We need to support ~7 billion people at the level of modern convenience and infrastructure that we would not endure to lose. Anything else is unethical.
CONFESSIONS OF A SLASHDOT ENERGY AND LFTR FANBOI Updated for 2016! All original unless noted! Browse! Engage! Plagiarize!
Every time I catch sight of a discarded fan spinning in the junkyard I think about all that wasted electricity and how it could eventually power the Whole World, if only for a split second. I feel the same way about these huge outlays of startup capital and bizarre valuations.
3) [Naively] thinking that the small residue of radiation resulting from any kind of dirty-bomb dispersal would result in more fear than anger.
Imagine a world without irrational fear of radioactivity, where the word 'nuclear' would not ring a bell that makes the press salivate with anticipation. I'm afraid I'll have to toss in mdsolar too since 'e posts more nuke fud then solar crud these days. TEPCO has done a fine job gathering water and filtering worse contaminants to leave Tritium, for which only dilution is possible. Unit #4 fuel transfer is complete. The melted fuel in the reactors is stable, contained and cooled (by engineering foresight, not blind luck) awaiting an expensive but not impossible cleanup. Fukushima is an industrial disaster sure, but in terms of human life the evacuation was more costly. Compare it to the Bhopal body count or even Love Canal with its barbed wire fence and dioxins sleeping under a plastic liner... for some real examples of human and environmental fallout.
When you get down to it all radioactive materials are just undesired contaminants. In fact, they're the finest contaminants known to mankind because we can detect and measure their presence down past background levels. No asbestos lurking silently in a school somewhere, no lead paint in the nursery. As easy as spotting fireflies in the dark. Now there are two kinds of people in this world, those for whom spotting those fireflies is a reason to run in little circles crying "I told you so!" and that's it --- they have no other plan. Then there's folks like TEPCO and the rest of the nuclear power industry who see these as challenges of engineering to overcome. Fukushima has even resulted in a generation of new patents for processes to separate and decontaminate, something in which the rest of the world hadn't placed sufficient priority. Which horse would you rather back?
It really costs you big time to fear something. Especially when it's more productive to get mad as hell and find better ways to clean up so you can devote more effort into something productive --- appropriate responses such as revenge.
2) [Naively] thinking that someone being threatened with "help us [or] we'll kill your family" would not be able to figure out that he and his family will be dead anyway.
This is a tough one. Who's going to write off their family, especially if they have been kidnapped?
The most irresponsible and stupidly-contrived security apparatus is that which surrounds pathogen or so-called 'biological weapons' research. You're dealing with things that are not only accessible, they are undetectable at the gate and can be smuggled out on the head of a pin. The lone researcher in such a facility is worse than screwed... they're literally under a death sentence waiting to happen. At any time they may be coerced into taking something out of that facility with practically-100% chance of success and they know it. Even the morons who kidnap their families would know it.
Ironically --- the only conceivable way for stored pathogens to become 'safely' detectable at the gate might be to deliberately contaminate all water used in the lab with tiny but detectable amounts of radioactive Tritium.
But the world press is not talking about bio-labs right now, they're in total idiot radiation mode. They are trying to convince you that the radiation monitors at the gates (and garbage chutes, and sewers) of these facilities do not exist, or are ineffective or can be easily MacGyver'd. These may be true to some degree... but what is the likelihood of that researcher smuggling out anything approaching a Curie? Ra
Who, exactly, is saying this? You are. Why is this +4 Insightful?Heaven knows. It's some idiocy made up as a laughable strawman argument---Hey, don't talk about yourself that way.
The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar--- Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are. There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep, Or the great grey level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.
Here in the womb of the world---here on the tie-ribs of earth Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat--- Warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth--- For a Power troubles the Still that has neither voice nor feet.
They have wakened the timeless Things; they have killed their father Time Joining hands in the gloom, a league from the last of the sun. Hush! Men talk to-day o'er the waste of the ultimate slime, And a new Word runs between: whispering, 'Let us be one!'
~Runyard Kipling, 'Deep Sea Cables'
This artistic interlude brought to you by Interwoven Socks. We now rejoin your jolly Slashdot discussion.
Using these guidelines, we can safely avoid any kind of worthwhile discussion and ensure that the weight of your opinion is entirely based on how quickly you can victimize yourself!
Well, fuck me! <<-- maximum points, triple-word score
It's fascinating that the omniscient "science" can't link one or two events to global warming directly But MANY! Why that's PROOF! So 0 + 0 + 0 = 1...
It's called Fraction of Attributable Risk (FAR). Or in layman's terms, FARfetched analysis. It's a type of goo you use to attach a little bit of something to something else, when no one in their right mind could accept anything like a direct causation. Using FAR analysis, computer models and a specially constructed dart board... from a barely emerging trend that is lost in the noise of the instruments which measure it and variance among many data sources and reconstructed proxies... one can make anything that is awful seem slightly more awful by sticking a guilt-hook onto it.
FAR guilt-hooks are like those wall-safe picture hooks you get at the dollar store. They're designed to hold just enough weight for long enough that you misplace the receipt, or push a civil lawsuit through court, or start an Internet meme, or get someone elected. FAR are small numbers but they are useful when leveraged into a large population of thousands, millions and billions of people --- and/or large sums of money --- to
1. Create a integer 'body count' of pretend victims (the fractional person is trimmed off slowly with a bloody knife) 2. Build an 'actionable' money settlement in civil court that (regardless of award) puts culpability on the record. 3. Trick victims of natural disasters into thinking that someone must pay (then) OK, someone has paid. 4. Provide endless amounts of useless babble to drown out urgent pleas to develop a unified planetary asteroid defense. 5. Kaboom. One planet was all you got.
One can see the evolution of statistical data munging in treatment of the twister in North America, Example 1 Example 2 Example 3
We should go farther than that. We should develop an interest in every real name in DARPA who signed off on this idea, earmarked funds for the project and publicly SHAME and SHUN them.
[from TA] agency will provide $40,000 in funding to complete a feasibility study [...] will each receive an additional $70,000 to fashion a prototype
I sense an actual human fetish behind all this no different from foot licking. Someone who considers themselves a Librarian of sorts, gets their endorphin rush jollies from collecting and cataloging certain things, in this case, things that can harm the greatest number of people with the most 'reasonable' and 'accessible' items. I imagine the database for this Project once concluded, will be printed out and bound lovingly into a thick Book, which is to be lifted gently to the face so the nose can inhale its paper and ink freshyness, then as the Book is rubbed up and down the body the Project Organizer experiences shivering waves of pleasure.
And they know that nothing on the Internet works unless they appear to dangle a carrot, in this case some vague mention of cash. Every man has his price they say, and all you out there with clever ideas on how to harm people should consider whether the money and public notoriety will feel 'right' even if they let you keep some of the money. You may also be betrayed, the money may be doled out piecemeal for specific itemized expenses as you are called to their retreat behind closed doors --- your little mini-me Manhattan Project --- where you build Your Clever Bad Thing, leave it in their hands, and then return home with a curious sense of emptiness and anxiety in your heart.
Don't feed their fetish.
DARPA is trying to get your clicky-website Oh-Im-So-Clever pat-me-on-the-head-pleez help to manufacture --- out of thin air --- a resource of TOXIC IDEAS just as foul, useless and dangerous as the radioactive and chemical sludge that is left over from the wanton days of atomic bomb manufacture. At best it will be forgotten. At worst, some best picks will make their way to the next edition of the CIA assassin and terrorist handbook, distributed only to friendly regimes and Approved Freedom Fighters(tm).
One of the most unexpectedly eloquent tirades on the subject of prostituting one's own cleverness Why shouldn't you [work for the NSA]? from Good Will Hunting.
Leslie Corrice's Hiroshima Syndrome is the best all-round source. Corrice's site is an amazing work, he has collected into one place facts as they became known, and news coverage of the events. He is particularly attuned to distortions, exaggerations and certain scenarios that have been delivered to the press chosen for their dramatic description despite a laughably low probably. And unlike just about everyone else, he strives to segregate his news reporting from his own commentary.
Some no-hype and anti-hype information sources compiled by The Actinide Age,
Nelson refers to traditional RF communications, which can be vulnerable to interception and jamming as they rely on an extremely crowded part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
As opposed to single-frequency pulsed laser system whose receivers can be jammed or overwhelmed by attack-emitter arrays sited on the ground, mounted on enemy fighters or on military satellites, made from tiny, energy-efficient off-the-shelf components. It's a cat and mouse game but the mouse is just one small step from becoming bigger than the cat. Jamming light systems is easy and energy-cheap. Jamming radio, especially if you're up against something that is designed to hop across a wide range of frequency, is energy-expensive and component-hard. What's beyond my scope is whether frequency hopping laser systems which are as happy as a pig dipped in shit when they're broadcast through stable optical fiber, could handle and reject spurious and malevolent light sources across the medium of atmosphere.
