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User: MSBob

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Comments · 834

  1. Re: Totally irrelevant on Many People Still Don't Want To Ride in Self-driving Cars, Survey Finds (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Yeah, the cheque from Andrej Karpathy is in the mail. I hope it doesn't bounce.

  2. Re:New technology on Many People Still Don't Want To Ride in Self-driving Cars, Survey Finds (cnbc.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yep, I once built an unsupervised learning algorithm for discovering vulnerabilities in a network topology. It was always over 95% accurate with most errors being false positives. When I wrote it ten years ago nobody wanted it. Now they are all over it and very little of that code has changed since. The security admins just came around.

  3. Re:Totally irrelevant on Many People Still Don't Want To Ride in Self-driving Cars, Survey Finds (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Well, you could be right or it could turn out that your town will just depopulate as people move to big cities to access the convenience of the new technology. FWIW I live in a rural town myself. But I don't kid myself about where the world is heading.

  4. Re:Totally irrelevant on Many People Still Don't Want To Ride in Self-driving Cars, Survey Finds (cnbc.com) · · Score: 2

    I guess we are just going to have to wait and see, aren't we? Here why I believe you are totally incorrect with your prediction. Software companies want autonomous cars to happen, car companies want autonomous cars to happen, logistics companies REALLY want autonomous freight. It's only a matter of time. And your proverbial family of four or their relatives will be appeased with a five million dollars lawsuit settlement and the whole thing will proceed anyway because that's what the big money wants. As for the tech itself, you should pay more attention to where the research is. scene recognition is at near human levels already and in many cases at superhuman levels. A couple more years of hardware and software progress and humans will be no match for a self driving car in terms of safety and efficiency. None of the latest systems are hardcoded in any way. They are _trained_ on millions of hours of safe human driving data and they are getting better every hour of every day. How many hours of driving experience have _you_ logged in your lifetime?

  5. Re:Totally irrelevant on Many People Still Don't Want To Ride in Self-driving Cars, Survey Finds (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Correct. And the fact that we are technologically on the cusp of cracking this means we have AI that is on the cusp of automating a shit ton of other stuff. The future I'm painting may not materialize for another two, three decades what with the red tape and the cultural shifts. But it WILL come. Probably within my lifetime and I'm not spring chicken.

  6. Totally irrelevant on Many People Still Don't Want To Ride in Self-driving Cars, Survey Finds (cnbc.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The world will change whether people who enjoy driving like it or not. Just like nobody today insists on riding in an assisted elevator those people will have to adapt. Over time the pressures of technology will make human driven cars more expensive to own because of the higher insurance rates, having to add more mechanical steering components etc. Even just individual vehicle ownership may become very expensive because car sharing services will likely become extremely prevalent and efficient. Owning a vehicle outright will make very little economic sense. There will always be a market for manually operated cars but those cars are likely going to get relegated to race tracks and that market will probably be as big as the market for chariots today. And yes, chariots are still a thing and there is a chariot racing track not far from my place. And it's being used daily. But needless to say the people who go there don't ride chariots to the office in the morning.

  7. My work is my true love and passion in life. I make great money doing it and really periodic burn outs are my natural modus operandi. I tried the "slow and steady" approach but it didn't work for me personally. I'm most productive when I dive into something really deep and come out with great things at the tail end of that. And then I'm sort of burned out and slack off for a month or two. My employer seems to be pretty understanding of my idiosyncrasies as I get good raises year after year. But I know this is probably not the "approved" approach but I imagine most creatives work in this way.

  8. How siÄ(TM) tenis different from Clojure/Scri on MIT Unifies Web Development In Single, Speedy New Language · · Score: 1

    the concepts behind Clojure and its sibling ClojureScript are exactly what they are describing. Maybe the time would be better spent popularizing a language with immutable structures and software transactional memory as opposed to creating yet another one?

