In the long run (read : I mean the next 30 years), every job in existence has a programmer involved.
Manual Labor? In the long run, it'll be robots that do nearly all of it, and software is the only real obstacle that stops us from automating more tasks.
Manufacturing? Software problem. Healthcare? Most of a doctor's thinking could be automated with existing software techniques. (sure, not the physical procedures part, but that's only a portion)
Of course, in the LONG, LONG run, someone will advance the art of software to the point that we have software that can write itself, and then we're all out of work...
Apple charges a premium for their products of about 30%. However, they have a very large and dedicated team of developers, and only one major product to work on at a time. Furthermore, as a firm, they are aware that their survival and profits depend on Getting It Right. If they cut corners, maybe skip some testing, don't support their products the day after it ships, it lowers the public perception of their brand, and they will no longer be able to consistently charge that 30% markup.
Shoulda bought an iphone. With the subsidized carrier model, it wouldn't have cost any more than you are already paying.
Which makes me wonder, if the cops have time to bash down that couple's door, why have they not gotten to you? One would think that if their surveillance methods were at all efficient, you would be far higher on the list than people searching for backpacks.
I think the business lesson here is clear. Whenever you're trying to evaluate the likely success of a business, ask yourself if the business is efficient for the market it covers or not. In the case of facebook games, a bigger company is less efficient, because there's no benefit to throwing dozens of developers at a tiny browser game for casual players. 2-3 people can develop a top tier game in this market, the trick is coming up with the right mechanics.
There's also no natural monopoly in browser games, unlike, say, a connection network like facebook.
Zynga should have stayed small, and just enjoyed it's huge profits from the early hits.
25-35% less file size for the same quality is an incredible advance. Obviously the task of improving compression algorithms is going to ratchet up enormously as the file sizes get smaller with higher entropy. I'm in fact amazed that an advance this big is even possible, apparently, x264 is nowhere near the theoretical limits for (lossy) video compression.
Does anyone have an idea of what these extremely expensive systems are even for? And don't say password cracking/NSA, because both of those tasks are "embarrassingly parallel", so that you can use a cloud of separate computers rather than a tightly interlinked network like a supercomputer.
Are there real world problems right now where another 100x more CPU power would make real, practical differences? (versus making the algorithm more efficient, etc)
Yes. Current console games use every last drop of power from the GPU to get 30 fps. The reason the game "caps" at 30 is to smooth out performance - the hardware is not able to do any better. The next gen will probably have the same problem - except that, as I said, a game that maxes out on the Xbox one will produce about 50% better FPS on the PS4. This means that the PS4 developers can set their cap to 45 FPS, and in "busy" areas where the Xbox One chugs away, it'll run significantly smoother on the PS4.
That was because the Xbox 360 hardware was measurably better in some ways. Xbox 360 had a faster GPU and a slower CPU, effectively. In this generation, both consoles have identical GPUs and CPU architecture - except sony paid for a GPU with more processing units, a faster CPU, and much faster memory. By "identical" I mean that the same code will basically execute on either console, almost unchanged.
Yes, but those exact same games will have better graphics or framerates on the PS4. (probably in many cases the latter, since publishers will design the game to run ok on the Xbox One and when they "port" it to the PS4 it'll have better framerates by default)
That's like saying "playing cards at the casino was a smart decision for me". Just because you were lucky and came out ahead doesn't mean the house doesn't win overall.
You were lucky, and if somehow you had to play another round (suppose some medical treatment existed that could make you 20 again, and the government started drafting everyone for a land war with China) it would still be a bad idea.
Think back to the 1960s. Many of the complaints the "radicals" had were in fact legitimate. The Vietnam war was poorly managed and ultimately a colossal waste of lives and resources. Agent Orange really was a horrible toxin, causing permanent injuries. Drafting people to send them to a pointless war really was an evil act (and the draft dodgers were making a decision that in retrospect was a smart one)
Marijuana really was a drug with low potential for harm, black people really were being oppressed, and nudism and free love must have been pretty fun.
