We have a lot of old people so need even more young people in the hope that some will look after them. ANother generation down the line - those young people become an even bigger population of old people. Rinse and repeat until the human population size causes complete eco collapse.
Whats the solution? Wish I knew.
World war is a solution... Black Death or Spanish Flu was another solution.... On the fictional side, Logan's run is a solution...
There are many solutions. The problem is to find one that is acceptable. We probably want to think outside the box given the above solutions...
"The discovery of this phase was completely unexpected and not based on any prior theoretical prediction"
and yet for some reason they decided to build a detector specifically to look for these arrangements of electrons....
Actually, I think the original use of the detector was to developed a faster way to determine structure of crystal/electronic symmetries in solids (by measuring high-order non-linear harmonics and inferring the structure, not specifically looking for a particular arrangement). The interesting thing about this detector is that it doesn't involve moving the sample under test, so you can test samples that are under conditions that would be otherwise impractical to test using other techniques.
This latest result using this detector on Sr2IrO4 yielded a measurement that indicated a structure that didn't match the expected underlying crystal structure (thus unexpected). Furthermore, the presence of this unrelated structure seemed to be temperature dependent indicating a possible novel phase of matter that formed at a critical temperature.
Using optical second-harmonic generation, we report evidence of a hidden non-dipolar magnetic order in Sr2IrO4 that breaks both the spatial inversion and rotational symmetries of the underlying tetragonal lattice. Four distinct domain types corresponding to discrete 90-rotated orientations of a pseudovector order parameter are identified using nonlinear optical microscopy, which is expected from an electronic phase that possesses the symmetries of a magneto-electric loop-current order.
Palo Alto public schools spend around $14,700 per student when the average cost per student in the nation is around $8500. Someone needs to tell Zuckerberg he is opening the school in the wrong place if he truly wants to help the "underserved".
East Palo Alto != Palo Alto. This school is actually intended to tap from the Ravenswood City School District in Palo Alto
Although East Palo Alto spends nearly $13,000/student, about 2/3 of the students are English language learners. The district many full-time Spanish translators for school office, classroom support, and attending parent-teacher meetings as well as to comply with special education requirements (the law requires reports to be translated for non-english speaking parents).
A few years ago, they had to cut down the school year to the bare minimum required by law to fund these fixed offsets and pretty much leaves no money for the "extras" that you see in the Palo Alto School district across highway 101. Then there's the additional parcel tax in Palo Alto and the funding from the non-profit Palo-Alto Partner's in Education (formed by parents to help fund extra curriculars for Palo Alto, not East Palo Alto/Ravenswood City). So yes, Ravenswood City area (EPO) is certainly deserving of the label of underserved.
And since Google owns the models, it would be perfectly logical for said model to start making purchasing decisions on the original's behalf, thus massively increasing the value of Google's advertising/data mining services.
I'll bet amazon is working on similar technology given their patent on anticipatory shipping...;^)
But more seriously, I know people that buy certain items when they get below a certain price (basically, they have their own mental model). If a consumer had such a model of that and shared that with a seller, that's a small step from an automatic bill payment system...
E.g., Buy a ticket to Colorado no more than 3 times a year, during Christmas or winter weekends no less than 1 months in advance if the price is below $230/person round trip. Buy prime NYsteak no more than 4 times a year when it goes below $15/lb.
Of course you can always do this on the consumer side (e.g., automatic shopping tools based on advertised price), but often in price negotiations, the buyers generally get the best price when the seller is confident on closing the deal on the spot before they leave for a competitor.
Yes, I didn't mean that specific reactor itself would be used for production, but if this prototype works it clears the way for an actual production version in the **near** future, which will reduce the cost of energy in the long run.
Fusion has always been in the **near** future...
The fact that the W7X reactor is 8 years behind schedule already^ and it's only the experimental reactor might give some pause to the enthusiasm around this technology being deployed in a time frame that might be considered the near future from today. In the long run, it **might** prove to be a promising technology to reduce the cost of energy in the long run, but many potential revolutionary technologies suffer a great infant mortality rate and I wouldn't be betting too much on any of them at this point in the game...
I'm not saying we shouldn't be trying, but everything deserves a critical analysis, and that include the dream of clean fusion energy...
^(sadly, that magnitude of delay is not bad compared to other fusion projects like ITER and NIF)
Maybe you should read the original article, the machine has already been built and is ready for it's first test run with plasma, but is waiting aproval to do so.. Yes it did cost a lot of money to build, but if it works it will reduce the cost of generating energy enormously and it's 'clean'.. But even if the test works perfectly, it's still a long way off before we see it used for our daily use..
