Scientific theories only works when the minute details don't significantly affect the macro behavior (and vis-versa). That is, if there is a hierarchy of behaviors where theories can match the observations with some small uncertainty, the illusion of science is created with the assumed emergent continuum between apparently self-consistent levels of heirarchy.
Example of a simple hierarchy: the earth going around the sun is a macro-behavior, and testing molecular motion in a test-tube is a micro behavior. Although the hierarchy is not restricted simply to scale, but any aggregated parameter scientific model.
If a theory emerges for each where you assume the parametric effects on the other level of hierarchy are in the noise, you can discover a scientific theory (e.g., make hypothesis, test them, refine, etc), if no hierarchy emerges, you apparently cannot have scientific theory (e.g., cannot create testable hypothesis). Additionally, if you do have a scientific theory, you are implicity assuming that there is a continuum between the levels of your hierarchy (which is the underlying assumption of science).
These folks apparently assert that taking the eigenvalues of the Fisher Information Matrix predicts the emergence of a hierarchy. This apparently is because similar patterns result when analyzing the scientific modeling in other fields which have presumed scientific theories and they are theorizing that this is some sort of prerequisite of any model for which a scientific theory can be formed.
When did they ban perfume? Last time I flew was about 2 years ago, and I remember one woman who seemed to have spent the night before marinading in the same nasty ostensibly sunflower-scented old lady perfume that my grandmother wore.
I really, really hate flying...
I don't think there is an official ban on perfume, but one time I was on a flight an the flight attendent made someone change their seat because they wreaked of perfume and the passenger seated next to them complained.
Of course in more extreme situations, you might get kicked off a flight... Lest you think that's apocryphal, it actually happened in 2006 and 2010. Apparently most airline's conditions of carriage allows them to refuse passage to individuals with extreme body odors.
To my knowledge, boom boxes, smoking and heavy perfume and nudists haven't caused any plane accidents, and there currently social reasons to ban them as they can be quite annoying and might (in the case of smoking) cause future health problems.
As for cell phone situation, it's a similar situation (and if there may EM-o-phobes that would complain about sitting next to someone with a cell-phone causing them future health problems).
It's just a function of the times what we ban and don't ban. Right now everyone is addicted to electronics and need to be accommodated. 50 years ago people were addicted to smoking and needed to be accomodated. Maybe tomorrow, it will be people addicted to nudism that need to be accommodated. I'm just hoping that perfume isn't going to be big fad in the future...
The one you are remembering was probably PolyHeme. It wasn't a hundred years ago, but there technical and industrial barriers blocking the development of this type of product didn't really fall until the 70's.
The non-consent trial (technically opt-out, but you had to do it before you got your trama injury) for PolyHeme weren't just disturbing, Polyheme didn't perform well in these trials (for example, the chicago trial). This is probably why you haven't heard much about this since that time.
Because of the blowback from the Polyheme trials, one of the competing products at the time Hemopure never made it to similar trials and went BK. Part of the concern was that at least Polyheme was made from human blood, where Hemopure was made from cow blood.
This Hemerythrin stuff is chemically different, but may face the same issues as the earlier synthetic blood products in clinical trials and the inevitable marketing.
Ugh you are talking like Taiwan is a US territory. They are not like HK was, no US entities pick who runs Taiwan or how.
No Taiwan is not a US territory, that is why I said the closest analogy is with post WWII Germany (which wasn't a US, UK, French, or USSR territory either). It is technically a temporarily occupied territory.
Under well established precepts of international law (e.g., the Hauge convention of 1907), if you temporarily "occupy" a country as a result of a war (as opposed to annex a territory), the occupier (in this case the US) shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country (in this case Taiwan). I don't believe respecting the laws in force in the country would include being able to pick who runs the country.
As to what happens when such an occupation ends, that is generally a result of some treaty (in this case the Treaty of San Francisco) which said nothing about it. This is the basis of the current problem. In contrast, the same treaty specifically stated that Japan must give Korea back to Korea, and the various occupied pacific islands to the UN-trusteeship program administered by the US. There general wasn't any problem with these other territorial specifications of the treaty (although China has recently made some noise concerning the Ryukyu Islands and the Daito Islands)...
In contrast, Hong Kong was "ceded" to the British as a result of the Treaty of Nanjing (which closed out the First Opium War) making it a crown territory of the British Empire (this was different than the 99-year lease that was made for the new territories). As a crown colony it was technically part of the British empire and not an occupied territory, they could pick who ran the territory.
I suggest reading about the Treaty of San Francisco, Treaty of Taipei, and the Treaty of Shimonoseki before commenting about the Taiwan / PROC dispute...
The current status of Taiwan probably most similar to that of Germany. Where Germany was divided up into 4 zones after the war (US, UK, France, Russia), Taiwan is apparently effectively a US occupied zone until its fate is determined. It was recognized as an occupied territory of Japan before/during the war, but required that Japan relinquish control of Taiwan (and other territories acquired before the war) as a penalty for pre-war territorial aggressions. However, the treaty never specified to which government it was to go to (mainly because of the civil war between the ROC and the PROC which happened at the end of WWII).
The Treaty of Taipei (a separate peace treaty between Japan and the ROC, since abrogated by Japan when they recognized the PROC government), specifically ceded Taiwan to the ROC government. It's sort of a title to Taiwan that the ROC has waived around in the past, but it is unclear how the PROC ultimately winning the civil war affected the status of this document.
The US is pretty much in a conundrum. It could probably legally cede Taiwan to the PROC under the theory promulgated by the Treaty of San Francisco (give the island back to the country had it before Japan took it, this is what the UK wanted to do), or they can do nothing and claim that this is an internal issue between the ROC and PROC governments (I believe this is the continuing official US stance since the treaty), or they might twist the treaty wording and assert that Taiwan has the right to self-determination (which is of course what the US wants to do, but is opposed by the PROC and probably is too far a twist from a legal sense).
Originally, the US was sitting on its treaty status over Taiwan as part of a greater anti-communist sphere-of-influence policy. Now, it is probably merely attempting to get better terms for a PROC takeover by sitting on their hands until they get a deal that Taiwan is okay with. This has basically stalled because Taiwan doesn't appear that it would be happy with any PROC takeover (however, they are no-doubt looking at the Hong Kong 2-system situation with great interest).
I think people are confusing H1B (which have their own problems), with the B-1 visas that Infosys was caught abusing...
