As far as these posts are expected to remain here for a long time, they are addressed to not particularly bright people and I might change the signature in the future (where this issue is clearly explained), I will highlight once again that there was/is/will continue being just one person here: myself, Alvaro Carballo Garcia. The current surrounding nonsense seems to be somehow provoked by problems to understand this reality, the simple equality shown in the current signature of this post: Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas. Only one person here with one personality, set of ideas, knowledge and expectations. The same one making jokes and writing serious stuff, the one using customsolvers or varocarbas whatever, the only one doing all the work (a lot) and getting all the money (not so much), writing text and code, making mistakes and correcting problems, the one whose pic is now everywhere (recently changed my policy on this front as a reaction to all this still-no-idea-how-to-call-it). A pretty simple idea which has been proven to be much more difficult to be transmitted than what I would have ever expected.
As far as the previous post is addressed to individuals with particularly limited understanding capabilities and this will be one of the last times when I will be doing something of this sort, I will better clarify what I meant with "our real (not the ones happening in their mind, ignorance, prejudices, self-esteem issues, etc.) interactions". I meant each single idea which anyone might have had, interpreted, heard, hoped, guessed, assumed, etc. now or at any point from anything of what I have said/done without having properly understood it within the proper context (specific conditions, my personality, common sense, etc.).
For example, I say that I am (kind of) poor and you (because of your prejudices, having a much worse situation than me or a limited understanding of the world/my expectations, etc.) assume that this is a problem (-> here you start your imaginary journey and where all what you do stops being related to reality/myself) and start guessing what you think that is acceptable under these conditions (for example, that I really care about money as a relevant goal in itself). My actions/words, at least when being properly understood, should help you understand your mistake at some point, but some people seem to have certain tendency to auto-convince themselves of whatever and re-interpret the reality such that everything meets those expectations (e.g., when I propose you a fair price, you think that bargaining is acceptable or that my work/behaviour would be affected in any way because of a higher/lower price because you are blindly convinced that this works for everyone under certain conditions). And so you might continue going down an unrealistic path with unrealistic expectations about me. The only sensible exit? Accept the reality (you made a mistake), learn (ask as much as needed and remember that I don't lie) and let's all be happy. The longer it takes you to realise about your mistake, the worse for everyone (mainly for you). There will be no excuse, no "it seemed that", no "anyone would have". No. You will realise that the only reason why you made a mistake (and another one and another one and...) was because of your (understanding) limitations, your lack of acceptation (of reality, of others not wanting the same than you, etc) and your unwillingness to properly understand.
This is an intentionally very neutral (and soft) example of the kind of behaviours which might need to take a look at these last two posts and think carefully quite a few things. I mean... I don't expect miracles, mainly by bearing in mind that I am under the impression that some threads of nonsense have been running for quite long time and have gone pretty depth (outside reality). As a starting exercise, perhaps you should take a look at quite a few of the last posts in this Slashdot profile and, by taking advantage of the express tagging (remember: LOL for jokes; but I haven't been always tagging, just during the last year or something), understand the differences between joke (random, unrelated to me, just for fun) vs. serious (work or interest, related to what I like/want/expect). Then you can go to my sites or any other of my profiles somewhere else and confirm that everything is consistent. You might even talk to me, I mean to my face or writing me directly in a language I can understand (Spanish or English). You know? Don't talk about me when I am not present or guess what my ideas might be on any front from what you think or what someone else tells you. Also bear in mind that I don't reply spammers, much less to ones of the crazy subtype (offering me ridiculous articles in languages I cannot even understand; or even a worse version: emailing me 3-10 times daily big bunches of repeated letters/symbols?!). If you do all that, you would get a reasonably good understanding of my personality/expectations and then your assumptions about me might start making a bit of sense and you might start getting when I am joking/serious without my help. We might even reach the point where I don't need to write in a public fashion to help people with whom I have no relationship to understand that we don't have any kind of relationship such that they can update their behaviour accordingly. But this seems a far dream.
Even though it seems pretty obvious to me that the parent post is a joke and that I have expressly tagged it as such (ending LOLs -> unfortunately proven required to minimise the chances of someone believing that all what is written there is true), I will go ahead and confirm it: yes, it is a joke. Meaning that it is exclusively meant to bring a bit of joy and, eventually, make a pretty mild critic of certain issue. Other than that, there is no hidden meaning, no wisdom to extract, no implicit indication of any kind of idea or expectation which I might have.
I haven't ever dealt with a billionaire and will probably never do so (no special interest either). As an abstract idea, I don't care much about them similarly to what happens with anything else which has always been very far away from me. I am not particularly interested in the accumulation of money regardless of anything else and/or in people caring about all that. I am not the kind of business-idea person (understood as constantly looking for ways to easily get new source of income, usually at the expense of others' work), but hard-working-technical one (ironically, owning a business although under a pretty peculiar format). I don't envy anyone (with money). I don't have a solid prejudices about billionaires or any other generic group of people. I do find pretty unappealing, even illogical, the obsessive/not-really-required accumulation of whatever, but I also apply ideas on the lines of "live and let live". I would certainly do lots of things with lots of money, but don't feel like generically censoring what others do. Long story short: this was a random joke about an irrelevant-to-me issue which I thought that was kind of related to this article. These ideas have no relationship at all with me, my expectations, my behaviour, what I do, what I want, etc.
What is the reason for this new post? That I am tired. I am tired of over-explaining, over-tagging, over-working and systematically seeing disproportionate and completely-unrelated-to-me/my intention/reality pathetic(ally stupid) behaviours whose incoherent nonsense seems to be fed by a higher amount of information/explanations. I quit. I will not provide any kind of help to anyone misinterpreting anything I do/say or having weird ideas about me on whatever front or having any kind of behaviour towards me which isn't strictly justified by our real (not the ones happening in their mind, ignorance, prejudices, self-esteem issues, etc.) interactions. I will not be tolerant. I will not be patient. I will not be understanding. I will be clear and quick. No help, no second chances, no politeness, no being nice with those not deserving it. You can find lots of information about me, my ideas/expectations, what I do/did, etc. I will always be very open, clear, honest, direct. I will always be polite with those being polite, help those asking for help and answer any doubt. Hopefully, this post will be read, understood and accepted by some people who seem to have a very important misconception about their position with respect to some issues like myself, having actual knowledge or their opinions being truly relevant.
