Is this really a cost effective way to save lives? How many deaths a year are caused in the US by terrorists on aircraft? How many of those would actually be stopped by CAT scanners?
That is separate from the serious privacy issues that other posters have raised.
I agree, and I think the problem is that the public (media?) has knee-jerk responses to what looks like misuse of funds without really paying attention to the relative scale. I remember the complaints when a GSA conference had an expensive sushi dinner in Las Vegas - when the per-person cost wasn't actually out of line with typical conference food. Yet that got as much media attention as 10s of billions of overruns on a F35 project, and those got more attention that the question of whether a multi $100B fighter plane project made any sense in the first place.
The public / media will jump all over a government official who makes an unguarded comment that some find offensive, but not pay nearly so much attention to someone who always is careful to use the right words, but who's policies cause widespread harm to the same group.
It creates a difficult situation where there is good reason for complete government transparency, but where detailed public scrutiny can result in a wild misdirection of public concerns.
Any claims by the government that they can keep their hacking tools / backdoors secure were disproved by the Snowden data theft. Whatever the excuse, someone was able to steal extremely sensitive data from the NSA. Is there any real reason to think that other intelligence or law enforcement agencies would do a better job? So any tools the government has are likely to end up in the hands of other (possibly enemy) governments, and in the hands of organized crime.
The government has lost its credibility on this for a very long time.
So no, I do not believe the world will be a better place when no American's information is secure.
In addition, even if the government could be trusted to secure the information, I do not want to give them the power that that information represents. Governments can go bad, and open access to everyone secrets in the country is not a weapon that I trust in anyone's hands. I accept that the result of this is a higher rate of ordinary crime and terrorism. As things sit in the US now, that is a bargain that I am happy to accept.
If it weren't for SpaceX, this would be impressive, but they have a lot of catching up to do. The H2/O2 engine is nice for upper stages, but I can't find any specific impulse numbers so it isn't clear how well they are doing. (there are valid arguments for either kerosine / O2, or H2/O2 for upper stages)).
The landing is still a hover / descend landing. That shows great throttability of the engine, but the SpaceX suicide burn is more efficient and they seem to be getting pretty good reliability with that.
They are only sub-orbital, so they don't yet need good engine performance.
Its not really clear where Blue Origin is pushing the envelope of existing space technology, but its good to have more players in the market. They have plans for an orbital rocket in ~2020, and that will be a better test of how they are doing.
I see a lot of targeted adds, but they seem very badly targeted. I get adds for things I've already bought. Recommendations for hotels in places I've just left. Adds for things that seem similar to things that I do, but which are not usually correlated. Meanwhile I don't get adds for things I am actively trying to find (either in my work life or in my personal life).
It feels very open-loop, as if they are not making any use of information on what is actually purchased as a result of the adds, as opposed to things that are correlated. Showing car adds to someone who just bought a car is really stupid.
So I'm not surprised that I'm being tracked, but I am surprised that advertisers don't do a better job with all the information that they have about me.
Unfortunately most projects are funded one at a time for a specific mission. Developing a new overall technology would take some general purpose funding that is very difficult to obtain. Its an issue in a lot of technology driven science and can be quite frustrating .
That said, there is a fair bit of modularity and design re-use in satellites in cases where it makes sense.
Has the office become a status symbol like the old Mahogany Row and executive restroom? Is there an active desire to put lower level workers in unpleasant conditions to make management feel better about themselves?
There are lots of reasons to think that open offices are less efficient. Often the workers are highly paid so the loss in efficiency clearly outweighs the cost of extra offices. Maybe its an incorrect money optimization but it seems obviously wrong. It doesn't take a lot of loss of efficiency in an employee who is costing $150/hour to balance the extra cost of a small office.
Another, equally damning explanation is that open offices "look" nice and modern. It seems likely that the insanely expensive Apple headquarters building (clearly not cost optimized!) is mostly open offices for improved visual appeal, with no regard to efficiency.