H1B are for employing people that live HERE to work HERE and are paid at a level to live HERE. B-1 visa are for people that live THERE, but are temporarily working HERE, but are paid to live THERE (which is generally much lower). For example, a person employed with the same company but lives say in India, that needs to come to the US to attend a meeting, or conference, or perhaps for a couple months for training or maybe even negotiate a contract in person would need a B-1 to get into the country (you technically can't do any of these things on a tourist visa).
The duration of an H1B is 3 years (extendable to 6 years), the duration of a B-1 is typically 6 months (extendable to 1 year). Think of the B-1 as a visitor visa to do technical visiting (there is a separate P-visa for an athlete or artist to make a performance in the US for money which is another type of visa).
The abuse that Infosys was doing is that they were submitting manufactured documentation for the B-1 that they were coming to the US to attend training, meetings or conference, but employing B-1 visa folks to work on long term projects. That is a big NO-NO because then you can paying foreign wages (instead of H1B equivalent wages) to people work on projects even though they are here, undercutting everyone (including H1Bs).
Infosys could have gotten the "death-sentence" (which some companies have gotten) which is no B-1 visas for a year, but they are of course big enough to avoid that and only need to pay $35M. This slap on the wrist is what to get upset about, not tangle this up with the separate H1B discussion. At least H1Bs are supposed to get paid a prevailing wage and their numbers are supposed to be limited, so at least on paper, it's reasonable. There are none of the similar statutory limitations on a B-1, so when you are abusing it, you are really going to town.
Coding may be valuable to some people's life, but given the number of people who successfully "muddled" through their lives w/o these skills, I think statistically (or perhaps in the actuarial sense) I would have an issue with a blanket statement like this is a vital skill...
Certainly knowing math can help you run a business or save money, but you don't really have to know any "coding" skills to get a feeling for numbers and use prepackaged software (e.g, hack up a spreadsheet) to get answers that are "good-enough" so you can spend your time practicing your most valuable skills (be it plumbing, or neuro-surgery) instead of coding/hacking up a program in java or C++ (or visual basic)...
Coding, like any valuable skill, take a bit of talent and practice. But is not key skill (unlike math and english), just because it's useful.
As a stupid example, when your toilet flapper valve wears out, it might be valuable and save you a few buck to know a bit of theory about this so you can go down to the hardware store and replace it yourself and save a few bucks, but as we know there are certainly people who call a plumber in this situation (and probably get ripped off). Although the/. crowd might look down on them too, they mostly manage to muddle through life (some of them earning more than we will ever see in our lifetimes). You might argue that learning the general in-and-outs of how a toilet works to make this kind of repair is actually plumbing, but it's really more akin to learning a common math-trick or discovering the excel compound interest function vs learning coding (and it certainly won't make you a master plumber, no more than knowing how to hack a program makes you a coder or even a professional software engineer).
Coders are the mechanics/machinists of the modern age. Highly technical, dedicated to their craft, important part of the industrial/economic engine, spawned a generation of amateurs that tinkered (usually with their cars) some of which were inspired to grow up to be professionals. But still not a vital skill for everyone.
Assuming Antigua actually goes through with this, they will likely find that the lure of $21M in gross profit isn't enough to get any real businesses interested (they would no doubt not want to invest in a business that had a gross cap annual net of $10M or so).
It will probably end up being setup by some fly by night folks setting up a website in Antigua for the sole purpose to tick off the US with no intention of actually making money (or paying Antigua any local taxes on the $21M gross). I'm not sure Antigua will enjoy the likely consequences if such a fly-by-night organization was audited and the WTO allows the US to destroy what is left of their economy.
To avoid the likely backlash, the likely outcome is that they will allow some MPAA backed entity to just set up a shell company to donate the government $21+1M/year. That is peanuts to the movie industry...
FWIW the statement "Think of all the people who tell you why the world is a good place, but theyâ(TM)re still jerks." was a direct quote from the interview with the author in the article.
My response "Not sure why anyone would take advice from someone with that attitude..." was a comment on the potential validity of their points given this attitude...
In many asian countries, the lexicographic and cultural barriers allows "copy-cat" internet business to thrive in the presense of multi-national generic providers. Despite many protestations by Europeans that their lexicography and culture are highly distinct from America, they are in actuality so similar that it is difficult for a "copy-cat" local internet business to differentiate themselves from a multi-national business.
Of course if there was some novel offering it might be able to fend off the multi-nationals, but for some reason the innovation engine doesn't seem to be as successful in Europe. Don't know if it's the unavailability of capital, or talent, but the real answer may be a culture that spawns stuff like this... My observation is that Silicon valley is populated with Europeans attempting to escape that. I'm not aware of any equivalent in asian cultures...
Having the red on the bottom, instead of on the top as we are accustomed to with automobile traffic lights is a carryover from the old semaphore days, where the blade of an upper quadrant semaphore would "drop" from green to red as a failsafe/safety function in the event of a problem, equipment failure, or other mal-function.
I don't think you read the same article (aka self help book infomercial) I did.
1. The article does really talk about "evolution optimizing your brain for achieving more happiness that it currenty can achieve". It posits that "the brain is relatively poor at turning positive experiences into emotional learning neural structure." I don't see how these are related.
2. The article doesn't really talk about behavior at all. It talks about learning and how survival learning has priority.
3. It also talks alot about internal satisfaction, or more specifically "repeatedly internalize the sense of having our three core needs met: safety, satisfaction, and connection."
It's really a self help book written by people that think happy people must be jerks (probably because they don't need his help). Here's a classic quote from this self professed self-help guru...
Think of all the people who tell you why the world is a good place, but they’re still jerks.
Not sure why anyone would take advice from someone with that attitude...
As someone who optimizes for happiness and doesn't indulge in mind altering substances (unless you count the occasional good prime NY strip cooked medium rare), I haven't noticed any disadvantages you seem to be alluding to. Would you care to elaborate?
Not saying optimizing for happiness is what everyone should do (to each his own), but I don't even understand what it is like to go through life mostly motivated by attempting to avoid unhappiness (or pain, or whatever the opposite of what I'm doing is).
It's not to say I'm happy all the time (I think people would be delusional if they were), but if I had to figuratively walk across coals to get some literal happiness, I probably would consider it. I'm guessing a person with the opposite temperament would avoid this simply to avoid the temporary unhappiness of the figurative coals. No pain, no gain?