AFAIK, the Wendelstein 7-X is an *experimental* reactor, it wasn't planned to be an economical power plant.. It is designed for demonstrating the features required for continuous operation (important for a power plant), but I don't think it was designed for actual continuous 24-7 operation (as I recall it is supposed to operate in short stretches of plasma containment for about a half an hour or so and then gather test data, not actually do continuous fusion and extract power)
The idea is that its design is very close to that of what you would want for an actual stellarator reactor. If it works well, someone could tweak the design and build the plant that you might want to try to do fusion tests, and then later you would build on that the one for daily use and be pretty sure it works. This is not unlike ITER (which is also an experimental tokamak that is doing something similar). Neither is designed to be a power plant, (ITER doesn't even have a way to capture the fusion energy released and convert it to electricity, and I suspect neither does the W7-X reactor).
Unlike software, you don't ship the alpha nuclear reactor and let the unsuspecting population beta test it...
but if time can be observed moving both forward and backward, what is the per seconds part of the speed of light value? time has been shown to not be static in this observation, so 1 second could be observed in 100 seconds or.001 seconds... so what is the observed time dimension for the speed of light?
The problem with your question is that you are assuming that time is the same in frames of reference that are moving relative to each other. The short answer is they are not. Take this example from special relativity...
You are in a car driving to run-over an enemy watched by your friend on a nearby grassy knoll. You turn on your headlights and light from your headlights goes forward "at the speed of light" to illuminate your enemy and see his eyes illuminated as you race forward at 100km/h. Your friend on the grassy knoll is not moving at all and sees the light apparently travel at the "speed of light" from your car even though he is stationary. At first, you might think that your friend must see the light going "at the speed of light + 100km/h". However, he measured it and confirms it travelling at the only speed of light (not +100km/h). What gives?
Is the distance wrong, or the time wrong? In special relativity, you can treat things as if time dilated, or space contracted, but general relativity (e.g., when you take in consideration acceleration instead of constant velocities) actually suggests that both happen.
The wacky thing about this is that from the point of view of a photon (which is always travelling at the speed of light), there effectively isn't any distance at all to travel (it effectively exists at all points on its world line simultaneously), even though it is only travelling at the speed of light relative to other observers.
I thought all this means is that you can entangle two particles when they are close. Basically this means all you know is one is + and one is -. Then if you separate them and measure one you know what the other one is. That doesn't seem so spooky.
That's only the "non-QM" entanglement. The spooky part of the problem occurs when the particles are entangled in a superposition of states.
The difficulty is that it's hard to describe a non-QM analogy of an object in superposition of states (e.g., cat-is-half-dead). The so called QM bomb tester thought experiment is perhaps one of the easier way to understand how QM superposition might be different that simply an emergent property of an unknown or hidden underlying probability distribution function. Given a basic understanding of superposition, the idea entanglement and observed correlated wavefunction collapse/measurement might be a bit spooky (if observed correlations are in particles that are farther apart than light can travel during the time window of the observation).
Three major airports all sharing the same airspace also limits how many tall skyscrapers are built throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
I doubt air traffic is limiting any development (other than near the airports). The current limits on skyscrapers are mostly a result of limiting the shadows they cast on adjacent properties. Of course if you have politicians in your back pocket, you can of course build one of them tall skyscrapers in downtown SF.
As one developer put it, "In California people want to walk outside and see a tree. In New York, who cares if you're in a high rise? It's miserable eight months of the year."
Because it would detract from the income of small apartment complexes who wanted to rent to Google and Facebook employees, and charge them huge rents.
Actually, I think the main points against more housing are (ordered however your priorities dictate) * offices are less resource draining on the city than housing
(housing generally requires more public services like schools, police, fire, etc) * the area in question (north shoreline) is near protected wildlife (e.g. burrowing owl) * the profile of the average employees who stay in company housing generally don't spend much money in the community
Given that the specific companies proposing this housing generally don't result in a large tax-base (they mostly only pay property tax capped at prop-13 rates, not income tax because Linked-in and Google don't "sell" anything taxable). The main pro arguments for housing are quality of life issue for the people currently stuck in traffic, but someone needs to pay for their improved quality of life and it seems like making current residents pay for improving the lives of future residents (while simultaneously bearing the risk of supporting the services infrastructure if/when the boom goes bust) isn't totally fair.
which may be more of a "lightweight union" like the Screen Actors' Guild
I don't think you understand the whole SAG union stance in on the closed-shop issue (aka global rule one)...
"No SAG-AFTRA member shall work as an actor or make an agreement to work as an actor for any producer who has not executed a basic minimum agreement with the union which is in full force and effect. This provision applies worldwide."
