So weâ(TM)re basically little air bags all surrounded by bubble wrap. Once we become a space faring civilizations, aliens will find us, cut us open, and wonder why someone shipped empty parcels all over the universe.
I heard a story about an engineering company who used automatic translation to send documents back and forth with their international collaborators. At one point, their engineers were perplexed by the frequent mention of an âoewater goatâ in their correspondence.
After digging through their source documents, they learned that the water goats were in fact hydraulic rams.
The best/fastest way to get rid of bedbugs is with heat. Get the heat up to 140F (60C) for eight hours.
Good lord, don't give them any ideas. It seems like work conditions there are bad enough without you having them make it into a *literal* sweatshop for an entire workday.
I have an invention that can solve that problem. It's a smartphone case with a cord that attaches to the wall, so you'll never loose your phone again. Patent pending.
I bought a Rift and although it is a great VR headset, my biggest disappointment is that for the money I paid, I expected to be able to see all the newest VR content out there. This cannot be any further from the truth. I can't even experience Google Earth (without hacking) on the Rift and there are countless Gear VR experiences I would love to try, but I cannot do so. So PC headsets are a good buy if you are a gamer with specific games in mind, but for experiencing general and free VR content, the Gear VR seems to be where it is at right now.
I hope open standards like WebVR improve the situation, but for now the fragment nature of the VR landscape is a major let down.
..the answer to the most important question in quantum uncertainty: "if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
Isn't writing out requirements in a way a computer can understand the essence of any programming language that has ever existed? So how is this any different? To truly get rid of programmers, the machine would need to look at the world, figure out what the problems were, figure out the requirements to solve it on it's own, and solve it. Then, yes, would programmers be able to look at kitten pictures all day.
Robots still suck at some things -- sewing complex shapes (like teddy bears and backpacks) for example..
Hopefully there will be robots writing better manuals for products; given the ones I have seen coming out of China, this would be a fairly low bar for AI to reach.
Therefore, our alien race will know what shape the Earth was in when they left, because of the entangled particles, but they really could just have made notes instead. They won't know what happens when the state of any particle on Earth changes.
Thanks for clarifying. Seems like entanglement is much less useful feature of the universe than I had expected. Is it good for anything?
I don't think any alien race is going to succeed in entangling all the particles in the Solar System, but even if they do they won't stay entangled for very long. Remember that a lot of the challenges to making viable quantum computers are preventing the entangled particles from interacting with anything else. If they do they're then no longer entangled.
Super-intelligent alien engineers love a challenge and presumably they've had a head start:)
Just because you agreed that a certain state of that certain particle would mean a certain action was taken/not taken doesn't mean that the other person didn't change their mind, or wasn't prevented from carrying out the agreed-upon course of action.
Yes, I understand. But I used the limited twin example as a lead in to my more fantastic scenario of a highly advanced alien race that wanted to keep tabs on Earth. They would do so by entangling all the particles on Earth and then traveling back to their home star with the sister particles. In such a scenario, there would be no source of randomness available to us that they could not observe from afar. We would have free will because our actions could still be random and unpredictable, but those actions, which are somehow derived from quantum states, could be observed by the alien race using the sister particles back home.
It's sort of an extension on the question on whether the universe is amenable to simulation. If there are random quantum states that prevent simulation on deterministic hardware, the hypothetical alien race could get around this by entangling all the particles in our part of the universe and using those particles to feed the correct random parameters into their simulation of Earth.
Measure them all, record the state, measure them all later... oops, now the measurements are no longer correlated with the state of the particles with Twin A.
Okay. It wasn't clear from the article that once you measure the particle the entanglement goes away. I had assumed that you could keep measuring the particle over and over again for different outcomes. I had read it as being like a pseudo-random number generator that was set to the same seed when the particles were entangled.
I think my general idea still works, though. I did not say that a twin had any ability to influence what the other saw when he measured his particle. All I assumed is that he could tell what random value his twin had measured by consulting his own particle. If you have an infinite number of particles and an agreed upon sequence of checking them, you could still implement first scenario. You could get the exact same result more easily with the pseudo-random number generator, however, rather than having an infinite bag of entangled particles.
