I believe that human caused climate change is occurring considering everything else we've changed on earth (we literally move mountains now) but I don't think it means the end of the world. Folks who are predicting the end of the world are likely being overly alarmist but that's not to say we should sit back and do nothing. I've seen increasingly worse local flooding in recent years and weather's becoming more unstable. The worry isn't so much that the world will end but that it is going to be more difficult to make a living as the things we've been use to (relatively stable climate and weather for close to a millennium) might be going away. Change is expensive.
I live in Canada, I like maple syrup and it makes sense that if it warms on average that trees might not do so well. Trees are rooted and take decades to mature so I imagine to compensate it's going to take a few decades to move them north to more appropriate climates. So saying there's no more maple syrup seems silly, saying that there might be shortage and it'll get more expensive makes more sense.
It's somewhat ironic that everything folks cited that was a plus to BitCoin is turning out to be the exact oppose:
1. No government or central body control. Except when countries decide to ban it causing market crashes. 2. Good currency for goods. Except when it yo-yos so badly that no sane vendor will use it because they can't predict prices. 3. Good for investing. Except that it's so unstable it's closer to gambling. 4. Needing control of more than half the bitcoin network to take over means the rich won't be able to get to it. Except they can and do by putting a lot of money (which I assume they can afford to lose) into the market in a bid to control it. The sad truth is very few people control almost the entire market. 5. Low resource overhead. Only the computational network that's running bitcoin is blowing more resources than some small thou admittedly "poor" countries.
At the end of the day, it seems if you were there early and out at the peak then you won. But overall the whole system seems worse or more world wrecking than country issued currency. I wouldn't be surprised if bitcoin crashes badly or dies someday leaving a sour taste in crytocurrency.
I don't think this is really that surprising. Modern CPU's are almost like mini-computers in themselves breaking down and reorganizing code on the fly internally. Fixing them means ugly workarounds which will usually cost a bit in performance. As time goes on, expect more of these issues rather than less. It's why most modern CPUs have a BIOS loaded table that makes workaround fixes in hardware although this problem is probably too big to fix there.
I think these investors are missing the point. You can be addicted to *anything*. But something that they've long pointed out is many addictions are the result of some other gap or need that is missing in life. I often get the impression that online a lot of folks are quite literally lonely. As much as you can make do with a virtual social life, I suspect having a real social life is a part of being human. So parents throwing their kids a near $1000 phone because they don't have time to deal with them is not really making the situation better. Instead encourage your kids to be with other kids in person and better yet take a more active approach to the community you belong to.
Soo reading this article I just thought of something stupid that might make this not work. So get piss drunk with beer so you don't remember the ads since hopefully it'll get you there eventually?
Actually there's been articles that suggest something like 40% of all bitcoins are held by a small rich crowd of about 1000 users who have more money than common sense and they tend to move simultaneously. So maybe that small rich group is attempting to cash in by selling all at once at the cost of everyone else.
Unfortunately media hasn't entirely caught on to this yet but a lot of refugees flooding into Europe are actually from Africa and it isn't because of war. This has unfortunately been going on for more years than when things blew up in Syria. Basically there are places in Africa who haven't seen rain in years and farmers who are unable to grow anything. Folks might argue California has suffered the same but folks are forgetting that these folks weren't "rich" farmers to begin with and there's no social safety net. Unfortunately it's also these same countries that have seen the rise of ISIS as well. When you can't make money, don't have food or water and your family's starving and it looks like you're going to die from starvation or thirst, radical religions which give you a sliver of hope starts to sound unfortunately sane.
I'm not sure how this is suppose to be amazing considering most computer folks at home who care about their systems use a UPS. I can see how not having a UPS and losing power at a key point might be a small disaster. Probably the only amazing part is that there are few systems that approach this size and scope but aside from that nothing new.