An open office doesn't even help that problem. Just because someone is staring at a screen full of code or engineering diagrams doesn't mean that they are actually being productive. Management needs to be competent enough to understand how well their employees are doing - and that requires technical expertise, and is sometimes really quite difficult.
If one group calls another "savage", that would seem to be a claim that the other group was *more* savage. I haven't seen anything to indicate that North America (the area we are discussing I assume), was more violent than Europe in the 16th to 18th century. (the timescale I assume we are discussing).
Europe was embroiled in almost constant wars with substantial death tolls. The "Spanish Inquisition" wasn't just a Monty Python joke. The Reconquista (expelling Moors from Spain) was pretty spectacularly vicious and deadly.
There are not a lot of records from the pre-columbian period in north America, so its not clear what level of conflict existed. I haven't seen anything to suggest that violence was more widespread than in Europe.
Europe did have a substantial technological lead over north america at that time - though until probably 1600-1700 they were technologically inferior to China by most measures. North America seemed to be in a downturn after the collapse of the Cahokian and similar cultures and the Pueblo cultures (eg. Anasazi). It may have just been a downturn similar to Europe 800 years earlier.
A *person* might not query your viewing habits, but machine learning might use them to help assign probabilities to your matching various patterns.
Did you re-watch certain scenes in "little miss sunshine". Might reduce your chances at a teaching job.
Do you watch movies that glorify criminal activity or re-watch scenes that present extremists in a positive light?
Do you rewatch sex scenes in movies more or less often than the average viewer. Do your watching habits indicates that your sexual orientation may be different from what you have indicated on Facebook to your friends?
How often do you watch late at night before a work day. Are you suffering from sleep deprivation that might affect your ability to use heavy construction equipment.
All for your own good and the safety of society of course.
Depends on the type of work. I find that the good engineers are a LOT better than the average ones and I'd be happy to pay them more to keep them.
I haven't seen a strong correlation either direction with age, except for the obvious that older engineers generally have broader knowledge and the younger ones are more up on the latest technology. The combination works really well.
True - but aren't modern switching supplies tiny? Most wall-wart plugs are for systems that are only a few watts. Seems like that should fit in a slightly larger than normal sized plug. Should be>90% efficient, so there shoudln't be much power loss.
At SLAC and other large accelerator complexes we need to synchronize systems as the few-picosecond level (sub-picosecond for specialized systems), over a few kilometers. For us we have a near speed-of-light beam to allow a clear definition of synchronization (but the synchronization is maintained without the beam), and are now also installing a system that measures the round-trip physical time delay. The latter of course depends critically on the exact cable routing.
For large scale (global) networks, its not obvious exactly what the goal is. Is the goal to ignore all cable delays? If so, I wonder how a computer's local time is certified to be synchronized at the nanosecond level - maybe some sort of GPS based synchronization where the computers position and GPS signal phase is used to determine time? (but what about the nanoseconds of GPS antenna cable?).
It seems like defining what is wanted may be trickier than doing the engineering.
He3 is great but we still don't know how to make an economically viable fusion reactor. A sufficiently scaled up magnetic confinement fusion machine will work, but its not clear how the costs can ever be competitive. Unlike fission where you basically just pile up fuel and it gets hot, all the current fusion designs require that a substantial portion of the reactor output be redirected into the reactor in some technically complex (eg expensive) system. (neutral beams, plasma jets, millimeter waves etc etc).
He3 makes things better, but I don't see how it helps enough.
I would love to see fusion become practical, but I just don't see it moving that way.
"bringing the same UI into applications".... eg *changing* applications. Its probably a fine idea - but its a change and that means that for a while things will be slower because my work flow will change. By the time I'm familiar with the new scheme, there will be yet another.
Yes I can disable it, but like the ribbon it will eventually become universal.
There is a fantastic Arthur C Clarke story: Superiority. Discusses this issue better that I can.
Don't move buttons around. Don't add weird auto-width-changing scroll bars. I don't care how much time all these things might in theory save in the future, but if you change the UI too frequently, all that is lost to the reduction in efficiency when people try to figure out how to do the things that they used to do.
