaching your kids right from wrong, as crazy as that sounds, is a LOT easier than not teaching them anything, throwing them onto the internet, and then trying to filter the "wrong" out and/or observe them doing wrong and punishing them (i mean "interceding") later.
Example 1: the clueless submitter asks about iphone apps, clearly has no idea what they even are, and completely overlooks the fact that whenever the kid/spouse/slave/whatever is out of the house, the fancy pants record-it-all box will have NO effect at all. This "project" has FAIL written all over it, for so many reasons.
Exactly. Either the "friend" is actually an oppressive government or a guy with some serious problems. Tell him it's not possible. Even if it's possible, it's a bad idea, possibly illegal. Then go take an Ethics class.
I like how he concluded that installing monitoring software on the endpoint devices has "legal implications" as if his family is not really on board with the plan, then waves his hand over simply listening/recording EVERYTHING as if that is magically OK. Messages in words with friends? Shit, you better be recording the words they play, too. You wouldn't want your teenage daughter seeing "COCK" get a triple word score when she is playing against billybuddy99 on the interwebs...
Hosting 150 million (shitty, but that's just my opinion) pictures with no acutal posture toward ANY sort of revenue is a pretty clear cut example of a NOT GOOD company. Revenue > No Revenue, plain and simple. Facebook could have simply said "hey users here is $25 if you join our [new|hip|overprocessed|shitty] photo sharing feature" and they would have SAVED money by the time they got to enough users to outpace Instagram. That qualifies as a sketchy deal, I don't care who you are (unless you for some reason are in love with quarter-megapixel filtered photos of guys with ugly mustaches).
True, I hate Instagram and am ambiguous toward Facebook, but have a look at the performance of FB if you think I am the only one.
So, sure a US company could be founded in 10 years to compete with the Chinese, but they would be 10 years behind them in the quality and/or efficiency of their product.
BINGO. We aren't making wooden toys, or sunglasses; we are making technology-dependent, highly precise materials and assemblies that rely heavily on a very tightly controlled process and EXACT design specifications. Design specs that can't be downloaded from wikipedia. Processes that can't be started up in a few weeks (or probably years). This is a RACE. Putting a year or five or ten on your competition can mean EVERYTHING. Just ask Apple. Why do you think it is that they are selling 142 billion of product a year? They are 2 to 3 years (used to be more like 5) ahead of their competition, and that gap is VERY hard to close when it comes to technology.
Ask anyone working with manufacturing in China, and they will have stories to tell about how god awful hard it is to get something made the American way over there. Tolerances on locally made machines are crap. Training for employees is worthless (they leave as soon as you teach them something valuable.) Processes that get started, get dropped as soon as your flight back to the US is off the ground. It's hard as hell to change the course of manufacturing in a country. The thing is, they realize all of this. They are working around the clock to figure out how to out-do the US, and this is just another gun in their arsenal. The same is exactly true for what goes on in the US in any given industry.
China is doing what we did back in the 30s and 40s, stumbling their way through different techniques, technologies, and methodologies to find their way to effective manufacturing while they grow the workforce needed to actually maintain it. If they give their solar industry 10 years to perfect itself (largely based on workers trained by US companies, like I mentioned earlier) and they can keep the US solar industry from blossoming (which they have done pretty well considering how many US firms have gone bankrupt) then they will be in a leadership position, with the US a distant second. Do you really want to work for $1.50 a day?
Sure, what could be hard about purifying silicon, growing it into cell grade crystals, doping it properly, mounting it effectively, and applying high current connectors designed for a 20+ year life of safe operation. I am sure guys in garages can have all that running in a couple of weekends.
You think solar cell manufacturing at a large, economical scale has no barriers to entry, and then you call my argument ridiculous? This is some funny shit. Even for slashdot, you have taken absurdity to a new level.
Humans aren't doing math at all in those situations. Hence, dumbing down a computer's math will not make it more "intelligent". Intelligent systems that are being designed today take advantage of a myriad of techniques developed over the past few decades. Path finding systems use different types of tree search algoritms. Self-driving cars will use a pair of cameras to judge distance and relative speed of external objects. In neither of these cases does imprecise math help the intelligence of they system.
It sure as shit helps the *effectiveness* of the system if the driving algorithm can come up with a 90% accurate "fudged" answer in .1 seconds and a 99.9% accurate answer in 1.0 seconds. Being "pretty confident" and able to react in a short amount of time is a lot better than waiting until you have complete confidence if your window to act is gone. Especially in an organic environment like driving a car or walking down the street; many important decisions aren't about intelligence (just like with humans) they are instead about reacting as quickly as possible in an environment where it would take far too long to completely accurately assess all the variables. It's the same principle as the article, just skewed a different way.
You can still have Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians... but it is about using fact-based arguments over appeals to emotion.
They derive opposite conclusions from the same facts, so I don't see where that gets us.
That's his precise point. They do that because they are ideologies. For example, libertarianism is the ideology that consenting adults should be free to do whatever they want unless there is a necessary and compelling reason to forbid something. The only necessary and compelling reasons it recognizes are those things which infringe on the freedoms of other people who do not consent. For example, you are free to drink alcohol whether or not I think that's a good idea, because it is your body; but you are not free to drive drunk and put me in danger I didn't ask for.
Here's the rub (aside from your other points): You are not free to drive drunk... But what's "drunk"? Failing a field sobriety test? A BAC of .05? .08? Any readable BAC? Is it legal to pull someone over (or set up a checkpoint) specifically to test for drunkenness?