It's interesting but with every advance in broadcast radio technology it has required a massive jump in radio equipment. AM could for example be received in an unpowered crystal radio set with virtually no components! (Yes it could run off radio waves like magic!) FM required significantly more parts and I imagine DAB requires a much more advanced digital receiver. Frankly I don't see the advantage of doing this, it's not like most cars have super high quality sound systems with all the road noise. I think this is probably just a bad idea in most areas.
I've often looked at the amount of money folks are charging for commissions on artwork on DeviantArt and considering the quality of work for the very little they can sometimes charge, it's amazing. When you work out the amount of time some artists spend to perfect their work, it doesn't usually work out to be a decent pay so the fact that so many of these artists are also on Pateron, maybe it shouldn't be surprising.
Look at basic economics which essentially says growth is necessary for good economics. Even a small level of growth say at 1%. It basically points that in order to stay healthy economically speaking we need to burn, consume and destroy more for the sake of economy and it isn't linear growth, it's exponential. Unfortunately at some point we're going to reach the actual limits of growth in real life because they can't go on forever. The risk is at that point, will society collapse?
With the amount of heat and the fuel involved, I'm a bit surprised this doesn't happen more often. I suppose that booster is parts now or is SpaceX going to risk trying another flight with it. Maybe dangeriously discounted?:)
I've heard the arguments for Bitcoin and against. In theory, Bitcoin has no controls on it and is suppose to be allow you to make anonymous transactions. Which is curious because our normal physical currency was essentially like that at some point too but as society grew up it became more regulated and stable to try to help people. Then when that illusion blew up multiple times due to scams, fraud and use for mostly illegal activities, the other massive argument was there was a lot of money to be made. Usually in life if there's a lot of money to be made there's a lot to be lost as well. Money isn't magic, there needs to be some give and take. My opinion is if you want to gamble your assets on Bitcoin, go for it but realize at the same time that it could just as easily blow up in your face and when it does there's no one to provide any sense of a safety net because that's what you're going for. I won't touch it for that reason but there are many that will.
I'm still using a fairly old Samsung Note 3 now which uses an OLED display and it doesn't show any obvious signs of screen burn-in whatsoever. So not all OLED displays are that horrible. I think if you really abuse it or the quality of the screen was bad to begin with it probably won't work right.
To be honest, I didn't have much faith in it as soon as they announced that the Bots would be piloted by live humans. It right away means that they won't be fighting to destruction or using any weapons that could potentially kill the pilot for obvious reasons. Unfortunately it also means it would probably be boring! It probably also didn't help that they had announcers who were cheering property damage over actual fighting. (Imagine boxers punching the ring and environment instead of each other!) I actually liked the first battle the best because it was highly realistic. I think the winning Bot had something like 4x the horsepower of the other, was smaller and lighter and not top heavy which lead to the single KO punch.
And if you were really serious about fighting, I would have bought an old WWII tank although results probably wouldn't have been good for my opponent. After all there's good reason why our military doesn't use Mechs.
At the end of the day, this idea doesn't work. Go back to using remotely driven and creatively designed drones.
AI hasn't really changed much in years, computers have gotten more powerful so some pattern recognition tricks that use to take more effort don't anymore. The big breakthrough was figuring out how to write a decent AI to play Go optimally against modern equipment. After that all they did was create random legal scenarios to play against the system creating patterns that are unusual to us and using the results of those outcomes to fine tune the AI algorithm. There really isn't that much magic if you've taken some AI courses.
Think about fractals, some of the resulting art or images generated from some relatively simple equations create things which we could have never imagined.
I have nothing against people saying they "hate" or "love" a product but it might help to have a reason? Does it cost too much, have short battery life, ect, ect? At least give a reason slashdot!:)
I'm wondering why professors / administrators would be using the public terminals to work on student records. In my small university, I eventually earned the privilege of being a student system administrator but I knew with all the viruses and issues that happen on a public access computer that I wouldn't trust sensitive data on it. Even the floppy drives of the day were so screwed up that they would randomly destroy disks because people misused them all the time.
I have little sympathy for the student. If not caught this bad behaviour becomes a disaster in the workplace. It's like the expression play with fire, expect to get burned sometimes.