According to the Forbes article, if you read the quantum state of a particle here, you can learn the corresponding state of the remote particle, no matter the distance. It would seem like this could allow you to gain knowledge about distant events, provided you knew the particle on the other end was being used to influence those events. For example, suppose you had a particle here on Earth and your twin had another entangled particle on Alpha Centauri. Suppose the two of you had worked out a system where each of you would consult the particle as an Oracle for major life decisions. If this was the case, you and your twin would know what life choices the other was making instantly, without having to communicate.
So the upshot of this is that a sufficiently advanced alien race could be keeping tabs on Earth from very far away by having seeded entangled particles throughout our planet eons ago. Since our actions are based on random events (the weather, the stock market, random number generators, synaptic activity in our brains, etc) such an alien race could know an incredible amount of information about how we operate by consulting their entangled particles.
So, think about it. We are being watched. Each random occurrence on Earth gives our alien overlords the ability to spy on us, while themselves being so far away that we could never see them. I bet you'll never look at a Magic-8 Ball or a coin flip the same way again.
If you RTFF (Read the F'ing FAQ), you'll learn the Honour and Glory was the name of the clock from the Grand Staircase.
Question - Why not use “Honour”, the British spelling, instead of “Honor”? Answer - While we are aware that Titanic was a British Ship and the “Honour and Glory” name for the clock from the Grand Staircase was spelled as such, we had our reasons for using a different spelling. There’s already something Titanic-related called “Titanic - Honour and Glory”, In addition to that, “Glory” refers to the ship itself, but “Honor” refers to the story, and the project is being developed by a mostly North American team.
Sure, this sounds like a nasty bug but how did someone go about discovering it? Is this some tinfoil hat theory that setting the date to 1970 keeps the NSA from snooping your calls?
Obviously someone whose software license has expired.
This could be solved by two factor authentication. Not only would the key fob transmit a radio signal, but you would also need a metallic dongle with uniquely coded grooves that when inserted into a specialized slot would engage a mechanical door release mechanism.
Slashdot Mirror
So weâ(TM)re basically little air bags all surrounded by bubble wrap. Once we become a space faring civilizations, aliens will find us, cut us open, and wonder why someone shipped empty parcels all over the universe.
iPhone. Curly quotes. Sigh.
I heard a story about an engineering company who used automatic translation to send documents back and forth with their international collaborators. At one point, their engineers were perplexed by the frequent mention of an âoewater goatâ in their correspondence.
After digging through their source documents, they learned that the water goats were in fact hydraulic rams.
It's fairly obvious that el niño has been deported to Mexico due to the takedown of the DACA.
The best/fastest way to get rid of bedbugs is with heat. Get the heat up to 140F (60C) for eight hours.
Good lord, don't give them any ideas. It seems like work conditions there are bad enough without you having them make it into a *literal* sweatshop for an entire workday.
I have an invention that can solve that problem. It's a smartphone case with a cord that attaches to the wall, so you'll never loose your phone again. Patent pending.
I bought a Rift and although it is a great VR headset, my biggest disappointment is that for the money I paid, I expected to be able to see all the newest VR content out there. This cannot be any further from the truth. I can't even experience Google Earth (without hacking) on the Rift and there are countless Gear VR experiences I would love to try, but I cannot do so. So PC headsets are a good buy if you are a gamer with specific games in mind, but for experiencing general and free VR content, the Gear VR seems to be where it is at right now.
I hope open standards like WebVR improve the situation, but for now the fragment nature of the VR landscape is a major let down.
-- Marcio
..the answer to the most important question in quantum uncertainty: "if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
https://xkcd.com/606/
No, really. This applies to movies too. Why spend more to see it now when you can find it in the Walmart bargain bin a year later?
Isn't writing out requirements in a way a computer can understand the essence of any programming language that has ever existed? So how is this any different? To truly get rid of programmers, the machine would need to look at the world, figure out what the problems were, figure out the requirements to solve it on it's own, and solve it. Then, yes, would programmers be able to look at kitten pictures all day.
export DISPLAY=someterminal.cs.edu:0.0
xkill &
Or:
$ yes > /dev/tty32 # Where tty32 corresponds to someone’s shell
*Finally* I will be able to customize my keyboard with an "any" key.
So humanity has 1500 more years to live before the aliens come and destroy us.
At this point we've solved pretty much every problem with OLED displays bar one as far as I am aware. I wonder what the burn-in is like?
I think it might be time to bring back the flying toasters.
Robots still suck at some things -- sewing complex shapes (like teddy bears and backpacks) for example..
Hopefully there will be robots writing better manuals for products; given the ones I have seen coming out of China, this would be a fairly low bar for AI to reach.
