See Turns Out Algorithms Are Racist. And don't forget that time Twitter taught Microsoft’s AI chatbot to be a racist asshole in less than a day. If we can do the opposite and make sure our algorithms aren't racist unintentionally and that our machine learning assistants don't become racist, you'll have won half the battle of making them ethical. This is going to be a hard problem to solve. It's not enough for programmers to be ethical they need to have outside observers helping them, especially people not like them.
I was in San Jose a few months ago and I knew about the homeless problem in Silicon Valley and I made it a point to look for the homeless camps. I saw them under highway bridges and along the sides of the roads. A friend of my told me there's a YouTube channel devoted on how to live on the streets in cars, vans, and RVs. These people were already suffering even though many have jobs. No doubt the horrible air quality that hit the city from the fires up north had a huge negative impact on their health. There is plenty of space to build dense cheap housing in the area, but the political will is not there or is being blocked for profit. I think the tv series "Silicon Valley" nailed it's hypocrisy with all the tech bro startups saying the wanted to "make the world a better place." Yeah, well making the world a better place starts at home.
You still need a little a/c at night during monsoon season. Given our overuse of water and global warming, Palo Verde may not have enough water to keep it cooled and running. It already uses treated wastewater from several communities upstream. Will it be available in 10, 20 or even 30 years?
Re: growing corn and cotton. I agree it is bonkers. The Southwest has experienced natural megadroughts in the past, but it is our overuse and poor water management that is the problem. Global warming is only going to exacerbate it. Last year I read The Water Knife, an interesting near future thriller all about water or lack thereof and the fights over it. Hopefully, it will remain a what if scenario.
Energy is going to become more expensive no matter what mix of energy we use. Might as well install as much solar as possible. Arizona is the sunniest state in the Union and installing solar should be a no brainer. We still need a way to store that energy. I hope molten salt batteries, or train car kinetic energy storage or something else will solve that problem.Vote Yes 127
Arizona has the only nuclear power plant far from a major body of water. It already uses reclaimed water from suburbs of Phoenix upstream. What happens when that water is no longer available as the Southwest dries out from climate change? We may very well enter another megadrought forcing most people to leave Arizona in a decade or two. Arizona needs to switch to renewables, increase energy efficiency of buildings (wrap them in thick walls of adobe?), and conserve water, but if the rest of the world doesn't do its part, Arizona is screwed. So Vote Yes on 127 (if you live in the state).
I recently listened to a decent reading of your story "The Sultan of the Clouds" over at StarShipSofa. I enjoyed it. It does have a pulp era feel to it. And for those of you who want to give it a listen, they broke it up into three parts and is only a segment in each episode:
"The Sultan of the Clouds" Part 1 (23:50),
Part 2 (10:00), Part 3 (1:17:10).
Spoiler question below . . . . . . . . . .
The only question I have concerning the story is what would this diamond structure the villain wants to build look like? The description seemed a little vague (though maybe intentionally so). Would they be super strong tall platforms made out of a lattice of diamond struts? Would it cover all of Venus' surface or just a good portion of it?
Of course the way the villain in the story could have dealt with all that excess oxygen is to add some hydrogen scooped from the atmosphere of a gas giant.
The official IAU definition sucks, but it makes more sense to think of Pluto as part of a class of objects of which it is the largest. Eris being the second. These icy objects are very different than the inner planets (celestial objects are really a spectrum and hard definitions can be difficult (see brown dwarf, not a star, not really a planet). But what matters is what astronomers and planetary scientists think is conceptually useful. Even when Pluto was discovered it wasn't clear it should be called a planet. Ceres was considered to be a planet for a lot longer than Pluto was. Though I was excited when one of the proposed IAU definitions alongside what became the official definition would have classified it as a planet.
Blut Pluto is a world in it's own right now that we've visited it. It's a place. So is Ceres, Vesta, even P/67 Churyumov–Gerasimenko is a world now that we've been there. They are no longer points of light or blurry objects in our telescopes. I use world as a poetic term not a scientific one. I know this comment is short on details arguing against considering Pluto a planet but considering it a world.
The other reason I don't want Pluto to be re-classified as a planet is because people would lose interest in astronomy and forget about. It keeps people engaged in the debate. However, if you want to call it a planet, fine. I'll call it a world.
You are welcome. If I recall correctly I read that the city of Tucson recently switched to LED street lighting and not only did they use the correct type the reduced their output around 10%. Tucson has some nearby observatories so they try to keep their skies darker than comparable cities its size. I remember visiting Flagstaff a few years ago and they touted themselves as a Dark Skies approved town, so they are really dark at night. Anyway, the IDA is all about smart lighting.