The point is, what did mainstream culture have to say then? What did all those protests do to affect the decisions made by The Man? Fuck-all, that's what. Doesn't seem any different now.
Is a 50 minute flight time even a remote possibility?
I suppose that if it does 6 minutes now, and 4x higher density batteries are supposed to be available as prototypes, then that's 24 minutes. If you then doubled the mass of batteries carried...maybe?
It's acting like a relay. The actual part from digikey is irrelevant - the point is, the design requirement is that it be wired to energize the electronics indefinitely upon receiving an intermittent burst of current from a switch being pressed. Also, it must use 0 current when idle.
Because if you were a cop on the beat or relying on the gun to protect you in a high crime area, you never want to be in a situation where you have a non-functional weapon. Having a gun that won't fire is sometimes worse than having no gun at all.
The way it works, there's a switch in the gun. Toggling the switch throws a relay. The relay completes the circuit and allows the gun's ultra long life battery to energize the electronics. Once the gun has "rested" long enough (meaning a certain number of minutes pass without seeing a tag nearby) it shuts itself off by throwing the relay into the opposite position.
It would use the same kind of batteries they put into pacemakers with at least a 10 year life, possibly longer, depending on how often someone used it.
Proposal : the only validation method I think is usable is an implanted RFID tag with encryption. I don't think these exist yet, the current ones that can be implanted can be "cloned" because they emit a fixed data string when queried.
Why not fingerprints/palmprints? Validation is too slow, too many ways for the sensor to get obscured or some other failure to happen to cause the gun to not register the user instantly. Also, fingerprints/palmprints can be hacked easily.
Anyways, it would use implanted RFID tags, and there would be mechanical switches in the gun itself that must be closed before the weapon starts scanning for a tag. That way, when a user is not holding the gun, the switches are open, and it does not use any energy at all. (the switch allows power to flow to the circuitry). It would have to use long life, non rechargable lithium ion batteries similar to what they use in pacemakers.
Ultimately, the whole technology package would be a module that could replace part of the firing mechanism for an existing tried and true firearm, such as a popular model of glock or something. I think if it were reliable enough, police would want to use it.
What this demonstrates is a manufacturing method for producing nanoscale machinery. The concept is, with a series of simple experiments conducted in many labs, enough data is obtained to create an accurate nanoscale design simulation. (many of this experiments have been done already). You would then design a set of nanoscale machine parts - sensors, motors, gears, and so on in the software then create prototypes very laboriously and at very high cost using a tool like this microscope at IBM.
Once you have tested the prototypes and debugged them, correcting mistakes in the software model of them as you go, you'd then design a nanoscale machine that could place atoms down according to a template. You'd build that machine at even higher cost, using hundreds of microscopes like the one at IBM, and test it.
Anyways, a series of iterations later (and about a trillion dollars, realistically) you'd have a machine that could PRINT ITSELF and you no longer need the microscopes. By print itself, I mean it can slowly manufacture itself if kept in a clean vacuum chamber, supplied with clean DC power, atomic intermediates as substrate, and a high bitrate stream of the design files for itself from a control computer system. Nevertheless, exponential growth would be possible and you'd be very close to changing the world forever.
Google glass has to have a powerful ARM processor and a high resolution display to implement it's specs. 2013 technology can only reduce the power consumption for that to a certain extent. And glass is supposed to be a wearable pair of glasses, so the battery mass can only be so high before it causes pain for the wearer.
A wire trailing down from the user's neck to a battery pack elsewhere is a potential solution...but wires like that get tangled up.
Maybe a bleeding edge higher density experimental battery? There are a few like that with more power density (about double) than the best standard lithium ion packs. Of course, such batteries are more likely to fail by catching fire, and this would be in the worst possible place.
Offload more computation to the android smartphone that goes with the glass? Still have to run the radios at a high bitrate to get things like the camera feed. Also this would make the smartphone mandatory.