I'm not sure if it's really appropriate to call it the "Amazon Effect" seeing how there's only online giants like Alibaba and so forth. For electronics and computer stuff I can see that being purchased online. Many small computer shops have closed in my area in recent years and even giants like BestBuy are struggling. It all makes sense because unlike clothes, if you read reviews and do your research most folks don't buy electronics as a fashion statement. I don't see clothes and shoes going online thou because it's hard to size clothes looking at a picture.
Also I can't help to think that some chains over-expanded due to economic slowdown in recent years got hit pretty hard as well.
I studied AI algorithms back in University a decade ago and they really haven't changed much from now till today. The biggest improvements have come from having faster computers, not more efficient or even effective algorithms. The problem is we don't really have a good idea of how the magic algorithm of self-awareness or learning even works. We don't even know how we achieve that ourselves despite decades of research and theories.
The other point is if we can make AI be more or less like us, wouldn't that be an evolution of who we are? It might occur naturally over time. Think about kids, they start off almost as a blank slate AI system. It might end up that humans go extinct not because we were eliminated but we ended up raising robots as our children and they in turn carry on our knowledge and values.
I have to admit I've used MPC-HC for many many years now, in fact I'm using an old out of date version. I wonder if basically it's "good enough" that it doesn't need further development? There's products like "PuTTY" which essentially don't update for ages because the open source product fulfills it's function. Unless the product needs more fancy features which often risks breaking things. Time will tell I suppose.
I think the reason why Hawking thinks this way is actually very logical. As much as we might believe that we're absolutely above nature, we are not. Most biological systems such as bacteria will grow exponentially provided they have their needs met. It's only when they're suffering from massive shortages that they stop growing exponentially. As smart as humans are, this trend doesn't appear to be stopping which means we need more space and places to expand to in order to keep our rich lifestyles.
The irony of it is space is mostly empty space. Too much empty space in fact. I remember someone showing a scale where if the sun was a pea, the solar system would be a football field and the nearest star is an hour's drive away at least! Considering how long it took us to shoot the Horizon's Probe to Pluto, it's an understatement to say things are far apart!
Ah, crazy short term fads. I don't own a fidget spinner but I've seen them so I guess I missed the whole craze. I do have to admit some of the solid metal ones that were hand machined were impressive but at the end of the day it isn't much different then having a rock to play with or coin or something else to fidget with at your desk. Someone needs to try to sell a fidget rock with no bearings (it's just a rock) for laughs.
Tesla's are normally very expensive cars so yes it was surprising they sold so well. Still I wouldn't exactly call this a subsidy, seems to be more a tax break because it seems regular gas powered vehicles have a massive tax on them. I own a Volt, and in Ontario-Canada thanks to an actual subsidy of about $7,000 which is similar to the hybrid subsidy that existed for years before it, it became affordable for me. I have absolutely no regrets over it, compared to my Corolla which I also bought new at the time it is so much of a nicer car thou at almost twice the price. Given the choice again I'd do it again!
I think part of the problem is that folks want EVs all at once where a Volt will get you 99% of the way there without the limitations or more than double the cost. Sure it won't do 0-60 in 2 seconds but seriously who drives like that all the time. I run on pure electricity all summer and some gas in the winter or if I cross-country travel.
This is way inaccurate. At the turn of the century, Industrialization allowed for more to be produced from less putting a lot of folks out of work. Farms got tremendously larger because they got more efficient at producing food for example, but everyone didn't go unemployed you say? BUT you're forgetting one important fact, consumption went up! If you look at the thing we have have now including our computers / electronics and technology, they use more resources and energy than our ancestors ever did!
Sure a cellphone is tiny but the resources and energy behind it's production is something you would never see as a consumer.