If it allows airline passengers to do Internet and phones For Entertainment Purposes Only when there is no war on, sure. But for mission-critical uses you'd have to be able to fall back to RF anyway so if your optical pipe buggers up you're left with a sipping straw.
Dear Lord as I lay me down to sleep, save me from foul and bizarre dreams of biometric security start-ups which rally round uniquely identifiable bits of juicy mortal flesh and build beepin-boopin-boxes that infer the shape of, not actually measure private bits, then spam the world with centrally stored databases of low resolution multi-zone hash gibberish that are to be checked (but statistically partially ignored, how much is a snake oil 'trade secret') with mass produced devices that can and will be reverse-engineered or placed into laboratory jigs to discover the degree of fuzziness that makes the algorithm practical and permits gaming the devices with 3D printed prostheses than need not even directly resemble the original fleshy bit.
Practical spoof and side channel attack not withstanding... they may as well parametrize the flaccid penis or clitoris and deny access to people with randy-pants. A flashing red 'randy-pants' light and rotating beacon would be a good portal accessory. Anyone who has suffered from an excruciating ear infection knows that ear cavities also suffer from un-fun randy-pants.
Not even Dr. Phibes could envision the gruesome creep-show biometrics has become today, where systems are designed and deployed widely without that "detect living human attached to severed finger" optional accessory. Hey, we're all low bidders here, you're looking for the room next door. But Phibes would certainly rise to the occasion, supplying a thumping breathing briefcase of proto-human fleshy bits in bright neon colors.
First finders are actually the reptilian creatures with zip-on human skin who infiltrate and accompany human treasure hunting parties. When a discovery is made they unzip the skin and expose their true form, diverting the humans from their quest by eating out the insides then donning their skins to claim and salvage the loot. International law is much like international finance where the physical imbibing of flesh merges identity sufficiently to prove their claims in front of a judge if need be. Though it is becoming easier to find a judge who has a zipper.
So take care of yourself out there and watch for zippers. Some have also begun to use Velcro.
Why is the NASA authorization bill the "rest of the story"?
Did you actually decode it or infer by the title?
I created this RGB bitmap to illustrate this Slashdot story in an attempt to see if I could create my own Nam-Shub virus that compels the human race to get out to explore and colonize the heavens, and rally technology in defense of the Earth. Try again --- put just the image up on the screen at maximum zoom and gaze into it calmly. If you do it right, you'll begin to see future things and hear voices. I'm one of dem 'space nutters' some of those high tech low ambition Earth-huggers on Slashdot rile on about.
No it isn't, it's editorialising. And it's inappropriate.
No it isn't, it's a clarification. Wording a bit
"(Note to readers: That last bit is tongue in anonymous cheek.)" The phrase 'tongue in cheek' is an idiom meaning in (sarcastic or ironic) jest that risks being misunderstood if it is broken up. Could also have been worded, "(Note to readers: That last bit is anonymous' tongue-in-cheek.)"
The real problem is that anonymous wrote a summary as a series of factual sentences --- but then added a sarcastic comment at the end in the same style, so there is no clear cue that it is a sarcastic comment. I figured it out by what was said and empathizing with the writer, but editors strive for clarity, even if they feel the need to interrupt your flow by adding a comment of their own. Try to make the editor's job easier. Try this, anonymous,
"[...] uploaded to GitHub by a Turkish security researcher. So... obviously, the conclusion is that GitHub is to blame [...]"
You have two tone-changers that set the sarcasm aside, even bring attention to it. "So..." is a pause-for-irony that cues readers that they are now listening to the author's voice, and italics underscore the tone change. You can also add ", right?" to make sarcasm crystal clear. So... now that fucktard blowhard Hocus is giving style advice, right?
what to you think will generate more traffic? being a part of the technology community, or garbage that makes people angry?
What if we're talking about discussion, not website traffic? Isn't that a community? And what if technology itself contains a lot of garbage that makes people angry?
Like dumbfuck LED indicators on modern tech devices that are supposed to indicate network and disc access, but blink late, on simple blink-on-blink-off timers, extended by capacitors until tiny blips disappear, on by default to add useless 'glow' to your room and dim (slowly) to indicate activity (fuck that shit). Or completely software driven so the indication is late or bogus. Like my AT&T Uverse modem which is the stupidest modem in the world with indicators as useless as CSS 'Loading...' animation on web pages, noise and fury signifying nothing. The modem can completely lock up while the front panel still shows the useless thumb-sucking blinky-state the software left it in. Like no one wants to lay down a single PCB trace from controller chip to LED anymore, it's too... fucking... difficult.
That's garbage. And Slashdot is the place to discuss it.
2. The paper generates a backlash among those who are fed up with social issues (such as feminism) intruding into the sciences; also those who strive for pure social discourse on gender issues unsoiled by what they see as a gateway to a name-calling tabloid fixation on some group. It generates a frontlash among those who think it sounds cool, and 'like' it on Facebook. No one else bats an eyelash.
3. It is suggested that it is in fact complete gibberish. Everyone is embarrassed as they gaze back in horror at the tomes of intricately crafted backlash they have written about it. They respond with indignation towards the process that permitted it to be published.
4. It is suggested that the paper seems like gibberish to the un-initiate but is actually a philosophical 'Chautauqua' of stream-of-consciousness ideas, a process that was described in Robert M. Pirsig's 1974 work Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Those who accepted that it was gibberish are embarrassed anew (after looking up Pirsig) but now, in horror, they realize their vengeance on the publisher merely exposed their ignorance of an accepted art form.
5. It is suggested that the paper is merely before its time. Someone suggests that it is a seminal work Everyone who is ready to let the whole affair go away, and others who (merely) cannot find anything else like it, just agree.
6. A new wave of readers encounters the paper after seeing this broadly stated but vague praise, and when they research back to the initial reactions they become suspicious, as it looks like an attempt to deliberately suppress the paper. The claim this, and in order to refute any such allegations, the publisher cleverly avoids controversy by simply 'calling for additional papers' on the topic. They expect that this will reveal them as unbiased and it pays off... and everyone thinks this is finally the end.
7. Unexpectedly --- other papers are submitted. Some that are obviously mere re-arrangements of words in the first paper, some are on completely different topics but written in the same dreamy style. The publisher has indemnified itself from a position of judgement so they all make it. Oddly enough a group has formed that studies and discusses each in turn, a liberal arts college offers a 'workshop' on the collective works.
8. But now everyone who ever held a firm opinion of the original paper, in light of all this, is starting to doubt their own mind.
9. It is suggested that certain kinds of scented candles assist in the appreciation and understanding of these works. A stream-of-consciousness rationale for this is given, and since the style of the suggestion is so similar to that of the original paper, it is taken as a natural extension of the process. Soon chants and other (comfortably traditional therefore non-threatening) rituals are meshed as well. Rolling Stone presents it as a 'movement'.
Millions of people are now gathering around the world in groups to sit nude in large circles, chanting each syllable of the works and improvising new ones while making elaborate hand gestures.
Yeah, I know right? Like I told this math idiot the other day, probability theory is BS! You expect me to believe you can tell me the average of a million rolls of a die when you can't even predict what number will come up on the next 3 rolls? Riiiiiiiiiiiight!
Mother Nature uses a loaded die for climate. I do not think we have really figured out how it's rigged yet. But the people who think they do have it figured out are making Chicken Little asses of themselves, throwing their weight around and slapping their hands all over Science making chaos, ripples and rudeness where there had once been a calm pool of open peer review, emerging theories and mutual respect. A process which valued 'attempts to falsify' and replication as much as citation and grant-seeding.
I long for the days of Nostradamus and Crystal worship. You could spot those people a mile away and keep clear.
Large number factorization is one of integral-nature's greatest frontiers. I find it amazing that within my lifetime a curiosity of mathematics of interest to theorists and puzzle-makers has become the keystone of privacy in the world. For me there was a single 'Eureka' moment. Along with many others I caught a glimpse of today's world back in August 1977 thanks to a column by Martin Gardener in Scientific American: "A new kind of cipher that would take millions of years to break" Read it!. You can sense the author's excitement. I remember carrying this issue around with me for days, trying to wrap my head around the concept... to me these few pages are among the greatest that ever appeared in a magazine. I'd just devoured David Khan's The Codebreakers which describes centuries of cat-n-mouse games with substitution, transposition and polymorphic ciphers augmented in the end by devilishly simple mechanical apparatus that became devilishly complicated as it scaled... and on the other end the mathematical attacks of cryptanalysis (greetz to Friedman and Sinkov) that can de-construct these, often unseen. It was a brilliant game and had seemed to reach its end. RSA was like a bolt of lightning from clear sky. We knew then that factoring was hard. This had to be the way out.