It was pretty amazing the way they launched a 10,000 square mile movie screen to fly over Florida so that they could project the Saturn V launch - not to mention the awesome sound system.
Agreed. I'm surprised at how often Silicon Valley re-invents old ideas when they stray away from information technology. Probably related to the average age of the workers, who are far to young to remember the last time people talked about maglev trains running in vacuum tubes....
There is always a question of how far to go with looking at stupid. So far it looks very likely that everyone reading this will be dead in 100 years. That the sun will destroy the earth in a few billion, and that the ultimate expansion / heat death of the unverse seems inescapable. So in the long run by some standards *everything* is useless.
So its all a matter of scale. Is working hard to afford a fancy sports car stupid? Is getting stressed and working hard to solve a difficult problem a reasonable thing to do? It depends on the underlying assumptions of what things have meaning in a universe with a finite future.
Are any of these real engineered designs - where the main technical challenges of energy storage, power density, noise and safety have been addressed? Otherwise its just like then endless versions of the Moller "sky car", which is beautiful, but which I also remember from the late 80s, without any production models.
People have been talking about flying cars and have flown some test models since the 1930s. Useful "sky cars" in the form of helicopters have existed for well over half a century. What is missing is a solution to the difficult technical issues that make them impractical for mass use (beyond what we have now for helicopters). Pretty fiberglass shapes really doesn't address the basic issue.
While the world waits for real AI, there is a lot of AS (artificial stupidity). Systems that are too dumb to do what their designers want and instead are just annoying. Email helper apps tend to be like that. I hate when my phone email app tells me that it thinks its found an appointment and pops up a window to enter it. Its just annoying, wastes time and interrupts what I am doing.
The original was the copy machine that after a jam would insist that you "remove the original" without the ability to sense that there was no original sheet on the copier.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this really a cost effective way to save lives? How many deaths a year are caused in the US by terrorists on aircraft? How many of those would actually be stopped by CAT scanners?
That is separate from the serious privacy issues that other posters have raised.
I agree, and I think the problem is that the public (media?) has knee-jerk responses to what looks like misuse of funds without really paying attention to the relative scale. I remember the complaints when a GSA conference had an expensive sushi dinner in Las Vegas - when the per-person cost wasn't actually out of line with typical conference food. Yet that got as much media attention as 10s of billions of overruns on a F35 project, and those got more attention that the question of whether a multi $100B fighter plane project made any sense in the first place.
The public / media will jump all over a government official who makes an unguarded comment that some find offensive, but not pay nearly so much attention to someone who always is careful to use the right words, but who's policies cause widespread harm to the same group.
It creates a difficult situation where there is good reason for complete government transparency, but where detailed public scrutiny can result in a wild misdirection of public concerns.
Any claims by the government that they can keep their hacking tools / backdoors secure were disproved by the Snowden data theft. Whatever the excuse, someone was able to steal extremely sensitive data from the NSA. Is there any real reason to think that other intelligence or law enforcement agencies would do a better job? So any tools the government has are likely to end up in the hands of other (possibly enemy) governments, and in the hands of organized crime.
The government has lost its credibility on this for a very long time.
So no, I do not believe the world will be a better place when no American's information is secure.
In addition, even if the government could be trusted to secure the information, I do not want to give them the power that that information represents. Governments can go bad, and open access to everyone secrets in the country is not a weapon that I trust in anyone's hands. I accept that the result of this is a higher rate of ordinary crime and terrorism. As things sit in the US now, that is a bargain that I am happy to accept.
If it weren't for SpaceX, this would be impressive, but they have a lot of catching up to do. The H2/O2 engine is nice for upper stages, but I can't find any specific impulse numbers so it isn't clear how well they are doing. (there are valid arguments for either kerosine / O2, or H2/O2 for upper stages)).
The landing is still a hover / descend landing. That shows great throttability of the engine, but the SpaceX suicide burn is more efficient and they seem to be getting pretty good reliability with that.
They are only sub-orbital, so they don't yet need good engine performance.