Although LEDs reduce carbon dioxide emissions, if you don't use the right ones, they could make dark skies worse. Blue light is very disruptive to humans and animals. The International Dark Sky Association has the details on how to use dimmer lights and LEDs and nothing above 3000K. Also, don't illuminate where you don't need to: http://darksky.org/lighting/lighting-basics/.
The thing is cards used to sell below MSRP and it took a while to find one at MSRP. I ended up with a GTX 1050, but I really wanted a GTX 1050 Ti and couldn't find one for MSRP. I'm happy with the card I ended up with. It does what I need to do.
Well, more reasonable prices anyway. I built my first PC from scratch last year, rather assembled. When I shopped for graphics cards I could not find what I wanted at a decent price thanks to the cryptocurrency miners. I ended up after much searching online buying a decent next lower tier graphics card at a good price. The card wasn't what I wanted but good enough.
At the rate the miners were going they were actually putting out as much carbon dioxide as a small country, not good. Let's hope for our sakes that crypto currencies won't created another bubble for our wallet's sake and our environment's.
Uber is a predatory company. They took a great idea and turned it to shit. Uber gets no sympathy from me. Erdogan is far worse. He created a fake coup and led a countercoup to cement power, arresting thousands, firing thousands. He is a despot.
Yes, the IAU definition is flawed, but when you look at the other characteristics of Pluto as a Trans-Neptunian Object it makes more sense. Now what has changed that since we have visited Pluto it has become a place, a world in its own right. It is no longer a faint point of light. Same goes for every other object we've visited. They have become places. Calling something a world is more metaphorical than scientific, but it satisfies that desire to elevate its status.
Slashdot Mirror
You wouldn't train them without content from humans. I said it was a hard problem.
See Turns Out Algorithms Are Racist. And don't forget that time Twitter taught Microsoft’s AI chatbot to be a racist asshole in less than a day. If we can do the opposite and make sure our algorithms aren't racist unintentionally and that our machine learning assistants don't become racist, you'll have won half the battle of making them ethical. This is going to be a hard problem to solve. It's not enough for programmers to be ethical they need to have outside observers helping them, especially people not like them.
I was in San Jose a few months ago and I knew about the homeless problem in Silicon Valley and I made it a point to look for the homeless camps. I saw them under highway bridges and along the sides of the roads. A friend of my told me there's a YouTube channel devoted on how to live on the streets in cars, vans, and RVs. These people were already suffering even though many have jobs. No doubt the horrible air quality that hit the city from the fires up north had a huge negative impact on their health. There is plenty of space to build dense cheap housing in the area, but the political will is not there or is being blocked for profit. I think the tv series "Silicon Valley" nailed it's hypocrisy with all the tech bro startups saying the wanted to "make the world a better place." Yeah, well making the world a better place starts at home.
You still need a little a/c at night during monsoon season. Given our overuse of water and global warming, Palo Verde may not have enough water to keep it cooled and running. It already uses treated wastewater from several communities upstream. Will it be available in 10, 20 or even 30 years?
Re: growing corn and cotton. I agree it is bonkers. The Southwest has experienced natural megadroughts in the past, but it is our overuse and poor water management that is the problem. Global warming is only going to exacerbate it. Last year I read The Water Knife , an interesting near future thriller all about water or lack thereof and the fights over it. Hopefully, it will remain a what if scenario.
Energy is going to become more expensive no matter what mix of energy we use. Might as well install as much solar as possible. Arizona is the sunniest state in the Union and installing solar should be a no brainer. We still need a way to store that energy. I hope molten salt batteries, or train car kinetic energy storage or something else will solve that problem. Vote Yes 127
Arizona has the only nuclear power plant far from a major body of water. It already uses reclaimed water from suburbs of Phoenix upstream. What happens when that water is no longer available as the Southwest dries out from climate change? We may very well enter another megadrought forcing most people to leave Arizona in a decade or two. Arizona needs to switch to renewables, increase energy efficiency of buildings (wrap them in thick walls of adobe?), and conserve water, but if the rest of the world doesn't do its part, Arizona is screwed. So Vote Yes on 127 (if you live in the state).
I recently listened to a decent reading of your story "The Sultan of the Clouds" over at StarShipSofa. I enjoyed it. It does have a pulp era feel to it. And for those of you who want to give it a listen, they broke it up into three parts and is only a segment in each episode: "The Sultan of the Clouds" Part 1 (23:50), Part 2 (10:00), Part 3 (1:17:10).