Even by ignoring the evident arbitrariness of wanting (or needing? Who is funding this study?) to see a relevant meaning in something like how you like your coffee or what kind of tastes you prefer (out of the billions of possible variables affecting/defining someone's routine today or in the past); it isn't even required to highlight that ignoring tremendously influential external factors (e.g., culture/country, physical features or personality traits/ideology) converts these conclusions in virtually random; I might even not say anything about the extremely limited population under consideration (1000 adults!? From that you expect to get any kind of insight about most of people in the world? You cannot be serious!). All what I need to do to deem the conclusions of this study (as per my current understanding, created from quickly reading the title and the summary) irrelevant is to look at a personal experience which proves some of its basic assumptions completely wrong.
Let's focus on the dark coffee issue (honestly, I don't know how to classify my food tastes like I guess that everyone else: I like some bitter things, but also sweet ones. Who in the whole world is only liking either bitter or sweet things?!). Usually, I drink my coffee with milk, but I have also been drinking it dark for some periods. The reason? I don't really drink coffee because of its taste (well... I have got so used to it, that I guess that I would miss it what kind of means that I like it), but because of its effects. During certain periods of my life and under different conditions (e.g., not having an immediate/easy access to good milk), I haven't minded to drink it dark because, even despite not liking its taste much, it didn't seem like a big deal of an effort. If you had surveyed me during one of those periods, I would have said that I drink black coffee. But if you surveyed me now or at many other different points of my life, I would have said the opposite. Both answers would have been 100% accurate, my personality would be more or less identical and the conclusions of a tremendously-wrong "study" on these lines would be wrong.
So, let's assume that we have surveyed a relevant number of people, that we have properly classified them (by country, gender, age, background, etc.). Let's also assume that we are talking about a really-influential-for-personality variable (I don't know... anything but how you drink your coffee?). Even if you are in that nearly-perfect scenario and you do a really good analysis of all the data, your conclusions would turn out useless if you fail to adequately understand the exact implications of your underlying assumptions, mainly of the ones used in the main variables. In this case, they are assuming that drinking coffee in certain way is necessarily related to liking bitter things what, as proven by the previous paragraph, isn't necessarily true. You might even dismiss that aspect and focus on what "liking bitter things" implies. How many different foods/drinks can people take daily/monthly/during their whole life? If you list 5 options and someone likes 4 of them, it might not mean that that person tends to like more bitter things than another one choosing just 1, because by considering a much wider spectrum of options things could be completely different.
I am still working on the first stages and looking for funding (billionaires welcome), but here you have a sample ad giving a good idea about it:
Billionaire, are you looking for something relevant to do with your life? Do you have the feeling that something is missing? Are you tired of non-billionaire people only caring about your money? Do you want to be much more than just stinky (;)) rich? Are you looking for that world-changing endeavor providing the endless stream of blind admiration about which you have always dream?
Join BLFSD (Billionaires Looking For Something to Do)! You can give a profound meaning to your life for a reasonable entrance fee! Just 1 of your billions! (Full property of a big enough island might be accepted. Ask about our discounts for groups of 3 or more billionaires. Additional fees might apply). Our team will surely find that big idea on which you can put your money and hopes! Don't miss this opportunity and call us now!
I do trust in humanity as a whole and in the long run. Errors and non-ideal behaviours (perhaps having the best intentions and being quite reasonable at the start, but gradually kind of losing their point) tend to be eventually corrected. As a side effect and before reaching there, quite a few valuable lessons are likely to be learned. I don't see a big deal of a problem here.
Today, I read in a newspaper the following headline (translated from Spanish): "Since today until the end of the current year, European women will be working 'for free' due to the gender gap". Understanding the relationship between this reference, the current article and the title of this post is left as exercise for the reader.
There are multiple announced vulnerabilities per month that allow this to happen. Mostly in Flash the last few years, but also in image decoders, sound decoders, and web browsers in general.
Quite scary stuff. In any case, you have still to be in the wrong place with the wrong tools (what usually means obsolete or not updated or not particularly good software) and to perform some wrong actions (even by assuming that a malicious application can be downloaded without your permission, it would still need to be run either by the user or by other application/SO what would imply one further layer of insecurity/negligence). Just visiting a shady website doesn't seem enough to provoke what is described here, not even in the most unfortunate scenario.
I am seriously considering the option of becoming a public servant and this information seems quite useful. Note to myself: when visiting porn sites at work, never download anything! LOL.
Seriously, who downloads an executable from a porn site?! Part of the pathetically-nonsensical spam I am getting lately includes pretty crappy messages saying that I have to pay because they have recorded me watching porn? That otherwise they would destroy my reputation!! (I guess that they are planning to firstly build me a good reputation. LOL). By ignoring its overall nonsensical essence ("you can increase your available time by writing ++ in the calculator of your computer"!!), the first idea coming to my mind was precisely why would anyone download a piece of malware (not a video) from a porn site with the huge number of available alternatives where you don't need to do anything of this sort? I mean... this is at least what someone from my church told me. LOL.
Building a tremendously complex set of algorithms and feeding them with tons of information is the basic requisite to allow a machine to reach a reasonably good (still orders of magnitude below the human level) understanding of just a few generic concepts. Having the kind of insight that a newborn might have when learning for the first time very basic ideas. Not talking even about things like thinking, deciding, choosing, adapting. Just having in place a system able to get reasonably good insights into somehow complex concepts. Something like understanding the differences between adults and kids, genders, races, etc. in an unified way, by looking at different types of information like descriptive words, pictures or videos. Being able to automatically differentiate between different subsets of relevant information, use them to set up a system of categories and keep gradually evolving those definitions until reaching what might be considered a good enough basic understanding of the given concepts.