Therefore, our alien race will know what shape the Earth was in when they left, because of the entangled particles, but they really could just have made notes instead. They won't know what happens when the state of any particle on Earth changes.
Thanks for clarifying. Seems like entanglement is much less useful feature of the universe than I had expected. Is it good for anything?
I don't think any alien race is going to succeed in entangling all the particles in the Solar System, but even if they do they won't stay entangled for very long. Remember that a lot of the challenges to making viable quantum computers are preventing the entangled particles from interacting with anything else. If they do they're then no longer entangled.
Super-intelligent alien engineers love a challenge and presumably they've had a head start :)
Just because you agreed that a certain state of that certain particle would mean a certain action was taken/not taken doesn't mean that the other person didn't change their mind, or wasn't prevented from carrying out the agreed-upon course of action.
Yes, I understand. But I used the limited twin example as a lead in to my more fantastic scenario of a highly advanced alien race that wanted to keep tabs on Earth. They would do so by entangling all the particles on Earth and then traveling back to their home star with the sister particles. In such a scenario, there would be no source of randomness available to us that they could not observe from afar. We would have free will because our actions could still be random and unpredictable, but those actions, which are somehow derived from quantum states, could be observed by the alien race using the sister particles back home.
It's sort of an extension on the question on whether the universe is amenable to simulation. If there are random quantum states that prevent simulation on deterministic hardware, the hypothetical alien race could get around this by entangling all the particles in our part of the universe and using those particles to feed the correct random parameters into their simulation of Earth.
Measure them all, record the state, measure them all later... oops, now the measurements are no longer correlated with the state of the particles with Twin A.
Okay. It wasn't clear from the article that once you measure the particle the entanglement goes away. I had assumed that you could keep measuring the particle over and over again for different outcomes. I had read it as being like a pseudo-random number generator that was set to the same seed when the particles were entangled.
I think my general idea still works, though. I did not say that a twin had any ability to influence what the other saw when he measured his particle. All I assumed is that he could tell what random value his twin had measured by consulting his own particle. If you have an infinite number of particles and an agreed upon sequence of checking them, you could still implement first scenario. You could get the exact same result more easily with the pseudo-random number generator, however, rather than having an infinite bag of entangled particles.
According to the Forbes article, if you read the quantum state of a particle here, you can learn the corresponding state of the remote particle, no matter the distance. It would seem like this could allow you to gain knowledge about distant events, provided you knew the particle on the other end was being used to influence those events. For example, suppose you had a particle here on Earth and your twin had another entangled particle on Alpha Centauri. Suppose the two of you had worked out a system where each of you would consult the particle as an Oracle for major life decisions. If this was the case, you and your twin would know what life choices the other was making instantly, without having to communicate.
So the upshot of this is that a sufficiently advanced alien race could be keeping tabs on Earth from very far away by having seeded entangled particles throughout our planet eons ago. Since our actions are based on random events (the weather, the stock market, random number generators, synaptic activity in our brains, etc) such an alien race could know an incredible amount of information about how we operate by consulting their entangled particles.
So, think about it. We are being watched. Each random occurrence on Earth gives our alien overlords the ability to spy on us, while themselves being so far away that we could never see them. I bet you'll never look at a Magic-8 Ball or a coin flip the same way again.
US debates plan to hand out ice cubes in case of global warming.
It costs an arm and a leg to get a head in this world.
If you RTFF (Read the F'ing FAQ), you'll learn the Honour and Glory was the name of the clock from the Grand Staircase.
Question - Why not use “Honour”, the British spelling, instead of “Honor”?
Answer - While we are aware that Titanic was a British Ship and the “Honour and Glory” name for the clock from the Grand Staircase was spelled as such, we had our reasons for using a different spelling. There’s already something Titanic-related called “Titanic - Honour and Glory”, In addition to that, “Glory” refers to the ship itself, but “Honor” refers to the story, and the project is being developed by a mostly North American team.
Sure, this sounds like a nasty bug but how did someone go about discovering it? Is this some tinfoil hat theory that setting the date to 1970 keeps the NSA from snooping your calls?
Obviously someone whose software license has expired.
This could be solved by two factor authentication. Not only would the key fob transmit a radio signal, but you would also need a metallic dongle with uniquely coded grooves that when inserted into a specialized slot would engage a mechanical door release mechanism.