The/. summary doesn't do the article justice (okay that's not a revelation). They didn't say a lot people have some sort of happiness faÃade, the author said "I know a lot of people..." that means something totally different. Maybe (I'm guessing) that person knows a bunch of sad, angry, lonely, hurt or frightened people that could benefit from his advice (or perhaps could sell a self help book to?). He is a therapist after all (and no doubt sees a bunch of folks with serious psychological problems).
As to feigned happiness somehow being a cover up for some feelings of sadness, angry, lonely, hurt, or frightened feelings, I think that might be mostly restricted to people that need external validation. For example, I'm asking myself, if I was angry or lonely, why hide it by attempting to feign happiness to someone who could give a rats ass about what I felt? (since most folks give a rats ass about the affairs of total strangers or even casual acquaintances).
As many people will attest, when you stop caring what other people think about you, your happiness level will increase greatly... Perhaps this is the "clear" (not necessarily happy) thinking the author is alluding to that is necessary to be happy?
All of the 3D rendering APIs are capable of proper, full-featured 2D rendering. The same hardware accelerates both just as well. The problem is that most apps are just not using it and/or that they are CPU bound for other reasons. PDFs, for instance, are rather complex to decode.
Not totally true. Stroke/path/fill rasterization work is not supported by current 3D rendering APIs (and thus not accelerated by 3d hardware). Right now the stroke/path/fill rasterization is done on the CPU and merely 2D blit-ed to the frame buffer by the GPU. The CPU could of course attempt convert the stroke/path into triangles and then use the GPU to rasterize those triangles (with some level of efficiency), but that's a far cry from "proper, full-featured 2D".
Fonts are special cased in that glyphs are cached, but small font rasterization isn't generally possible to do with triangle rasterization (because of the glyph hints).
Since SW doesn't even attempt to use HW for modern 2D operations, it will likely be a long time before HW will support this kind of stuff...
So they are saying time is an emergent property that occurs when only one particle out of a entangled pair is observed.
I'm not a physicist, but as I understand it, it's a bit subtle, but one way to think about what physicists are saying that from the reference point of an external observer that is not entangled with particles, the entangled states don't evolve/change relative to each other, which is kind of a fancy way of saying that relative dependence on time for that state from the reference point of of the external observer has come to a stop. This might be an interesting way to think about why they remain entangled state until observed.
From the reference point of particles/observers that are entangled, their states can evolve/change separately which is kind of a fancy way of saying that since the fact that they can change, means that time has emerged.
The concept apparently was illustrated as follows...
Two entangled photons are created and passed through a polarizer. When an "observer" measures the polarization of one of the photons, the experimenter becomes entangled with it and when it measures the second photon, it can observe the change of polarization of the second photon relative to the first one and thus relative time has emerged as a consequence of making two measurements.
If the "super-observer" does not measure the polarization of an individual entangled photons but merely some global property of both photons (e.g., kind of like "net" polarization, but more complicated than that some tomography of states), the "super-observer" doesn't become entangled with individual polarization measurements and to that "super-observer", the photons remain in an unchanging entangled state from the "super-observer's" reference point. That is another way of saying that time or time-evolution has not emerged yet from the viewpoint of the "super-observer" relative to the photons in the entangled state.
P2RX7 was all the hype back in January. Here's a blog entry on it... Or the paper abstract for the more technically inclined (pay-wall for paper)...
If people are interested, I think there is some more info in English concerning the earlier Tampere research here (for free)...
Sometimes it's hard to predict what is going to work in bio-science just by seeing the techno-press response. Although polio is caused by an Enterovirus, so is the common cold (the variety caused by a Rhinovirus). Generally you get Enterovirus infections orally. Some Enteroviruses can eventually enter the bloodstream and infect other organs.
Apparently, the Tampere study looked at the small-bowel mucosal biopsies of 120 patients and did a PCR technique to assess if there was likely a Enterovirus infection. 74% of people with type 1 diabetes tested positive, compared with 29% of the non-diabetic ones. On that basis they conclude that a persistent Enterovirus infection in the small-bowel might eventually spread to the pancreas where the on-going immune response might destroy the insulin producing cells leading to diabetes...
So, I wasn't totally impressed after reading that paper, but you never know...
A kid has a hobby. The hobby has the ability to cause millions of dollars of consequential damages.
1) Is the parent responsible for the damage (if the kid doesn't have money or insurance to cover the potential damage)? Probably.
2) Does practicing the hobby at a friends house or in a public park change this? Unlikely, but they might make some other folks additionally responsible.
3) Does the kid have to ask for permission from the parents before practicing such a dangerous hobby? Only if you don't want to get in trouble with the parents or have plan to run away never to return if you get in trouble, although that probably won't get your parents off the hook.
I'm sure that given a strict interpretation of the set of criteria listed, not many folks would likely have free will. The first questions 1-3 sort of indicate the ability to make a decision, but the last question "can you predict your decision in advance?" is likely to be true for many decisions that people might make.
For example, a movie comes out (say like gravity or elysium). Certainly, you are a decider (you can choose to go or not go to the movie and say bicycle or go to a party), and you can make you decison using recursive reasoning, and you the ability to approximate that decision for yourself and the friends you are likely to see the movie with... Yet, you can predict with nearly 100% certainty that you will (or for some people will not) see the movie. According to this test, you are either lying (you can't predict), or you are not the decider (maybe hollywood has already decided you will see the movie and you have no free will in this matter).
I think the flaw is that it is nearly impossible to distinguish actual prediction from highly correlated estimations (e.g., I saw all the other sci-fi movies that came out before, so I'll make similar decisions in the future). To partially fix this I think these types of tests should restrict their analysis to isolated, novel decisions.
Of course if you can mark all habitual or predictable behaviours as the person not being the decider (kinda like how AA folks concede that they are powerless to make decisions). But to me that is basically a sad outcome as the number of novel decisions in life we actually make that are not predictable (vs the ones that we have "help" making and thus are not the decider) is small. Many folks might even be able to predict these rare deicions because of our joint conciousness (e.g., we are aculturated to make similar decision as the rest of society or if you are a rebel to make the predictable anti-decision), which leads us to the sad conclusion that the main function of any society is to deprive us of free will (even for the anti-social folks). You almost need to be asocial to have free will.
The US western frontier was often sold to the easterners as a place you could go to free yourselves from the stranglehold of modern society and make a clean start.
Sadly, most of the folks that made the trek were ill prepared for the radical self reliance required of early settlers in that territory. Many simply returned (some died on the way out or back), and a vanishing few found their dream lives. Of course their attempts paved the way for those that followed.