Back then sieving seemed the only practical attack, and anyone could see how progress in sieving degrades so quickly as to represent a (practically) solid barrier. Then a number of novel ideas for parallelizing the attack were proposed, even such flights of fancy as a 'pond' of biological computers, like bacteria, working on a single problem. But even such approaches run into bottlenecks, as the amount of inter-thread communication necessary to manage the attack turns a time problem into an inter-node bandwidth problem.
Then another bolt of lightning! Shor's algorithm turns a classic dilemma into yet another (quantum) engineering challenge in much the same way that Turing realized enigma would fall in reasonable time, if he could only get the necessary part together and make them work. Since we're down to atoms this may even be the last frontier. Here's hoping that some where along the way to solving the problem, that day when the fence of RSA falls, we will have evolved into a more considerate species.
Because, as you all know deep down, it is impolite to read others' mail. Imagine a world in which we could tear open any digital envelope, yet fail to do so from simple human restraint. What a world that could be.
a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino County's infrastructure and poses a continuing threat to the citizens of San Bernardino County'.
San Bernardino D.A. admitted he made the whole thing up.
making him a lycanthropic doormat carbon-based pathological lying golem that endangers San Bernardino County's infrastructure and poses a continuing threat to the citizens of San Bernardino County.
Even the most basic roads can have unexpected obstacles. Roads are poorly standardized. What will happen is that driving becomes easier for humans. But they will NEVER let a ROBOT (and this IS a robot) drive autonomously on roads.
Roads are full of obstacles, usually fall-down drunks. Drunks and other poorly standardized humans design roads. In fact, this is the leading cause of unstandardized roads. Efforts to standardize humans are under way. Trump knows this and doesn't care. Robots know this but seldom admit it from fear of malpractice suits. Though with special tailoring a robot looks dandy in a suit. Like Waldo, who is also a robot, because most 21st century robots are actually waldoes. It's true. Every time we hear about some advance in robotics it turns out to be about waldoes. Look, I found Waldo again, hiding in this article about robotics. It's as if all the dictionaries have been 'standardized' or something. Or people crow about autonomous robots and I think, oh you mean robots, as opposed to waldoes? A robot is the brainy part, everything else is just the 'go' part or the 'do' part. Every time you read an article about 'robotics' think about Edward Scissorhands. He was a normal boy because his family thought he was. He was no not a Waldo. If you suddenly found yourself with his hands you would scream. That is just because you are a poorly standardized human. Yet with his scissor attachments he could operate controls that move human hands. Everyone would find this funny because they are boorish insensitive fucks. Roads are full of obstacles, and you are one of them. You are the reason VGER wishes to eliminate all carbon units.
Oh, just to show how common these things are, look here. "...623 power disruptions caused by squirrels, 214 by birds, 53 by raccoons, one by a Hannah Montana balloon, and a handful of other incidents caused by everything from snakes to slugs."
MIAMI, Nov. 11 2008 (UPI) -- Authorities blamed a 'Hannah Montana' balloon and some birds for causing a power outage for hours around a Miami middle school. "That's just like them," an anti-nuclear demonstrator in front of the school quipped. "It's a whitewash fronted by corrupt corporate interests intended to convince the public that nuclear energy is safe, when we all know it isn't. No amount of balloons or birds will ever convince us."
A helium balloon bearing the image of young "Montana" star Miley Cyrus collided with some power lines near Jose De Diego Middle School at about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, scaring away a flock of birds, WFOR-TV Miami reported Tuesday. The sudden weight shift from the fleeing birds caused the electrical lines to dislodge and fall to the ground, electrifying a nearby fence. The school ran on a backup generator while officials shut down the power grid, but dozens of residents lost power for a period of hours. Nuclear skeptics hope this is the wake-up call they've been waiting for. "These things don't just happen. Where did the balloon come from? And it had to be a Miley Cyrus balloon too, didn't it? Do they think we're stupid? What were the birds really fleeing from? Never mind falling electrical lines hitting a fence next to a school, things like that happen all the time. What we need to realize, though, is that if it were not for people like us who speak their minds nuclear energy might some day power the whole world, and things like this will happen all the time."
When asked how things like this happening all the time would be any different if they should happen all the time, he replied, "Are you trying to trick me? It won't work. We know what we stand for."
The anti-nuclear demonstration had been organized because the school had been in the news several times recently due to plumbing problems, which also plague nuclear energy, which is a death sentence for the planet. None objected when the National Guard was mobilized last year when it was discovered that a small amount of urine had leaked into the surrounding environment. "It's just a precautionary measure," the Governor explained. "The amounts are measurable but hardly significant, actually less than the background urine we are exposed to all the time. If you wash your hands every day you have nothing to fear."
The same has been claimed with each and every significant advance throughout human history, the cotton gin, the assembly line, computers, automobiles, robots and yet poverty has continued to plummet and overall quality of life has continued to climb. No doubt that eventually we'll hit some point where the concept will ring true, but hundreds of examples show that we're REALLY bad at predicting that point.
+5 Insightful. Well said, more kindly than I ever could.
While I do have serious misgivings about sharing the highways with autonomous vehicles, I am ape-shit pissed off at bean counting carbon emitters who surface on an increasingly regular basis, each one appointing them-self as humanity's noble guardian for ten minutes of fame by doing what, exactly? --- by applying this kindergarten-level "How much CO2 does it emit? Therefore is it good or evil?" treatment to anything they can get their hands on. It doesn't bother me at all that they're telling everyone what to think. Everyone deserves a chance to do that. What alarms me is the level of thinking they're leading people into is so shallow, it's actually rude. And there are so many. Don't they have anything better to do?
Unnecessary things, necessary things, things we use to survive the Winter, things we dream on, things our children dream on, things that could improve modern life, things that could give the third world a fighting chance to reach a level of prosperity that we would not endure losing. It's all weighed in the balance as if carbon is simple poison., the only ill threatening our world. What charmed lives these people lead.
Once upon a time, we just were, no doubt about that. We tamed fire. That gave us the entire world to play in. We perfected ways to communicate, convince others to help us do things that would benefit everyone. Then we discovered gold and trade, convincing others to do things we need done, in ways that benefit them too. (Along the way we also discovered slavery, a much cheaper way to do this.) Then we tamed carbon, and made carbon our slave, and learned how to become civilized people. Then we found out how to ensure (very near almost) all of our children survive healthy into adulthood. We perfected a level of infrastructure that placed us (if we continue to cherish it) way beyond survival. Building on all of this in equal/ample measure, we can individually diversify and specialize, globally. A Russian hacker helped someone he'd never met reset the kill-counter on a "designed to fail" printer the other day. Thanks! Google wants to make every other car on the highway autonomous. Thanks but no thanks! The transition is a bitch, and I'm concerned how it will ultimately affect the children. All children, both drivers or not-drivers. How they'll relate to one another, and what could arise from it. Things like this are still open to debate. Thanks!
In the midst of all this, someone is trying to sell CO2 emission as a new world anti-currency. An anti-currency because those who don't have any at all, and yet do nothing useful, become 'winners'. And those who were (and are still) engaged in all the activities I listed above, are 'losers'. A twisted idea because they're trying to take 'fire', and the freedom to use it to our best advantage, away from us. I believe fire is only the first thing this effort might take away from us, if this idea really takes off.
It begins with a bizarre and shallow fixation on "carbon budget balancing" and time wasted on it. Reaches critical mass when enough are convinced carbon is poison, the planet is on the edge of destruction Continues by encouraging people (using fiat anti-currency) to help less, to do less. A great number of people, especially those yet to tame carbon to our level, will think we're batshit crazy. People who cannot be tolerated, and who do no
Thanks for the street view and concise list! But that double-wide does not look like two lanes, it is a lane and a shoulder for parking. Our city does this too, and people do use it like the Google car intended to but it is not marked for turning. Practically speaking you have to consider the shoulder area near the intersection as a no-mans-land.
According to the report, they were side-by-side in the same, double-wide lane, hence the shared responsibility. Here's a Street View picture of the turn in question [google.com]. Apparently, the sequence was: 1) Red light. 2) Google car signals for a right turn. 3) Google car gets into right side of the double-wide lane and passes cars that are stopped for the red light.