This means once you join, you will *NOT* work for a non-union shop as long as you are a member. This includes independent, low-budget, pilot, experimental, non-profit, interactive, educational, student, or ANY production, unless that producer has signed a Contract or Letter of Agreement with SAG-AFTRA. Conversely, producers generally need to sign that they *exclusively* use union members (some exceptions are made to avoid Taft-Hartley for some specialized performers such as famous people portraying themselves or roles that require specialized skills like real operating equipment on-screen for documentaries)
I don't this this is the best example of a "lightweight union"...
The original belief in that (as well as the belief that meat causes high cholesterol) originated from some poorly done studies in the early 60's and late 70's.
FWIW, there are many contradictory studies made in this area that correlate read-meat consumption with higher mortality. Earlier studies that blamed cholesterol and fat in meat were poor studies, but there are more modern studies that illustrate correlation. Some studies blame gut bacteria that converts Carnitine into TMAO. Some blame the nitrates in processed meat. Some studies show an increased link with certain cancers. Some studies blame poor dental hygiene causing a general inflammation response leading to heart disease.
We may not know the truth yet in this matter, except there is some correlation (but if there is actually causation is a bit of a mystery still).
A civilization probably wouldn't need the output of an entire star right away. We barely need 1% of the sunlight that reaches our planet, a small panel could feed our energy needs for the next few decades.
Or maybe quite a bit less than 1% (you know, global warming and all that stuff)...
Most things need some sunlight to survive. So why would you block out all of the sun's light?
Of course this question has been answered before...;^p
"We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun."
In conclusion, a double barrier memristive device was realized with a highly uniform current distribution for the high and low resistance states, which indicates a non-filamentary based resistive switching mechanism. We have shown evidence that the use of an ultra-thin NbxOy solid state electrolyte layer of 2.5nm sandwiched between an Au (Schottky) contact and an Al2O3 tunneling barrier restricts the resistive switching mechanism to interfacial effects where both barriers are involved. This may lead to the observed drastically improved retention characteristic compared to the single barrier Schottky contact devices and may be based on confined oxygen ion diffusion within the sandwiched NbxOy layer.
The automobile is about to undergo a revolution just as basic. Instead of the big step function of having to buy and maintain your own car, everyone will be able to grab a ride from an automated vehicle as needed, to carry whatever they need, and nobody will have to search for parking. Cars may become more complex and costly than ever, but breaking usage down to individual rides makes auto expenses a much smaller part of each individual consumer's life.
Although I don't disagree the auto market is about to go about a revolution, I don't see things the same way.
When you "buy" (or lease) a car, the premium you pay is for a private space. Some people treat their private space well and keep it clean and well maintained, some apparently like to live in the squalor of their own take-out food garbage (and I have taken a ride to serve as examples of both). Without passing judgement on this, it is apparent to me that there is some value placed upon the ability to impose your own personality on the condition of this transportation space by the marketplace. Simply breaking things down into "rides" essentially elucidates the value that people pay for this private space. I suspect these future "rides" will be similar to riding in a taxicab and similarly there won't be a way to impose your personality on a semi-public space. Sure you might see "non-smoking" rides and other such things pop up temporarily, but as the market gets more segmented and less politically correct, you will probably see things increase to a level where it is nearly more-or-less the same part of some individual consumer's life.
Even if people are not "driving", the ability to control personal transportation space and time will continue to be an affordable luxury no different than buying a starbucks coffee every morning is to some people. Others will simply accept the public options and its inherent limitations, but more reasonable pricing model. Sure there will be a few people on the margin which it will make a big difference, but I suspect the idle capacity problem will still be a large deterrent to deploy semi-private shared transportation at a price point competitive with public transportation, so there will always be a cost premium to this (e.g., everyone wants to go to work at the same time, and go visit the city for dinner on the weekends, and in the middle of the day in the middle of the work week, any extra capacity will sit idle), that paying a small premium for private transportation will always be a luxury that can be afforded on the margin.
The problem with FPGA is not a storage problem, it is a connectivity (wiring) problem. The only progress we have made in the last few years on this is to develop slower, but more connective topologies. The reasons for this are many-fold, but some of the top problems are...
* metal routing layers (we only have about 16 layers of metals max and multi-level metalization and planarization is becoming increasingly difficult to perform past this point) ** also the upper layers generally aren't as dense lower layers (which makes them slower because of increase capacitance) * vias to connect to those routing layers (lots of metallurgical problems prevent them from being minimal sized) * distance is restricted to taxicab geometries (in 2.5 dimensions) * design tools to select appropriate connections basically suck
Also, nearly all FPGA use volatile configuration storage (e.g., flops/rams) initialized during "boot" from a rom using the existing routing infrastructure. This means there is not currently any non-volatile storage requirement in the array, which eliminates the key advantage of the memristors over vanilla transistors in that area.
