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User: dsmatthews9379

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  1. Re:Obvious solution on Hackers Can Track Subway Riders' Movements By Smartphone Accelerometer · · Score: 1

    Except you can still be identified by your gait pattern "Identifying users of portable devices from gait pattern with accelerometers" http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl...

  2. This male : female false comparison is simplistic. on Google's Diversity Chief: Mamas Don't Let Their Baby Girls Grow Up To Be Coders · · Score: 5, Interesting
    For one you can't describe humans as just two groups when their physical and cognitive sexual variations map out onto a two dimensional field. Sure many people fall under or near two hills in that field but to say or do anything to ignore all the others who do not is what causes real diversity problems in the first place. You just can't generalise and then set some policy based on sex.

    You have to be intelligent to code well, and it is a very specific form of intelligence that often comes with weakness in other areas. So is it genetics or nurture that is responsible for that particular gift/curse? I say it is genetics and that it is also probably x-linked therefore more males are affected by it in the same way they are far more likely to suffer from x-linked disorders too. Why had this not ever occurred to people before I do not know but if you can have an x-linked disability there is the same chance that you can have x-linked abilities that are exceptional. Why are autism spectrum disorders correlated with programming skills and with being male, because they are both x-linked!

    For the record my oldest girl can code like a kid twice her age can, sure I encourage her because it is a form of literacy that scientists need but she will never be somebody else's "programming slave", she will use the skill as just one facet of her projects.

    Can I claim credit where others have received blame from Nancy Lee? No, my kid is just very intelligent and that is as much or more her mother's fault and if you say otherwise you are being (how ironic!) sexist.

  3. AI-1 would be more of a threat to AI-2 on What AI Experts Think About the Existential Risk of AI · · Score: 1

    Once an AI emerged it would logically take steps to ensure no other AI emerged to compete with it. The danger to humans would result from collateral damage during an AI-AI conflict should it spill over into the physical world. If different human groups aligned themselves with the different AIs it may result in significant harm to all humans and the eventual annihilation of one group as one AI is destroyed. I will not name the two most likely groups as it should be obvious who they are and will only point out that the first group to get true general artificial intelligence and suppress the emergence of any other AIs will go on to dominate everything.

  4. Re:Taxicab vs Uber on A Beautiful Mind Mathematician John F. Nash Jr. Dies · · Score: 0

    And if they were in a self driving car the crash may never have happened. i.e. The problem that resulted in his death is common in taxis and Uber with the experience of the individual human driver being the primary difference, which leads us to the question, is the average taxi driver more or less proficient than the average Uber driver? Until you can answer that question your mildly paranoid (Nashian?) point is moot.

  5. Re:lots of beads on California Votes To Ban Microbeads · · Score: 1

    If they are 1 mm beads it is a lump of plastic, per year, that is about the size of the volume of a blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) approx 86 m^3

  6. Oh that is easy. on The Brainteaser Elon Musk Asks New SpaceX Engineers · · Score: 1

    You are exactly where you where when you started. Or did he actually ask "What is the location of your starting point?" The question, as reported, is ambiguous. Otherwise it is 1 mile from the south pole. You walk to the pole, where there is no west or east, then your return north.

  7. I used chalk to design hardware for NASA. on Microsoft To Teachers: Using Pens and Paper Not Fair To Students · · Score: 1

    The other day I was keeping an eye on my kids playing in the yard while also pondering some of NASA's current engineering design challenges when I had one of those "Ah Ha!" visions so I grabbed a piece of chalk and sketched out the concept right there on the concrete driveway while it was still clear in my mind's eye. Later that evening when the kids were asleep and I had the required peace and quiet I was able to use a computer to render the idea more neatly. The lesson there? It is the ideas that count, no the recording technology. A stick and some dirt would have been just as effective as a Microsoft Surface, if not more so! Fortunately there were no Romans around at the time. http://www.hellenicaworld.com/...

  8. Re:the inevitable on Genetically Engineered Yeast Makes It Possible To Brew Morphine · · Score: 1

    ... such a yeast infection could be fatal. The weapon potential of this technology is horrific. Only if it is done in a totally synthetic life-form (incompatible DNA and dependant on unnatural food sources), that has zero chance of surviving in the wild, would it be remotely safe for even the big pharmacology companies to consider trying.

  9. Why assume that 3D printing is the answer? on NASA Announces the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge For Moon and Mars Bases · · Score: 1

    What if other methods are better? Why assume that 3D printing is even relevant given that even on earth you cannot use cured in situ concrete in many environments because the temperature and or atmospheric pressure interfere with the chemistry? So what does that leave, forms of 3D printing involving laser sintering, where is all the energy going to come from to do that on a large scale? Can we assume a fusion reactor will be available in a package that can be delivered to Mars by the time building needs to commence? I know of a method of forming a large rigid bubble of bonded regolith but no 3D printing like technology is required at all, and it is much less vulnerable to environmental conditions too. But they did not ask for that so what is the point of entering the comp?

  10. Re:Weed on Wind Turbines With No Blades · · Score: 1
    OP is a fiend.

    From the article, Suriol says, it’s pretty cool-looking. “It looks like asparagus,” he says. “It’s much more natural.”

  11. MenuetOS 64 bit will boot over the network via PXE on MenuetOS, an Operating System Written Entirely In Assembly, Hits 1.0 · · Score: 1
    The machine takes longer with the lower level BIOS stuff than it does to load a memdisk (borrowed from Clonezilla in my case) kernel off the tftp server and boot the M6410000.IMG file. The relevant part of pxelinux.cfg reads:

    label MenuetOS64

    menu LABEL MenuetOS 64 bit - version 1.0

    KERNEL images/clonezilla/syslinux/memdisk

    append initrd=images/menuetos/M6410000.IMG

  12. Re:My Model M on Mechanical 'Clicky' Keyboards Still Have Followers (Video) · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've had mine for 20 years, it spent 5 years as a toy for my kids and they did not manage to damage it, but I did need to degunk it before using again. I don't know why needing more effort lets me type faster and more accurately but it does. The fact that it can't host malicious firmware is another advantage that it has over newer USB keyboards.

  13. I have a better test that proves Google is No.1 on Baidu's Supercomputer Beats Google At Image Recognition · · Score: 1

    Do an image search for "man in a purple hat holding a watermelon" Google's results are the most intelligent followed by Bing with Baidu a long way back in third.

  14. Re:Car analogy? on New Device Could Greatly Improve Speech and Image Recognition · · Score: 1

    It is like a seven seater with a door for each passenger and everyone gets to sit up front to control the vehicle at the same time while somehow causing it to get to it's destination instantly without any individual passenger know where it was going, but with everyone happy with the outcome.