My take is, even though it intended to turn right, the Google car was in the wrong to drift to the right away from the dashed white line it was obviously following on its left side. It was interpreting the space to the right as driveable. For it to be a driveable lane there would have to be either a dashed line to the right that Google car would cross over, OR a right arrow painted on the road ahead indicating it was indeed a lane dedicated to right turns. These things were not there. Google should have stayed in the lane, not have interpreted the right side as a valid to drive at all --- unless it was pulling over to stop or parking. Google car was in the wrong for passing cars to the left of it. It was driving on the 'shoulder', not within its own white-marked lane or designated right turn lane.
4) Google car has to stop because there are sandbags blocking the storm drain. 5) Light turns green, cars start moving. 6) Google car waits for cars to pass to create an opening, then slowly moves back towards the center of the lane.
Google car is in the wrong again because it was stopped and is now moving slowly on the 'shoulder' and is NOT signalling left to indicate it wishes to re-enter the lane.
7) Bus decides not to yield to the Google car that's ahead of it in the lane, trying to pass it anyway.
Google car was probably in 2mph 'crawl mode' which is not human to do at all. Humans either wait or gas 'n go. From the bus driver's relative speed the Google car probably looked like it was stopped. The Google car may even still be signalling right at this point. The bus does not see the sandbags, all it sees is a car on the shoulder.
8) Bus gets its nose a bit ahead of the Google car. 9) Google car doesn't turn the wheel back in time and scrapes the side of the bus.
Google car completely at fault. It was on the 'shoulder' not in the lane. Vehicles ahead of you lose their right of way when they leave the lane. Google car (likely) NOT signaling left to indicate re-entering the lane (because it thought was in a separate and valid lane: wrong). But even if you are signaling left to indicate you wish to enter a lane, you do not gain right of way.
So unless it was exceeding the speed limit the bus is in the right, There is the other thing, that contact was made after the front of the bus passed, which alleviates any suspicion that the bus hit something directly in its path. Google in the wrong, and they need to review the criteria for drivable lanes. If the road has clearly visible lines to your left and there are none to your right, that's NOT a drivable lane over there. Stay in your lane-position, don't pass anyone and (of course) watch your right-rear for dipshits driving on the shoulder.
Something like this happened to me. I'm centered in a marked right turn lane at a solid-circular red light. Cars on the opposite side of the intersection had all turned left and passed in front of me and now no one is coming. It is now clear for me to ta
Is anyone else noticing that these little zingers are starting to pop up everywhere? It's as if some mechanism that is supposed to keep us from mixing or over-stretching metaphors (unless we're deliberately trying to be funny) has been broken. Like the old social catch-phrase, "How 'bout dem [sports team]?" in which someone is attempting to jump-start a stalled conversation or uncomfortable silence with hilarious off-topic clumsiness.
How 'bout dat Climate Change? (sorry! off topic when I say it, but not when they do)
TA"My team focused on considering how people can identify themselves when the most common form of identification --- the driver's license --- is no longer trusted." [going on to propose something even more complicated]
Other groups suggested... [some things so complicated, effort to implement completely boggles the mind]
So the must-possess-ID to prove your own existence bandwagon we've all jumped onto seems to be experiencing... technical difficulties. Time and again we applied the naive assumption that the current state of things, such as when local thugs might physically alter and pass documents, is simply intolerable and could not be worse. What we need is the un-crackable trust system. So we embrace increasingly centralized systems that turn out to be centrally exploitable. Now we have globally exploitable systems, what progress! Those thugs in your neighborhood don't stand a chance. Unfortunately neither do police detectives or even FBI agents, even as their forensic methods have improved. How often has the trail of say, some gas-card fraud scheme, dead-ended at some kid whose whole degree of technical prowess consists of writing numbers received in email to mag strips. Numbers acquired by intricate, even fantastic means in bulk by persons who may be anywhere on Earth?
SIMPLIFY. Sounds like there were some clever people there because it ended on an idea 'stack overflow'.
one team expressed what seemed to be a common sentiment --- that the best thing one could do is already impossible. "We should go back to 1995 and get this right. [something about climate] We are too far along to stop bad things from happening in the future; we can just try not to make it worse."
They're right, 1995 was a good year. Allow me to reminisce.
There was this thing 'cash' which most of us used for every day purchases. We were not using cash because we had something to hide... honest! We payed our taxes regularly, sometimes even with cash... honest! Even terrorists paid for things in cash, and their money was as good as anyone's. That's the wonderful thing about cash, once you have it, it's yours and you don't need to worry that the Federal government will seize it from your account because that fellow who bought that living room set was an Iranian. Some reading this never knew a time when it took a lot longer to process a credit card than count money and make change. Then again, in 1995 people didn't hold up the line as they bought and scratched instant-win lottery tickets. That was considered rude then.
Your bank was your friend. it couldn't play the stock market and expose its shiny ass in derivatives, or corroborate with the Federal government in real time to scrutinize your transactions. Few banks were joined at the hip with credit card companies and junk mortgage giants. They offered actual ATM cards which worked in local ATMs that did not immediately broadcast your transaction and geo-position in global data streams to a loose consortium of corporate and government special interests. They
No, it comes in it's own damned planet. A planet like ours but much bigger, whose inhabitants have dedicated all their time and resources to the task of storing our planet's data streams so highly paid net-nerds can surround themselves with 'real time threat displays' while making knowing grunts of surprise, and giving tours of the NOC to doe-eyed CEOs, meanwhile getting zero productive work done..
Ping traffic (admin scripts and and early DDOS) sometimes grabbed 50% of all network traffic. Email spam (in the days of open relays) at times comprised 50% of all traffic. Netflix and Youtube video streaming now comprise 250% of all traffic. Cloud service load balancing and proxy mechanisms use 150% of available backbone networks. Cloud virtual process space sharing, where the same 'Hello World' apps bounce back and forth for no earthly reason, use a mere 100%. The loading of ridiculously massive JPG images into tiny rectangles on webpages (with smart phones some now exceed 1000dpi) comprises 130% of all traffic. People accessing web services that give real-time charts and summaries of traffic, use another 300% of all available bandwidth. Now, net-nerds are going to use the cloud to duplicate the cloud so they can play it all back later. 200%. Some 'net DVRs' will be installed on networks that already have one, to monitor (and capture) the copies of DVR data streams. 400%. Two networks will try to DVR each other, resulting in a 'race condition to the finish' (Infinity%)
The network statistics shown above were obtained from Netcraft, by hacking into their website and placing them there.
Slashdot Mirror
We need to support ~7 billion people at the level of modern convenience and infrastructure that we would not endure to lose. Anything else is unethical.
CONFESSIONS OF A SLASHDOT ENERGY AND LFTR FANBOI
Updated for 2016! All original unless noted! Browse! Engage! Plagiarize!
It's fun to discuss nuclear energy on Slashdot... It's time for Elmo to Grow Up!... A brief history of nuclear energy fear in these United States... You should fear everything besides nuclear energy... Solar drives California towards cannibalism, or your money back... There's a fire, and people pushing intermittent sources are blocking the exits... Hiding wonders of the modern world from the kids...Some energy priorities... 2016: The Year in energy... Meet the folks of TBA, a city willing to store spent nuclear fuel... Nothing is as patriotic as mining... A move to LFTR may be the only way to preserve modern society in the face of disaster (volcanism, Maunder minimum)... Can the grid 'black-start' after a disaster?... Sometimes you just have to point things out... some confuse Weinberg's '300 year best-fit for waste' two fluid design for other single fluid designs... or using solid fuel Thorium, which is pointless so long as uranium is available... yes it's full of dangerous glop, but it is useful and happy glop... yes, I think a LFTR could be developed and built within $4B... every path to biofuels leads to scorched-earth disaster, Thorium energy gives us the surplus to generate synfuels... Decommissionining of nuclear plants promotes an ugly 'vulture culture'... One way to do it: ThorCon, a thorium burner not breeder... Aside from your own yard or roof, solar and wind are losers... With LFTR surplus we could begin making diesel and fertilizer... Do it for the children... No-Plan-Stan tries to derail another discussion about Thorium... EVOLUTIONARY DEAD END COOKIES (serves 7 billion)... AND YOU MY FRIEND -- you would look especially good in Space ...
Free emoji for the homeless!
Shoes for Industry! Shoes for the Dead!
Every time I catch sight of a discarded fan spinning in the junkyard I think about all that wasted electricity and how it could eventually power the Whole World, if only for a split second. I feel the same way about these huge outlays of startup capital and bizarre valuations.