A major advance in FPGAs would be some sort of 3D topological realization like your brain (rather than the 2.5D that we have today) or an improvement in topological connectivity, vias, or metalization, but it the current problems would not be something that would be solved by a memristor.
The automakers have reached the limits of technology in cleaning the diesel emissions, at least with the diesel fuel available in the USA.
I think you have made the wrong conclusion.
There *is* existing technology out there that allows diesels to burn cleaner, by using catalytic conversion in the exhaust with DEF. Unfortunately, this specific technology it has a cost and a hassle factor (DEF is a consumable, much more so than the platinum in a gasoline catalytic converter), so it is rarely deployed in consumer light-duty vehicles. Maybe someday, someone will come up a more economical technology that has less hassle factor for catalyzing exhaust from diesel engines, but to assume we have reached the limits of technology is an unwarranted conclusion.
You are likely to have been confused by the high-sulfur problem which has historically plagued diesel emissions in the US. This particular scandal was related to NOx emissions which is fixable (albeit inconveniently) by using DEF technology.
How much wiggle room between the limits is even physically and chemically feasible?
Apparently, it is feasible w/ a common bit of technology like DEF which is analogus to a catalytic converter in gasoline engines. Unfortunately, since DEF is a consumable, it creates this unpleasant maintenance hassle in addition to it's up-front costs to add into the exhaust system and user hassle during refueling.
Then again, of course you could just save a few bucks and cheat instead of deploying this type of catalytic technology -- like VW did...
Not to say that they are more elegant, but they are elegant, and another example thereof. Sorry English is such a shitty language that it routinely introduces serious ambiguity with as few as three words.
FWIW, English only allows you to be ambiguous, you could have written "other elegant computer"...
It is very clear to me, as a layman, not a strict scientist, the Great Leap Forward that happened 75000 years ago in our history was the development of abstract language and the ability to exploit coastal resources.
So yeah, tide prediction changed our history. But not 75 years ago in Europe, but 75000 years ago in South Eastern Africa.
Although this is all very interesting, I submit that it is merely serendipity to take advantage of the benefits of tide, but not the actual *prediction* of tides that changed human history in this case.
Although prediction of future events has been very useful in human history, we should not overstate it. Lest we devolve in to the shadow of practice like numerology, astrology, and other such fortune telling nonsense, because of course stopped clocks are still right twice a day...
1. Finding a black market to take a course for you isn't being "smart" it's just as likely to be "lazy" or "helicopter parenting". 2. We are talking admissions to MIT master's program here, not some random community college or state U. That mission isn't to educate people that are working their way up, master's degrees are for people who have graduated bachelor program somewhere already and offer admissions to a graduate-level program.
FWIW, the idea of this program is to treat certain MOOC's offered by MIT as kind of like "AP" classes for graduate studies to get them to graduate quicker. Basically, this is a revenue enhancement for MIT's business-school supply-chain-management master's program. Since these types of master's degrees are often paid for full-freight by companies (rather than students), they probably hope they can entice more enrollment for this degree program, yet not have to expand their brick-and-mortar operations as much which will result in more net $$$ in the bank. Ironically, those that do not take the MOOCs will consume brick-and-mortar operations and become more expensive and lower the net $$$, so why not favor those students that took the MOOCs (and did reasonably well)? Win-win...
So how do I get a raise in such an environment? How do I differentiate myself from my coworkers? This has Lord of The Flies written all over it. Or that Simpsons episode where Martin ends up in a bird cage.
AFAIK, often in a holacracy, you get raises by taking on more roles. If I understand it correctly, you generally can get more money by getting invited into the inner circles of roles (which is basically how it works in any company) or taking on more roles. Having access to new roles that are in high demand is generally similar to getting a promotion in that it may take some ass-kissing, but as I understand it you can sometimes take roles that nobody wants and get ahead that way...
Say goodbye to asymmetric encryption. Symmetric like AES can still survive quantum attacks with a doubling of key length. But all the current asymmetric algorithms are in peril once quantum computers exist.
Say hello to quantum encryption to replace some uses of asymmetric algorithms (which are often only used to exchange keys for symmetric algorithms).
The real danger is to public-private key signature algorithms (such as those used to sign certificates). At some point these may need to change to use proof-of-work (e.g., bitcoin) style authentication or other cost prohibitive measures...
Slashdot Mirror
We have a lot of old people so need even more young people in the hope that some will look after them. ANother generation down the line - those young people become an even bigger population of old people. Rinse and repeat until the human population size causes complete eco collapse.