As per my current knowledge, there is no system or even serious enough attempt in a position to ever reach the aforementioned preliminary understanding stages. And what, IMO, is even worse, there doesn't even seem to be an acceptation of what are the basic requirements to ever get there: lots of work, lots of patience, huge long-term efforts, what only seems doable through relevant collaborative, iterative improvement processes pursuing very long-term goals. Without a proper systematisation, a normalisation of each single element, the goals, the steps; without sharing all the different evolutions and allowing others to continue working from there; without an international, multi-organisation involvement; without a reliable long-term support/funding (governments, universities, associations); without properly understanding how extremely complex this whole process is, how important is having in place some basic solid cornerstones, and how far away we are still from getting anywhere; without anything of that, I think that it is very unlikely to ever get even a preliminary version of a system with good enough understanding capabilities.
How are they sure that the person even really checked her mail? She could just have lost password for one. Many people dislike email very much lately. Perhaps they switched to fb/whatsapp/discord/whatever.
Sure. As said, I don't know anything about the details or how the contact attempts happened or even about the honesty of the the person claiming all this. My post was addressed to those behaving in this way intentionally or, at least, in a careless way. Even in case of getting lots of messages, a considerate person would either clearly indicate that issue to the senders by trying to come back to all of them ASAP or get some help/dedicate more time or remove that contact resource because of not being able to use it properly. Errors happen and, even by doing everything fine, the final result might not be too good. But if you are competent enough and have a respectful-towards-others attitude, things should be more or less OK in most of the cases.
At least they know what query parameters are now. The programmer wasn't entirely at fault, up until PDO anyway.
Because there is no way to sanitise the inputs yourself, right? Because programmers are expected to quickly put together whatever, by not caring about the consequences at all and, in case of problems, complaining about the programming language? Because software developers are so lowly-qualified professionals and their expertise is so extremely unrelated to properly understanding/having full control on the given situation that they will fail to take care of even the slightest detail which the given tool (AKA programming language) hasn't made completely idiot-proof? LOL.
No. The only responsible for any SQL injection or any other problem provoked by an inadequate algorithm, usage of the programming language or poor understanding of whatever scenario is the programmer. Full stop. The fact that the whole programming process might be very complex, demanding, error-prone and that the given framework should ideally provide friendly ways to ease the more problematic parts is a different story. But a diligent-enough developer facing whatever implementation by relying on whatever resources should properly understand the conditions and adapt his coding behaviour accordingly. He can complain about having to pay more attention, wasting more time or preferring a different platform. But, unless in exceptional cases (unknown bug in the programming language), whatever problem in the generated piece of software will be his fault, either directly (limited experience, bad personal decisions, bad understanding of the problem/environment) or indirectly (having to comply with ridiculous constraints).
BTW, I have written many algorithms connecting to different databases, most of the times by sanitising the inputs myself rather via parametrised queries (not recommending to do so to everyone though). In fact, this is just a small subset of all the implementations where I have had to make sure that the inputs meet the expectations of the corresponding algorithm. I have never had any kind of input-sanitation-related (security) problem and, in case of ever having it, I would certainly be my fault.
You have to be a pathetic, low-self-esteem, disrespectful, probably-in-denial idiot to ignore others' sensible requests. Same ideas apply to those stupid enough to think that generic, hypocrite, saying-nothing, dishonest communication is welcome anywhere. All of them belong to the same type of low-life forms with a tremendous misconception about very basic things like the exact value of their contributions to others.
Logically, I don't know the specifics and that behaviour might have even made a bit of sense under the given conditions (after having tried hard enough to reason with that person, it was undoubtedly proven that no communication was possible). But, in principle, my opinion of a person doing something on these lines is quite bad, because of the punctual lack of respect and, more importantly, the personality traits (defects) which usually implies.
There are many many ways to reduce CO2 without having to burn less fuel, stop telling me otherwise because I know what you assert is not true.
I have never said that there aren't other ways. I said that this is the approach which is suitable for car engines. Exactly the same that I am not saying that you get certain emissions every time that you burn a given fuel no matter what. The IC engines are tremendously optimised devices, working under extremely demanding temperature/pressure conditions and placed inside one of the most unstable and not-much-available-space locations that there is. Additionally to all that and without wanting to start a discussion here about what should/shouldn't be more important, the industry/regulations have traditionally focused most of their efforts on minimising other species. And I know all that because I worked in that field some years ago. If everything has completely changed since then, there are now lots of work on reducing CO2 in car engines and you can provide a reliable reference to all this, I would be more than happy to recognise my mistake. Otherwise, I don't see the point of continuing this discussion.
Not true, we can synthesize the fuels, recycling the CO2 in the air.
You know the typical situation where CO2 capturing (what this video is about) is done right? Power plants. One of the reasons might be that they have lots of available space and a pretty stable layout. Not exactly the kind of conditions that you can find at the exhaust pipe of a car. Actually my statement was intrinsically wrong because "reducing CO2" doesn't mean what I intended, but something like this. A better version would have been "reducing CO2 levels", and even better "reducing CO2 levels from car ICEs".
Note that the levels of other emissions can be reduced by affecting the operating conditions of the engine, the fuel properties, by adding external elements like filters, etc. Nothing of this is applicable to CO2, as far as it will always be directly related to the amount of burning fuel no matter what you do. Some times, there are many potential solutions for a problem, but you should better focus on the ones which make sense in that specific context. And in the car context, there is only one methodology that allows to reliably reduce CO2 emissions: burning less fuel. What can be accomplished in different ways like having a more efficient combustion/engine, driving more efficiently or not using the car at all.
