There is a LOT of serious criticism there. It is enough to notice that his company has not produced anything real and testable since it started in 1991.
The review here also gives the usual crackpot smell (see Numerology and more for example). Equations and results are not derived but rather scotch taped together: http://sjbyrnes.com/cf/grand-u...
So, I think we can safely ignore this. At least until a physics defying battery shows up on the market.
Actually no. Algorithms and mathematics are not patentable, not even in the united states. An idea which uses math is patentable though. So, you can use any algorithm you want in the MPEG-LAs portfolio for anything but video encoding, which is patented.
Insulting your allies and saying dictators are "great guys" just to distract the press? If he's playing stupid as a strategy then it is a very stupid strategy.
1. Creating a general algorithm that can be applied to many different problems - No protection since math is neither patentable nor copyrightable. 2. Apply the algorithm to a specific problem - Patentable. 25 years of protection. 3. Writing a shitty almost off-topic post on slashdot in a thread about the algorithm - Copyright. Life + 70 years!
So, the less important the creative work is to society is, the more protection it gets.
But you can't avoid that in a large organization. Organizations have APIs and abstractions just like code.
Departments are abstractions for "people doing IT/economy/cleaning etc". You can call them and ask them to do stuff without knowing how they do it.
Between the departments there are APIs. Agreed upon processes on how to transfer information. Excel sheets, meetings, databases etc.
Big multi-department projects require some specification of the APIs up front or people can't start working. You need to know your inputs and outputs. If you must change an API later on, you may throw away someone elses work. That is why some kind of up front specification is often necessary. Usually, defects in the interdepartmental interfaces aren't visible until very late when things almost work so whole-company sprints won't help.
A friend of mine who runs a small company once asked what I thought was the most important job of a boss. I said: "Removing obstacles for their underlings". He really didn't like that and started talking about vision, planning, goals and such. I didn't reply and mentally excused him a bit since he's running a really small company and may not have experience with the kind of problems that arise in larger networks of people.
Waterfall does not mean "capture requirements poorly and charge ahead blindly" and it isn't Agile if and only if it works.
It really bothers me that these kind of insights come so late. Obviously, different problems are best solved with different processes. If you're building a pacemaker, you do NOT wait for customer feedback. "So, how was your heart last week? Need any changes to it?... Hello?"
Also, he does not address one of the major limitations of agile: The sprint. Not all problems can be broken down into 1-3 week jobs. I spent months working on a new model, probably not more than a few hundred lines long. Writing the first "version" took 2-3 days. Testing and proving it works as expected for thousands of test cases took months. Some of the tests revealed bugs in other parts of the system which was a nice unintended side effect.
It was at no point "ready" before I could show with confidence that it worked with no unexpected side effects. I really don't see how that could be "sprintified". Agile seem to assume the task is easily dividable and the "atoms" are small and simple.
The best advice I ever read about design was along the lines of "Just do it. Try many methods. The more you think about it in any way, the more likely you are to come up with a solution". I think the same applies here.
There are good practices within TDD, XP, Agile, Waterfall etc and you should think about them and try the ones that MAY fit your project .
I would prefer different access levels (like user vs root) that unlock with different passwords. For example, one password opens the phone with all the regular apps and another opens with regular and sensitive apps like banking. This gives plausible deniability which a two user setup does not. I am much more concerned about some evil citizen stealing than the government. If a thief can't technically crack it, they can always use the wrench" method https://xkcd.com/538/. Plausible deniability would help against that.
I had an LG with something almost like it. The guest mode was accessed by entering a different password. But, it was a guest mode and didn't look and feel like the regular login. LineageOS has protected apps but it is not really "deniable" that some stuff is locked. It would be great if they could implement something like dual passwords.
What if the purpose of the digital ledger is to resolve disputes and not replacing the documents? You would use it to verify all documents that were used in a certain transaction are both unmodified and present. You can't say "X never arrived" because then you can't recreate the hash. From your experience, would such a system be an improvement or just redundant?
I know "blockchain technology" has been discussed for various forms of registries like property ownership but I believe they are mostly interested in a digital ledger and not a full blown blockchain. For property ownership, it helps to know all the documents that were in the original transaction are present and unmodified. I suppose you could also use it to transfer stuff (like you do with coins) and thus prevent people from selling things twice or selling things they don't own. But, when listening to people who work with such registries, just knowing everything is there in the original form would be very welcome.
