I'll be introducing my StableGeniusCoin currency next month. It uses advanced cryptographic blockchain technology that guarantees that if you lose your investment, the Mexicans will pay for it.
More accurately social isolation causes depression in those who have a genetic need for social interaction.
I think everyone (outside of perhaps some autistic people) has some need for social interaction, although it's true that the desired amount can vary greatly from one person to the next.
For introvert computer geeks social isolation generates a ripple free brain, capable of deep thought and deep thought generates tasty, tasty, brain chemicals.
I think I fit that description to a tee -- I spend ~40 hours a week in an office by myself programming, and find that to be perfectly enjoyable and productive.
That said, I then go on to socialize on the weekends. When I was younger, I often spent the weekends mostly alone as well, but I found that without some minimal amount of socialization I was prone to becoming depressed and/or neurotic. For me, just a few hours of socializing per week is enough, but less than that clearly isn't enough.
Socially isolated people often turn to Facebook to try to relieve their social isolation, but sitting alone in a room and pretending some pixels on your monitor are your friends is not a long-term viable substitute for actually spending time with people, so that mostly doesn't work.
There's nothing unique about Facebook, one could get equally depressed by spending all one's time alone with Fortnight or Slashdot or Instagram or any other software.
It should be obvious that neural nets are great at this sort of thing. That's how our brains record and recall events. They're not registering a stream of pixels or waveforms and zipping them up, they're registering chained concepts.
Video codec A: Han shot first! Video codec B: Really? That's not how I remember it.
I missed the part where humanity's limited understanding of the universe implies that there must therefore be some omnipotent supernatural being out there who loves us each as individuals while simultaneously allowing all of us to suffer and die.
Also I'm a little confused by how Jesus' selfless love for all humanity is reflected by perpetually butt-hurt Christians' who insult and denigrate people anyone who proposes any other theories about how the universe works.
If you only ever use one computer, it's no big deal -- you can switch that one computer permanently to Dvorak and go about your business.
It's when you need to jump to multiple computers during the day that you run into some trouble -- at least for me, there would always be a few moments of confusion because it was hard to keep track of which computers are set to which layout, and half the time my muscle-memory would be set to the wrong layout and I'd end up typing a few words of gibberish before I realized what the problem was. In the end it I found it easier just to use QWERTY, even if it was a bit slower, since that way I could at sit down at any computer and start working on it right away.
Of course one solution to that would be to set every computer you ever use to Dvorak, but when many of the computers you need to type on are other peoples' computers, that isn't a practical option.
Let's just assume that no amount of machine learning, artificial intelligence or anticipatory pattern matching can handle my typical thought processes (need sex, any espresso left? what time is it? gotta check slashdot, shit my feet hurt, wow need to trim fingernails, was that a mouse?) nor I'm guessing what goes on in the minds of many other developers.
In the same way that not every thought that crosses your mind comes out through your typing fingers (or your mouth, for that matter), there would have to be some way for the system to pick up on which thoughts you intended to output to your outgoing-text-stream, vs which thoughts were part of your internal monologue only.
Is that possible? Well, it's no less impossible than any other kind of thought-reading, at the moment.
Sounds like a certain company with a fruity name. Sadly, large numbers of people are obviously willing to accept that kind of hand holding.
There's nothing sad about it, for people who aren't computer geeks. Their goal is not to experience computers in all their glorious manifold permutations; they are using computers only as a means to an end. Because of that, they don't want "freedom", they want "something that just works without any hassle" so that they can spend their time completing the tasks they want to complete, and not on managing and troubleshooting a computer's settings.
For people who are computer geeks and want direct control over every aspect of their computer's behavior (and are willing to spend the time to learn how to do it), there's Linux.
There is room in the world for both approaches. Lamenting that not everyone wants to explore the minutiae of their operating system is like a clothing-design geek lamenting that most people don't want to sew their own clothing.
I don't care if you have one or not, but the fact you think that the "West Coast" is green makes you ignorant and obnoxious. California is the #2 state in Co2 emissions.
I agree, addressing global warming is hard. Let's just ignore it and throw insults at people instead! That doesn't require any effort at all.
This can't be done. When you connect something to the Internet, the Internet gets to access it.
You can make the connection unidirectional (see below).
Even if something is designed and coded perfectly, and it won't be, new types of attacks will come out that would still make attacking it possible.
I think it can be done; if you want to be super-secure, use full encryption on everything (of course), and on top of that, design the car so that the only time it ever powers on its WiFi hardware is for a few minutes after you've typed in (on the car's touchscreen) a single-use/unique-per-vehicle activation code that you received in the mail from the manufacturer as part of a recall/update procedure. At that point it connects to the manufacturer's server via SSH, downloads and authenticates the new firmware image that corresponds to that activation code, and installs it (with an option to downgrade if anything goes wrong).