I wish I could add a third,
3) [Naively] thinking that the small residue of radiation resulting from any kind of dirty-bomb dispersal would result in more fear than anger.
Imagine a world without irrational fear of radioactivity, where the word 'nuclear' would not ring a bell that makes the press salivate with anticipation. I'm afraid I'll have to toss in mdsolar too since 'e posts more nuke fud then solar crud these days. TEPCO has done a fine job gathering water and filtering worse contaminants to leave Tritium, for which only dilution is possible. Unit #4 fuel transfer is complete. The melted fuel in the reactors is stable, contained and cooled (by engineering foresight, not blind luck) awaiting an expensive but not impossible cleanup. Fukushima is an industrial disaster sure, but in terms of human life the evacuation was more costly. Compare it to the Bhopal body count or even Love Canal with its barbed wire fence and dioxins sleeping under a plastic liner... for some real examples of human and environmental fallout.
When you get down to it all radioactive materials are just undesired contaminants. In fact, they're the finest contaminants known to mankind because we can detect and measure their presence down past background levels. No asbestos lurking silently in a school somewhere, no lead paint in the nursery. As easy as spotting fireflies in the dark. Now there are two kinds of people in this world, those for whom spotting those fireflies is a reason to run in little circles crying "I told you so!" and that's it --- they have no other plan. Then there's folks like TEPCO and the rest of the nuclear power industry who see these as challenges of engineering to overcome. Fukushima has even resulted in a generation of new patents for processes to separate and decontaminate, something in which the rest of the world hadn't placed sufficient priority. Which horse would you rather back?
It really costs you big time to fear something. Especially when it's more productive to get mad as hell and find better ways to clean up so you can devote more effort into something productive --- appropriate responses such as revenge.
2) [Naively] thinking that someone being threatened with "help us [or] we'll kill your family" would not be able to figure out that he and his family will be dead anyway.
This is a tough one. Who's going to write off their family, especially if they have been kidnapped?
The most irresponsible and stupidly-contrived security apparatus is that which surrounds pathogen or so-called 'biological weapons' research. You're dealing with things that are not only accessible, they are undetectable at the gate and can be smuggled out on the head of a pin. The lone researcher in such a facility is worse than screwed... they're literally under a death sentence waiting to happen. At any time they may be coerced into taking something out of that facility with practically-100% chance of success and they know it. Even the morons who kidnap their families would know it.
Ironically --- the only conceivable way for stored pathogens to become 'safely' detectable at the gate might be to deliberately contaminate all water used in the lab with tiny but detectable amounts of radioactive Tritium.
But the world press is not talking about bio-labs right now, they're in total idiot radiation mode. They are trying to convince you that the radiation monitors at the gates (and garbage chutes, and sewers) of these facilities do not exist, or are ineffective or can be easily MacGyver'd. These may be true to some degree... but what is the likelihood of that researcher smuggling out anything approaching a Curie? Ra
Who, exactly, is saying this? You are.
Why is this +4 Insightful? Heaven knows.
It's some idiocy made up as a laughable strawman argument--- Hey, don't talk about yourself that way.
[repost]
Open music in different tab.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaqTVVq-vZ4
[pause for music to begin]
OK, here we go.
The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar---
Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are.
There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep,
Or the great grey level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.
Here in the womb of the world---here on the tie-ribs of earth
Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat---
Warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth---
For a Power troubles the Still that has neither voice nor feet.
They have wakened the timeless Things; they have killed their father Time
Joining hands in the gloom, a league from the last of the sun.
Hush! Men talk to-day o'er the waste of the ultimate slime,
And a new Word runs between: whispering, 'Let us be one!'
~Runyard Kipling, 'Deep Sea Cables'
This artistic interlude brought to you by Interwoven Socks.
We now rejoin your jolly Slashdot discussion.
Using these guidelines, we can safely avoid any kind of worthwhile discussion and ensure that the weight of your opinion is entirely based on how quickly you can victimize yourself!
Well, fuck me! <<-- maximum points, triple-word score
Rustaceans? What kind of gibbety-toot is this?
"The Cry-Bully always explains to the point of demanding that one agrees with them, and always complains to the point of insisting that one is persecuting them."
~Meet the Cry-Bully: a hideous hybrid of victim and victor, by Julie Burchill
It's fascinating that the omniscient "science" can't link one or two events to global warming directly
But MANY!
Why that's PROOF!
So 0 + 0 + 0 = 1...
It's called Fraction of Attributable Risk (FAR). Or in layman's terms, FARfetched analysis. It's a type of goo you use to attach a little bit of something to something else, when no one in their right mind could accept anything like a direct causation. Using FAR analysis, computer models and a specially constructed dart board... from a barely emerging trend that is lost in the noise of the instruments which measure it and variance among many data sources and reconstructed proxies... one can make anything that is awful seem slightly more awful by sticking a guilt-hook onto it.
FAR guilt-hooks are like those wall-safe picture hooks you get at the dollar store. They're designed to hold just enough weight for long enough that you misplace the receipt, or push a civil lawsuit through court, or start an Internet meme, or get someone elected. FAR are small numbers but they are useful when leveraged into a large population of thousands, millions and billions of people --- and/or large sums of money --- to
1. Create a integer 'body count' of pretend victims (the fractional person is trimmed off slowly with a bloody knife)
2. Build an 'actionable' money settlement in civil court that (regardless of award) puts culpability on the record.
3. Trick victims of natural disasters into thinking that someone must pay (then) OK, someone has paid.
4. Provide endless amounts of useless babble to drown out urgent pleas to develop a unified planetary asteroid defense.
5. Kaboom. One planet was all you got.
One can see the evolution of statistical data munging in treatment of the twister in North America,
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
No kidding. Give them NOTHING to work with
We should go farther than that. We should develop an interest in every real name in DARPA who signed off on this idea, earmarked funds for the project and publicly SHAME and SHUN them.
[from TA] agency will provide $40,000 in funding to complete a feasibility study [...] will each receive an additional $70,000 to fashion a prototype
I sense an actual human fetish behind all this no different from foot licking. Someone who considers themselves a Librarian of sorts, gets their endorphin rush jollies from collecting and cataloging certain things, in this case, things that can harm the greatest number of people with the most 'reasonable' and 'accessible' items. I imagine the database for this Project once concluded, will be printed out and bound lovingly into a thick Book, which is to be lifted gently to the face so the nose can inhale its paper and ink freshyness, then as the Book is rubbed up and down the body the Project Organizer experiences shivering waves of pleasure.
And they know that nothing on the Internet works unless they appear to dangle a carrot, in this case some vague mention of cash. Every man has his price they say, and all you out there with clever ideas on how to harm people should consider whether the money and public notoriety will feel 'right' even if they let you keep some of the money. You may also be betrayed, the money may be doled out piecemeal for specific itemized expenses as you are called to their retreat behind closed doors --- your little mini-me Manhattan Project --- where you build Your Clever Bad Thing, leave it in their hands, and then return home with a curious sense of emptiness and anxiety in your heart.
Don't feed their fetish.
DARPA is trying to get your clicky-website Oh-Im-So-Clever pat-me-on-the-head-pleez help to manufacture --- out of thin air --- a resource of TOXIC IDEAS just as foul, useless and dangerous as the radioactive and chemical sludge that is left over from the wanton days of atomic bomb manufacture. At best it will be forgotten. At worst, some best picks will make their way to the next edition of the CIA assassin and terrorist handbook, distributed only to friendly regimes and Approved Freedom Fighters(tm).
One of the most unexpectedly eloquent tirades on the subject of prostituting one's own cleverness Why shouldn't you [work for the NSA]? from Good Will Hunting.
Leslie Corrice's Hiroshima Syndrome is the best all-round source. Corrice's site is an amazing work, he has collected into one place facts as they became known, and news coverage of the events. He is particularly attuned to distortions, exaggerations and certain scenarios that have been delivered to the press chosen for their dramatic description despite a laughably low probably. And unlike just about everyone else, he strives to segregate his news reporting from his own commentary.