Synthetic fuels are the future. Synthetic fuels from nuclear power.
Well... many things to say there too, but I think that I have already explained a lot.
I believe that synthetic liquid fuels are the future of transportation. We won't have electric airplanes.
Sorry for not having been clear enough. I meant for cars and light transportation in general. Replacing heavy-duty engines (trucks, ships, power plants, etc.) with electricity is, at this point, very difficult. There might appear other alternatives in the future. In any case, oil-based burning doesn't look like a good (very) long-term approach.
We've got fuels that are very low in sulfur so that's not much of a concern. Catalytic converters and other technology means there's little particulate or carbon monoxide emissions any more. There might be some NOx but I have to wonder how much even that is a concern.
Directly-harmful-for-health pollutants are a major concern for both legislators and engine manufactures. In fact, pollutants are one of the most relevant factors constraining the design of an engine/vehicle. All the ICE will always generate dangerous emissions, because they are an unavoidable output from the physical/chemical conditions under which these engines have to operate. Reducing them is possible, but very difficult; at least, when trying to not affect performance much. There is no way to reduce CO2, other than by making the engine more efficient. Caring about all this has always been and will always be very important, like in any other industrial activity generating dangerous outputs. BTW, the most dangerous/worrying emission from diesel engines is soot/particles.
Although you might be correct, the usual proceeding for comparisons of this sort is referring to the worst case ("even the dirty diesel..."). Also I understood that they implicitly took diesel as the paradigm of all what is bad for the environment, as opposed to everything else including gasoline. Because you know... current trends (of ignorance).
OK. I pretty much agree with what you say. I think that electric is the future, but it is still quite far away and will certainly not be a magical solution. The point of my post was highlighting that diesel isn't the only environment-unfriendly engine. In fact, CO2 isn't even the main concern when trying to reduce emissions from ICE cars.
All the internal combustion engines and any other combustion-based whatever generate CO2. The more they burn, the more CO2 they generate. Under equivalent conditions, diesel engines are more efficient than gasoline ones and, consequently, generate lower CO2 emissions. Other than that, all the IC engines should be considered similarly bad for the environment. Both diesel and gasoline engines output pretty nasty stuff.
In the experiment set up by the scientists, two 'senders' were connected to EEG electrodes and asked to play a Tetris-style game involving falling blocks. They had to decide whether each block needed rotating or not.
To do this, they were asked to stare at one of two flashing LEDs at either side of the screen – one flashing at 15 Hz and the other at 17 Hz – which produced different signals in the brain that the EEG could pick up on.
How difficult could be to scale up such a setup? You can just keep adding LEDs for every existing concept/action/character, each of them flashing at a different frequency and there you have a perfect transmission of "thoughts". People using that system might have to be trained during some years and need some suicide-prevention help, but how could science evolve without some sacrifices? LOL. Seriously now, I think that calling all this "thought sharing" is at best being tremendously imprecise. Also expecting this approach to be eventually able to deal with complex (or better: actual) thoughts or actions seems impossible.
One thing is measuring brain activity while performing very specific actions to see certain variations (= what is being done here); by bearing in mind that this doesn't imply understanding of what is going on, not even uniqueness of the given signal. A completely different story is getting any kind of tangible version of what might be considered thoughts and, for that, we would still need to know how the thinking process even happens. Long story short, all this kind of brain-activity measurement actions just try to find regular patterns within intrinsically meaningless signals.
Reading articles of this sort makes me feel a bit of sorry for (a big proportion of) the scientific community. Firstly, they are systematically forced to mostly work on projects aiming to accomplish directly-marketable/apparently-appealing goals, perhaps only for pretty ignorant individuals whose "knowledge" is mostly formed by sci-fi movies and ideas like "scaling up can be easily applied everywhere", otherwise they don't get any funding. Then, they are pushed to quickly deliver tangible results, again under equivalently stupid conditions. Finally, all their efforts are usually undermined or put completely out of context via a tabloid-like promotion to keep/get more funding. On the other hand, everyone should accept the consequences of their (non-)actions. For example, my principles (honesty, fairness, integrity) are the most important thing to me and I know that nothing will ever change that (much less something with so little-value-to-me like money or generic, not-well-deserved recognition). So, I guess that it is a matter of what the goals of everyone are and what they are willing to do to accomplish them. In any case, it does seem kind of sad, at least this is how it looks from my external and quite comfortable position.
Something like "It has a bug" can be used to describe virtually any programming-related problem like when the given piece of software: - doesn't deliver the expected results under very specific conditions. - completely ignores a relevant use case. - breaks for no clear reason. - has a somehow shady feature. - has been hacked in the most public and shameful way.
A bug might be provoked by a punctual mistake only affecting a small part of the functionalities or by a horrendous code not meeting the most basic quality standards. It might also be the go-to expression of a C-level manager not knowing too well what is going on or the main idea of the PR announcement trying to justify whatever catastrophe.
I propose to start using this magical work in other contexts. Some examples: "I don't have my homework because of a bug", "I will be a bit late today because we are dealing with a huge bug in the office" or "It isn't you, it is a bug.". LOL.
The workshop was about gender. How was this a bad time to give the speech?
My bad, if this is true. I read other comments mentioning the fact that he shouldn't be talking about this in that specific context and assumed that it was the case (similarly to what I am doing now with your comment). I just skimmed through the summary and some slides of his presentation. In any case, this issue doesn't seem too important for the point which I am trying to make here.
He was literally asked to talk about all this.
They simply didn't like what he had to say.