How far in advance is it legal to require someone to not drink newly purchase alcohol (via restricted hours/day of sale)? Any time Sunday? Only 2AM to 6AM each morning? Never? How long should a person have to age before being allowed to drink? 16 years? 18 years? 21 years? No restriction at all?
These laws were ALL put in place to try to reduce the chances of someone either directly injuring themselves or others, or being too drunk to drive, getting behind the wheel and injuring themselves or an innocent bystander (thus infringing on their rights). But how far is too far? Few people agree. That's why we end up with so many laws (and politicians around to change them) and feel like the system is "Broken". It's broken insofar as it's not possible to line up everyone's expectations with the same version of reality.
How would they run out of money? The government of China has and can force its banks to give loans that essentially never have to be repaid to these vendors.
Why would they? What would the Chinese government gain by flooding the solar panels market with things that cost more than they sell for?
Are you being serious? Dumping is a well understood practice. I will put it in Slashdot terms.
Step 1: Set up huge industry with government captial
Step 2: Start selling goods in foreign markets at well below what it cost to make them
Step 3: Watch as foreign competitors go bankrupt
Step 4: Crank up prices as no competition is left, then lend foreigners the money needed to buy goods
Step 5: ???
The question marks are at the end because the only thing unknown about this situation is whether china will use their wealth to simply buy up everything in the world, or to buy up just the military might and then watch as all the peasant nations fight over who will get to supply china with movies and music.
And before anyone jumps up to defend the free market here, you may want to keep in mind that a level playing field (with no protectionism) is great if you're a Chinese worker making $1 an hour--not so fucking great if you're an American or European worker getting paid many times that. You go ahead and compete in the "free market" with people willing to work for a fraction of your salary and just see what happens to your beloved first-world living standard.
I would hope that anyone commenting here realizes that when it comes to China, "free market" is not even on the spectrum of economic principles. Currency manipulation that puts EVERYTHING in the world's second largest economy at a continuously under-priced advantage is about as close to the "free market" as North Korea is to joining the UN.
Surely there are options on the table. However, the fact that Vixie concluded that "these will be very difficult to re-program" when a group of Estonian hackers managed to do it through a completely illegitimate virus, completely remotely, is troubling. Something about the process must have been irreversible otherwise a simple "undo" page distributed through DNS forwarding could have taken care of it as soon as the servers were under FBI control.
What is more interesting is that they dont make any stabs at guessing how many of the victims are on what providers (just referring to them as "DSL".) Why not name names? You have the IPs of the vics. If AT&T saw 150,000 customers about to go dark, and so did Verizon and so did CenturyLink, i suspect the problem would be confronted more directly than a single powerpoint at some conference in *Australia*...
Because they would probably do what they do any other time something complicated appears on the screen: click OK and get back to searching for pr0n.
Let's solve the problem of government being locked into exclusive relationships with other vendors by - locking them into an exclusive relationship with us! But our dog and pony show is more elaborate than theirs.
More like, Our show has dogs AND ponies! Plus you can reuse the old dogs and ponies from all the other shows you bought (with a minimal "rework" fee)... In the long run, you will save money with us, as we are pouring money into R&D to perfect the hybrid dog/pony that will be future proof!
Posting is information. Why do you think Facebook is so hot on wallstreet?
Because no one really knows what their books look like? Because they spent $1B on a shitty company like Instagram just to see if anyone would flinch, and when no one did, they knew they could basically write a blank check and investors would sign it? Or maybe (the simplest explanation) it's been like 5 years since there has been an interesting IPO and institutional investors are desperate to make mutual funds look appealing again?
From a programming perspective, algo trading is simple math, not AI. The challenges lie in A) Processing the ungodly amount of data necessary in a short enough time period to be relevant and B) Coming up with a formula that accurately identifies good trades. There is literally no connection to AI, you don't want the program to "pick" anything, only to quickly identify predefined situations.
What do you exactly think is the difference between current AI and "an algorithm that quickly identifies predefined situations"? Aside from the obvious example of natural language interaction that was hilariously pointed out in the OP. AI is nothing more than an (occasionally very complex) attempt at hacking English into a variety of numbers, and then performing math on them in interesting ways (what words are statistically likely to show up near what other words, and in what order, for example.) Algorithmic trading might have more specific activity at the low levels (like monitor 1000 different asset prices for a specific pattern) but that is hardly unlike an AI, its output is just handled differently.
is that people (possibly wrongly) believe what they read on wikipedia, but nobody believes fucking anything they read on reddit! the rest follows from there.
You make a good point. Next time I want to know what the atomic number of lithium is, I am going to check Reddit given their penchant for hard hitting fact finding.
I found something useful: the IP Webcam android app (Free from google play.) If skype from your phone wasnt already an option (such as, if you dont have a FFC) you can set Skype up to read the feed from the webcam. Then, plug your laptop into your wall mounted TV and mount/hang the phone near the TV somehow. Presto, a wall mounted video chat setup that doesnt have a touchscreen (per the spec in the submission) and if you have an old android phone lying around (what self respecting geek doesnt) you probably didnt spend a dime (fulfilling the other spec in the submission). How is that for "the usual dreck"?
Come on pal, cheer up!
Give your parents/inlaws a 40 minute video clip of your kid just sitting there doing whatever. Tell them to play it and talk to the screen like they normally would. If that isn't satisfying, they should just visit in person.