Ideas? The concept here is awesome, but it de fact REQUIRES a powerful machine that can do image recognition in realtime, monitor gps and heading, read street signs, etc etc etc. This in turn means many millions of active transistors.
The only thing I can think of that just might work is a custom ASIC that provides hardware implementation of the most common mathematical functions performed by the most common glass application. You can get 10:1 better power efficiency using a custom ASIC to implement the logic instead of a general purpose chip. The catch is, the cost to create such a chip is exorbitant.
Are you saying that when a Boeing aircraft is actually sold, the buyers and the sales team get onboard, they take off, fly out over the nearest ocean, and sign the bill of sale while IN FLIGHT? That's crazy amusing.
Are "seed factories" even possible with current levels of tech? I thought we needed molecular manufacturing to build credible devices.
The way I see it, currently we lack the "pre-requisite" technology to do practical space exploitation like this. If we had molecular manufacturing, we could mass produce rocket components autonomously in giant automated factories on earth that can self replicate the parts used in themselves. We could build true von neuman probes and spacecraft that could go out and build real seed factories, etc to really do it.
Large space stations with thousands of inhabitants, etc would all be possible.
But step 0 is R&D in developing molecular manufacturing, which requires an enormous research effort. Right now, there's a few scientists poking around with simulations of a method to covalently bond carbon to other carbon on a surface. This should be where all the research dollars go.
Try to think about this solution with a blank slate view for a moment. Don't assign qualitative values as to whether an approach is "good" or not.
Mining for resources ultimately comes down to (resources gained)/(labor + energy + fixed costs + materials).
There are very huge amounts of resources available deeper in the earth's crusts, in the oceans, in the wilds of undeveloped countries, etc. All of them require somewhat more of one of the variables in that equation than mines that are open today.
Consider the case of space mining. Labor requirements : enormous, because each piece of space-rated hardware must be assembled by hand because space stuff tends to use one-off designs and of the best possible quality. Energy : enormous. You have to provide incredible amounts of energy to get asteroids to a recovery location near the Earth. Fixed costs : enormous : you have to develop a bunch of new technology for this to even be possible. And materials : enormously expensive because the rocket equation demands that you throw away most of your spacecraft to even reach low earth orbit.
Versus opening a new mine somewhere on earth, or mining a little bit deeper.
Now, there is one advantage to space mining : no one has legal claims that can be enforced on any of those celestial bodies. In the future, when we have radically more advanced technology, it might be cheaper to send self-replicating robots out somewhere than to try to unleash those same robots onto land on earth that someone is willing to fight over. We don't have that kind of technology, yet, and are many decades from developing it.
If you actually wanted to push a mountain of metals to near the earth in a reasonable amount of time, you'll want a very high performance engine. However, such an engine not only has weapons proliferation risks, once you get the asteroid under power you've got a weapon in itself.
I have an alternate proposal. The total cost of investigation + prosecution must be available for the defense. That is, if the cops and the crime lab and the prosecutors office spend $500,000 on the case, then you get that amount for the defense.
The reason is simple - if someone is clearly guilty, the investigation is comparatively cheap. And if the cops spend a million bucks on prosecution, this usually means their case is weak and they are trying to amplify this weak signal as much as possible.
The game was rigged against those white males from the start, like you think, but it's a matter of genetics, not society. Males must take risks in order to have a chance to reproduce, there's evidence that only about 40% of males managed to successfully reproduce in past societies. (this information comes from digging up old bones and tracing lineages)
"Risk taking" is implemented by genes coding for neural networks that can have a wider variety of behaviors, some good, some bad.
If my hypothesis is correct, and it is supported by reams of overwhelming evidence, so it most likely is, then this means that at any given time there is a nonzero chance of a young male wanting to do something bad like this. As long as we have a free society where the means to commit mass murder are conveniently accessible, events like this will happen.
The only way to prevent them is to remove the freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
In the long run (read : I mean the next 30 years), every job in existence has a programmer involved.
Manual Labor? In the long run, it'll be robots that do nearly all of it, and software is the only real obstacle that stops us from automating more tasks.