OK. Then, his position seems even stronger. But I will not absolutely defend someone's views before properly understanding them, and I am not particularly interested in doing so here. I do get the point that his intention wasn't discriminating anyone, as many comments here say, but defending a (gender-)prejudice-free science, an idea which I undoubtedly support.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as these posts are expected to remain here for a long time, they are addressed to not particularly bright people and I might change the signature in the future (where this issue is clearly explained), I will highlight once again that there was/is/will continue being just one person here: myself, Alvaro Carballo Garcia. The current surrounding nonsense seems to be somehow provoked by problems to understand this reality, the simple equality shown in the current signature of this post: Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas. Only one person here with one personality, set of ideas, knowledge and expectations. The same one making jokes and writing serious stuff, the one using customsolvers or varocarbas whatever, the only one doing all the work (a lot) and getting all the money (not so much), writing text and code, making mistakes and correcting problems, the one whose pic is now everywhere (recently changed my policy on this front as a reaction to all this still-no-idea-how-to-call-it). A pretty simple idea which has been proven to be much more difficult to be transmitted than what I would have ever expected.
As far as the previous post is addressed to individuals with particularly limited understanding capabilities and this will be one of the last times when I will be doing something of this sort, I will better clarify what I meant with "our real (not the ones happening in their mind, ignorance, prejudices, self-esteem issues, etc.) interactions". I meant each single idea which anyone might have had, interpreted, heard, hoped, guessed, assumed, etc. now or at any point from anything of what I have said/done without having properly understood it within the proper context (specific conditions, my personality, common sense, etc.).
For example, I say that I am (kind of) poor and you (because of your prejudices, having a much worse situation than me or a limited understanding of the world/my expectations, etc.) assume that this is a problem (-> here you start your imaginary journey and where all what you do stops being related to reality/myself) and start guessing what you think that is acceptable under these conditions (for example, that I really care about money as a relevant goal in itself). My actions/words, at least when being properly understood, should help you understand your mistake at some point, but some people seem to have certain tendency to auto-convince themselves of whatever and re-interpret the reality such that everything meets those expectations (e.g., when I propose you a fair price, you think that bargaining is acceptable or that my work/behaviour would be affected in any way because of a higher/lower price because you are blindly convinced that this works for everyone under certain conditions). And so you might continue going down an unrealistic path with unrealistic expectations about me. The only sensible exit? Accept the reality (you made a mistake), learn (ask as much as needed and remember that I don't lie) and let's all be happy. The longer it takes you to realise about your mistake, the worse for everyone (mainly for you). There will be no excuse, no "it seemed that", no "anyone would have". No. You will realise that the only reason why you made a mistake (and another one and another one and...) was because of your (understanding) limitations, your lack of acceptation (of reality, of others not wanting the same than you, etc) and your unwillingness to properly understand.
This is an intentionally very neutral (and soft) example of the kind of behaviours which might need to take a look at these last two posts and think carefully quite a few things. I mean... I don't expect miracles, mainly by bearing in mind that I am under the impression that some threads of nonsense have been running for quite long time and have gone pretty depth (outside reality). As a starting exercise, perhaps you should take a look at quite a few of the last posts in this Slashdot profile and, by taking advantage of the express tagging (remember: LOL for jokes; but I haven't been always tagging, just during the last year or something), understand the differences between joke (random, unrelated to me, just for fun) vs. serious (work or interest, related to what I like/want/expect). Then you can go to my sites or any other of my profiles somewhere else and confirm that everything is consistent. You might even talk to me, I mean to my face or writing me directly in a language I can understand (Spanish or English). You know? Don't talk about me when I am not present or guess what my ideas might be on any front from what you think or what someone else tells you. Also bear in mind that I don't reply spammers, much less to ones of the crazy subtype (offering me ridiculous articles in languages I cannot even understand; or even a worse version: emailing me 3-10 times daily big bunches of repeated letters/symbols?!). If you do all that, you would get a reasonably good understanding of my personality/expectations and then your assumptions about me might start making a bit of sense and you might start getting when I am joking/serious without my help. We might even reach the point where I don't need to write in a public fashion to help people with whom I have no relationship to understand that we don't have any kind of relationship such that they can update their behaviour accordingly. But this seems a far dream.
Even though it seems pretty obvious to me that the parent post is a joke and that I have expressly tagged it as such (ending LOLs -> unfortunately proven required to minimise the chances of someone believing that all what is written there is true), I will go ahead and confirm it: yes, it is a joke. Meaning that it is exclusively meant to bring a bit of joy and, eventually, make a pretty mild critic of certain issue. Other than that, there is no hidden meaning, no wisdom to extract, no implicit indication of any kind of idea or expectation which I might have.
I haven't ever dealt with a billionaire and will probably never do so (no special interest either). As an abstract idea, I don't care much about them similarly to what happens with anything else which has always been very far away from me. I am not particularly interested in the accumulation of money regardless of anything else and/or in people caring about all that. I am not the kind of business-idea person (understood as constantly looking for ways to easily get new source of income, usually at the expense of others' work), but hard-working-technical one (ironically, owning a business although under a pretty peculiar format). I don't envy anyone (with money). I don't have a solid prejudices about billionaires or any other generic group of people. I do find pretty unappealing, even illogical, the obsessive/not-really-required accumulation of whatever, but I also apply ideas on the lines of "live and let live". I would certainly do lots of things with lots of money, but don't feel like generically censoring what others do. Long story short: this was a random joke about an irrelevant-to-me issue which I thought that was kind of related to this article. These ideas have no relationship at all with me, my expectations, my behaviour, what I do, what I want, etc.
What is the reason for this new post? That I am tired. I am tired of over-explaining, over-tagging, over-working and systematically seeing disproportionate and completely-unrelated-to-me/my intention/reality pathetic(ally stupid) behaviours whose incoherent nonsense seems to be fed by a higher amount of information/explanations. I quit. I will not provide any kind of help to anyone misinterpreting anything I do/say or having weird ideas about me on whatever front or having any kind of behaviour towards me which isn't strictly justified by our real (not the ones happening in their mind, ignorance, prejudices, self-esteem issues, etc.) interactions. I will not be tolerant. I will not be patient. I will not be understanding. I will be clear and quick. No help, no second chances, no politeness, no being nice with those not deserving it. You can find lots of information about me, my ideas/expectations, what I do/did, etc. I will always be very open, clear, honest, direct. I will always be polite with those being polite, help those asking for help and answer any doubt. Hopefully, this post will be read, understood and accepted by some people who seem to have a very important misconception about their position with respect to some issues like myself, having actual knowledge or their opinions being truly relevant.