Sadly in the next wave of "automation" we can't keep cranking up consumption for the simple fact that we're already dangerously close to burning out all the natural resources we have. This only work if resources are unlimited but in reality they're not. It's for this reason we're in trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that human caused climate change is occurring considering everything else we've changed on earth (we literally move mountains now) but I don't think it means the end of the world. Folks who are predicting the end of the world are likely being overly alarmist but that's not to say we should sit back and do nothing. I've seen increasingly worse local flooding in recent years and weather's becoming more unstable. The worry isn't so much that the world will end but that it is going to be more difficult to make a living as the things we've been use to (relatively stable climate and weather for close to a millennium) might be going away. Change is expensive.
I live in Canada, I like maple syrup and it makes sense that if it warms on average that trees might not do so well. Trees are rooted and take decades to mature so I imagine to compensate it's going to take a few decades to move them north to more appropriate climates. So saying there's no more maple syrup seems silly, saying that there might be shortage and it'll get more expensive makes more sense.
It's somewhat ironic that everything folks cited that was a plus to BitCoin is turning out to be the exact oppose:
1. No government or central body control.
Except when countries decide to ban it causing market crashes.
2. Good currency for goods.
Except when it yo-yos so badly that no sane vendor will use it because they can't predict prices.
3. Good for investing.
Except that it's so unstable it's closer to gambling.
4. Needing control of more than half the bitcoin network to take over means the rich won't be able to get to it.
Except they can and do by putting a lot of money (which I assume they can afford to lose) into the market in a bid to control it. The sad truth is very few people control almost the entire market.
5. Low resource overhead.
Only the computational network that's running bitcoin is blowing more resources than some small thou admittedly "poor" countries.
At the end of the day, it seems if you were there early and out at the peak then you won. But overall the whole system seems worse or more world wrecking than country issued currency. I wouldn't be surprised if bitcoin crashes badly or dies someday leaving a sour taste in crytocurrency.
I don't think this is really that surprising. Modern CPU's are almost like mini-computers in themselves breaking down and reorganizing code on the fly internally. Fixing them means ugly workarounds which will usually cost a bit in performance. As time goes on, expect more of these issues rather than less. It's why most modern CPUs have a BIOS loaded table that makes workaround fixes in hardware although this problem is probably too big to fix there.
I think these investors are missing the point. You can be addicted to *anything*. But something that they've long pointed out is many addictions are the result of some other gap or need that is missing in life. I often get the impression that online a lot of folks are quite literally lonely. As much as you can make do with a virtual social life, I suspect having a real social life is a part of being human. So parents throwing their kids a near $1000 phone because they don't have time to deal with them is not really making the situation better. Instead encourage your kids to be with other kids in person and better yet take a more active approach to the community you belong to.
Soo reading this article I just thought of something stupid that might make this not work. So get piss drunk with beer so you don't remember the ads since hopefully it'll get you there eventually?
Actually there's been articles that suggest something like 40% of all bitcoins are held by a small rich crowd of about 1000 users who have more money than common sense and they tend to move simultaneously. So maybe that small rich group is attempting to cash in by selling all at once at the cost of everyone else.
Unfortunately media hasn't entirely caught on to this yet but a lot of refugees flooding into Europe are actually from Africa and it isn't because of war. This has unfortunately been going on for more years than when things blew up in Syria. Basically there are places in Africa who haven't seen rain in years and farmers who are unable to grow anything. Folks might argue California has suffered the same but folks are forgetting that these folks weren't "rich" farmers to begin with and there's no social safety net. Unfortunately it's also these same countries that have seen the rise of ISIS as well. When you can't make money, don't have food or water and your family's starving and it looks like you're going to die from starvation or thirst, radical religions which give you a sliver of hope starts to sound unfortunately sane.
I'm not sure how this is suppose to be amazing considering most computer folks at home who care about their systems use a UPS. I can see how not having a UPS and losing power at a key point might be a small disaster. Probably the only amazing part is that there are few systems that approach this size and scope but aside from that nothing new.