What made it possible, the lure of course was the exploitation of natural resource made it possible to generate enough wealth to bootstrap the society. Not to mention the heavy incentives (homestead land) doled out by the US government in attempt to build a critical population mass there before other competing political powers were able to manipulate the situation. It would take pretty deep pockets to do something similar in todays world (a couple billion from a single dot-com billionaire wouldn't likely be enough)...
The short story, it is likely most of those that make the attempt to build it will not achieve their goal in their lifetime, but it might make it possible for those that follow. Still want to opt-in?
State PE (principle and practice of engineering) exams have had software options since I took them back 23 years ago. The main thing new is that it used to be an small optional element of the Electrical Engineering discipline, eventually became a larger optional element of the Electrical/Computer Engineering discipline, and now (just starting last year) Software Engineering test is available as it's own discipline.
The just released pass rate for the new PE-SW test is pretty dismal (~50%) compared to the PE-Electrical/Computer test (tends to hover around 66%). This is probably because many people who took the test the first go-around probably only had background as "programmers" or "developers", and few have a broad enough background (or studied sufficiently for the test), to understand and score well in all the elements of the test.
The software elements of the Electrical/Computer Test were more geared towards programming questions, and computer design issues which is probably more comfortable material for the typical EE-turned-programmer. In contrast, the PE-SW test covers stuff like UML, Software security audit (like common criteria), maintenance, testing, requirements management, etc... (in addition to traditional programming and algorithms stuff). A good portion of the test is a bunch of generic engineering stuff that many programmers/developers never bother to learn.
FWIW, back 23 years ago, getting a PE license for computer stuff wasn't really worth much unless you lived in Texas (that state is super picky about anyone that even hinted about being an engineer or a business offering engineering services if they weren't licensed). The company I worked for was forced to create a new title for all the FAEs (field applications engineers) because of this restriction although Texas PE board eventually relented and gave field engineers and test engineers a PE waiver to be compatible with the rest of the world.
I'm guessing that the PE-SW is really only gonna be valuable if you are working on government contracts. Not saying it wouldn't be a good for SW engineers to up their "engineering" game, but often what starts as licensing often morphs into a lever to limit the number of people in the profession (basically like a guild). Given that any limits will likely just accelerate the migration of SW offshore, I doubt any attempt to make PE-SW a requirement will go anywhere...
Sadly, very few people understand the ACA (although many claim to). To argue that there is some sort of complexity of the ACA is just flat out wrong.
The primary function of the ACA is to attempt to force more people (and their money) into the insurance pool. The basic strategy is to levy a fine folks for not having enough insurance (meaning people pursuing a high-deductible+MSA strategy will likely incur the fine).
The minimum level of insurance to avoid the fines on the individual policy is considered the bronze level. It is anticipated that insurance companies will eventually drop all plans that don't meet this level due to minimal future demand. Of course there are predefined silver, gold and platinum levels (if you can afford them) making more standardized offerings which should be easier to compare.
The political environment that created the ACA is really a function of the unions and the large corporations. They did not want to give up their gold-plated plans funded with employer tax deductions, so any reform bill had to leave them intact.
I'm not a fan of the ACA (as written), but that's primarily because of the politicization of what the "bronze" plan needed to cover.
The ACA also establishes a medical loss ratio (MLR) which requires insurance companies to spend a minimum percentage of premiums on claims. This is done to reduce that whole supposedly "evil" profit motive of denying claims. The downside is that insurance company is allowed to "rebate" the premium to comply with the MLR potentially complicating your taxes at the same time simplifying the insurance companies job (they can just deny claims like they did before, but just rebate the money to all the enrollees equally).
The sad thing is the ACA might have been good in idea form, but bad on paper (mostly because they didn't allow anyone to actually read the written bill before they had to vote to pass it).
As for the single-payer/fee-for-service model, the ACA even attempts to move Medicare away from that model. The ACA attempts to expand on the idea of a shared saving program where accountable care organizations (ACOs) can operate similar to medicare-advantage (the private version of medicare in the US) health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Under the single-payer/fee-for-service model, there's no incentive for medicare providers to coordinate service to minimize redundant costs and it was noticed that medicare-advantage plans were working better because they often had coordinated service. Under the ACO model, medicare providers can now coordinate and actually split the savings that resulted from coordination with the government (before there was no incentive to coordinate because the providers wouldn't see any monetary benefit from coordination). Many see the ACO provision as the Trojan horse that will eventually lead to the eventual conversion to single-payer (but not fee-for-service). As I understand it, this is how the NHS and the Canadian system work (not 100% fee-for-service, but more of a hybrid with reimbursement-per-patient-served model like and ACO).
So readup on the ACA. It sucks if you have to pay more (either in additional 0.9% medicare tax, or the 3.8% net investment income tax created to fund it) or were attempting to avoid putting your money in the health insurance pool by using a high-deductible strategy, but the money to subsidize all the poor folks (and underemployed 26-year-olds) getting insurance had to come from somewhere.
Upto 50nm, it was fine, but is now in the region of diminishing returns. The cost savings that were always synonymous w/ shrinks are no longer there, since the process costs easily outweigh the cost savings per die, even assuming a 100% yield.
I wasn't aware of a 50nm node or shrink, but 65nm was the last "cheap" node (which corresponded to a 55nm shrink). The next popular node was 45nm didn't really take off before the shrink to 40nm. TSMC (one of the major foundaries) actually blew-off the 32nm and 22nm nodes completely and only productized the 28nm shrink and 20nm shrink.
Usually, the "shrink" is purely a cost/die = (cost/wafer)/(yield*die/wafer) issue. Since in a shrink, the cost/wafer is mostly constant but the die/wafer goes up, the cost/die goes down (usually the yield goes up too if it's defect density limited, but not so much if it is parametric limited).
Moving to a new node, however, tends to give other benefits (e.g., faster transitors, lower voltage swings), but at higher wafer costs and more design restrictions and complexity. Recently this has been diminishing returns from a cost point of view. For example, the Intel's 22nm node with fin-fet/tri-gate gave the benefit of a much lower static power, but the average transitor size didn't go down very much and I'm sure the wafer cost was much higher. Still, the benefit of lower static power gates for mobile devices (or other thermally limited devices) is hard to overlook even if the cost per die is higher (meaning the new features are worth the additional cost per die).
Slashdot Mirror
Scientific theories only works when the minute details don't significantly affect the macro behavior (and vis-versa). That is, if there is a hierarchy of behaviors where theories can match the observations with some small uncertainty, the illusion of science is created with the assumed emergent continuum between apparently self-consistent levels of heirarchy.