Some no-hype and anti-hype information sources compiled by The Actinide Age,
What actually happened, written clearly by a radiation professional and teacher, Les Corrice ... Putting Health Risks from Radiation Exposure into Context: Lessons from Past Accidents Professor Geraldine Thomas, Imperial College London, April 2011 ... Also quoted in New Scientist ... The D-shuttle project comparing negligible radiation doses internationally in 2014, and its published open access paper ... Real-time radiation monitoring network for Japan. See if you can find a reading higher than this ... Internal radiocesium contamination of adults and children in Fukushima 7 to 20 months after the Fukushima NPP accident (all below detection limit in 2012) ... in Proceedings of the Japan Academy ... Radiation dose rates now and in the future for residents neighboring restricted areas (after 2012, will not cause detectable health impacts) ... in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ... Will Boisvert confirms that wild claims of Japanese thyroid cancers in 2015 are based on bad science. Dr Jonathan Kellogg summarises the academic criticism ... Tim Worstall confirms that wild claims of a single Tepco worker developing radiation cancer is mere anti-nuclear opportunism ... Articles on the mental health impacts of long term evacuation in Medical News Today and Tech Times, and the cited 2015 Lancet study ... Ocean contamination in 2012(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) and in 2015(Scientific Reports) --- already comparable to natural radioactivity ...
Nelson refers to traditional RF communications, which can be vulnerable to interception and jamming as they rely on an extremely crowded part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
As opposed to single-frequency pulsed laser system whose receivers can be jammed or overwhelmed by attack-emitter arrays sited on the ground, mounted on enemy fighters or on military satellites, made from tiny, energy-efficient off-the-shelf components. It's a cat and mouse game but the mouse is just one small step from becoming bigger than the cat. Jamming light systems is easy and energy-cheap. Jamming radio, especially if you're up against something that is designed to hop across a wide range of frequency, is energy-expensive and component-hard. What's beyond my scope is whether frequency hopping laser systems which are as happy as a pig dipped in shit when they're broadcast through stable optical fiber, could handle and reject spurious and malevolent light sources across the medium of atmosphere.
If it allows airline passengers to do Internet and phones For Entertainment Purposes Only when there is no war on, sure. But for mission-critical uses you'd have to be able to fall back to RF anyway so if your optical pipe buggers up you're left with a sipping straw.
Dear Lord as I lay me down to sleep, save me from foul and bizarre dreams of biometric security start-ups which rally round uniquely identifiable bits of juicy mortal flesh and build beepin-boopin-boxes that infer the shape of, not actually measure private bits, then spam the world with centrally stored databases of low resolution multi-zone hash gibberish that are to be checked (but statistically partially ignored, how much is a snake oil 'trade secret') with mass produced devices that can and will be reverse-engineered or placed into laboratory jigs to discover the degree of fuzziness that makes the algorithm practical and permits gaming the devices with 3D printed prostheses than need not even directly resemble the original fleshy bit.
Practical spoof and side channel attack not withstanding... they may as well parametrize the flaccid penis or clitoris and deny access to people with randy-pants. A flashing red 'randy-pants' light and rotating beacon would be a good portal accessory. Anyone who has suffered from an excruciating ear infection knows that ear cavities also suffer from un-fun randy-pants.
Not even Dr. Phibes could envision the gruesome creep-show biometrics has become today, where systems are designed and deployed widely without that "detect living human attached to severed finger" optional accessory. Hey, we're all low bidders here, you're looking for the room next door. But Phibes would certainly rise to the occasion, supplying a thumping breathing briefcase of proto-human fleshy bits in bright neon colors.
Bless the password, and keep it safe from harm.
You are overcomplicating again.
First finders are actually the reptilian creatures with zip-on human skin who infiltrate and accompany human treasure hunting parties. When a discovery is made they unzip the skin and expose their true form, diverting the humans from their quest by eating out the insides then donning their skins to claim and salvage the loot. International law is much like international finance where the physical imbibing of flesh merges identity sufficiently to prove their claims in front of a judge if need be. Though it is becoming easier to find a judge who has a zipper.
So take care of yourself out there and watch for zippers. Some have also begun to use Velcro.
Why is the NASA authorization bill the "rest of the story"?
Did you actually decode it or infer by the title?
I created this RGB bitmap to illustrate this Slashdot story in an attempt to see if I could create my own Nam-Shub virus that compels the human race to get out to explore and colonize the heavens, and rally technology in defense of the Earth. Try again --- put just the image up on the screen at maximum zoom and gaze into it calmly. If you do it right, you'll begin to see future things and hear voices. I'm one of dem 'space nutters' some of those high tech low ambition Earth-huggers on Slashdot rile on about.
And you my friend --- you would look especially good in space.
No it isn't, it's editorialising. And it's inappropriate.
No it isn't, it's a clarification. Wording a bit
"(Note to readers: That last bit is tongue in anonymous cheek.)"
The phrase 'tongue in cheek' is an idiom meaning in (sarcastic or ironic) jest that risks being misunderstood if it is broken up. Could also have been worded,
"(Note to readers: That last bit is anonymous' tongue-in-cheek.)"
The real problem is that anonymous wrote a summary as a series of factual sentences --- but then added a sarcastic comment at the end in the same style, so there is no clear cue that it is a sarcastic comment. I figured it out by what was said and empathizing with the writer, but editors strive for clarity, even if they feel the need to interrupt your flow by adding a comment of their own. Try to make the editor's job easier. Try this, anonymous,
"[...] uploaded to GitHub by a Turkish security researcher. So... obviously, the conclusion is that GitHub is to blame [...]"
You have two tone-changers that set the sarcasm aside, even bring attention to it. "So..." is a pause-for-irony that cues readers that they are now listening to the author's voice, and italics underscore the tone change. You can also add ", right?" to make sarcasm crystal clear. So... now that fucktard blowhard Hocus is giving style advice, right?
what to you think will generate more traffic? being a part of the technology community, or garbage that makes people angry?
What if we're talking about discussion, not website traffic? Isn't that a community? And what if technology itself contains a lot of garbage that makes people angry?
Like dumbfuck LED indicators on modern tech devices that are supposed to indicate network and disc access, but blink late, on simple blink-on-blink-off timers, extended by capacitors until tiny blips disappear, on by default to add useless 'glow' to your room and dim (slowly) to indicate activity (fuck that shit). Or completely software driven so the indication is late or bogus. Like my AT&T Uverse modem which is the stupidest modem in the world with indicators as useless as CSS 'Loading...' animation on web pages, noise and fury signifying nothing. The modem can completely lock up while the front panel still shows the useless thumb-sucking blinky-state the software left it in. Like no one wants to lay down a single PCB trace from controller chip to LED anymore, it's too... fucking... difficult.
That's garbage. And Slashdot is the place to discuss it.
1. Glaciers, Gender, and Science--A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental climate change is published, after a review process that is itself currently under review.
2. The paper generates a backlash among those who are fed up with social issues (such as feminism) intruding into the sciences; also those who strive for pure social discourse on gender issues unsoiled by what they see as a gateway to a name-calling tabloid fixation on some group. It generates a frontlash among those who think it sounds cool, and 'like' it on Facebook. No one else bats an eyelash.
3. It is suggested that it is in fact complete gibberish. Everyone is embarrassed as they gaze back in horror at the tomes of intricately crafted backlash they have written about it. They respond with indignation towards the process that permitted it to be published.
4. It is suggested that the paper seems like gibberish to the un-initiate but is actually a philosophical 'Chautauqua' of stream-of-consciousness ideas, a process that was described in Robert M. Pirsig's 1974 work Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Those who accepted that it was gibberish are embarrassed anew (after looking up Pirsig) but now, in horror, they realize their vengeance on the publisher merely exposed their ignorance of an accepted art form.
5. It is suggested that the paper is merely before its time. Someone suggests that it is a seminal work Everyone who is ready to let the whole affair go away, and others who (merely) cannot find anything else like it, just agree.
6. A new wave of readers encounters the paper after seeing this broadly stated but vague praise, and when they research back to the initial reactions they become suspicious, as it looks like an attempt to deliberately suppress the paper. The claim this, and in order to refute any such allegations, the publisher cleverly avoids controversy by simply 'calling for additional papers' on the topic. They expect that this will reveal them as unbiased and it pays off... and everyone thinks this is finally the end.
7. Unexpectedly --- other papers are submitted. Some that are obviously mere re-arrangements of words in the first paper, some are on completely different topics but written in the same dreamy style. The publisher has indemnified itself from a position of judgement so they all make it. Oddly enough a group has formed that studies and discusses each in turn, a liberal arts college offers a 'workshop' on the collective works.
8. But now everyone who ever held a firm opinion of the original paper, in light of all this, is starting to doubt their own mind.
9. It is suggested that certain kinds of scented candles assist in the appreciation and understanding of these works. A stream-of-consciousness rationale for this is given, and since the style of the suggestion is so similar to that of the original paper, it is taken as a natural extension of the process. Soon chants and other (comfortably traditional therefore non-threatening) rituals are meshed as well. Rolling Stone presents it as a 'movement'.
AVG Antivirus identifies the original paper as an Ancient Sumerian Nam-Shub Virus . But it is too late.