Whats the solution? Wish I knew.
World war is a solution... Black Death or Spanish Flu was another solution.... On the fictional side, Logan's run is a solution...
There are many solutions. The problem is to find one that is acceptable. We probably want to think outside the box given the above solutions...
"The discovery of this phase was completely unexpected and not based on any prior theoretical prediction"
and yet for some reason they decided to build a detector specifically to look for these arrangements of electrons....
Actually, I think the original use of the detector was to developed a faster way to determine structure of crystal/electronic symmetries in solids (by measuring high-order non-linear harmonics and inferring the structure, not specifically looking for a particular arrangement). The interesting thing about this detector is that it doesn't involve moving the sample under test, so you can test samples that are under conditions that would be otherwise impractical to test using other techniques.
This latest result using this detector on Sr2IrO4 yielded a measurement that indicated a structure that didn't match the expected underlying crystal structure (thus unexpected). Furthermore, the presence of this unrelated structure seemed to be temperature dependent indicating a possible novel phase of matter that formed at a critical temperature.
Using optical second-harmonic generation, we report evidence of a hidden non-dipolar magnetic order in Sr2IrO4 that breaks both the spatial inversion and rotational symmetries of the underlying tetragonal lattice. Four distinct domain types corresponding to discrete 90-rotated orientations of a pseudovector order parameter are identified using nonlinear optical microscopy, which is expected from an electronic phase that possesses the symmetries of a magneto-electric loop-current order.
Palo Alto public schools spend around $14,700 per student when the average cost per student in the nation is around $8500. Someone needs to tell Zuckerberg he is opening the school in the wrong place if he truly wants to help the "underserved".
East Palo Alto != Palo Alto. This school is actually intended to tap from the Ravenswood City School District in Palo Alto
Although East Palo Alto spends nearly $13,000/student, about 2/3 of the students are English language learners. The district many full-time Spanish translators for school office, classroom support, and attending parent-teacher meetings as well as to comply with special education requirements (the law requires reports to be translated for non-english speaking parents).
A few years ago, they had to cut down the school year to the bare minimum required by law to fund these fixed offsets and pretty much leaves no money for the "extras" that you see in the Palo Alto School district across highway 101. Then there's the additional parcel tax in Palo Alto and the funding from the non-profit Palo-Alto Partner's in Education (formed by parents to help fund extra curriculars for Palo Alto, not East Palo Alto/Ravenswood City). So yes, Ravenswood City area (EPO) is certainly deserving of the label of underserved.
And since Google owns the models, it would be perfectly logical for said model to start making purchasing decisions on the original's behalf, thus massively increasing the value of Google's advertising/data mining services.
I'll bet amazon is working on similar technology given their patent on anticipatory shipping... ;^)
But more seriously, I know people that buy certain items when they get below a certain price (basically, they have their own mental model). If a consumer had such a model of that and shared that with a seller, that's a small step from an automatic bill payment system...
E.g., Buy a ticket to Colorado no more than 3 times a year, during Christmas or winter weekends no less than 1 months in advance if the price is below $230/person round trip. Buy prime NYsteak no more than 4 times a year when it goes below $15/lb.
Of course you can always do this on the consumer side (e.g., automatic shopping tools based on advertised price), but often in price negotiations, the buyers generally get the best price when the seller is confident on closing the deal on the spot before they leave for a competitor.
Yes, I didn't mean that specific reactor itself would be used for production, but if this prototype works it clears the way for an actual production version in the **near** future, which will reduce the cost of energy in the long run.
Fusion has always been in the **near** future...
The fact that the W7X reactor is 8 years behind schedule already^ and it's only the experimental reactor might give some pause to the enthusiasm around this technology being deployed in a time frame that might be considered the near future from today. In the long run, it **might** prove to be a promising technology to reduce the cost of energy in the long run, but many potential revolutionary technologies suffer a great infant mortality rate and I wouldn't be betting too much on any of them at this point in the game...
I'm not saying we shouldn't be trying, but everything deserves a critical analysis, and that include the dream of clean fusion energy...
^(sadly, that magnitude of delay is not bad compared to other fusion projects like ITER and NIF)
Maybe you should read the original article, the machine has already been built and is ready for it's first test run with plasma, but is waiting aproval to do so.. Yes it did cost a lot of money to build, but if it works it will reduce the cost of generating energy enormously and it's 'clean'..
But even if the test works perfectly, it's still a long way off before we see it used for our daily use..