Example of a simple hierarchy: the earth going around the sun is a macro-behavior, and testing molecular motion in a test-tube is a micro behavior. Although the hierarchy is not restricted simply to scale, but any aggregated parameter scientific model.
If a theory emerges for each where you assume the parametric effects on the other level of hierarchy are in the noise, you can discover a scientific theory (e.g., make hypothesis, test them, refine, etc), if no hierarchy emerges, you apparently cannot have scientific theory (e.g., cannot create testable hypothesis). Additionally, if you do have a scientific theory, you are implicity assuming that there is a continuum between the levels of your hierarchy (which is the underlying assumption of science).
These folks apparently assert that taking the eigenvalues of the Fisher Information Matrix predicts the emergence of a hierarchy. This apparently is because similar patterns result when analyzing the scientific modeling in other fields which have presumed scientific theories and they are theorizing that this is some sort of prerequisite of any model for which a scientific theory can be formed.
When did they ban perfume? Last time I flew was about 2 years ago, and I remember one woman who seemed to have spent the night before marinading in the same nasty ostensibly sunflower-scented old lady perfume that my grandmother wore.
I really, really hate flying...
I don't think there is an official ban on perfume, but one time I was on a flight an the flight attendent made someone change their seat because they wreaked of perfume and the passenger seated next to them complained.
Of course in more extreme situations, you might get kicked off a flight... Lest you think that's apocryphal, it actually happened in 2006 and 2010. Apparently most airline's conditions of carriage allows them to refuse passage to individuals with extreme body odors.
To my knowledge, boom boxes, smoking and heavy perfume and nudists haven't caused any plane accidents, and there currently social reasons to ban them as they can be quite annoying and might (in the case of smoking) cause future health problems.
As for cell phone situation, it's a similar situation (and if there may EM-o-phobes that would complain about sitting next to someone with a cell-phone causing them future health problems).
It's just a function of the times what we ban and don't ban. Right now everyone is addicted to electronics and need to be accommodated. 50 years ago people were addicted to smoking and needed to be accomodated. Maybe tomorrow, it will be people addicted to nudism that need to be accommodated. I'm just hoping that perfume isn't going to be big fad in the future...
The one you are remembering was probably PolyHeme. It wasn't a hundred years ago, but there technical and industrial barriers blocking the development of this type of product didn't really fall until the 70's.
The non-consent trial (technically opt-out, but you had to do it before you got your trama injury) for PolyHeme weren't just disturbing, Polyheme didn't perform well in these trials (for example, the chicago trial). This is probably why you haven't heard much about this since that time.
Because of the blowback from the Polyheme trials, one of the competing products at the time Hemopure never made it to similar trials and went BK. Part of the concern was that at least Polyheme was made from human blood, where Hemopure was made from cow blood.
This Hemerythrin stuff is chemically different, but may face the same issues as the earlier synthetic blood products in clinical trials and the inevitable marketing.
http://slashdot.org/story/13/08/13/2022222/cold-war-plan-tried-to-put-a-copper-ring-around-the-earth
Ugh you are talking like Taiwan is a US territory. They are not like HK was, no US entities pick who runs Taiwan or how.
No Taiwan is not a US territory, that is why I said the closest analogy is with post WWII Germany (which wasn't a US, UK, French, or USSR territory either). It is technically a temporarily occupied territory.
Under well established precepts of international law (e.g., the Hauge convention of 1907), if you temporarily "occupy" a country as a result of a war (as opposed to annex a territory), the occupier (in this case the US) shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country (in this case Taiwan). I don't believe respecting the laws in force in the country would include being able to pick who runs the country.
As to what happens when such an occupation ends, that is generally a result of some treaty (in this case the Treaty of San Francisco) which said nothing about it. This is the basis of the current problem. In contrast, the same treaty specifically stated that Japan must give Korea back to Korea, and the various occupied pacific islands to the UN-trusteeship program administered by the US. There general wasn't any problem with these other territorial specifications of the treaty (although China has recently made some noise concerning the Ryukyu Islands and the Daito Islands)...
In contrast, Hong Kong was "ceded" to the British as a result of the Treaty of Nanjing (which closed out the First Opium War) making it a crown territory of the British Empire (this was different than the 99-year lease that was made for the new territories). As a crown colony it was technically part of the British empire and not an occupied territory, they could pick who ran the territory.
I suggest reading about the Treaty of San Francisco, Treaty of Taipei, and the Treaty of Shimonoseki before commenting about the Taiwan / PROC dispute...
The current status of Taiwan probably most similar to that of Germany. Where Germany was divided up into 4 zones after the war (US, UK, France, Russia), Taiwan is apparently effectively a US occupied zone until its fate is determined. It was recognized as an occupied territory of Japan before/during the war, but required that Japan relinquish control of Taiwan (and other territories acquired before the war) as a penalty for pre-war territorial aggressions. However, the treaty never specified to which government it was to go to (mainly because of the civil war between the ROC and the PROC which happened at the end of WWII).
The Treaty of Taipei (a separate peace treaty between Japan and the ROC, since abrogated by Japan when they recognized the PROC government), specifically ceded Taiwan to the ROC government. It's sort of a title to Taiwan that the ROC has waived around in the past, but it is unclear how the PROC ultimately winning the civil war affected the status of this document.
The US is pretty much in a conundrum. It could probably legally cede Taiwan to the PROC under the theory promulgated by the Treaty of San Francisco (give the island back to the country had it before Japan took it, this is what the UK wanted to do), or they can do nothing and claim that this is an internal issue between the ROC and PROC governments (I believe this is the continuing official US stance since the treaty), or they might twist the treaty wording and assert that Taiwan has the right to self-determination (which is of course what the US wants to do, but is opposed by the PROC and probably is too far a twist from a legal sense).
Originally, the US was sitting on its treaty status over Taiwan as part of a greater anti-communist sphere-of-influence policy. Now, it is probably merely attempting to get better terms for a PROC takeover by sitting on their hands until they get a deal that Taiwan is okay with. This has basically stalled because Taiwan doesn't appear that it would be happy with any PROC takeover (however, they are no-doubt looking at the Hong Kong 2-system situation with great interest).
I think people are confusing H1B (which have their own problems), with the B-1 visas that Infosys was caught abusing...