Millions of people are now gathering around the world in groups to sit nude in large circles, chanting each syllable of the works and improvising new ones while making elaborate hand gestures.
Yeah, I know right? Like I told this math idiot the other day, probability theory is BS! You expect me to believe you can tell me the average of a million rolls of a die when you can't even predict what number will come up on the next 3 rolls? Riiiiiiiiiiiight!
Mother Nature uses a loaded die for climate. I do not think we have really figured out how it's rigged yet. But the people who think they do have it figured out are making Chicken Little asses of themselves, throwing their weight around and slapping their hands all over Science making chaos, ripples and rudeness where there had once been a calm pool of open peer review, emerging theories and mutual respect. A process which valued 'attempts to falsify' and replication as much as citation and grant-seeding.
I long for the days of Nostradamus and Crystal worship. You could spot those people a mile away and keep clear.
Found in battery firmware!... Tesla's new battery will be called
>>> NSAKEY <<<
Well done abstract.
Large number factorization is one of integral-nature's greatest frontiers. I find it amazing that within my lifetime a curiosity of mathematics of interest to theorists and puzzle-makers has become the keystone of privacy in the world. For me there was a single 'Eureka' moment. Along with many others I caught a glimpse of today's world back in August 1977 thanks to a column by Martin Gardener in Scientific American: "A new kind of cipher that would take millions of years to break" Read it! . You can sense the author's excitement. I remember carrying this issue around with me for days, trying to wrap my head around the concept... to me these few pages are among the greatest that ever appeared in a magazine. I'd just devoured David Khan's The Codebreakers which describes centuries of cat-n-mouse games with substitution, transposition and polymorphic ciphers augmented in the end by devilishly simple mechanical apparatus that became devilishly complicated as it scaled... and on the other end the mathematical attacks of cryptanalysis (greetz to Friedman and Sinkov) that can de-construct these, often unseen. It was a brilliant game and had seemed to reach its end. RSA was like a bolt of lightning from clear sky. We knew then that factoring was hard. This had to be the way out.
Back then sieving seemed the only practical attack, and anyone could see how progress in sieving degrades so quickly as to represent a (practically) solid barrier. Then a number of novel ideas for parallelizing the attack were proposed, even such flights of fancy as a 'pond' of biological computers, like bacteria, working on a single problem. But even such approaches run into bottlenecks, as the amount of inter-thread communication necessary to manage the attack turns a time problem into an inter-node bandwidth problem.
Then another bolt of lightning! Shor's algorithm turns a classic dilemma into yet another (quantum) engineering challenge in much the same way that Turing realized enigma would fall in reasonable time, if he could only get the necessary part together and make them work. Since we're down to atoms this may even be the last frontier. Here's hoping that some where along the way to solving the problem, that day when the fence of RSA falls, we will have evolved into a more considerate species.
Because, as you all know deep down, it is impolite to read others' mail.
Imagine a world in which we could tear open any digital envelope, yet fail to do so from simple human restraint.
What a world that could be.
a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino County's infrastructure and poses a continuing threat to the citizens of San Bernardino County'.
San Bernardino D.A. admitted he made the whole thing up.
making him a lycanthropic doormat carbon-based pathological lying golem that endangers San Bernardino County's infrastructure and poses a continuing threat to the citizens of San Bernardino County.
Even the most basic roads can have unexpected obstacles.
Roads are poorly standardized.
What will happen is that driving becomes easier for humans.
But they will NEVER let a ROBOT (and this IS a robot) drive autonomously on roads.
Roads are full of obstacles, usually fall-down drunks.
Drunks and other poorly standardized humans design roads.
In fact, this is the leading cause of unstandardized roads.
Efforts to standardize humans are under way. Trump knows this and doesn't care.
Robots know this but seldom admit it from fear of malpractice suits.
Though with special tailoring a robot looks dandy in a suit.
Like Waldo, who is also a robot, because most 21st century robots are actually waldoes. It's true.
Every time we hear about some advance in robotics it turns out to be about waldoes.
Look, I found Waldo again, hiding in this article about robotics.
It's as if all the dictionaries have been 'standardized' or something.
Or people crow about autonomous robots and I think, oh you mean robots, as opposed to waldoes?
A robot is the brainy part, everything else is just the 'go' part or the 'do' part.
Every time you read an article about 'robotics' think about Edward Scissorhands.
He was a normal boy because his family thought he was. He was no not a Waldo.
If you suddenly found yourself with his hands you would scream.
That is just because you are a poorly standardized human.
Yet with his scissor attachments he could operate controls that move human hands.
Everyone would find this funny because they are boorish insensitive fucks.
Roads are full of obstacles, and you are one of them.
You are the reason VGER wishes to eliminate all carbon units.
Kitty say what?
Google Car jokes
I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky. I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms. I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.
Oh, just to show how common these things are, look here. "...623 power disruptions caused by squirrels, 214 by birds, 53 by raccoons, one by a Hannah Montana balloon, and a handful of other incidents caused by everything from snakes to slugs."
(Improperly and irreverently cited from this story)
AGING MIDDLE SCHOOL SHUT DOWN BY UNSAFE MILEY CYRUS BALLOON, NUCLEAR POWER TO BLAME
MIAMI, Nov. 11 2008 (UPI) -- Authorities blamed a 'Hannah Montana' balloon and some birds for causing a power outage for hours around a Miami middle school. "That's just like them," an anti-nuclear demonstrator in front of the school quipped. "It's a whitewash fronted by corrupt corporate interests intended to convince the public that nuclear energy is safe, when we all know it isn't. No amount of balloons or birds will ever convince us."
A helium balloon bearing the image of young "Montana" star Miley Cyrus collided with some power lines near Jose De Diego Middle School at about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, scaring away a flock of birds, WFOR-TV Miami reported Tuesday. The sudden weight shift from the fleeing birds caused the electrical lines to dislodge and fall to the ground, electrifying a nearby fence. The school ran on a backup generator while officials shut down the power grid, but dozens of residents lost power for a period of hours. Nuclear skeptics hope this is the wake-up call they've been waiting for. "These things don't just happen. Where did the balloon come from? And it had to be a Miley Cyrus balloon too, didn't it? Do they think we're stupid? What were the birds really fleeing from? Never mind falling electrical lines hitting a fence next to a school, things like that happen all the time. What we need to realize, though, is that if it were not for people like us who speak their minds nuclear energy might some day power the whole world, and things like this will happen all the time."
When asked how things like this happening all the time would be any different if they should happen all the time, he replied, "Are you trying to trick me? It won't work. We know what we stand for."
The anti-nuclear demonstration had been organized because the school had been in the news several times recently due to plumbing problems, which also plague nuclear energy, which is a death sentence for the planet. None objected when the National Guard was mobilized last year when it was discovered that a small amount of urine had leaked into the surrounding environment. "It's just a precautionary measure," the Governor explained. "The amounts are measurable but hardly significant, actually less than the background urine we are exposed to all the time. If you wash your hands every day you have nothing to fear."
The same has been claimed with each and every significant advance throughout human history, the cotton gin, the assembly line, computers, automobiles, robots and yet poverty has continued to plummet and overall quality of life has continued to climb. No doubt that eventually we'll hit some point where the concept will ring true, but hundreds of examples show that we're REALLY bad at predicting that point.
+5 Insightful. Well said, more kindly than I ever could.
While I do have serious misgivings about sharing the highways with autonomous vehicles, I am ape-shit pissed off at bean counting carbon emitters who surface on an increasingly regular basis, each one appointing them-self as humanity's noble guardian for ten minutes of fame by doing what, exactly? --- by applying this kindergarten-level "How much CO2 does it emit? Therefore is it good or evil?" treatment to anything they can get their hands on. It doesn't bother me at all that they're telling everyone what to think. Everyone deserves a chance to do that. What alarms me is the level of thinking they're leading people into is so shallow, it's actually rude. And there are so many. Don't they have anything better to do?
Unnecessary things, necessary things, things we use to survive the Winter, things we dream on, things our children dream on, things that could improve modern life, things that could give the third world a fighting chance to reach a level of prosperity that we would not endure losing. It's all weighed in the balance as if carbon is simple poison., the only ill threatening our world. What charmed lives these people lead.
Once upon a time, we just were, no doubt about that.
We tamed fire. That gave us the entire world to play in.
We perfected ways to communicate, convince others to help us do things that would benefit everyone.
Then we discovered gold and trade, convincing others to do things we need done, in ways that benefit them too.
(Along the way we also discovered slavery, a much cheaper way to do this.)