Manufacturing? Software problem. Healthcare? Most of a doctor's thinking could be automated with existing software techniques. (sure, not the physical procedures part, but that's only a portion)
Of course, in the LONG, LONG run, someone will advance the art of software to the point that we have software that can write itself, and then we're all out of work...
Apple charges a premium for their products of about 30%. However, they have a very large and dedicated team of developers, and only one major product to work on at a time. Furthermore, as a firm, they are aware that their survival and profits depend on Getting It Right. If they cut corners, maybe skip some testing, don't support their products the day after it ships, it lowers the public perception of their brand, and they will no longer be able to consistently charge that 30% markup.
Shoulda bought an iphone. With the subsidized carrier model, it wouldn't have cost any more than you are already paying.
Which makes me wonder, if the cops have time to bash down that couple's door, why have they not gotten to you? One would think that if their surveillance methods were at all efficient, you would be far higher on the list than people searching for backpacks.
I think the business lesson here is clear. Whenever you're trying to evaluate the likely success of a business, ask yourself if the business is efficient for the market it covers or not. In the case of facebook games, a bigger company is less efficient, because there's no benefit to throwing dozens of developers at a tiny browser game for casual players. 2-3 people can develop a top tier game in this market, the trick is coming up with the right mechanics.
There's also no natural monopoly in browser games, unlike, say, a connection network like facebook.
Zynga should have stayed small, and just enjoyed it's huge profits from the early hits.
25-35% less file size for the same quality is an incredible advance. Obviously the task of improving compression algorithms is going to ratchet up enormously as the file sizes get smaller with higher entropy. I'm in fact amazed that an advance this big is even possible, apparently, x264 is nowhere near the theoretical limits for (lossy) video compression.
Amusingly, superhero movies have yet to flop more than once or twice is recent years...
Does anyone have an idea of what these extremely expensive systems are even for? And don't say password cracking/NSA, because both of those tasks are "embarrassingly parallel", so that you can use a cloud of separate computers rather than a tightly interlinked network like a supercomputer.
Are there real world problems right now where another 100x more CPU power would make real, practical differences? (versus making the algorithm more efficient, etc)
Yes. Current console games use every last drop of power from the GPU to get 30 fps. The reason the game "caps" at 30 is to smooth out performance - the hardware is not able to do any better. The next gen will probably have the same problem - except that, as I said, a game that maxes out on the Xbox one will produce about 50% better FPS on the PS4. This means that the PS4 developers can set their cap to 45 FPS, and in "busy" areas where the Xbox One chugs away, it'll run significantly smoother on the PS4.
That was because the Xbox 360 hardware was measurably better in some ways. Xbox 360 had a faster GPU and a slower CPU, effectively. In this generation, both consoles have identical GPUs and CPU architecture - except sony paid for a GPU with more processing units, a faster CPU, and much faster memory. By "identical" I mean that the same code will basically execute on either console, almost unchanged.
Yes, but those exact same games will have better graphics or framerates on the PS4. (probably in many cases the latter, since publishers will design the game to run ok on the Xbox One and when they "port" it to the PS4 it'll have better framerates by default)
That's like saying "playing cards at the casino was a smart decision for me". Just because you were lucky and came out ahead doesn't mean the house doesn't win overall.
You were lucky, and if somehow you had to play another round (suppose some medical treatment existed that could make you 20 again, and the government started drafting everyone for a land war with China) it would still be a bad idea.
Think back to the 1960s. Many of the complaints the "radicals" had were in fact legitimate. The Vietnam war was poorly managed and ultimately a colossal waste of lives and resources. Agent Orange really was a horrible toxin, causing permanent injuries. Drafting people to send them to a pointless war really was an evil act (and the draft dodgers were making a decision that in retrospect was a smart one)
Marijuana really was a drug with low potential for harm, black people really were being oppressed, and nudism and free love must have been pretty fun.
The point is, what did mainstream culture have to say then? What did all those protests do to affect the decisions made by The Man? Fuck-all, that's what. Doesn't seem any different now.