H1B are for employing people that live HERE to work HERE and are paid at a level to live HERE. B-1 visa are for people that live THERE, but are temporarily working HERE, but are paid to live THERE (which is generally much lower). For example, a person employed with the same company but lives say in India, that needs to come to the US to attend a meeting, or conference, or perhaps for a couple months for training or maybe even negotiate a contract in person would need a B-1 to get into the country (you technically can't do any of these things on a tourist visa).
The duration of an H1B is 3 years (extendable to 6 years), the duration of a B-1 is typically 6 months (extendable to 1 year). Think of the B-1 as a visitor visa to do technical visiting (there is a separate P-visa for an athlete or artist to make a performance in the US for money which is another type of visa).
The abuse that Infosys was doing is that they were submitting manufactured documentation for the B-1 that they were coming to the US to attend training, meetings or conference, but employing B-1 visa folks to work on long term projects. That is a big NO-NO because then you can paying foreign wages (instead of H1B equivalent wages) to people work on projects even though they are here, undercutting everyone (including H1Bs).
Infosys could have gotten the "death-sentence" (which some companies have gotten) which is no B-1 visas for a year, but they are of course big enough to avoid that and only need to pay $35M. This slap on the wrist is what to get upset about, not tangle this up with the separate H1B discussion. At least H1Bs are supposed to get paid a prevailing wage and their numbers are supposed to be limited, so at least on paper, it's reasonable. There are none of the similar statutory limitations on a B-1, so when you are abusing it, you are really going to town.
Coding may be valuable to some people's life, but given the number of people who successfully "muddled" through their lives w/o these skills, I think statistically (or perhaps in the actuarial sense) I would have an issue with a blanket statement like this is a vital skill...
Certainly knowing math can help you run a business or save money, but you don't really have to know any "coding" skills to get a feeling for numbers and use prepackaged software (e.g, hack up a spreadsheet) to get answers that are "good-enough" so you can spend your time practicing your most valuable skills (be it plumbing, or neuro-surgery) instead of coding/hacking up a program in java or C++ (or visual basic)...
Coding, like any valuable skill, take a bit of talent and practice. But is not key skill (unlike math and english), just because it's useful.
As a stupid example, when your toilet flapper valve wears out, it might be valuable and save you a few buck to know a bit of theory about this so you can go down to the hardware store and replace it yourself and save a few bucks, but as we know there are certainly people who call a plumber in this situation (and probably get ripped off). Although the /. crowd might look down on them too, they mostly manage to muddle through life (some of them earning more than we will ever see in our lifetimes). You might argue that learning the general in-and-outs of how a toilet works to make this kind of repair is actually plumbing, but it's really more akin to learning a common math-trick or discovering the excel compound interest function vs learning coding (and it certainly won't make you a master plumber, no more than knowing how to hack a program makes you a coder or even a professional software engineer).
Coders are the mechanics/machinists of the modern age. Highly technical, dedicated to their craft, important part of the industrial/economic engine, spawned a generation of amateurs that tinkered (usually with their cars) some of which were inspired to grow up to be professionals. But still not a vital skill for everyone.
Assuming Antigua actually goes through with this, they will likely find that the lure of $21M in gross profit isn't enough to get any real businesses interested (they would no doubt not want to invest in a business that had a gross cap annual net of $10M or so).
It will probably end up being setup by some fly by night folks setting up a website in Antigua for the sole purpose to tick off the US with no intention of actually making money (or paying Antigua any local taxes on the $21M gross). I'm not sure Antigua will enjoy the likely consequences if such a fly-by-night organization was audited and the WTO allows the US to destroy what is left of their economy.
To avoid the likely backlash, the likely outcome is that they will allow some MPAA backed entity to just set up a shell company to donate the government $21+1M/year. That is peanuts to the movie industry...
FWIW the statement "Think of all the people who tell you why the world is a good place, but theyâ(TM)re still jerks." was a direct quote from the interview with the author in the article.
My response "Not sure why anyone would take advice from someone with that attitude..." was a comment on the potential validity of their points given this attitude...
My take...
In many asian countries, the lexicographic and cultural barriers allows "copy-cat" internet business to thrive in the presense of multi-national generic providers. Despite many protestations by Europeans that their lexicography and culture are highly distinct from America, they are in actuality so similar that it is difficult for a "copy-cat" local internet business to differentiate themselves from a multi-national business.
Of course if there was some novel offering it might be able to fend off the multi-nationals, but for some reason the innovation engine doesn't seem to be as successful in Europe. Don't know if it's the unavailability of capital, or talent, but the real answer may be a culture that spawns stuff like this... My observation is that Silicon valley is populated with Europeans attempting to escape that. I'm not aware of any equivalent in asian cultures...
Random fact check:
Having the red on the bottom, instead of on the top as we are accustomed to with automobile traffic lights is a carryover from the old semaphore days, where the blade of an upper quadrant semaphore would "drop" from green to red as a failsafe/safety function in the event of a problem, equipment failure, or other mal-function.
http://www.railroadsignals.us/basics/basics4.htm#Format_
I don't think you read the same article (aka self help book infomercial) I did.
1. The article does really talk about "evolution optimizing your brain for achieving more happiness that it currenty can achieve". It posits that "the brain is relatively poor at turning positive experiences into emotional learning neural structure." I don't see how these are related.
2. The article doesn't really talk about behavior at all. It talks about learning and how survival learning has priority.
3. It also talks alot about internal satisfaction, or more specifically "repeatedly internalize the sense of having our three core needs met: safety, satisfaction, and connection ."
It's really a self help book written by people that think happy people must be jerks (probably because they don't need his help). Here's a classic quote from this self professed self-help guru...
Think of all the people who tell you why the world is a good place, but they’re still jerks.
Not sure why anyone would take advice from someone with that attitude...
As someone who optimizes for happiness and doesn't indulge in mind altering substances (unless you count the occasional good prime NY strip cooked medium rare), I haven't noticed any disadvantages you seem to be alluding to. Would you care to elaborate?
Not saying optimizing for happiness is what everyone should do (to each his own), but I don't even understand what it is like to go through life mostly motivated by attempting to avoid unhappiness (or pain, or whatever the opposite of what I'm doing is).
It's not to say I'm happy all the time (I think people would be delusional if they were), but if I had to figuratively walk across coals to get some literal happiness, I probably would consider it. I'm guessing a person with the opposite temperament would avoid this simply to avoid the temporary unhappiness of the figurative coals. No pain, no gain?