AFAIK, the Wendelstein 7-X is an *experimental* reactor, it wasn't planned to be an economical power plant.. It is designed for demonstrating the features required for continuous operation (important for a power plant), but I don't think it was designed for actual continuous 24-7 operation (as I recall it is supposed to operate in short stretches of plasma containment for about a half an hour or so and then gather test data, not actually do continuous fusion and extract power)
The idea is that its design is very close to that of what you would want for an actual stellarator reactor. If it works well, someone could tweak the design and build the plant that you might want to try to do fusion tests, and then later you would build on that the one for daily use and be pretty sure it works. This is not unlike ITER (which is also an experimental tokamak that is doing something similar). Neither is designed to be a power plant, (ITER doesn't even have a way to capture the fusion energy released and convert it to electricity, and I suspect neither does the W7-X reactor).
Unlike software, you don't ship the alpha nuclear reactor and let the unsuspecting population beta test it...
but if time can be observed moving both forward and backward, what is the per seconds part of the speed of light value? time has been shown to not be static in this observation, so 1 second could be observed in 100 seconds or .001 seconds... so what is the observed time dimension for the speed of light?
The problem with your question is that you are assuming that time is the same in frames of reference that are moving relative to each other. The short answer is they are not. Take this example from special relativity...
You are in a car driving to run-over an enemy watched by your friend on a nearby grassy knoll. You turn on your headlights and light from your headlights goes forward "at the speed of light" to illuminate your enemy and see his eyes illuminated as you race forward at 100km/h. Your friend on the grassy knoll is not moving at all and sees the light apparently travel at the "speed of light" from your car even though he is stationary. At first, you might think that your friend must see the light going "at the speed of light + 100km/h". However, he measured it and confirms it travelling at the only speed of light (not +100km/h). What gives?
Is the distance wrong, or the time wrong? In special relativity, you can treat things as if time dilated, or space contracted, but general relativity (e.g., when you take in consideration acceleration instead of constant velocities) actually suggests that both happen.
The wacky thing about this is that from the point of view of a photon (which is always travelling at the speed of light), there effectively isn't any distance at all to travel (it effectively exists at all points on its world line simultaneously), even though it is only travelling at the speed of light relative to other observers.
I thought all this means is that you can entangle two particles when they are close. Basically this means all you know is one is + and one is -. Then if you separate them and measure one you know what the other one is. That doesn't seem so spooky.
That's only the "non-QM" entanglement. The spooky part of the problem occurs when the particles are entangled in a superposition of states.
The difficulty is that it's hard to describe a non-QM analogy of an object in superposition of states (e.g., cat-is-half-dead). The so called QM bomb tester thought experiment is perhaps one of the easier way to understand how QM superposition might be different that simply an emergent property of an unknown or hidden underlying probability distribution function. Given a basic understanding of superposition, the idea entanglement and observed correlated wavefunction collapse/measurement might be a bit spooky (if observed correlations are in particles that are farther apart than light can travel during the time window of the observation).
Three major airports all sharing the same airspace also limits how many tall skyscrapers are built throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
I doubt air traffic is limiting any development (other than near the airports). The current limits on skyscrapers are mostly a result of limiting the shadows they cast on adjacent properties. Of course if you have politicians in your back pocket, you can of course build one of them tall skyscrapers in downtown SF.
As one developer put it, "In California people want to walk outside and see a tree. In New York, who cares if you're in a high rise? It's miserable eight months of the year."
Because barracks were not considered "housing"?
Because it would detract from the income of small apartment complexes who wanted to rent to Google and Facebook employees, and charge them huge rents.
Actually, I think the main points against more housing are (ordered however your priorities dictate)
* offices are less resource draining on the city than housing
(housing generally requires more public services like schools, police, fire, etc)
* the area in question (north shoreline) is near protected wildlife (e.g. burrowing owl)
* the profile of the average employees who stay in company housing generally don't spend much money in the community
Given that the specific companies proposing this housing generally don't result in a large tax-base (they mostly only pay property tax capped at prop-13 rates, not income tax because Linked-in and Google don't "sell" anything taxable). The main pro arguments for housing are quality of life issue for the people currently stuck in traffic, but someone needs to pay for their improved quality of life and it seems like making current residents pay for improving the lives of future residents (while simultaneously bearing the risk of supporting the services infrastructure if/when the boom goes bust) isn't totally fair.
which may be more of a "lightweight union" like the Screen Actors' Guild
I don't think you understand the whole SAG union stance in on the closed-shop issue (aka global rule one)...
"No SAG-AFTRA member shall work as an actor or make an agreement to work as an actor for any producer who has not executed a basic minimum agreement with the union which is in full force and effect. This provision applies worldwide."