Spoiler question below
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The only question I have concerning the story is what would this diamond structure the villain wants to build look like? The description seemed a little vague (though maybe intentionally so). Would they be super strong tall platforms made out of a lattice of diamond struts? Would it cover all of Venus' surface or just a good portion of it?
Of course the way the villain in the story could have dealt with all that excess oxygen is to add some hydrogen scooped from the atmosphere of a gas giant.
is out. What then are we going to eat when we run out of food?
Oh, I know. Soylent Green.
I don't know if he's concern trolling or if he has a point. I'm too lazy to find out, so I'm going to use this an excuse to mention another idea Modern Monetary Theory. Planet Money did a recent episode on it as a good primer. It may not amount to much but MMT sounds better than UBI. Of course they both point to a post scarcity society that we are heading to which in David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs it is an undercurrent of his thesis.
fucked up.
He is loosing it.
As in loosing his bowels?
Yeah, he should've taken the deal.
It's not them. It's the job, the bullshit job. David Graeber has expanded the essay into a book and it is well worth reading. Perhaps at your bullshit job.
The official IAU definition sucks, but it makes more sense to think of Pluto as part of a class of objects of which it is the largest. Eris being the second. These icy objects are very different than the inner planets (celestial objects are really a spectrum and hard definitions can be difficult (see brown dwarf, not a star, not really a planet). But what matters is what astronomers and planetary scientists think is conceptually useful. Even when Pluto was discovered it wasn't clear it should be called a planet. Ceres was considered to be a planet for a lot longer than Pluto was. Though I was excited when one of the proposed IAU definitions alongside what became the official definition would have classified it as a planet.
Blut Pluto is a world in it's own right now that we've visited it. It's a place. So is Ceres, Vesta, even P/67 Churyumov–Gerasimenko is a world now that we've been there. They are no longer points of light or blurry objects in our telescopes. I use world as a poetic term not a scientific one. I know this comment is short on details arguing against considering Pluto a planet but considering it a world.
The other reason I don't want Pluto to be re-classified as a planet is because people would lose interest in astronomy and forget about. It keeps people engaged in the debate. However, if you want to call it a planet, fine. I'll call it a world.
a cubicle.
@Ranger, 3000K and LED does not help,
@encad should let the IDA know. It was their recommendation not mine.
You are welcome. If I recall correctly I read that the city of Tucson recently switched to LED street lighting and not only did they use the correct type the reduced their output around 10%. Tucson has some nearby observatories so they try to keep their skies darker than comparable cities its size. I remember visiting Flagstaff a few years ago and they touted themselves as a Dark Skies approved town, so they are really dark at night. Anyway, the IDA is all about smart lighting.
Although LEDs reduce carbon dioxide emissions, if you don't use the right ones, they could make dark skies worse. Blue light is very disruptive to humans and animals. The International Dark Sky Association has the details on how to use dimmer lights and LEDs and nothing above 3000K. Also, don't illuminate where you don't need to: http://darksky.org/lighting/lighting-basics/.
The thing is cards used to sell below MSRP and it took a while to find one at MSRP. I ended up with a GTX 1050, but I really wanted a GTX 1050 Ti and couldn't find one for MSRP. I'm happy with the card I ended up with. It does what I need to do.
Well, more reasonable prices anyway. I built my first PC from scratch last year, rather assembled. When I shopped for graphics cards I could not find what I wanted at a decent price thanks to the cryptocurrency miners. I ended up after much searching online buying a decent next lower tier graphics card at a good price. The card wasn't what I wanted but good enough.
At the rate the miners were going they were actually putting out as much carbon dioxide as a small country, not good. Let's hope for our sakes that crypto currencies won't created another bubble for our wallet's sake and our environment's.
Uber is a predatory company. They took a great idea and turned it to shit. Uber gets no sympathy from me. Erdogan is far worse. He created a fake coup and led a countercoup to cement power, arresting thousands, firing thousands. He is a despot.
Yes, the IAU definition is flawed, but when you look at the other characteristics of Pluto as a Trans-Neptunian Object it makes more sense. Now what has changed that since we have visited Pluto it has become a place, a world in its own right. It is no longer a faint point of light. Same goes for every other object we've visited. They have become places. Calling something a world is more metaphorical than scientific, but it satisfies that desire to elevate its status.
Although pretty much anyone who's read much about the Rift Valley knows that Africa is splitting there.
I'm dri
Dad Describes What Happens When Roomba Meets Dog Poop.
I suppose it can do both though.