Is a 50 minute flight time even a remote possibility?
I suppose that if it does 6 minutes now, and 4x higher density batteries are supposed to be available as prototypes, then that's 24 minutes. If you then doubled the mass of batteries carried...maybe?
It's acting like a relay. The actual part from digikey is irrelevant - the point is, the design requirement is that it be wired to energize the electronics indefinitely upon receiving an intermittent burst of current from a switch being pressed. Also, it must use 0 current when idle.
Because if you were a cop on the beat or relying on the gun to protect you in a high crime area, you never want to be in a situation where you have a non-functional weapon. Having a gun that won't fire is sometimes worse than having no gun at all.
The way it works, there's a switch in the gun. Toggling the switch throws a relay. The relay completes the circuit and allows the gun's ultra long life battery to energize the electronics. Once the gun has "rested" long enough (meaning a certain number of minutes pass without seeing a tag nearby) it shuts itself off by throwing the relay into the opposite position.
It would use the same kind of batteries they put into pacemakers with at least a 10 year life, possibly longer, depending on how often someone used it.
Proposal : the only validation method I think is usable is an implanted RFID tag with encryption. I don't think these exist yet, the current ones that can be implanted can be "cloned" because they emit a fixed data string when queried.
Why not fingerprints/palmprints? Validation is too slow, too many ways for the sensor to get obscured or some other failure to happen to cause the gun to not register the user instantly. Also, fingerprints/palmprints can be hacked easily.
Anyways, it would use implanted RFID tags, and there would be mechanical switches in the gun itself that must be closed before the weapon starts scanning for a tag. That way, when a user is not holding the gun, the switches are open, and it does not use any energy at all. (the switch allows power to flow to the circuitry). It would have to use long life, non rechargable lithium ion batteries similar to what they use in pacemakers.
Ultimately, the whole technology package would be a module that could replace part of the firing mechanism for an existing tried and true firearm, such as a popular model of glock or something. I think if it were reliable enough, police would want to use it.
What this demonstrates is a manufacturing method for producing nanoscale machinery. The concept is, with a series of simple experiments conducted in many labs, enough data is obtained to create an accurate nanoscale design simulation. (many of this experiments have been done already). You would then design a set of nanoscale machine parts - sensors, motors, gears, and so on in the software then create prototypes very laboriously and at very high cost using a tool like this microscope at IBM.
Once you have tested the prototypes and debugged them, correcting mistakes in the software model of them as you go, you'd then design a nanoscale machine that could place atoms down according to a template. You'd build that machine at even higher cost, using hundreds of microscopes like the one at IBM, and test it.
Anyways, a series of iterations later (and about a trillion dollars, realistically) you'd have a machine that could PRINT ITSELF and you no longer need the microscopes. By print itself, I mean it can slowly manufacture itself if kept in a clean vacuum chamber, supplied with clean DC power, atomic intermediates as substrate, and a high bitrate stream of the design files for itself from a control computer system. Nevertheless, exponential growth would be possible and you'd be very close to changing the world forever.
Google glass has to have a powerful ARM processor and a high resolution display to implement it's specs. 2013 technology can only reduce the power consumption for that to a certain extent. And glass is supposed to be a wearable pair of glasses, so the battery mass can only be so high before it causes pain for the wearer.
A wire trailing down from the user's neck to a battery pack elsewhere is a potential solution...but wires like that get tangled up.
Maybe a bleeding edge higher density experimental battery? There are a few like that with more power density (about double) than the best standard lithium ion packs. Of course, such batteries are more likely to fail by catching fire, and this would be in the worst possible place.
Offload more computation to the android smartphone that goes with the glass? Still have to run the radios at a high bitrate to get things like the camera feed. Also this would make the smartphone mandatory.
Ideas? The concept here is awesome, but it de fact REQUIRES a powerful machine that can do image recognition in realtime, monitor gps and heading, read street signs, etc etc etc. This in turn means many millions of active transistors.