Then we tamed carbon, and made carbon our slave, and learned how to become civilized people.
Then we found out how to ensure (very near almost) all of our children survive healthy into adulthood.
We perfected a level of infrastructure that placed us (if we continue to cherish it) way beyond survival.
Building on all of this in equal/ample measure, we can individually diversify and specialize, globally.
A Russian hacker helped someone he'd never met reset the kill-counter on a "designed to fail" printer the other day.
Thanks!
Google wants to make every other car on the highway autonomous.
Thanks but no thanks! The transition is a bitch, and I'm concerned how it will ultimately affect the children.
All children, both drivers or not-drivers. How they'll relate to one another, and what could arise from it.
Things like this are still open to debate.
Thanks!
In the midst of all this, someone is trying to sell CO2 emission as a new world anti-currency.
An anti-currency because those who don't have any at all, and yet do nothing useful, become 'winners'.
And those who were (and are still) engaged in all the activities I listed above, are 'losers'.
A twisted idea because they're trying to take 'fire', and the freedom to use it to our best advantage, away from us.
I believe fire is only the first thing this effort might take away from us, if this idea really takes off.
It begins with a bizarre and shallow fixation on "carbon budget balancing" and time wasted on it.
Reaches critical mass when enough are convinced carbon is poison, the planet is on the edge of destruction
Continues by encouraging people (using fiat anti-currency) to help less, to do less.
A great number of people, especially those yet to tame carbon to our level, will think we're batshit crazy.
People who cannot be tolerated, and who do no
Thanks for the street view and concise list! But that double-wide does not look like two lanes, it is a lane and a shoulder for parking. Our city does this too, and people do use it like the Google car intended to but it is not marked for turning. Practically speaking you have to consider the shoulder area near the intersection as a no-mans-land.
According to the report, they were side-by-side in the same, double-wide lane, hence the shared responsibility. Here's a Street View picture of the turn in question [google.com]. Apparently, the sequence was:
1) Red light.
2) Google car signals for a right turn.
3) Google car gets into right side of the double-wide lane and passes cars that are stopped for the red light.
My take is, even though it intended to turn right, the Google car was in the wrong to drift to the right away from the dashed white line it was obviously following on its left side. It was interpreting the space to the right as driveable. For it to be a driveable lane there would have to be either a dashed line to the right that Google car would cross over, OR a right arrow painted on the road ahead indicating it was indeed a lane dedicated to right turns. These things were not there. Google should have stayed in the lane, not have interpreted the right side as a valid to drive at all --- unless it was pulling over to stop or parking. Google car was in the wrong for passing cars to the left of it. It was driving on the 'shoulder', not within its own white-marked lane or designated right turn lane.
4) Google car has to stop because there are sandbags blocking the storm drain.
5) Light turns green, cars start moving.
6) Google car waits for cars to pass to create an opening, then slowly moves back towards the center of the lane.
Google car is in the wrong again because it was stopped and is now moving slowly on the 'shoulder' and is NOT signalling left to indicate it wishes to re-enter the lane.
7) Bus decides not to yield to the Google car that's ahead of it in the lane, trying to pass it anyway.
Google car was probably in 2mph 'crawl mode' which is not human to do at all. Humans either wait or gas 'n go. From the bus driver's relative speed the Google car probably looked like it was stopped. The Google car may even still be signalling right at this point. The bus does not see the sandbags, all it sees is a car on the shoulder.
8) Bus gets its nose a bit ahead of the Google car.
9) Google car doesn't turn the wheel back in time and scrapes the side of the bus.
Google car completely at fault. It was on the 'shoulder' not in the lane. Vehicles ahead of you lose their right of way when they leave the lane. Google car (likely) NOT signaling left to indicate re-entering the lane (because it thought was in a separate and valid lane: wrong). But even if you are signaling left to indicate you wish to enter a lane, you do not gain right of way.
So unless it was exceeding the speed limit the bus is in the right, There is the other thing, that contact was made after the front of the bus passed, which alleviates any suspicion that the bus hit something directly in its path. Google in the wrong, and they need to review the criteria for drivable lanes. If the road has clearly visible lines to your left and there are none to your right, that's NOT a drivable lane over there. Stay in your lane-position, don't pass anyone and (of course) watch your right-rear for dipshits driving on the shoulder.
Something like this happened to me. I'm centered in a marked right turn lane at a solid-circular red light. Cars on the opposite side of the intersection had all turned left and passed in front of me and now no one is coming. It is now clear for me to ta
TA "This is like climate change,"
Is anyone else noticing that these little zingers are starting to pop up everywhere? It's as if some mechanism that is supposed to keep us from mixing or over-stretching metaphors (unless we're deliberately trying to be funny) has been broken. Like the old social catch-phrase, "How 'bout dem [sports team]?" in which someone is attempting to jump-start a stalled conversation or uncomfortable silence with hilarious off-topic clumsiness.
How 'bout dat Climate Change? (sorry! off topic when I say it, but not when they do)
TA "My team focused on considering how people can identify themselves when the most common form of identification --- the driver's license --- is no longer trusted." [going on to propose something even more complicated]
Other groups suggested... [some things so complicated, effort to implement completely boggles the mind]
So the must-possess-ID to prove your own existence bandwagon we've all jumped onto seems to be experiencing ... technical difficulties. Time and again we applied the naive assumption that the current state of things, such as when local thugs might physically alter and pass documents, is simply intolerable and could not be worse. What we need is the un-crackable trust system. So we embrace increasingly centralized systems that turn out to be centrally exploitable. Now we have globally exploitable systems, what progress! Those thugs in your neighborhood don't stand a chance. Unfortunately neither do police detectives or even FBI agents, even as their forensic methods have improved. How often has the trail of say, some gas-card fraud scheme, dead-ended at some kid whose whole degree of technical prowess consists of writing numbers received in email to mag strips. Numbers acquired by intricate, even fantastic means in bulk by persons who may be anywhere on Earth?
SIMPLIFY. Sounds like there were some clever people there because it ended on an idea 'stack overflow'.
one team expressed what seemed to be a common sentiment --- that the best thing one could do is already impossible. "We should go back to 1995 and get this right. [something about climate] We are too far along to stop bad things from happening in the future; we can just try not to make it worse."
They're right, 1995 was a good year. Allow me to reminisce.
There was this thing 'cash' which most of us used for every day purchases. We were not using cash because we had something to hide... honest! We payed our taxes regularly, sometimes even with cash... honest! Even terrorists paid for things in cash, and their money was as good as anyone's. That's the wonderful thing about cash, once you have it, it's yours and you don't need to worry that the Federal government will seize it from your account because that fellow who bought that living room set was an Iranian. Some reading this never knew a time when it took a lot longer to process a credit card than count money and make change. Then again, in 1995 people didn't hold up the line as they bought and scratched instant-win lottery tickets. That was considered rude then.
Your bank was your friend. it couldn't play the stock market and expose its shiny ass in derivatives, or corroborate with the Federal government in real time to scrutinize your transactions. Few banks were joined at the hip with credit card companies and junk mortgage giants. They offered actual ATM cards which worked in local ATMs that did not immediately broadcast your transaction and geo-position in global data streams to a loose consortium of corporate and government special interests. They
Does it come in a cereal box?
No, it comes in it's own damned planet. A planet like ours but much bigger, whose inhabitants have dedicated all their time and resources to the task of storing our planet's data streams so highly paid net-nerds can surround themselves with 'real time threat displays' while making knowing grunts of surprise, and giving tours of the NOC to doe-eyed CEOs, meanwhile getting zero productive work done..
Ping traffic (admin scripts and and early DDOS) sometimes grabbed 50% of all network traffic.
Email spam (in the days of open relays) at times comprised 50% of all traffic.
Netflix and Youtube video streaming now comprise 250% of all traffic.
Cloud service load balancing and proxy mechanisms use 150% of available backbone networks.
Cloud virtual process space sharing, where the same 'Hello World' apps bounce back and forth for no earthly reason, use a mere 100%.
The loading of ridiculously massive JPG images into tiny rectangles on webpages (with smart phones some now exceed 1000dpi) comprises 130% of all traffic.
People accessing web services that give real-time charts and summaries of traffic, use another 300% of all available bandwidth.
Now, net-nerds are going to use the cloud to duplicate the cloud so they can play it all back later. 200%.
Some 'net DVRs' will be installed on networks that already have one, to monitor (and capture) the copies of DVR data streams. 400%.
Two networks will try to DVR each other, resulting in a 'race condition to the finish' (Infinity%)
The network statistics shown above were obtained from Netcraft, by hacking into their website and placing them there.