It's interesting but with every advance in broadcast radio technology it has required a massive jump in radio equipment. AM could for example be received in an unpowered crystal radio set with virtually no components! (Yes it could run off radio waves like magic!) FM required significantly more parts and I imagine DAB requires a much more advanced digital receiver. Frankly I don't see the advantage of doing this, it's not like most cars have super high quality sound systems with all the road noise. I think this is probably just a bad idea in most areas.
I've often looked at the amount of money folks are charging for commissions on artwork on DeviantArt and considering the quality of work for the very little they can sometimes charge, it's amazing. When you work out the amount of time some artists spend to perfect their work, it doesn't usually work out to be a decent pay so the fact that so many of these artists are also on Pateron, maybe it shouldn't be surprising.
Look at basic economics which essentially says growth is necessary for good economics. Even a small level of growth say at 1%. It basically points that in order to stay healthy economically speaking we need to burn, consume and destroy more for the sake of economy and it isn't linear growth, it's exponential. Unfortunately at some point we're going to reach the actual limits of growth in real life because they can't go on forever. The risk is at that point, will society collapse?
With the amount of heat and the fuel involved, I'm a bit surprised this doesn't happen more often. I suppose that booster is parts now or is SpaceX going to risk trying another flight with it. Maybe dangeriously discounted? :)
I've heard the arguments for Bitcoin and against. In theory, Bitcoin has no controls on it and is suppose to be allow you to make anonymous transactions. Which is curious because our normal physical currency was essentially like that at some point too but as society grew up it became more regulated and stable to try to help people. Then when that illusion blew up multiple times due to scams, fraud and use for mostly illegal activities, the other massive argument was there was a lot of money to be made. Usually in life if there's a lot of money to be made there's a lot to be lost as well. Money isn't magic, there needs to be some give and take. My opinion is if you want to gamble your assets on Bitcoin, go for it but realize at the same time that it could just as easily blow up in your face and when it does there's no one to provide any sense of a safety net because that's what you're going for. I won't touch it for that reason but there are many that will.
I'm still using a fairly old Samsung Note 3 now which uses an OLED display and it doesn't show any obvious signs of screen burn-in whatsoever. So not all OLED displays are that horrible. I think if you really abuse it or the quality of the screen was bad to begin with it probably won't work right.
To be honest, I didn't have much faith in it as soon as they announced that the Bots would be piloted by live humans. It right away means that they won't be fighting to destruction or using any weapons that could potentially kill the pilot for obvious reasons. Unfortunately it also means it would probably be boring! It probably also didn't help that they had announcers who were cheering property damage over actual fighting. (Imagine boxers punching the ring and environment instead of each other!) I actually liked the first battle the best because it was highly realistic. I think the winning Bot had something like 4x the horsepower of the other, was smaller and lighter and not top heavy which lead to the single KO punch.
And if you were really serious about fighting, I would have bought an old WWII tank although results probably wouldn't have been good for my opponent. After all there's good reason why our military doesn't use Mechs.
At the end of the day, this idea doesn't work. Go back to using remotely driven and creatively designed drones.
AI hasn't really changed much in years, computers have gotten more powerful so some pattern recognition tricks that use to take more effort don't anymore. The big breakthrough was figuring out how to write a decent AI to play Go optimally against modern equipment. After that all they did was create random legal scenarios to play against the system creating patterns that are unusual to us and using the results of those outcomes to fine tune the AI algorithm. There really isn't that much magic if you've taken some AI courses.
Think about fractals, some of the resulting art or images generated from some relatively simple equations create things which we could have never imagined.
I have nothing against people saying they "hate" or "love" a product but it might help to have a reason? Does it cost too much, have short battery life, ect, ect? At least give a reason slashdot! :)
I'm wondering why professors / administrators would be using the public terminals to work on student records. In my small university, I eventually earned the privilege of being a student system administrator but I knew with all the viruses and issues that happen on a public access computer that I wouldn't trust sensitive data on it. Even the floppy drives of the day were so screwed up that they would randomly destroy disks because people misused them all the time.
I have little sympathy for the student. If not caught this bad behaviour becomes a disaster in the workplace. It's like the expression play with fire, expect to get burned sometimes.