Could that still be theoretically hacked? Of course. Would it be? Probably not, because without a passcode to activate the hardware with, there would be no easy way for miscreants to develop or test any hacking technique. The amount of effort it would take them to develop an exploit would be greater than the amount of effort its would take them to "hack" the manual update procedure (e.g. by getting a job at a dealer and hacking customers' cars via the JTAG programmer when they come in for repairs), so they wouldn't bother.
We are now fighting next battle - lets not connect all that garbage to the Internet. Your car doesn't belong on IoT junk pile.
I don't know, if these 68,000 SUVs could have their firmware updated over the Internet, it would save 68,000 people trips their local Mitsubishi dealership.
The trick, as always, is to enable that functionality without simultaneously enabling the vehicles to be hacked by bad actors.
Burn coal [...] Shitpost on slashdot with retardisms
Surely, pretending that coal is the only way electricity can be made, is also a form of shitposting? Deliberately ignoring the entire other half of the equation (the societal shift away from fossil fuels as an energy source, Trump notwithstanding) in order to "win" an argument on Slashdot definitely qualifies as a retardism (as does using words like "retardism", of which I am hereby twice guilty)
At what point do we finally decide that C just wasn't the best choice for large scale long lived systems?
We can decide that whenever you like; unless you've got a time machine handy, it doesn't really change anything now, because all of those systems are still out there and aren't going anywhere. Even if you aren't working on the C code directly, you're likely going to want to link to a C library, or run on a C-based operating system.
C, like the faint scent of urine on the subway, is there, and there's nothing anybody can do about it.
The only value of a company is money. Absolutely every other "thing of value" is given its value according to it's potential to bring in money or save money.
That's a common way to run a company, but certainly not the only way. Companies can also be formed as part of an effort to accomplish other (non-monetary) goals, with making money seen as merely a means towards reaching those goals. (e.g. SpaceX and colonizing Mars)
Software developers are, by definition, more valuable than the money a company pays to employ them. This is also true of any employee.
Not by definition, no, because no employer has perfect knowledge of the actual value of an employee to their company -- particularly not at the moment they decide to hire that employee. Every new hire is something of a gamble over whether and when the employee will actually yield the quality and quantity of product that the employer predicts they will.
What? You're proposing the tyranny of the majority, my friend. The system was set up precisely to avoid what you're saying.:)
Nothing of the sort; in particular, I'm not proposing that the electoral process be changed. I'm merely saying that Trump's occasional moral claim to some sort of "mandate of the people" is invalid given the facts. If you want to reasonably claim a "mandate from the people", you should actually have the support of a majority of the people, not a 39% approval rating and a 60% disapproval rating.
It's all well and good to understand how the American electoral system works, but part of that is also understanding that it does not always represent the will of the American people. If it did, then electoral results would always match result of the nationwide popular vote, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.
The best you can say for it is that it precisely represents "the will of the 50 states", which is not quite the same thing, and honestly not a very useful property to have, in that a state is not a conscious being and therefore doesn't have any "will" to speak of, only a set of algorithmic rules it blindly follows.
So yes, Trump was duly elected under the rules of American elections. That doesn't mean he gets to claim any kind of mandate from the American people, though, because the simple and unarguable fact is that most Americans didn't want him to be elected.
A reasonable question, and it deserves a reasonable answer, so here it is: Bob Woodward's book comes out on Tuesday, and it contains hundreds of hours of carefully transcribed conversations with dozens of White House aides, all saying roughly the same thing that this op-ed is saying, and worse. Trump, of course, will do his usual "fake news" act and try to turn yet another mountain of evidence against him into a "he said, she said" scenario, but that gambit doesn't work when your opponent has all the audio tapes.
Without having an opinion on the bill's contents one way or another, the name is bad.
Including a person's name in its title (yes, even as a backronym, wink-wink-nudge-nudge) is getting too close to trying to pass a Bill of Attainder, which is forbidden by the US Constitution. Even if Sanders is only skirting the edge here, he should know better.
If Sanders wants to make companies more responsible for their employees' well-being, great. But explicitly singling out a particular company is a dumb thing to do.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll be introducing my StableGeniusCoin currency next month. It uses advanced cryptographic blockchain technology that guarantees that if you lose your investment, the Mexicans will pay for it.
Making $50,000 at a job in Silicon Valley isn't too shabby, provided you are telecommuting from Bangalore.
More accurately social isolation causes depression in those who have a genetic need for social interaction.
