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User: ceoyoyo

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Comments · 17,857

  1. Re:News? on The Programming Talent Myth · · Score: 1

    People develop, or lose, motivation all the time. You're born with the motivation to do things like look at faces, imitate people around you and eat. More complex motivations are born out of experience and necessity. Lots of people are motivated to do things if there's a sufficient reward involved.

  2. Re:Seriously ? What a non story on No, NASA Did Not Accidentally Invent Warp Drive · · Score: 1

    Your statement is based on theories that aren't exactly widely accepted yet and/or very liberal use of the term "space".

    The measurements NASA made of their EM drive, if they're correct, are just the kind of space warps you'd need to go faster than light. The NASA test was firing a laser through the device and measuring how fast the light travelled. The answer was, in some cases, faster than c.

  3. Re:The question is on No, NASA Did Not Accidentally Invent Warp Drive · · Score: 1

    Nobody knows enough about either one to determine what it's doing yet. The inventor of the Cannae drive hypothesized that it was exploiting some relativistic effect of the microwave reflection. One of the predictions he made, that certain slots were necessary for the effect, turned out not to be true. The inventor of the EM drive believes the Cannae drive is just an inefficient EM drive.

    The device NASA built, which started out as a kind of Cannae drive but now does indeed seem to be an inefficient EM drive, is hypothesized, by the NASA group, to be accelerating virtual particles. The same device is reported to show some signs of possibly warping space, again by the NASA group.

  4. Re:IS this guy a scientist on No, NASA Did Not Accidentally Invent Warp Drive · · Score: 1

    Not really. He's got a PhD in physics but hasn't published anything since 2008. From his CV it looks like he got his PhD, did some postdoc, then got an education degree. Forbes says he's a professor, but it looks like a teaching position at a college.

    He does write a blog with a very irritating style.

  5. Re:Seriously ? What a non story on No, NASA Did Not Accidentally Invent Warp Drive · · Score: 1

    Currently the only way we know to bend space is through gravity, which is inconvenient because, as far as we know, you need a LOT of mass to do anything significant. If you really can bend space with a few hundred watts worth of microwaves, that's a really giant step towards actually building a warp drive. The tin can they're testing might not go flying away faster than light, but if the effect is real it brings a warp drive out of the realm of mathematical possibility into the arena of engineering possibility.

  6. Re:Seriously ? What a non story on No, NASA Did Not Accidentally Invent Warp Drive · · Score: 1

    The inventor of the EM drive, Sawyer, says he got about 0.1 N, and the Chinese say they got about 3/4 of a N. The NASA group was testing a very similar device invented by a different guy that Sawyer says is nothing but an inefficient EM drive.

    It would be nice if NASA built something to Sawyer's specifications to test. 1 N of thrust is pretty easy to measure. 1 N / kW is pretty hard to get by experimental error.

  7. Re:The question is on No, NASA Did Not Accidentally Invent Warp Drive · · Score: 1

    If the EM drive really is warping space, then that's the mechanism you use to warp space.

  8. Re:The question is on No, NASA Did Not Accidentally Invent Warp Drive · · Score: 1

    You have to read the articles all the way to the end.

    The NASA group shot the beam of an interferometer through the device while it was running and says they got readings that look like spatial distortion. If it's true, it would be a giant step towards building a warp drive.

  9. Re:The question is on No, NASA Did Not Accidentally Invent Warp Drive · · Score: 1

    There are two factors. A propellantless drive (regardless of whether it is actually reactionless or not) gives you the ability to make a ship with enormous delta-V. That lets you go really fast if you want to.

    Secondly, the NASA group is reporting the possibility of some distortion of space. If you can distort space in the right way you can make the distance you have to travel shorter. While you don't technically go faster than light, because you're travelling a shorter distance the overall effect is that you could make a trip to another star faster than light could do it.

  10. Re:One Criterion Missing on No, NASA Did Not Accidentally Invent Warp Drive · · Score: 2

    That's not correct. Their original test involved three models - (1) one that was designed to provide no thrust, (2) one that was missing a particular feature a particular person claimed was necessary to produce thrust, and (3) one that had all the design features recommended.

    (1) produced no thrust, as expected. (2) and (3) both produced equivalent thrust, showing that one particular theory was incorrect.

  11. Re:One Criterion Missing on No, NASA Did Not Accidentally Invent Warp Drive · · Score: 1

    The NASA group has created a model that assumes the EM drive is a magnetohydrodynamic drive using virtual particles as propellant. Their model makes predictions about the thrust to power curve, including that it has a peak efficiency. They're building a variable power prototype to test it.

  12. Re:Warp drive? on No, NASA Did Not Accidentally Invent Warp Drive · · Score: 1

    It was almost a postscript in the NASA article, but they fired the laser beam of an interferometer through it and got some anomalous readings, as if it were warping space. Being able to warp space is required for the best current idea for how to travel faster than light.

  13. Re:News? on The Programming Talent Myth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just read the rest of the comments. Slashdot is a hotbed of programmers who think they're god and everyone else sucks. They also argue that programming is some kind of talent you're born with.

    I teach programming mostly to people you wouldn't expect. Anybody can learn and, just like any other skill, their ability is mostly determined by the time and motivation they put in. Learning programming is even easier than a lot of academic subjects because there's instant, fairly unambiguous feedback.

  14. Re:Nothing wrong with Socialism. on Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina Announces Bid For White House · · Score: 1

    Are you saying Americans would be happier if you broke up the country?

    As a whole, the EU is similar to the US in population and geographical size but is older and more socialist. Canada is also on the happiest list. It's also a nation of immigrants, quite a bit younger than the US, and similar in geographic size, although about 1/10th the population. Also much more socialist than the US.

    The OP is correct, the common factor seems to be the type of economic system.