Its not really clear where Blue Origin is pushing the envelope of existing space technology, but its good to have more players in the market. They have plans for an orbital rocket in ~2020, and that will be a better test of how they are doing.
I see a lot of targeted adds, but they seem very badly targeted. I get adds for things I've already bought. Recommendations for hotels in places I've just left. Adds for things that seem similar to things that I do, but which are not usually correlated. Meanwhile I don't get adds for things I am actively trying to find (either in my work life or in my personal life).
It feels very open-loop, as if they are not making any use of information on what is actually purchased as a result of the adds, as opposed to things that are correlated. Showing car adds to someone who just bought a car is really stupid.
So I'm not surprised that I'm being tracked, but I am surprised that advertisers don't do a better job with all the information that they have about me.
Surely someone with the skills to hack a gas pump can get a job that pays far more than $1800 for the same effort. Seems such a sad use of talent.
what science do you consider to be worth spending money on? What is you criteria?
Unfortunately most projects are funded one at a time for a specific mission. Developing a new overall technology would take some general purpose funding that is very difficult to obtain. Its an issue in a lot of technology driven science and can be quite frustrating .
That said, there is a fair bit of modularity and design re-use in satellites in cases where it makes sense.
Has the office become a status symbol like the old Mahogany Row and executive restroom? Is there an active desire to put lower level workers in unpleasant conditions to make management feel better about themselves?
There are lots of reasons to think that open offices are less efficient. Often the workers are highly paid so the loss in efficiency clearly outweighs the cost of extra offices. Maybe its an incorrect money optimization but it seems obviously wrong. It doesn't take a lot of loss of efficiency in an employee who is costing $150/hour to balance the extra cost of a small office.
Another, equally damning explanation is that open offices "look" nice and modern. It seems likely that the insanely expensive Apple headquarters building (clearly not cost optimized!) is mostly open offices for improved visual appeal, with no regard to efficiency.
An open office doesn't even help that problem. Just because someone is staring at a screen full of code or engineering diagrams doesn't mean that they are actually being productive. Management needs to be competent enough to understand how well their employees are doing - and that requires technical expertise, and is sometimes really quite difficult.
If one group calls another "savage", that would seem to be a claim that the other group was *more* savage. I haven't seen anything to indicate that North America (the area we are discussing I assume), was more violent than Europe in the 16th to 18th century. (the timescale I assume we are discussing).
Europe was embroiled in almost constant wars with substantial death tolls. The "Spanish Inquisition" wasn't just a Monty Python joke. The Reconquista (expelling Moors from Spain) was pretty spectacularly vicious and deadly.
There are not a lot of records from the pre-columbian period in north America, so its not clear what level of conflict existed. I haven't seen anything to suggest that violence was more widespread than in Europe.
Europe did have a substantial technological lead over north america at that time - though until probably 1600-1700 they were technologically inferior to China by most measures. North America seemed to be in a downturn after the collapse of the Cahokian and similar cultures and the Pueblo cultures (eg. Anasazi). It may have just been a downturn similar to Europe 800 years earlier.
A *person* might not query your viewing habits, but machine learning might use them to help assign probabilities to your matching various patterns.
Did you re-watch certain scenes in "little miss sunshine". Might reduce your chances at a teaching job.
Do you watch movies that glorify criminal activity or re-watch scenes that present extremists in a positive light?
Do you rewatch sex scenes in movies more or less often than the average viewer. Do your watching habits indicates that your sexual orientation may be different from what you have indicated on Facebook to your friends?
How often do you watch late at night before a work day. Are you suffering from sleep deprivation that might affect your ability to use heavy construction equipment.
All for your own good and the safety of society of course.
Depends on the type of work. I find that the good engineers are a LOT better than the average ones and I'd be happy to pay them more to keep them.
I haven't seen a strong correlation either direction with age, except for the obvious that older engineers generally have broader knowledge and the younger ones are more up on the latest technology. The combination works really well.
Yes, businesses can choose not to do business in CA if they don't want those customers .
In theory, but are you really willing to take the time to take a company to court?