Even by ignoring the evident arbitrariness of wanting (or needing? Who is funding this study?) to see a relevant meaning in something like how you like your coffee or what kind of tastes you prefer (out of the billions of possible variables affecting/defining someone's routine today or in the past); it isn't even required to highlight that ignoring tremendously influential external factors (e.g., culture/country, physical features or personality traits/ideology) converts these conclusions in virtually random; I might even not say anything about the extremely limited population under consideration (1000 adults!? From that you expect to get any kind of insight about most of people in the world? You cannot be serious!). All what I need to do to deem the conclusions of this study (as per my current understanding, created from quickly reading the title and the summary) irrelevant is to look at a personal experience which proves some of its basic assumptions completely wrong.
Let's focus on the dark coffee issue (honestly, I don't know how to classify my food tastes like I guess that everyone else: I like some bitter things, but also sweet ones. Who in the whole world is only liking either bitter or sweet things?!). Usually, I drink my coffee with milk, but I have also been drinking it dark for some periods. The reason? I don't really drink coffee because of its taste (well... I have got so used to it, that I guess that I would miss it what kind of means that I like it), but because of its effects. During certain periods of my life and under different conditions (e.g., not having an immediate/easy access to good milk), I haven't minded to drink it dark because, even despite not liking its taste much, it didn't seem like a big deal of an effort. If you had surveyed me during one of those periods, I would have said that I drink black coffee. But if you surveyed me now or at many other different points of my life, I would have said the opposite. Both answers would have been 100% accurate, my personality would be more or less identical and the conclusions of a tremendously-wrong "study" on these lines would be wrong.
So, let's assume that we have surveyed a relevant number of people, that we have properly classified them (by country, gender, age, background, etc.). Let's also assume that we are talking about a really-influential-for-personality variable (I don't know... anything but how you drink your coffee?). Even if you are in that nearly-perfect scenario and you do a really good analysis of all the data, your conclusions would turn out useless if you fail to adequately understand the exact implications of your underlying assumptions, mainly of the ones used in the main variables. In this case, they are assuming that drinking coffee in certain way is necessarily related to liking bitter things what, as proven by the previous paragraph, isn't necessarily true. You might even dismiss that aspect and focus on what "liking bitter things" implies. How many different foods/drinks can people take daily/monthly/during their whole life? If you list 5 options and someone likes 4 of them, it might not mean that that person tends to like more bitter things than another one choosing just 1, because by considering a much wider spectrum of options things could be completely different.
I am still working on the first stages and looking for funding (billionaires welcome), but here you have a sample ad giving a good idea about it:
Billionaire, are you looking for something relevant to do with your life? Do you have the feeling that something is missing? Are you tired of non-billionaire people only caring about your money? Do you want to be much more than just stinky (;)) rich? Are you looking for that world-changing endeavor providing the endless stream of blind admiration about which you have always dream?
Join BLFSD (Billionaires Looking For Something to Do)! You can give a profound meaning to your life for a reasonable entrance fee! Just 1 of your billions! (Full property of a big enough island might be accepted. Ask about our discounts for groups of 3 or more billionaires. Additional fees might apply). Our team will surely find that big idea on which you can put your money and hopes! Don't miss this opportunity and call us now!
LOL, LOL, etc.
I do trust in humanity as a whole and in the long run. Errors and non-ideal behaviours (perhaps having the best intentions and being quite reasonable at the start, but gradually kind of losing their point) tend to be eventually corrected. As a side effect and before reaching there, quite a few valuable lessons are likely to be learned. I don't see a big deal of a problem here.
Today, I read in a newspaper the following headline (translated from Spanish): "Since today until the end of the current year, European women will be working 'for free' due to the gender gap". Understanding the relationship between this reference, the current article and the title of this post is left as exercise for the reader.
With "application/SO", I really meant "application/OS". FYI, SO is the Spanish version of OS.
There are multiple announced vulnerabilities per month that allow this to happen. Mostly in Flash the last few years, but also in image decoders, sound decoders, and web browsers in general.
Quite scary stuff. In any case, you have still to be in the wrong place with the wrong tools (what usually means obsolete or not updated or not particularly good software) and to perform some wrong actions (even by assuming that a malicious application can be downloaded without your permission, it would still need to be run either by the user or by other application/SO what would imply one further layer of insecurity/negligence). Just visiting a shady website doesn't seem enough to provoke what is described here, not even in the most unfortunate scenario.
You have never heard of a drive-by download?
You mean something being downloaded to your computer without your consent or any kind of warning? Is this possible?
I am seriously considering the option of becoming a public servant and this information seems quite useful. Note to myself: when visiting porn sites at work, never download anything! LOL.
Seriously, who downloads an executable from a porn site?! Part of the pathetically-nonsensical spam I am getting lately includes pretty crappy messages saying that I have to pay because they have recorded me watching porn? That otherwise they would destroy my reputation!! (I guess that they are planning to firstly build me a good reputation. LOL). By ignoring its overall nonsensical essence ("you can increase your available time by writing ++ in the calculator of your computer"!!), the first idea coming to my mind was precisely why would anyone download a piece of malware (not a video) from a porn site with the huge number of available alternatives where you don't need to do anything of this sort? I mean... this is at least what someone from my church told me. LOL.