  9. Re:umm..... on The Canadian Government's War On Science · · Score: 3, Informative

    Balancing the budget? LOL! This government has blown the hole in the budget that Canada had never seen in its entire history. The federal debt has skyrocketed under this regime while the funds to provinces were cut. The 'tax and spend' Liberals maintained balanced budgets for years and years until these clowns grabbed a hold of the steering wheel. Their first stupid move was cutting the GST by two percentage points just before the debt crisis hit. As for their approach to science they had a creationist as a minister of science; enough said.

  10. Now that the UK economy is roaring under Cameron on No Porn From Public WiFi Hotspots In the UK Proposed · · Score: 2

    the prime minister can tend to more urgent issues like porn at Starbucks. Got it.

  11. Does that mean on Gambling-Focused Internet Cafes Now Illegal In Florida · · Score: 1

    My brokerage account will be blocked too?

  12. I think slashdot has a post about you.

  13. For those who don't know what Elite was on David Braben Kickstarts an Elite Reboot · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's a very interesting read (long but worth your time) about how the original was conceived: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/oct/18/features.weekend

  14. Re:Finally on British Schoolkids To Be Taught Computer Coding · · Score: 1

    The BBC Micro was terrific. It was entirely made of off the shelf components like the 6502 and 6522 so understanding its design was easy and transparent. The BBC Micro was probably the best computer to teach assembly programming on as the 6502 assembly was such as joy to learn and use.

  15. what we need to ask on Has Cleverbot Passed the Turing Test? · · Score: 1

    is what it's going to do if it comes across a turtle lying on its back.

  16. Re:Text to speech on Would the Developing World Use E-Readers More Than Laptops? · · Score: 1

    I don't have a kindle nor do I know what they use but the blog-to-podcast engine Audiodizer uses a very good TTS engine that I find is good enough even for long articles (not sure I would hear it read an entire book though) and it seems to improve on a regular basis. Here's a sample of how it sounds: http://www.audiodizer.com/Clients/PhysOrg/physorg/news217488993.mp3

  17. This Slashdot post is lying on GM Criticized Over Chevy Volt's Hybrid Similarities · · Score: 1

    The GM volt drives the wheels from the engine when the battery is depleted AND the speed is more than 70mph. Both conditions have to be met before the outer ring of the planetary is unlocked and powered by the gas engine.

  18. Re:The Volt uses a planetary gearset on GM Criticized Over Chevy Volt's Hybrid Similarities · · Score: 1

    The claims made by Nissan are yet to be tested in practice. I doubt that car will go anywhere near 100 miles on a charge. 60 is much more probable.

  19. Cause and effect? on The Hell Known As Internet Screening Services · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What if we turn this around and consider that maybe those who apply for jobs to screen the internet already have an unhealthy fascination with weird and/or illegal content? Maybe the post-contract counseling only reveals all the issues they harbored prior to starting the work?

    I'm not saying this is the case, but it's a possibility...

  20. Programmer's display on DIY Pixel Qi Screens Available · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wasn't aware of this company or its technology. But to me this is something that programmers would really enjoy (and other workers stuck in front of an LCD for 8+ hours a day). They need to get the size and resolution much higher up though. I'd pay north of $900 for something like this but in a 23" format with a resolution of 1920x1200 or higher.

  21. Re:Google already said it was an accident.... on Google Introduces, Then Scraps, Bing-Style Background Images · · Score: 1

    Sounds like Marissa may accidentally find herself without a job.

  22. Re:health insurance is like auto insurance now on House Passes Massive Medical Insurance Bill, 219-212 · · Score: 0, Troll

    > Funding will be used to kill human fetuses. I did not have the choice to opt out of paying for your idiotic war on Iraq. Screw you and your right wing fetus obsession.

  23. Did this affect climate on Chilean Earthquake Shortened Earth's Day · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Given the axial shift will that have a measurable impact on the climate in a measurable way?

  24. Re:If it's anything like Google Translate on Google Shooting For Smartphone Universal Translator · · Score: 1

    ...or war.

  25. Re:Germany still censored on Google.cn Has Already Lifted Censorship · · Score: 4, Funny

    Youporn banned in Germany? How come?