This means once you join, you will *NOT* work for a non-union shop as long as you are a member. This includes independent, low-budget, pilot, experimental, non-profit, interactive, educational, student, or ANY production, unless that producer has signed a Contract or Letter of Agreement with SAG-AFTRA. Conversely, producers generally need to sign that they *exclusively* use union members (some exceptions are made to avoid Taft-Hartley for some specialized performers such as famous people portraying themselves or roles that require specialized skills like real operating equipment on-screen for documentaries)
I don't this this is the best example of a "lightweight union"...
The original belief in that (as well as the belief that meat causes high cholesterol) originated from some poorly done studies in the early 60's and late 70's.
FWIW, there are many contradictory studies made in this area that correlate read-meat consumption with higher mortality. Earlier studies that blamed cholesterol and fat in meat were poor studies, but there are more modern studies that illustrate correlation. Some studies blame gut bacteria that converts Carnitine into TMAO. Some blame the nitrates in processed meat. Some studies show an increased link with certain cancers. Some studies blame poor dental hygiene causing a general inflammation response leading to heart disease.
We may not know the truth yet in this matter, except there is some correlation (but if there is actually causation is a bit of a mystery still).
A civilization probably wouldn't need the output of an entire star right away. We barely need 1% of the sunlight that reaches our planet, a small panel could feed our energy needs for the next few decades.
Or maybe quite a bit less than 1% (you know, global warming and all that stuff)...
Most things need some sunlight to survive. So why would you block out all of the sun's light?
Of course this question has been answered before... ;^p
"We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun."
http://www.nature.com/articles...
In conclusion, a double barrier memristive device was realized with a highly uniform current distribution for the high and low resistance states, which indicates a non-filamentary based resistive switching mechanism. We have shown evidence that the use of an ultra-thin NbxOy solid state electrolyte layer of 2.5nm sandwiched between an Au (Schottky) contact and an Al2O3 tunneling barrier restricts the resistive switching mechanism to interfacial effects where both barriers are involved. This may lead to the observed drastically improved retention characteristic compared to the single barrier Schottky contact devices and may be based on confined oxygen ion diffusion within the sandwiched NbxOy layer.
The automobile is about to undergo a revolution just as basic. Instead of the big step function of having to buy and maintain your own car, everyone will be able to grab a ride from an automated vehicle as needed, to carry whatever they need, and nobody will have to search for parking. Cars may become more complex and costly than ever, but breaking usage down to individual rides makes auto expenses a much smaller part of each individual consumer's life.
Although I don't disagree the auto market is about to go about a revolution, I don't see things the same way.
When you "buy" (or lease) a car, the premium you pay is for a private space. Some people treat their private space well and keep it clean and well maintained, some apparently like to live in the squalor of their own take-out food garbage (and I have taken a ride to serve as examples of both). Without passing judgement on this, it is apparent to me that there is some value placed upon the ability to impose your own personality on the condition of this transportation space by the marketplace. Simply breaking things down into "rides" essentially elucidates the value that people pay for this private space. I suspect these future "rides" will be similar to riding in a taxicab and similarly there won't be a way to impose your personality on a semi-public space. Sure you might see "non-smoking" rides and other such things pop up temporarily, but as the market gets more segmented and less politically correct, you will probably see things increase to a level where it is nearly more-or-less the same part of some individual consumer's life.
Even if people are not "driving", the ability to control personal transportation space and time will continue to be an affordable luxury no different than buying a starbucks coffee every morning is to some people. Others will simply accept the public options and its inherent limitations, but more reasonable pricing model. Sure there will be a few people on the margin which it will make a big difference, but I suspect the idle capacity problem will still be a large deterrent to deploy semi-private shared transportation at a price point competitive with public transportation, so there will always be a cost premium to this (e.g., everyone wants to go to work at the same time, and go visit the city for dinner on the weekends, and in the middle of the day in the middle of the work week, any extra capacity will sit idle), that paying a small premium for private transportation will always be a luxury that can be afforded on the margin.
That the individual discussing the "economics" of Star Trek was not an economist.
So, I'm bit confused, is it good or bad that the individual discussing "economics" is an economist?
Memristors would seem to be a relevant candidate.
A relative candidate for what?
The problem with FPGA is not a storage problem, it is a connectivity (wiring) problem. The only progress we have made in the last few years on this is to develop slower, but more connective topologies. The reasons for this are many-fold, but some of the top problems are...
* metal routing layers (we only have about 16 layers of metals max and multi-level metalization and planarization is becoming increasingly difficult to perform past this point)
** also the upper layers generally aren't as dense lower layers (which makes them slower because of increase capacitance)
* vias to connect to those routing layers (lots of metallurgical problems prevent them from being minimal sized)
* distance is restricted to taxicab geometries (in 2.5 dimensions)
* design tools to select appropriate connections basically suck
Also, nearly all FPGA use volatile configuration storage (e.g., flops/rams) initialized during "boot" from a rom using the existing routing infrastructure. This means there is not currently any non-volatile storage requirement in the array, which eliminates the key advantage of the memristors over vanilla transistors in that area.