The /. summary doesn't do the article justice (okay that's not a revelation). They didn't say a lot people have some sort of happiness faÃade, the author said "I know a lot of people..." that means something totally different. Maybe (I'm guessing) that person knows a bunch of sad, angry, lonely, hurt or frightened people that could benefit from his advice (or perhaps could sell a self help book to?). He is a therapist after all (and no doubt sees a bunch of folks with serious psychological problems).
As to feigned happiness somehow being a cover up for some feelings of sadness, angry, lonely, hurt, or frightened feelings, I think that might be mostly restricted to people that need external validation. For example, I'm asking myself, if I was angry or lonely, why hide it by attempting to feign happiness to someone who could give a rats ass about what I felt? (since most folks give a rats ass about the affairs of total strangers or even casual acquaintances).
As many people will attest, when you stop caring what other people think about you, your happiness level will increase greatly... Perhaps this is the "clear" (not necessarily happy) thinking the author is alluding to that is necessary to be happy?
B. You can't run font hint virtual machine by tessellating triangles.
A. running the font hint engine in CUDA or OpenCL would likely be an exercise in deceleration not acceleration.
All of the 3D rendering APIs are capable of proper, full-featured 2D rendering. The same hardware accelerates both just as well. The problem is that most apps are just not using it and/or that they are CPU bound for other reasons. PDFs, for instance, are rather complex to decode.
Not totally true. Stroke/path/fill rasterization work is not supported by current 3D rendering APIs (and thus not accelerated by 3d hardware). Right now the stroke/path/fill rasterization is done on the CPU and merely 2D blit-ed to the frame buffer by the GPU. The CPU could of course attempt convert the stroke/path into triangles and then use the GPU to rasterize those triangles (with some level of efficiency), but that's a far cry from "proper, full-featured 2D".
Fonts are special cased in that glyphs are cached, but small font rasterization isn't generally possible to do with triangle rasterization (because of the glyph hints).
Since SW doesn't even attempt to use HW for modern 2D operations, it will likely be a long time before HW will support this kind of stuff...
So they are saying time is an emergent property that occurs when only one particle out of a entangled pair is observed.
I'm not a physicist, but as I understand it, it's a bit subtle, but one way to think about what physicists are saying that from the reference point of an external observer that is not entangled with particles, the entangled states don't evolve/change relative to each other, which is kind of a fancy way of saying that relative dependence on time for that state from the reference point of of the external observer has come to a stop. This might be an interesting way to think about why they remain entangled state until observed.
From the reference point of particles/observers that are entangled, their states can evolve/change separately which is kind of a fancy way of saying that since the fact that they can change, means that time has emerged.
The concept apparently was illustrated as follows...
Two entangled photons are created and passed through a polarizer. When an "observer" measures the polarization of one of the photons, the experimenter becomes entangled with it and when it measures the second photon, it can observe the change of polarization of the second photon relative to the first one and thus relative time has emerged as a consequence of making two measurements.
If the "super-observer" does not measure the polarization of an individual entangled photons but merely some global property of both photons (e.g., kind of like "net" polarization, but more complicated than that some tomography of states), the "super-observer" doesn't become entangled with individual polarization measurements and to that "super-observer", the photons remain in an unchanging entangled state from the "super-observer's" reference point. That is another way of saying that time or time-evolution has not emerged yet from the viewpoint of the "super-observer" relative to the photons in the entangled state.
P2RX7 was all the hype back in January. Here's a blog entry on it... Or the paper abstract for the more technically inclined (pay-wall for paper)...
If people are interested, I think there is some more info in English concerning the earlier Tampere research here (for free)...
Sometimes it's hard to predict what is going to work in bio-science just by seeing the techno-press response. Although polio is caused by an Enterovirus, so is the common cold (the variety caused by a Rhinovirus). Generally you get Enterovirus infections orally. Some Enteroviruses can eventually enter the bloodstream and infect other organs.
Apparently, the Tampere study looked at the small-bowel mucosal biopsies of 120 patients and did a PCR technique to assess if there was likely a Enterovirus infection. 74% of people with type 1 diabetes tested positive, compared with 29% of the non-diabetic ones. On that basis they conclude that a persistent Enterovirus infection in the small-bowel might eventually spread to the pancreas where the on-going immune response might destroy the insulin producing cells leading to diabetes...
So, I wasn't totally impressed after reading that paper, but you never know...
This is analogy. IANAL.
A kid has a hobby. The hobby has the ability to cause millions of dollars of consequential damages.
1) Is the parent responsible for the damage (if the kid doesn't have money or insurance to cover the potential damage)? Probably.
2) Does practicing the hobby at a friends house or in a public park change this? Unlikely, but they might make some other folks additionally responsible.
3) Does the kid have to ask for permission from the parents before practicing such a dangerous hobby? Only if you don't want to get in trouble with the parents or have plan to run away never to return if you get in trouble, although that probably won't get your parents off the hook.
I'm sure that given a strict interpretation of the set of criteria listed, not many folks would likely have free will. The first questions 1-3 sort of indicate the ability to make a decision, but the last question "can you predict your decision in advance?" is likely to be true for many decisions that people might make.
For example, a movie comes out (say like gravity or elysium). Certainly, you are a decider (you can choose to go or not go to the movie and say bicycle or go to a party), and you can make you decison using recursive reasoning, and you the ability to approximate that decision for yourself and the friends you are likely to see the movie with... Yet, you can predict with nearly 100% certainty that you will (or for some people will not) see the movie. According to this test, you are either lying (you can't predict), or you are not the decider (maybe hollywood has already decided you will see the movie and you have no free will in this matter).
I think the flaw is that it is nearly impossible to distinguish actual prediction from highly correlated estimations (e.g., I saw all the other sci-fi movies that came out before, so I'll make similar decisions in the future). To partially fix this I think these types of tests should restrict their analysis to isolated, novel decisions.
Of course if you can mark all habitual or predictable behaviours as the person not being the decider (kinda like how AA folks concede that they are powerless to make decisions). But to me that is basically a sad outcome as the number of novel decisions in life we actually make that are not predictable (vs the ones that we have "help" making and thus are not the decider) is small. Many folks might even be able to predict these rare deicions because of our joint conciousness (e.g., we are aculturated to make similar decision as the rest of society or if you are a rebel to make the predictable anti-decision), which leads us to the sad conclusion that the main function of any society is to deprive us of free will (even for the anti-social folks). You almost need to be asocial to have free will.
The US western frontier was often sold to the easterners as a place you could go to free yourselves from the stranglehold of modern society and make a clean start.