I can't help you with any more information. The "article" was awfully light. I came here hoping to find more technical details but lacking that, I can at least guess.
The article indicates that they might be interested in the transparency and traceability of a digital ledger. If so, they don't a full blown blockchain with mining and stuff, just a simple digital ledger with one hash per set of documents in a transaction and a head hash. When a package changes hands, the sender and receiver sign the transaction by hashing all the relevant documents and computing a new head hash (which is published to their respective employers and one or more third parties). If there is a later dispute, both parties can verify that no documents have been altered or are missing by recreating the chain. It could be a cheaper and more practical alternative to keeping copies of every single document in triples or quadruples.
Exactly. That's why I always argued against the death penalty for murders but FOR the death penalty on speeding. Speeding is a premeditated crime where the perpetrator has made a cost/benefit analysis weighing the risk of getting caught vs the value of getting home 5 minutes faster. The death penalty would be a very effective deterrent and people would probably stop speeding over night. I bet people would even require cars to have built in automatic speed control and all road signs to be machine readable. In total, it would probably save a lot of lives every year.
So the news is that Amazon might build a "home robot" but nobody knows what it might do. Have Alexa follow you around the house? Great... That's underwhelming to say the least.
What could you possibly do with small floor based robot with no limbs? The only useful thing I can think of is to remove the camera and stick a vacuum cleaner in there. I'm sure no one has thought of that yet...
What so-called "standard definition of sound" are you using? I just checked two separate dictionaries and both of them defined sound in terms of sensing vibrations on the auditory structures of an ear as their first definition of sound (noun).
I was referring to the one used in sentences like "I recorded the weird sound my car makes". It is generally assumed you used a microphone to record vibrations in the air and not electrodes in the brain to record the vibrations there. Also technical measures like sound pressure use non-human-brain based definitions of sound.
Clearly there are wrong answers though. 1 mile is clearly wrong. Equally clearly there is no limit to the number of correct answers, but it depends on methodology -- so first you set a methodology, then you make your measurements according to that methodology. The stricter and more well defined the method, the stricter and more restricted the range of values that will satisfy it.
I believe we are in agreement. The only thing I would add is that a fine grained method would probably have to rely on arbitrary judgement calls. For example, if a kid digs a new 5cm wide canal on the beach, should that be included or ignored with a 1cm resolution? Even with a 5m resolution you will get a similar problem with areas under construction. Probably also dry docks.
I'd argue the length of the coastline is exactly what the surveyors office says it is. It is a matter of definition, not measurement. There is no coastline on the beach, only on maps.
While I'm at it, if a tree falls in the forest, there is a sound. The standard definition of sound does not require a human listener. The sound of one hand clapping? I can clap with one hand. It sounds almost like clapping with two hands.
But, that's the thing. Who really IS in touch with reality?
Have you bought an an ice cream over the last year? You could have bought mosquito nets for poor people living in Malaria ridden countries instead. Do you really value your own sweet tooth more than the lives of others? What about speeding while driving? There's mostly a psychological benefit to you but an increased real risk to anyone around you.
Humans are not in touch with reality (whatever "in touch" would mean). We care much more about local things than distant things. We make decisions based on impulses and apply rationalizations afterwards (but only if asked for it). We all create filter bubbles by having "friends", i.e. people who attribute social status to more or less the same things like you do (money, charity work, veganism, patriotism etc).
I guess it is possible to be more "in touch" but that takes a lot hard work, more than most of us have time for. For example, I imagine Hans Rosling was more "in touch" than most but that was his full time job. Also, I don't know if it had any effect on a personal level. Maybe he both ate ice cream and drove too fast.
Someone already mentioned uMatrix for blocking videos but it is essentially the white list you are asking for. It gives fine grained control of what should be allowed to load at what site.