I'm not sure if it's really appropriate to call it the "Amazon Effect" seeing how there's only online giants like Alibaba and so forth. For electronics and computer stuff I can see that being purchased online. Many small computer shops have closed in my area in recent years and even giants like BestBuy are struggling. It all makes sense because unlike clothes, if you read reviews and do your research most folks don't buy electronics as a fashion statement. I don't see clothes and shoes going online thou because it's hard to size clothes looking at a picture.
Also I can't help to think that some chains over-expanded due to economic slowdown in recent years got hit pretty hard as well.
I studied AI algorithms back in University a decade ago and they really haven't changed much from now till today. The biggest improvements have come from having faster computers, not more efficient or even effective algorithms. The problem is we don't really have a good idea of how the magic algorithm of self-awareness or learning even works. We don't even know how we achieve that ourselves despite decades of research and theories.
The other point is if we can make AI be more or less like us, wouldn't that be an evolution of who we are? It might occur naturally over time. Think about kids, they start off almost as a blank slate AI system. It might end up that humans go extinct not because we were eliminated but we ended up raising robots as our children and they in turn carry on our knowledge and values.
I have to admit I've used MPC-HC for many many years now, in fact I'm using an old out of date version. I wonder if basically it's "good enough" that it doesn't need further development? There's products like "PuTTY" which essentially don't update for ages because the open source product fulfills it's function. Unless the product needs more fancy features which often risks breaking things. Time will tell I suppose.
I think the reason why Hawking thinks this way is actually very logical. As much as we might believe that we're absolutely above nature, we are not. Most biological systems such as bacteria will grow exponentially provided they have their needs met. It's only when they're suffering from massive shortages that they stop growing exponentially. As smart as humans are, this trend doesn't appear to be stopping which means we need more space and places to expand to in order to keep our rich lifestyles.
The irony of it is space is mostly empty space. Too much empty space in fact. I remember someone showing a scale where if the sun was a pea, the solar system would be a football field and the nearest star is an hour's drive away at least! Considering how long it took us to shoot the Horizon's Probe to Pluto, it's an understatement to say things are far apart!
Ah, crazy short term fads. I don't own a fidget spinner but I've seen them so I guess I missed the whole craze. I do have to admit some of the solid metal ones that were hand machined were impressive but at the end of the day it isn't much different then having a rock to play with or coin or something else to fidget with at your desk. Someone needs to try to sell a fidget rock with no bearings (it's just a rock) for laughs.
Tesla's are normally very expensive cars so yes it was surprising they sold so well. Still I wouldn't exactly call this a subsidy, seems to be more a tax break because it seems regular gas powered vehicles have a massive tax on them. I own a Volt, and in Ontario-Canada thanks to an actual subsidy of about $7,000 which is similar to the hybrid subsidy that existed for years before it, it became affordable for me. I have absolutely no regrets over it, compared to my Corolla which I also bought new at the time it is so much of a nicer car thou at almost twice the price. Given the choice again I'd do it again!
I think part of the problem is that folks want EVs all at once where a Volt will get you 99% of the way there without the limitations or more than double the cost. Sure it won't do 0-60 in 2 seconds but seriously who drives like that all the time. I run on pure electricity all summer and some gas in the winter or if I cross-country travel.
This is way inaccurate. At the turn of the century, Industrialization allowed for more to be produced from less putting a lot of folks out of work. Farms got tremendously larger because they got more efficient at producing food for example, but everyone didn't go unemployed you say? BUT you're forgetting one important fact, consumption went up! If you look at the thing we have have now including our computers / electronics and technology, they use more resources and energy than our ancestors ever did!
Sure a cellphone is tiny but the resources and energy behind it's production is something you would never see as a consumer.
Sadly in the next wave of "automation" we can't keep cranking up consumption for the simple fact that we're already dangerously close to burning out all the natural resources we have. This only work if resources are unlimited but in reality they're not. It's for this reason we're in trouble.