Sadly, most of the folks that made the trek were ill prepared for the radical self reliance required of early settlers in that territory. Many simply returned (some died on the way out or back), and a vanishing few found their dream lives. Of course their attempts paved the way for those that followed.
What made it possible, the lure of course was the exploitation of natural resource made it possible to generate enough wealth to bootstrap the society. Not to mention the heavy incentives (homestead land) doled out by the US government in attempt to build a critical population mass there before other competing political powers were able to manipulate the situation. It would take pretty deep pockets to do something similar in todays world (a couple billion from a single dot-com billionaire wouldn't likely be enough)...
The short story, it is likely most of those that make the attempt to build it will not achieve their goal in their lifetime, but it might make it possible for those that follow. Still want to opt-in?
State PE (principle and practice of engineering) exams have had software options since I took them back 23 years ago. The main thing new is that it used to be an small optional element of the Electrical Engineering discipline, eventually became a larger optional element of the Electrical/Computer Engineering discipline, and now (just starting last year) Software Engineering test is available as it's own discipline.
The just released pass rate for the new PE-SW test is pretty dismal (~50%) compared to the PE-Electrical/Computer test (tends to hover around 66%). This is probably because many people who took the test the first go-around probably only had background as "programmers" or "developers", and few have a broad enough background (or studied sufficiently for the test), to understand and score well in all the elements of the test.
The software elements of the Electrical/Computer Test were more geared towards programming questions, and computer design issues which is probably more comfortable material for the typical EE-turned-programmer. In contrast, the PE-SW test covers stuff like UML, Software security audit (like common criteria), maintenance, testing, requirements management, etc... (in addition to traditional programming and algorithms stuff). A good portion of the test is a bunch of generic engineering stuff that many programmers/developers never bother to learn.
FWIW, back 23 years ago, getting a PE license for computer stuff wasn't really worth much unless you lived in Texas (that state is super picky about anyone that even hinted about being an engineer or a business offering engineering services if they weren't licensed). The company I worked for was forced to create a new title for all the FAEs (field applications engineers) because of this restriction although Texas PE board eventually relented and gave field engineers and test engineers a PE waiver to be compatible with the rest of the world.
I'm guessing that the PE-SW is really only gonna be valuable if you are working on government contracts. Not saying it wouldn't be a good for SW engineers to up their "engineering" game, but often what starts as licensing often morphs into a lever to limit the number of people in the profession (basically like a guild). Given that any limits will likely just accelerate the migration of SW offshore, I doubt any attempt to make PE-SW a requirement will go anywhere...
Sadly, very few people understand the ACA (although many claim to). To argue that there is some sort of complexity of the ACA is just flat out wrong.
The primary function of the ACA is to attempt to force more people (and their money) into the insurance pool. The basic strategy is to levy a fine folks for not having enough insurance (meaning people pursuing a high-deductible+MSA strategy will likely incur the fine).
The minimum level of insurance to avoid the fines on the individual policy is considered the bronze level. It is anticipated that insurance companies will eventually drop all plans that don't meet this level due to minimal future demand. Of course there are predefined silver, gold and platinum levels (if you can afford them) making more standardized offerings which should be easier to compare.
The political environment that created the ACA is really a function of the unions and the large corporations. They did not want to give up their gold-plated plans funded with employer tax deductions, so any reform bill had to leave them intact.
I'm not a fan of the ACA (as written), but that's primarily because of the politicization of what the "bronze" plan needed to cover.
The ACA also establishes a medical loss ratio (MLR) which requires insurance companies to spend a minimum percentage of premiums on claims. This is done to reduce that whole supposedly "evil" profit motive of denying claims. The downside is that insurance company is allowed to "rebate" the premium to comply with the MLR potentially complicating your taxes at the same time simplifying the insurance companies job (they can just deny claims like they did before, but just rebate the money to all the enrollees equally).
The sad thing is the ACA might have been good in idea form, but bad on paper (mostly because they didn't allow anyone to actually read the written bill before they had to vote to pass it).
As for the single-payer/fee-for-service model, the ACA even attempts to move Medicare away from that model. The ACA attempts to expand on the idea of a shared saving program where accountable care organizations (ACOs) can operate similar to medicare-advantage (the private version of medicare in the US) health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Under the single-payer/fee-for-service model, there's no incentive for medicare providers to coordinate service to minimize redundant costs and it was noticed that medicare-advantage plans were working better because they often had coordinated service. Under the ACO model, medicare providers can now coordinate and actually split the savings that resulted from coordination with the government (before there was no incentive to coordinate because the providers wouldn't see any monetary benefit from coordination). Many see the ACO provision as the Trojan horse that will eventually lead to the eventual conversion to single-payer (but not fee-for-service). As I understand it, this is how the NHS and the Canadian system work (not 100% fee-for-service, but more of a hybrid with reimbursement-per-patient-served model like and ACO).
So readup on the ACA. It sucks if you have to pay more (either in additional 0.9% medicare tax, or the 3.8% net investment income tax created to fund it) or were attempting to avoid putting your money in the health insurance pool by using a high-deductible strategy, but the money to subsidize all the poor folks (and underemployed 26-year-olds) getting insurance had to come from somewhere.
Upto 50nm, it was fine, but is now in the region of diminishing returns. The cost savings that were always synonymous w/ shrinks are no longer there, since the process costs easily outweigh the cost savings per die, even assuming a 100% yield.
I wasn't aware of a 50nm node or shrink, but 65nm was the last "cheap" node (which corresponded to a 55nm shrink). The next popular node was 45nm didn't really take off before the shrink to 40nm. TSMC (one of the major foundaries) actually blew-off the 32nm and 22nm nodes completely and only productized the 28nm shrink and 20nm shrink.
Usually, the "shrink" is purely a cost/die = (cost/wafer)/(yield*die/wafer) issue. Since in a shrink, the cost/wafer is mostly constant but the die/wafer goes up, the cost/die goes down (usually the yield goes up too if it's defect density limited, but not so much if it is parametric limited).
Moving to a new node, however, tends to give other benefits (e.g., faster transitors, lower voltage swings), but at higher wafer costs and more design restrictions and complexity. Recently this has been diminishing returns from a cost point of view. For example, the Intel's 22nm node with fin-fet/tri-gate gave the benefit of a much lower static power, but the average transitor size didn't go down very much and I'm sure the wafer cost was much higher. Still, the benefit of lower static power gates for mobile devices (or other thermally limited devices) is hard to overlook even if the cost per die is higher (meaning the new features are worth the additional cost per die).