It is basically a matrix with data types (cookies, css, script, etc) as columns and the source url as rows (hence the name). Any row, column or cell can be allowed or blocked. The grid is then represented as very nice and understandable rules like this (they seem to be parsed from most general rule to least general rule):
Block everything from all sources on all sites * * * block
Allow css and image from the main site (but not any child sites). * 1st-party css allow * 1st-party image allow
On youtube.com, allow all from youtube.com and ytimg.com: youtube.com youtube.com * allow youtube.com ytimg.com * allow
Ah, yes but one of the popular arguments for a simulated universe is that any advanced species will simulate their past out of curiosity. Therefore, there are more simulated "pasts" than real ones and chances are higher we are living in one of the simulated ones than the only real one. If so, the simulated universe must be very much like the real universe. So, if nothing else, this is at least a dent in that argument.
Citation needed! I can't believe this got +5 Insightful.
Where is the evidence supporting your claim? Has the nutritional value of fruits decreased since the 70s? You could blame anything that has changed since 1973. Why not the lack of lead in gasoline or Internet porn?
Before anyone blames it on any hormone like chemical found in plastics/fertilizers/pesticides/whatever, please show that our exposure has at least increased! For many nasty chemicals our exposure peaked in the 70-80s which increased awareness and regulations during later generations. Our exposure has decreased for many nasties, not increased. Lead being the obvious example but probably many other nasties like plastic softeners etc.
I find it very disturbing how the presentation changes when the victim was supposedly "special" and not just anyone. The implication is that we should care more because he was an executive for a well known company. But why? What if I don't like Spotify? Should I care less then? I sure hope not.
I wish the media would try *not* to make headlines when these things happen. It may have more "news value" when someone famous dies but now is not the time to think about scoops or clicks. It isn't more tragic if someone famous dies, just as it isn't less tragic when one of us dies.
it's usually the organization, not its employees, that is to blame
It is incorrect to suggest that only factors related to work are the cause of burnout...
I don't think they are suggesting that. They looked for common factors between companies with higher than average risk of burnout for their employees. They are not suggesting the factors they found are the only relevant factors. At least I hope they don't suggest that because it would be incredibly dumb to do so.
There seem to be evidence that impaired recovery is the cause of burnout. If so, then there is no single factor but rather the total 24h load that is important. For example, I think I remember studies showing a low risk of burnout as long as your sleep isn't affected. Also, unemployed have an increased risk of burnout which can not be explained by high intensity stress during working hours but rather the constant low intensity stress and worry about money, finding a job, the future etc.
It would explain why otherwise unrelated things like work stress, depression and shift work increase the risk of burnout. Stress may make it difficult to unwind after work which can impair sleep and general recovery. Depression may lead to excessive worry which does the same. Shift work may physically keep you awake when your body wants to rest and recover, therefore also leading to increased risk.
I didn't get the thing with nulls either. Maybe it's a Java thing. I vaguely remember such issues with Java since there are so many pointers and object allocations. If you forget just one, there's a null pointer exception waiting to happen. I suppose the lack of explicit pointer syntax might also help / make it worse since you may think about your variables as values and not as pointers.
It doesn't happen in C++ as much since you use heap allocated values more often and perhaps pay more attention to dynamic allocation, when it happens. I have accidentally created null pointers of course but it really isn't a major concern.
in Python, it's even less of an issue even though it should supposedly be a bigger issue since any pointer can point to any value, not just nulls. My guess is that the ease of writing unit tests more than makes up for whatever is lost from not having static type checking. Static type checking can't detect accidental nulls anyway but unit tests can.
Having said that, yes, I do hate nulls and I try to avoid them as often as I can. An empty string or empty list is often a better "empty" value than a null pointer.
Maybe avoiding Java and replacing nulls by empty values is enough to not consider them a menace.
It would still be strange since the memory allocation would depend on the precision the simulated person decides to request. I think you have to go for a full QM explanation to understand it and that probably isn't memory efficient,
A fun though: Something that would definitively prove we lived in a simulation would be if some amounts or numbers conformed to IEEE 754. Measure the weight of 1kg of water and add 1e-16 kg of water 1,000,000 times and then measure again. Then add 1e-10 kg to 1kg of water directly. If the first experiment shows no increase in weight but the second does, we may live in a 32 bit float world. That would be convincing.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't read his stuff myself but googling for more information on Randall Mills and GUTCP reveals some not-so-possitive links:
First of all wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There is a LOT of serious criticism there. It is enough to notice that his company has not produced anything real and testable since it started in 1991.
The review here also gives the usual crackpot smell (see Numerology and more for example). Equations and results are not derived but rather scotch taped together:
http://sjbyrnes.com/cf/grand-u...