Building a tremendously complex set of algorithms and feeding them with tons of information is the basic requisite to allow a machine to reach a reasonably good (still orders of magnitude below the human level) understanding of just a few generic concepts. Having the kind of insight that a newborn might have when learning for the first time very basic ideas. Not talking even about things like thinking, deciding, choosing, adapting. Just having in place a system able to get reasonably good insights into somehow complex concepts. Something like understanding the differences between adults and kids, genders, races, etc. in an unified way, by looking at different types of information like descriptive words, pictures or videos. Being able to automatically differentiate between different subsets of relevant information, use them to set up a system of categories and keep gradually evolving those definitions until reaching what might be considered a good enough basic understanding of the given concepts.
As per my current knowledge, there is no system or even serious enough attempt in a position to ever reach the aforementioned preliminary understanding stages. And what, IMO, is even worse, there doesn't even seem to be an acceptation of what are the basic requirements to ever get there: lots of work, lots of patience, huge long-term efforts, what only seems doable through relevant collaborative, iterative improvement processes pursuing very long-term goals. Without a proper systematisation, a normalisation of each single element, the goals, the steps; without sharing all the different evolutions and allowing others to continue working from there; without an international, multi-organisation involvement; without a reliable long-term support/funding (governments, universities, associations); without properly understanding how extremely complex this whole process is, how important is having in place some basic solid cornerstones, and how far away we are still from getting anywhere; without anything of that, I think that it is very unlikely to ever get even a preliminary version of a system with good enough understanding capabilities.
How are they sure that the person even really checked her mail? She could just have lost password for one. Many people dislike email very much lately. Perhaps they switched to fb/whatsapp/discord/whatever.
Sure. As said, I don't know anything about the details or how the contact attempts happened or even about the honesty of the the person claiming all this. My post was addressed to those behaving in this way intentionally or, at least, in a careless way. Even in case of getting lots of messages, a considerate person would either clearly indicate that issue to the senders by trying to come back to all of them ASAP or get some help/dedicate more time or remove that contact resource because of not being able to use it properly. Errors happen and, even by doing everything fine, the final result might not be too good. But if you are competent enough and have a respectful-towards-others attitude, things should be more or less OK in most of the cases.
At least they know what query parameters are now. The programmer wasn't entirely at fault, up until PDO anyway.
Because there is no way to sanitise the inputs yourself, right? Because programmers are expected to quickly put together whatever, by not caring about the consequences at all and, in case of problems, complaining about the programming language? Because software developers are so lowly-qualified professionals and their expertise is so extremely unrelated to properly understanding/having full control on the given situation that they will fail to take care of even the slightest detail which the given tool (AKA programming language) hasn't made completely idiot-proof? LOL.
No. The only responsible for any SQL injection or any other problem provoked by an inadequate algorithm, usage of the programming language or poor understanding of whatever scenario is the programmer. Full stop. The fact that the whole programming process might be very complex, demanding, error-prone and that the given framework should ideally provide friendly ways to ease the more problematic parts is a different story. But a diligent-enough developer facing whatever implementation by relying on whatever resources should properly understand the conditions and adapt his coding behaviour accordingly. He can complain about having to pay more attention, wasting more time or preferring a different platform. But, unless in exceptional cases (unknown bug in the programming language), whatever problem in the generated piece of software will be his fault, either directly (limited experience, bad personal decisions, bad understanding of the problem/environment) or indirectly (having to comply with ridiculous constraints).
BTW, I have written many algorithms connecting to different databases, most of the times by sanitising the inputs myself rather via parametrised queries (not recommending to do so to everyone though). In fact, this is just a small subset of all the implementations where I have had to make sure that the inputs meet the expectations of the corresponding algorithm. I have never had any kind of input-sanitation-related (security) problem and, in case of ever having it, I would certainly be my fault.
You have to be a pathetic, low-self-esteem, disrespectful, probably-in-denial idiot to ignore others' sensible requests. Same ideas apply to those stupid enough to think that generic, hypocrite, saying-nothing, dishonest communication is welcome anywhere. All of them belong to the same type of low-life forms with a tremendous misconception about very basic things like the exact value of their contributions to others.
Logically, I don't know the specifics and that behaviour might have even made a bit of sense under the given conditions (after having tried hard enough to reason with that person, it was undoubtedly proven that no communication was possible). But, in principle, my opinion of a person doing something on these lines is quite bad, because of the punctual lack of respect and, more importantly, the personality traits (defects) which usually implies.
There are many many ways to reduce CO2 without having to burn less fuel, stop telling me otherwise because I know what you assert is not true.
I have never said that there aren't other ways. I said that this is the approach which is suitable for car engines. Exactly the same that I am not saying that you get certain emissions every time that you burn a given fuel no matter what. The IC engines are tremendously optimised devices, working under extremely demanding temperature/pressure conditions and placed inside one of the most unstable and not-much-available-space locations that there is. Additionally to all that and without wanting to start a discussion here about what should/shouldn't be more important, the industry/regulations have traditionally focused most of their efforts on minimising other species. And I know all that because I worked in that field some years ago. If everything has completely changed since then, there are now lots of work on reducing CO2 in car engines and you can provide a reliable reference to all this, I would be more than happy to recognise my mistake. Otherwise, I don't see the point of continuing this discussion.
Not true, we can synthesize the fuels, recycling the CO2 in the air.
You know the typical situation where CO2 capturing (what this video is about) is done right? Power plants. One of the reasons might be that they have lots of available space and a pretty stable layout. Not exactly the kind of conditions that you can find at the exhaust pipe of a car. Actually my statement was intrinsically wrong because "reducing CO2" doesn't mean what I intended, but something like this. A better version would have been "reducing CO2 levels", and even better "reducing CO2 levels from car ICEs".
Note that the levels of other emissions can be reduced by affecting the operating conditions of the engine, the fuel properties, by adding external elements like filters, etc. Nothing of this is applicable to CO2, as far as it will always be directly related to the amount of burning fuel no matter what you do. Some times, there are many potential solutions for a problem, but you should better focus on the ones which make sense in that specific context. And in the car context, there is only one methodology that allows to reliably reduce CO2 emissions: burning less fuel. What can be accomplished in different ways like having a more efficient combustion/engine, driving more efficiently or not using the car at all.