The only thing I can think of that just might work is a custom ASIC that provides hardware implementation of the most common mathematical functions performed by the most common glass application. You can get 10 :1 better power efficiency using a custom ASIC to implement the logic instead of a general purpose chip. The catch is, the cost to create such a chip is exorbitant.
Are you saying that when a Boeing aircraft is actually sold, the buyers and the sales team get onboard, they take off, fly out over the nearest ocean, and sign the bill of sale while IN FLIGHT? That's crazy amusing.
Are "seed factories" even possible with current levels of tech? I thought we needed molecular manufacturing to build credible devices.
The way I see it, currently we lack the "pre-requisite" technology to do practical space exploitation like this. If we had molecular manufacturing, we could mass produce rocket components autonomously in giant automated factories on earth that can self replicate the parts used in themselves. We could build true von neuman probes and spacecraft that could go out and build real seed factories, etc to really do it.
Large space stations with thousands of inhabitants, etc would all be possible.
But step 0 is R&D in developing molecular manufacturing, which requires an enormous research effort. Right now, there's a few scientists poking around with simulations of a method to covalently bond carbon to other carbon on a surface. This should be where all the research dollars go.
Try to think about this solution with a blank slate view for a moment. Don't assign qualitative values as to whether an approach is "good" or not.
Mining for resources ultimately comes down to (resources gained)/(labor + energy + fixed costs + materials).
There are very huge amounts of resources available deeper in the earth's crusts, in the oceans, in the wilds of undeveloped countries, etc. All of them require somewhat more of one of the variables in that equation than mines that are open today.
Consider the case of space mining. Labor requirements : enormous, because each piece of space-rated hardware must be assembled by hand because space stuff tends to use one-off designs and of the best possible quality. Energy : enormous. You have to provide incredible amounts of energy to get asteroids to a recovery location near the Earth. Fixed costs : enormous : you have to develop a bunch of new technology for this to even be possible. And materials : enormously expensive because the rocket equation demands that you throw away most of your spacecraft to even reach low earth orbit.
Versus opening a new mine somewhere on earth, or mining a little bit deeper.
Now, there is one advantage to space mining : no one has legal claims that can be enforced on any of those celestial bodies. In the future, when we have radically more advanced technology, it might be cheaper to send self-replicating robots out somewhere than to try to unleash those same robots onto land on earth that someone is willing to fight over. We don't have that kind of technology, yet, and are many decades from developing it.
One other nasty fact : high performance rocket engines need several nuclear weapons worth of highly enriched uranium as fuel. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket
If you actually wanted to push a mountain of metals to near the earth in a reasonable amount of time, you'll want a very high performance engine. However, such an engine not only has weapons proliferation risks, once you get the asteroid under power you've got a weapon in itself.
I have an alternate proposal. The total cost of investigation + prosecution must be available for the defense. That is, if the cops and the crime lab and the prosecutors office spend $500,000 on the case, then you get that amount for the defense.
The reason is simple - if someone is clearly guilty, the investigation is comparatively cheap. And if the cops spend a million bucks on prosecution, this usually means their case is weak and they are trying to amplify this weak signal as much as possible.
The game was rigged against those white males from the start, like you think, but it's a matter of genetics, not society. Males must take risks in order to have a chance to reproduce, there's evidence that only about 40% of males managed to successfully reproduce in past societies. (this information comes from digging up old bones and tracing lineages)
"Risk taking" is implemented by genes coding for neural networks that can have a wider variety of behaviors, some good, some bad.
If my hypothesis is correct, and it is supported by reams of overwhelming evidence, so it most likely is, then this means that at any given time there is a nonzero chance of a young male wanting to do something bad like this. As long as we have a free society where the means to commit mass murder are conveniently accessible, events like this will happen.
The only way to prevent them is to remove the freedom.
This is not true. Certain chemical reactions are 1 way, and the loss of lead from the plates is also 1 way.
If you wanted to keep a lead acid running for 100 years, you'd have to keep building a new one using the old one as materials to recycle.