I think everyone (outside of perhaps some autistic people) has some need for social interaction, although it's true that the desired amount can vary greatly from one person to the next.
For introvert computer geeks social isolation generates a ripple free brain, capable of deep thought and deep thought generates tasty, tasty, brain chemicals.
I think I fit that description to a tee -- I spend ~40 hours a week in an office by myself programming, and find that to be perfectly enjoyable and productive.
That said, I then go on to socialize on the weekends. When I was younger, I often spent the weekends mostly alone as well, but I found that without some minimal amount of socialization I was prone to becoming depressed and/or neurotic. For me, just a few hours of socializing per week is enough, but less than that clearly isn't enough.
He could achieve permanent world peace
Frankly, he couldn't. He has neither the competence nor the desire to try.
More broadly: social isolation causes depression.
Socially isolated people often turn to Facebook to try to relieve their social isolation, but sitting alone in a room and pretending some pixels on your monitor are your friends is not a long-term viable substitute for actually spending time with people, so that mostly doesn't work.
There's nothing unique about Facebook, one could get equally depressed by spending all one's time alone with Fortnight or Slashdot or Instagram or any other software.
It should be obvious that neural nets are great at this sort of thing. That's how our brains record and recall events. They're not registering a stream of pixels or waveforms and zipping them up, they're registering chained concepts.
Video codec A: Han shot first!
Video codec B: Really? That's not how I remember it.
I missed the part where humanity's limited understanding of the universe implies that there must therefore be some omnipotent supernatural being out there who loves us each as individuals while simultaneously allowing all of us to suffer and die.
Also I'm a little confused by how Jesus' selfless love for all humanity is reflected by perpetually butt-hurt Christians' who insult and denigrate people anyone who proposes any other theories about how the universe works.
If you only ever use one computer, it's no big deal -- you can switch that one computer permanently to Dvorak and go about your business.
It's when you need to jump to multiple computers during the day that you run into some trouble -- at least for me, there would always be a few moments of confusion because it was hard to keep track of which computers are set to which layout, and half the time my muscle-memory would be set to the wrong layout and I'd end up typing a few words of gibberish before I realized what the problem was. In the end it I found it easier just to use QWERTY, even if it was a bit slower, since that way I could at sit down at any computer and start working on it right away.
Of course one solution to that would be to set every computer you ever use to Dvorak, but when many of the computers you need to type on are other peoples' computers, that isn't a practical option.
Let's just assume that no amount of machine learning, artificial intelligence or anticipatory pattern matching can handle my typical thought processes (need sex, any espresso left? what time is it? gotta check slashdot, shit my feet hurt, wow need to trim fingernails, was that a mouse?) nor I'm guessing what goes on in the minds of many other developers.
In the same way that not every thought that crosses your mind comes out through your typing fingers (or your mouth, for that matter), there would have to be some way for the system to pick up on which thoughts you intended to output to your outgoing-text-stream, vs which thoughts were part of your internal monologue only.
Is that possible? Well, it's no less impossible than any other kind of thought-reading, at the moment.
... asking for a friend who is out $20,000,000.
Sounds like a certain company with a fruity name. Sadly, large numbers of people are obviously willing to accept that kind of hand holding.
There's nothing sad about it, for people who aren't computer geeks. Their goal is not to experience computers in all their glorious manifold permutations; they are using computers only as a means to an end. Because of that, they don't want "freedom", they want "something that just works without any hassle" so that they can spend their time completing the tasks they want to complete, and not on managing and troubleshooting a computer's settings.
For people who are computer geeks and want direct control over every aspect of their computer's behavior (and are willing to spend the time to learn how to do it), there's Linux.
There is room in the world for both approaches. Lamenting that not everyone wants to explore the minutiae of their operating system is like a clothing-design geek lamenting that most people don't want to sew their own clothing.
I don't care if you have one or not, but the fact you think that the "West Coast" is green makes you ignorant and obnoxious. California is the #2 state in Co2 emissions.
I agree, addressing global warming is hard. Let's just ignore it and throw insults at people instead! That doesn't require any effort at all.
This can't be done. When you connect something to the Internet, the Internet gets to access it.
You can make the connection unidirectional (see below).
Even if something is designed and coded perfectly, and it won't be, new types of attacks will come out that would still make attacking it possible.
I think it can be done; if you want to be super-secure, use full encryption on everything (of course), and on top of that, design the car so that the only time it ever powers on its WiFi hardware is for a few minutes after you've typed in (on the car's touchscreen) a single-use/unique-per-vehicle activation code that you received in the mail from the manufacturer as part of a recall/update procedure. At that point it connects to the manufacturer's server via SSH, downloads and authenticates the new firmware image that corresponds to that activation code, and installs it (with an option to downgrade if anything goes wrong).