Synthetic fuels are the future. Synthetic fuels from nuclear power.
Well... many things to say there too, but I think that I have already explained a lot.
I believe that synthetic liquid fuels are the future of transportation. We won't have electric airplanes.
Sorry for not having been clear enough. I meant for cars and light transportation in general. Replacing heavy-duty engines (trucks, ships, power plants, etc.) with electricity is, at this point, very difficult. There might appear other alternatives in the future. In any case, oil-based burning doesn't look like a good (very) long-term approach.
We've got fuels that are very low in sulfur so that's not much of a concern. Catalytic converters and other technology means there's little particulate or carbon monoxide emissions any more. There might be some NOx but I have to wonder how much even that is a concern.
Directly-harmful-for-health pollutants are a major concern for both legislators and engine manufactures. In fact, pollutants are one of the most relevant factors constraining the design of an engine/vehicle. All the ICE will always generate dangerous emissions, because they are an unavoidable output from the physical/chemical conditions under which these engines have to operate. Reducing them is possible, but very difficult; at least, when trying to not affect performance much. There is no way to reduce CO2, other than by making the engine more efficient. Caring about all this has always been and will always be very important, like in any other industrial activity generating dangerous outputs. BTW, the most dangerous/worrying emission from diesel engines is soot/particles.
Although you might be correct, the usual proceeding for comparisons of this sort is referring to the worst case ("even the dirty diesel..."). Also I understood that they implicitly took diesel as the paradigm of all what is bad for the environment, as opposed to everything else including gasoline. Because you know... current trends (of ignorance).
OK. I pretty much agree with what you say. I think that electric is the future, but it is still quite far away and will certainly not be a magical solution. The point of my post was highlighting that diesel isn't the only environment-unfriendly engine. In fact, CO2 isn't even the main concern when trying to reduce emissions from ICE cars.
All the internal combustion engines and any other combustion-based whatever generate CO2. The more they burn, the more CO2 they generate. Under equivalent conditions, diesel engines are more efficient than gasoline ones and, consequently, generate lower CO2 emissions. Other than that, all the IC engines should be considered similarly bad for the environment. Both diesel and gasoline engines output pretty nasty stuff.
In the experiment set up by the scientists, two 'senders' were connected to EEG electrodes and asked to play a Tetris-style game involving falling blocks. They had to decide whether each block needed rotating or not.
To do this, they were asked to stare at one of two flashing LEDs at either side of the screen – one flashing at 15 Hz and the other at 17 Hz – which produced different signals in the brain that the EEG could pick up on.
How difficult could be to scale up such a setup? You can just keep adding LEDs for every existing concept/action/character, each of them flashing at a different frequency and there you have a perfect transmission of "thoughts". People using that system might have to be trained during some years and need some suicide-prevention help, but how could science evolve without some sacrifices? LOL. Seriously now, I think that calling all this "thought sharing" is at best being tremendously imprecise. Also expecting this approach to be eventually able to deal with complex (or better: actual) thoughts or actions seems impossible.
One thing is measuring brain activity while performing very specific actions to see certain variations (= what is being done here); by bearing in mind that this doesn't imply understanding of what is going on, not even uniqueness of the given signal. A completely different story is getting any kind of tangible version of what might be considered thoughts and, for that, we would still need to know how the thinking process even happens. Long story short, all this kind of brain-activity measurement actions just try to find regular patterns within intrinsically meaningless signals.
Reading articles of this sort makes me feel a bit of sorry for (a big proportion of) the scientific community. Firstly, they are systematically forced to mostly work on projects aiming to accomplish directly-marketable/apparently-appealing goals, perhaps only for pretty ignorant individuals whose "knowledge" is mostly formed by sci-fi movies and ideas like "scaling up can be easily applied everywhere", otherwise they don't get any funding. Then, they are pushed to quickly deliver tangible results, again under equivalently stupid conditions. Finally, all their efforts are usually undermined or put completely out of context via a tabloid-like promotion to keep/get more funding. On the other hand, everyone should accept the consequences of their (non-)actions. For example, my principles (honesty, fairness, integrity) are the most important thing to me and I know that nothing will ever change that (much less something with so little-value-to-me like money or generic, not-well-deserved recognition). So, I guess that it is a matter of what the goals of everyone are and what they are willing to do to accomplish them. In any case, it does seem kind of sad, at least this is how it looks from my external and quite comfortable position.
Something like "It has a bug" can be used to describe virtually any programming-related problem like when the given piece of software:
- doesn't deliver the expected results under very specific conditions.
- completely ignores a relevant use case.
- breaks for no clear reason.
- has a somehow shady feature.
- has been hacked in the most public and shameful way.
A bug might be provoked by a punctual mistake only affecting a small part of the functionalities or by a horrendous code not meeting the most basic quality standards. It might also be the go-to expression of a C-level manager not knowing too well what is going on or the main idea of the PR announcement trying to justify whatever catastrophe.
I propose to start using this magical work in other contexts. Some examples: "I don't have my homework because of a bug", "I will be a bit late today because we are dealing with a huge bug in the office" or "It isn't you, it is a bug.". LOL.
The workshop was about gender. How was this a bad time to give the speech?
My bad, if this is true. I read other comments mentioning the fact that he shouldn't be talking about this in that specific context and assumed that it was the case (similarly to what I am doing now with your comment). I just skimmed through the summary and some slides of his presentation. In any case, this issue doesn't seem too important for the point which I am trying to make here.
He was literally asked to talk about all this. They simply didn't like what he had to say.
OK. Then, his position seems even stronger. But I will not absolutely defend someone's views before properly understanding them, and I am not particularly interested in doing so here. I do get the point that his intention wasn't discriminating anyone, as many comments here say, but defending a (gender-)prejudice-free science, an idea which I undoubtedly support.