A major advance in FPGAs would be some sort of 3D topological realization like your brain (rather than the 2.5D that we have today) or an improvement in topological connectivity, vias, or metalization, but it the current problems would not be something that would be solved by a memristor.
The automakers have reached the limits of technology in cleaning the diesel emissions, at least with the diesel fuel available in the USA.
I think you have made the wrong conclusion.
There *is* existing technology out there that allows diesels to burn cleaner, by using catalytic conversion in the exhaust with DEF. Unfortunately, this specific technology it has a cost and a hassle factor (DEF is a consumable, much more so than the platinum in a gasoline catalytic converter), so it is rarely deployed in consumer light-duty vehicles. Maybe someday, someone will come up a more economical technology that has less hassle factor for catalyzing exhaust from diesel engines, but to assume we have reached the limits of technology is an unwarranted conclusion.
You are likely to have been confused by the high-sulfur problem which has historically plagued diesel emissions in the US. This particular scandal was related to NOx emissions which is fixable (albeit inconveniently) by using DEF technology.
How much wiggle room between the limits is even physically and chemically feasible?
Apparently, it is feasible w/ a common bit of technology like DEF which is analogus to a catalytic converter in gasoline engines. Unfortunately, since DEF is a consumable, it creates this unpleasant maintenance hassle in addition to it's up-front costs to add into the exhaust system and user hassle during refueling.
Then again, of course you could just save a few bucks and cheat instead of deploying this type of catalytic technology -- like VW did...
Not to say that they are more elegant, but they are elegant, and another example thereof. Sorry English is such a shitty language that it routinely introduces serious ambiguity with as few as three words.
FWIW, English only allows you to be ambiguous, you could have written "other elegant computer"...
It is very clear to me, as a layman, not a strict scientist, the Great Leap Forward that happened 75000 years ago in our history was the development of abstract language and the ability to exploit coastal resources.
So yeah, tide prediction changed our history. But not 75 years ago in Europe, but 75000 years ago in South Eastern Africa.
Although this is all very interesting, I submit that it is merely serendipity to take advantage of the benefits of tide, but not the actual *prediction* of tides that changed human history in this case.
Although prediction of future events has been very useful in human history, we should not overstate it. Lest we devolve in to the shadow of practice like numerology, astrology, and other such fortune telling nonsense, because of course stopped clocks are still right twice a day...
Uh, no...
1. Finding a black market to take a course for you isn't being "smart" it's just as likely to be "lazy" or "helicopter parenting".
2. We are talking admissions to MIT master's program here, not some random community college or state U. That mission isn't to educate people that are working their way up, master's degrees are for people who have graduated bachelor program somewhere already and offer admissions to a graduate-level program.
FWIW, the idea of this program is to treat certain MOOC's offered by MIT as kind of like "AP" classes for graduate studies to get them to graduate quicker. Basically, this is a revenue enhancement for MIT's business-school supply-chain-management master's program. Since these types of master's degrees are often paid for full-freight by companies (rather than students), they probably hope they can entice more enrollment for this degree program, yet not have to expand their brick-and-mortar operations as much which will result in more net $$$ in the bank. Ironically, those that do not take the MOOCs will consume brick-and-mortar operations and become more expensive and lower the net $$$, so why not favor those students that took the MOOCs (and did reasonably well)? Win-win...
So how do I get a raise in such an environment? How do I differentiate myself from my coworkers? This has Lord of The Flies written all over it. Or that Simpsons episode where Martin ends up in a bird cage.
AFAIK, often in a holacracy, you get raises by taking on more roles. If I understand it correctly, you generally can get more money by getting invited into the inner circles of roles (which is basically how it works in any company) or taking on more roles. Having access to new roles that are in high demand is generally similar to getting a promotion in that it may take some ass-kissing, but as I understand it you can sometimes take roles that nobody wants and get ahead that way...
Say goodbye to asymmetric encryption.
Symmetric like AES can still survive quantum attacks with a doubling of key length. But all the current asymmetric algorithms are in peril once quantum computers exist.
Say hello to quantum encryption to replace some uses of asymmetric algorithms (which are often only used to exchange keys for symmetric algorithms).
The real danger is to public-private key signature algorithms (such as those used to sign certificates). At some point these may need to change to use proof-of-work (e.g., bitcoin) style authentication or other cost prohibitive measures...