  15. Re:LOL LOL OMG.. HAHAHAHA on Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina Announces Bid For White House · · Score: 1

    Debt is okay if you use it to invest in things that will make you more money than the interest payments. Since the US also has a large deficit, and the debt to GDP ratio has been rising for the last thirty years, that doesn't seem to be the case.

  16. Re:Stop calling it AI. on AI Experts In High Demand · · Score: 1

    Many modern AI methods take advantage of unsupervised learning. Not only do they not need to know what the rules are, they don't even need to know the right answer most of the time. There are successful demonstrations of such algorithms learning to play Nintendo from watching people play, and Google's deep learning network learning the concept of "cat" from watching YouTube videos. I also remember a paper looking at recognizing melodies played in different keys.

    Your knowledge of AI is a couple of decades out of date.

  17. Re: This again? on New Test Supports NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 1

    Possibly momentum imparted to virtual particles can be transmitted through the EM quantum field, eventually being imparted to any real matter along the way.

  18. Re: This again? on New Test Supports NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 1

    The article talks about a model made by the NASA group assuming acceleration of virtual particles. It suggests greater than linear thrust to power ratios with increasing power, up to an optimum. Presumably the details would also depend on the type of device, frequency of microwave, etc.

  19. Re: This again? on New Test Supports NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 1

    That's pretty much what they're doing. NASA has been pretty quiet about the whole thing. The results have mainly been presented at conferences.

    It's an extraordinary claim, but it does seem like they're working to provide extraordinary evidence. Also, the thrust claims aren't really very subtle. 1 N is pretty easy to measure, and the Chinese say they can get that using only 1 kW. It sounds like you could build one of these with a decent metal shop and a household microwave.

  20. Re:Can't wait to get this installed in my house on Tesla Announces Home Battery System · · Score: 1

    Perhaps you're not familiar with the term "inverter". Inverters are used to convert from DC to AC. The application we're talking about in this thread is charging a battery from the grid at off hours, then using it to power the house during peak. This requires AC (grid) to DC (battery) conversion, then DC (battery) to AC (household stuff) conversion. Plus AC to DC conversion by the device, but that's out of scope.

    As I said in my post (with references), typical household inverter units get about 90% efficiency at maximum draw and very much poorer efficiency with low loads. The exact efficiency you get depends on your use case, but it is less than the optimum, so DC->AC loss sounds like a pretty reasonable estimate. 25% is probably low if you consider the full AC->DC->Battery->AC path since the Volt takes 20% loss just on the AC->DC->Battery part, and the DC-AC bit is max 90% efficient.

    PS - telling someone to go Google something because they need the practice is rude. Then you went ahead and made unfounded assertions without the least bit of evidence. This makes you look like a rude idiot, regardless of whether you're right or not (you weren't).

  21. Re:Can't wait to get this installed in my house on Tesla Announces Home Battery System · · Score: 1

    I just read your post rudely telling someone to go google battery efficiency. Perhaps you should heed your own advice. Small household inverters might be around 90% efficient (10% loss) running near their peak output. If your setup allowed the inverter to idle or only supply a small amount of power (running your alarm clock at night), it could be very much worse than that. http://www.homepower.com/artic...

    That's only one side. You've also go to convert the AC to DC. An average of 25% conversion loss doesn't sound too unreasonable (and the OP posted an IEEE reference to that effect). Unlike your completely unreferenced post.

  22. Re:false positives on Results Are In From Psychology's Largest Reproducibility Test: 39/100 Reproduced · · Score: 1

    You shouldn't be impressed by people who publish insignificant results. Insignificant doesn't mean "not true." It means inconclusive. You should be impressed by people who go the extra mile to turn their not significant results into meaningful limits on parameter estimates (setting limits on how big an effect could be). That's done a lot in physics but only occasionally in other fields.

    The only reason for publishing inconclusive results is to allow somebody to incorporate them into a later meta-analysis, or to serve as pilot data for someone doing a power calculation to plan a larger experiment.

  23. Re:39/100 is the new passing grade. on Results Are In From Psychology's Largest Reproducibility Test: 39/100 Reproduced · · Score: 1

    What do you mean by "accept?"

    When you publish in a journal what you're really saying is "hey, look what I did! What do you guys think?" The point of publishing your work is to tell people what you found so they can evaluate it and try to reproduce it themselves.

    If you mean that people, both scientists and the layman, shouldn't believe something is true until it's reproduced? Absolutely that would be a good idea. Even better, wait until a good meta-analysis is performed.

    Incidentally, the FDA generally requires at least two large, independent trials, both of which are significant, before a drug is approved.

  24. Weird way of looking at it on Yes, You Can Blame Your Pointy-Haired Boss On the Peter Principle · · Score: 1

    It seems like much less than 10% of working people would be qualified to do any given skilled non-managerial job. When most labor was unskilled you'd promote dirt-common unskilled employees to management if they demonstrated they had the moderately uncommon talent to manage. Now that most "labor" is actually highly skilled, you should get promoted from common manager to skilled worker if you demonstrate you have the rare talent to do that job. Managers should be lower-level employees who do the administrative tasks to free up skilled workers to concentrate on their valuable work.

  25. Re:Argentina outlaws Bitcoin in 3...2...1... on Bitcoin Is Disrupting the Argentine Economy · · Score: 1

    You're correct if the bitcoin is actually being used inside argentina (you'd have to replace that with dollars). But it doesn't seem to be. It's immediately exchanged for pesos. The argentinian exchange has to somehow buy pesos with bitcoin, and since argentinians aren't walking about the grocery store with BTC wallets the suggestion is that those pesos come from argentinians with savings who want to move their money out of the country. You could replace that chain of exchanges by simply matching up argentinians who do business with foreigners with argentinians who want to buy foreign currency.