So, I think we can safely ignore this. At least until a physics defying battery shows up on the market.
Actually no. Algorithms and mathematics are not patentable, not even in the united states. An idea which uses math is patentable though. So, you can use any algorithm you want in the MPEG-LAs portfolio for anything but video encoding, which is patented.
I haven't seen such a nicely crafted old-school troll post in a long time. Well done!
Insulting your allies and saying dictators are "great guys" just to distract the press? If he's playing stupid as a strategy then it is a very stupid strategy.
Let's see if we can find a pattern here:
1. Creating a general algorithm that can be applied to many different problems - No protection since math is neither patentable nor copyrightable.
2. Apply the algorithm to a specific problem - Patentable. 25 years of protection.
3. Writing a shitty almost off-topic post on slashdot in a thread about the algorithm - Copyright. Life + 70 years!
So, the less important the creative work is to society is, the more protection it gets.
But you can't avoid that in a large organization. Organizations have APIs and abstractions just like code.
Departments are abstractions for "people doing IT/economy/cleaning etc". You can call them and ask them to do stuff without knowing how they do it.
Between the departments there are APIs. Agreed upon processes on how to transfer information. Excel sheets, meetings, databases etc.
Big multi-department projects require some specification of the APIs up front or people can't start working. You need to know your inputs and outputs. If you must change an API later on, you may throw away someone elses work. That is why some kind of up front specification is often necessary. Usually, defects in the interdepartmental interfaces aren't visible until very late when things almost work so whole-company sprints won't help.
A friend of mine who runs a small company once asked what I thought was the most important job of a boss. I said: "Removing obstacles for their underlings". He really didn't like that and started talking about vision, planning, goals and such. I didn't reply and mentally excused him a bit since he's running a really small company and may not have experience with the kind of problems that arise in larger networks of people.
Yes! It is booth Straw Man and No True Scotsman.
Waterfall does not mean "capture requirements poorly and charge ahead blindly" and it isn't Agile if and only if it works.
It really bothers me that these kind of insights come so late. Obviously, different problems are best solved with different processes. If you're building a pacemaker, you do NOT wait for customer feedback. "So, how was your heart last week? Need any changes to it? ... Hello?"
Also, he does not address one of the major limitations of agile: The sprint. Not all problems can be broken down into 1-3 week jobs. I spent months working on a new model, probably not more than a few hundred lines long. Writing the first "version" took 2-3 days. Testing and proving it works as expected for thousands of test cases took months. Some of the tests revealed bugs in other parts of the system which was a nice unintended side effect.
It was at no point "ready" before I could show with confidence that it worked with no unexpected side effects. I really don't see how that could be "sprintified". Agile seem to assume the task is easily dividable and the "atoms" are small and simple.
The best advice I ever read about design was along the lines of "Just do it. Try many methods. The more you think about it in any way, the more likely you are to come up with a solution". I think the same applies here.
There are good practices within TDD, XP, Agile, Waterfall etc and you should think about them and try the ones that MAY fit your project .
I would prefer different access levels (like user vs root) that unlock with different passwords. For example, one password opens the phone with all the regular apps and another opens with regular and sensitive apps like banking. This gives plausible deniability which a two user setup does not. I am much more concerned about some evil citizen stealing than the government. If a thief can't technically crack it, they can always use the wrench" method https://xkcd.com/538/. Plausible deniability would help against that.
I had an LG with something almost like it. The guest mode was accessed by entering a different password. But, it was a guest mode and didn't look and feel like the regular login. LineageOS has protected apps but it is not really "deniable" that some stuff is locked. It would be great if they could implement something like dual passwords.
What if the purpose of the digital ledger is to resolve disputes and not replacing the documents? You would use it to verify all documents that were used in a certain transaction are both unmodified and present. You can't say "X never arrived" because then you can't recreate the hash. From your experience, would such a system be an improvement or just redundant?
I know "blockchain technology" has been discussed for various forms of registries like property ownership but I believe they are mostly interested in a digital ledger and not a full blown blockchain. For property ownership, it helps to know all the documents that were in the original transaction are present and unmodified. I suppose you could also use it to transfer stuff (like you do with coins) and thus prevent people from selling things twice or selling things they don't own. But, when listening to people who work with such registries, just knowing everything is there in the original form would be very welcome.