Could that still be theoretically hacked? Of course. Would it be? Probably not, because without a passcode to activate the hardware with, there would be no easy way for miscreants to develop or test any hacking technique. The amount of effort it would take them to develop an exploit would be greater than the amount of effort its would take them to "hack" the manual update procedure (e.g. by getting a job at a dealer and hacking customers' cars via the JTAG programmer when they come in for repairs), so they wouldn't bother.
We are now fighting next battle - lets not connect all that garbage to the Internet. Your car doesn't belong on IoT junk pile.
I don't know, if these 68,000 SUVs could have their firmware updated over the Internet, it would save 68,000 people trips their local Mitsubishi dealership.
The trick, as always, is to enable that functionality without simultaneously enabling the vehicles to be hacked by bad actors.
Because as long as we're fantasizing, why not?
Burn coal
[...]
Shitpost on slashdot with retardisms
Surely, pretending that coal is the only way electricity can be made, is also a form of shitposting? Deliberately ignoring the entire other half of the equation (the societal shift away from fossil fuels as an energy source, Trump notwithstanding) in order to "win" an argument on Slashdot definitely qualifies as a retardism (as does using words like "retardism", of which I am hereby twice guilty)
At what point do we finally decide that C just wasn't the best choice for large scale long lived systems?
We can decide that whenever you like; unless you've got a time machine handy, it doesn't really change anything now, because all of those systems are still out there and aren't going anywhere. Even if you aren't working on the C code directly, you're likely going to want to link to a C library, or run on a C-based operating system.
C, like the faint scent of urine on the subway, is there, and there's nothing anybody can do about it.
The only value of a company is money. Absolutely every other "thing of value" is given its value according to it's potential to bring in money or save money.
That's a common way to run a company, but certainly not the only way. Companies can also be formed as part of an effort to accomplish other (non-monetary) goals, with making money seen as merely a means towards reaching those goals. (e.g. SpaceX and colonizing Mars)
Software developers are, by definition, more valuable than the money a company pays to employ them. This is also true of any employee.
Not by definition, no, because no employer has perfect knowledge of the actual value of an employee to their company -- particularly not at the moment they decide to hire that employee. Every new hire is something of a gamble over whether and when the employee will actually yield the quality and quantity of product that the employer predicts they will.
What people want is to live in a nice neighborhood that is also affordable.
To what extent that is an achievable goal, OTOH, is an open question.
What? You're proposing the tyranny of the majority, my friend. The system was set up precisely to avoid what you're saying. :)
Nothing of the sort; in particular, I'm not proposing that the electoral process be changed. I'm merely saying that Trump's occasional moral claim to some sort of "mandate of the people" is invalid given the facts. If you want to reasonably claim a "mandate from the people", you should actually have the support of a majority of the people, not a 39% approval rating and a 60% disapproval rating.
It's all well and good to understand how the American electoral system works, but part of that is also understanding that it does not always represent the will of the American people. If it did, then electoral results would always match result of the nationwide popular vote, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.
The best you can say for it is that it precisely represents "the will of the 50 states", which is not quite the same thing, and honestly not a very useful property to have, in that a state is not a conscious being and therefore doesn't have any "will" to speak of, only a set of algorithmic rules it blindly follows.
So yes, Trump was duly elected under the rules of American elections. That doesn't mean he gets to claim any kind of mandate from the American people, though, because the simple and unarguable fact is that most Americans didn't want him to be elected.
And what evidence is there that this is real?
A reasonable question, and it deserves a reasonable answer, so here it is: Bob Woodward's book comes out on Tuesday, and it contains hundreds of hours of carefully transcribed conversations with dozens of White House aides, all saying roughly the same thing that this op-ed is saying, and worse. Trump, of course, will do his usual "fake news" act and try to turn yet another mountain of evidence against him into a "he said, she said" scenario, but that gambit doesn't work when your opponent has all the audio tapes.
On the other hand, if this is accurate, this IS evidence of the Deep State and if true, staffers in the WH that are more powerful than the President.
Apparently, Trump brought his own Deep State with him? Because all of Trump's staffers were hired by Trump, and he hires only the best people.
Without having an opinion on the bill's contents one way or another, the name is bad.
Including a person's name in its title (yes, even as a backronym, wink-wink-nudge-nudge) is getting too close to trying to pass a Bill of Attainder, which is forbidden by the US Constitution. Even if Sanders is only skirting the edge here, he should know better.
If Sanders wants to make companies more responsible for their employees' well-being, great. But explicitly singling out a particular company is a dumb thing to do.