The threat doesn't work until you are talking to a human, and even then the person you are talking to will likely just transfer you around .
True - but aren't modern switching supplies tiny? Most wall-wart plugs are for systems that are only a few watts. Seems like that should fit in a slightly larger than normal sized plug. Should be>90% efficient, so there shoudln't be much power loss.
I assume the standard transformers are cheaper?
At SLAC and other large accelerator complexes we need to synchronize systems as the few-picosecond level (sub-picosecond for specialized systems), over a few kilometers. For us we have a near speed-of-light beam to allow a clear definition of synchronization (but the synchronization is maintained without the beam), and are now also installing a system that measures the round-trip physical time delay. The latter of course depends critically on the exact cable routing.
For large scale (global) networks, its not obvious exactly what the goal is. Is the goal to ignore all cable delays? If so, I wonder how a computer's local time is certified to be synchronized at the nanosecond level - maybe some sort of GPS based synchronization where the computers position and GPS signal phase is used to determine time? (but what about the nanoseconds of GPS antenna cable?).
It seems like defining what is wanted may be trickier than doing the engineering.
He3 is great but we still don't know how to make an economically viable fusion reactor. A sufficiently scaled up magnetic confinement fusion machine will work, but its not clear how the costs can ever be competitive. Unlike fission where you basically just pile up fuel and it gets hot, all the current fusion designs require that a substantial portion of the reactor output be redirected into the reactor in some technically complex (eg expensive) system. (neutral beams, plasma jets, millimeter waves etc etc).
He3 makes things better, but I don't see how it helps enough.
I would love to see fusion become practical, but I just don't see it moving that way.
"bringing the same UI into applications".... eg *changing* applications. Its probably a fine idea - but its a change and that means that for a while things will be slower because my work flow will change. By the time I'm familiar with the new scheme, there will be yet another.
Yes I can disable it, but like the ribbon it will eventually become universal.
There is a fantastic Arthur C Clarke story: Superiority. Discusses this issue better that I can.
Stop, please just stop.
Don't move buttons around. Don't add weird auto-width-changing scroll bars. I don't care how much time all these things might in theory save in the future, but if you change the UI too frequently, all that is lost to the reduction in efficiency when people try to figure out how to do the things that they used to do.
It was pretty amazing the way they launched a 10,000 square mile movie screen to fly over Florida so that they could project the Saturn V launch - not to mention the awesome sound system.
Agreed. I'm surprised at how often Silicon Valley re-invents old ideas when they stray away from information technology. Probably related to the average age of the workers, who are far to young to remember the last time people talked about maglev trains running in vacuum tubes....
There is always a question of how far to go with looking at stupid. So far it looks very likely that everyone reading this will be dead in 100 years. That the sun will destroy the earth in a few billion, and that the ultimate expansion / heat death of the unverse seems inescapable. So in the long run by some standards *everything* is useless.
So its all a matter of scale. Is working hard to afford a fancy sports car stupid? Is getting stressed and working hard to solve a difficult problem a reasonable thing to do? It depends on the underlying assumptions of what things have meaning in a universe with a finite future.
Are any of these real engineered designs - where the main technical challenges of energy storage, power density, noise and safety have been addressed? Otherwise its just like then endless versions of the Moller "sky car", which is beautiful, but which I also remember from the late 80s, without any production models.
People have been talking about flying cars and have flown some test models since the 1930s. Useful "sky cars" in the form of helicopters have existed for well over half a century. What is missing is a solution to the difficult technical issues that make them impractical for mass use (beyond what we have now for helicopters). Pretty fiberglass shapes really doesn't address the basic issue.
While the world waits for real AI, there is a lot of AS (artificial stupidity). Systems that are too dumb to do what their designers want and instead are just annoying. Email helper apps tend to be like that. I hate when my phone email app tells me that it thinks its found an appointment and pops up a window to enter it. Its just annoying, wastes time and interrupts what I am doing.
The original was the copy machine that after a jam would insist that you "remove the original" without the ability to sense that there was no original sheet on the copier.