I can't help you with any more information. The "article" was awfully light. I came here hoping to find more technical details but lacking that, I can at least guess.
The article indicates that they might be interested in the transparency and traceability of a digital ledger. If so, they don't a full blown blockchain with mining and stuff, just a simple digital ledger with one hash per set of documents in a transaction and a head hash. When a package changes hands, the sender and receiver sign the transaction by hashing all the relevant documents and computing a new head hash (which is published to their respective employers and one or more third parties). If there is a later dispute, both parties can verify that no documents have been altered or are missing by recreating the chain. It could be a cheaper and more practical alternative to keeping copies of every single document in triples or quadruples.
Exactly. That's why I always argued against the death penalty for murders but FOR the death penalty on speeding. Speeding is a premeditated crime where the perpetrator has made a cost/benefit analysis weighing the risk of getting caught vs the value of getting home 5 minutes faster. The death penalty would be a very effective deterrent and people would probably stop speeding over night. I bet people would even require cars to have built in automatic speed control and all road signs to be machine readable. In total, it would probably save a lot of lives every year.
So the news is that Amazon might build a "home robot" but nobody knows what it might do. Have Alexa follow you around the house? Great... That's underwhelming to say the least.
What could you possibly do with small floor based robot with no limbs? The only useful thing I can think of is to remove the camera and stick a vacuum cleaner in there. I'm sure no one has thought of that yet...
What so-called "standard definition of sound" are you using? I just checked two separate dictionaries and both of them defined sound in terms of sensing vibrations on the auditory structures of an ear as their first definition of sound (noun).
I was referring to the one used in sentences like "I recorded the weird sound my car makes". It is generally assumed you used a microphone to record vibrations in the air and not electrodes in the brain to record the vibrations there. Also technical measures like sound pressure use non-human-brain based definitions of sound.
Clearly there are wrong answers though. 1 mile is clearly wrong. Equally clearly there is no limit to the number of correct answers, but it depends on methodology -- so first you set a methodology, then you make your measurements according to that methodology. The stricter and more well defined the method, the stricter and more restricted the range of values that will satisfy it.
I believe we are in agreement. The only thing I would add is that a fine grained method would probably have to rely on arbitrary judgement calls. For example, if a kid digs a new 5cm wide canal on the beach, should that be included or ignored with a 1cm resolution? Even with a 5m resolution you will get a similar problem with areas under construction. Probably also dry docks.
Don't forget waves or kids playing on the beach.
I'd argue the length of the coastline is exactly what the surveyors office says it is. It is a matter of definition, not measurement. There is no coastline on the beach, only on maps.
While I'm at it, if a tree falls in the forest, there is a sound. The standard definition of sound does not require a human listener. The sound of one hand clapping? I can clap with one hand. It sounds almost like clapping with two hands.
Fractals are cool. Cooler than coastlines.
But, that's the thing. Who really IS in touch with reality?
Have you bought an an ice cream over the last year? You could have bought mosquito nets for poor people living in Malaria ridden countries instead. Do you really value your own sweet tooth more than the lives of others? What about speeding while driving? There's mostly a psychological benefit to you but an increased real risk to anyone around you.
Humans are not in touch with reality (whatever "in touch" would mean). We care much more about local things than distant things. We make decisions based on impulses and apply rationalizations afterwards (but only if asked for it). We all create filter bubbles by having "friends", i.e. people who attribute social status to more or less the same things like you do (money, charity work, veganism, patriotism etc).
I guess it is possible to be more "in touch" but that takes a lot hard work, more than most of us have time for. For example, I imagine Hans Rosling was more "in touch" than most but that was his full time job. Also, I don't know if it had any effect on a personal level. Maybe he both ate ice cream and drove too fast.
Someone already mentioned uMatrix for blocking videos but it is essentially the white list you are asking for. It gives fine grained control of what should be allowed to load at what site.
It is basically a matrix with data types (cookies, css, script, etc) as columns and the source url as rows (hence the name). Any row, column or cell can be allowed or blocked. The grid is then represented as very nice and understandable rules like this (they seem to be parsed from most general rule to least general rule):
Block everything from all sources on all sites
* * * block
Allow css and image from the main site (but not any child sites).
* 1st-party css allow
* 1st-party image allow
On youtube.com, allow all from youtube.com and ytimg.com:
youtube.com youtube.com * allow
youtube.com ytimg.com * allow
Oh, and it also has built in black lists.
Ah, yes but one of the popular arguments for a simulated universe is that any advanced species will simulate their past out of curiosity. Therefore, there are more simulated "pasts" than real ones and chances are higher we are living in one of the simulated ones than the only real one. If so, the simulated universe must be very much like the real universe. So, if nothing else, this is at least a dent in that argument.
Citation needed! I can't believe this got +5 Insightful.
Where is the evidence supporting your claim? Has the nutritional value of fruits decreased since the 70s? You could blame anything that has changed since 1973. Why not the lack of lead in gasoline or Internet porn?
Before anyone blames it on any hormone like chemical found in plastics/fertilizers/pesticides/whatever, please show that our exposure has at least increased! For many nasty chemicals our exposure peaked in the 70-80s which increased awareness and regulations during later generations. Our exposure has decreased for many nasties, not increased. Lead being the obvious example but probably many other nasties like plastic softeners etc.
If you are an engineer, do not go on vacation in Oregon. If you truly must, NEVER engage in small talk.
- So, what do you do for a living?
- I'm an engineer.
- Ha! Gotcha!
I find it very disturbing how the presentation changes when the victim was supposedly "special" and not just anyone. The implication is that we should care more because he was an executive for a well known company. But why? What if I don't like Spotify? Should I care less then? I sure hope not.
I wish the media would try *not* to make headlines when these things happen. It may have more "news value" when someone famous dies but now is not the time to think about scoops or clicks. It isn't more tragic if someone famous dies, just as it isn't less tragic when one of us dies.
it's usually the organization, not its employees, that is to blame
It is incorrect to suggest that only factors related to work are the cause of burnout...
I don't think they are suggesting that. They looked for common factors between companies with higher than average risk of burnout for their employees. They are not suggesting the factors they found are the only relevant factors. At least I hope they don't suggest that because it would be incredibly dumb to do so.
There seem to be evidence that impaired recovery is the cause of burnout. If so, then there is no single factor but rather the total 24h load that is important. For example, I think I remember studies showing a low risk of burnout as long as your sleep isn't affected. Also, unemployed have an increased risk of burnout which can not be explained by high intensity stress during working hours but rather the constant low intensity stress and worry about money, finding a job, the future etc.
It would explain why otherwise unrelated things like work stress, depression and shift work increase the risk of burnout. Stress may make it difficult to unwind after work which can impair sleep and general recovery. Depression may lead to excessive worry which does the same. Shift work may physically keep you awake when your body wants to rest and recover, therefore also leading to increased risk.
I didn't get the thing with nulls either. Maybe it's a Java thing. I vaguely remember such issues with Java since there are so many pointers and object allocations. If you forget just one, there's a null pointer exception waiting to happen. I suppose the lack of explicit pointer syntax might also help / make it worse since you may think about your variables as values and not as pointers.
It doesn't happen in C++ as much since you use heap allocated values more often and perhaps pay more attention to dynamic allocation, when it happens. I have accidentally created null pointers of course but it really isn't a major concern.
in Python, it's even less of an issue even though it should supposedly be a bigger issue since any pointer can point to any value, not just nulls. My guess is that the ease of writing unit tests more than makes up for whatever is lost from not having static type checking. Static type checking can't detect accidental nulls anyway but unit tests can.
Having said that, yes, I do hate nulls and I try to avoid them as often as I can. An empty string or empty list is often a better "empty" value than a null pointer.
Maybe avoiding Java and replacing nulls by empty values is enough to not consider them a menace.
Wow! Somebody better call the unicode people. They have a LOT of work ahead of them!
It would still be strange since the memory allocation would depend on the precision the simulated person decides to request. I think you have to go for a full QM explanation to understand it and that probably isn't memory efficient,
A fun though: Something that would definitively prove we lived in a simulation would be if some amounts or numbers conformed to IEEE 754. Measure the weight of 1kg of water and add 1e-16 kg of water 1,000,000 times and then measure again. Then add 1e-10 kg to 1kg of water directly. If the first experiment shows no increase in weight but the second does, we may live in a 32 bit float world. That would be convincing.