To my understanding these are the core arguments of the article:
1) The feasibility of quantum computing is based on the assumption, that the effort (e.g. for error correction) scales with the number of qbits (in the example 1000), not the dimension of the superimposable state vector (2^1000). According to the author it is not yet proven that that is the case.
2) For a useful quantum computer it must be possible to manipulate qbits (with quantum gates) at will, i.e. move them around and "process" them like we do with classical bits in a classical computer nowadays.
3) In theoretical concepts of quantum computers perfect quantum gates are assumed, but quantum gates are physical devices. Rotating a spin by 90 deg might be achieved by applying a magnetic field of a given strength for a precise length of time. But in the physical world the precision of such manipulations is always finite, so maybe the result is somewhere between an 89 and 91 deg rotation and the axis might be slightly off too. Such imprecision might even occur when storing or transferring qbits (the information) in/between their physical storage. In lengthier calculations such errors add up, a bit like in analog computers. That would (severely?) limit the usefulness of quantum computers.
This is very unlike classical logical gates where anything above a certain voltage is interpreted as "1", anything below as "0" and logical gates consist of voltage controlled switches (transistors) in either "on" or "off" state that is clearly defined and leaves a wide error margin in terms of voltage.
To summarize: The physical world is far messier than the theoretical concepts of quantum computing and it has yet to be shown, that error correction mechanisms to control that "messiness" are feasible.
These problems are not new, and AFAIK there are theoretical as well as experimental efforts made to counter them. The article presents a very disillusioned view of the advances in that respect and suggests that it might be even impossible to overcome the problems. Sadly, instead of making the points by giving examples of the efforts and the advances or non-advances that were made, a lot of space in the article is simply wasted by pointless comparisons of the number of superimposable quantum states to the number of particles in the universe and the like. The question is not how big that number is but if it really represents the size of the obstacle/necessary effort on the way to quantum computing.
OTOH it should be noted, that even the theoretical concepts of quantum computing, i.e. quantum information theory, broadened our understanding of quantum mechanics. E.g. experiments on entangled states like EPR, delayed quantum eraser or "quantum teleportation" (which should really be named "quantum state teleportation") can be viewed from a new perspective.
Instead of unpredictable (e.g. sales of Windows 8, Windows ME) bursts of income at the release of a new Windows version in addition to relying on sales of new devices, selling Windows as a service generates a steady flow of income, which is really great for the cash flow and predictability of it. From a development point of view it might even be a motivation to put out a steady stream of improvements instead of bundling them up as a sales argument for Windows n+1. That'd be closer to open-source development where larger version jumps are dictated by the development process, not by the sales department.
For some big customers windows as a service may well make sense, to them it's the flip side of the same cash flow problem: they may prefer a steady flow instead of decision making and paying whenever a new windows is on the market, but usually they already got deals to upgrade their license pool.
For a private PC- or Laptop owner it makes no sense at all. Someone who buys a PC doesn't want it to run under a rented license so his device becomes a useless brick the moment he doesn't pay his fees or there is a hiccup in the licensing system.
Will Falk seems to fit right in with "fallists" that demand "de-colonization" of science (i.e. regarding voodoo and science to be on an equal footing). https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Such folks really should adhere to their own standards and refuse any use of electronic devices.
My guess would be, that the researchers aren't specifically endeared to Trump, but that they see a fine opportunity for their research in the controversy around Trump resulting in frequent protests about a subject that is relatively easy to find in keyword searches ("president" and/or "Trump").
By focusing on Trump they can severely cut down on the amount of social media chatter they have to work with and see what methods they can apply to it (e.g. simply seeking words like "protest" in the vicinity of "Trump", frequency of words with negative connotations etc.) to predict protests. Once they got that (reasonably) pat they can apply said methods to a wider range of subjects.
Surely one can discuss the morality of such research, but when doing so it shouldn't be seen as a "Trump thing" but as a "predict protests thing" that can (and if feasible will) be applied to all kinds of controversial subjects (climate, environment, police shootings, gun laws, abortions,...).
Once algorithms are in place to filter out social media posts that lead up to protests a next step in research might be a better understanding how momentum builds up in the public discussion, and that might lead to ideas how to manipulate and "guide" such discussions to get back some of the control that journalistic "gate keepers" had before wide spread social media. That aspect should be of far more concern than the current research focus on "anti-Trump" protests of a research that probably won't see much (if any) real world application during Trumps presidency anyway.
"Golden Parachutes" (i.e. excessive severance payments) are a quite common business practice, and those who decide to hand out such payments to high executives and so perpetuate the "tradition" are themselves high executives that hope to benefit from said "tradition" in the future.
"According to the report, Google was under no obligation to offer such an enormous sum to Rubin or any of the other executives that the Times says received separation agreements after leaving the company over sexual misconduct allegations. They could’ve all been fired, but were instead protected by the company and given millions. In Rubin’s case, the deal prevented him from working for any of the company’s rivals or publicly disparaging Google."
That sounds very much like Rubin was handed a "golden parachute" to make him leave.
It's easier to grasp what to do to those numbers. Presented with percentages it's often hard to see what mathematical operations are necessary to arrive at the desired answer in bayesian statistics problems.
E.g. A medicinal test for disease X gives false positives in 0.1% of cases. It gives a false negative in 1% of the cases (i.e. correct positive in 99% of the cases). The disease afflicts 0.01%. Of those tested positive, how many have disease X.
Of course one now could employ the statistics toolbox to solve that problem. OTOH one could compare the 10 in 10,000 false positives (with a slight error since only 9,999 are without disease), to the 1 in 10,000 diseased (noticing that the false negatives have negligible impact for the question at hand and we can work with 100% correct positives as well as 99% if we want an estimate).
So now we need to compare only small numbers, 10 false positives to 1 diseased positive or 1 in 11 which is about 9%. (the correct result without the approximations is 10 in 111 or 9,009...%).
Also note the easy expansion of 1 in 1,000 to 10 in 10,000 to get to comparable numbers. It's not important to have an accurate image of those 10,000, what's of interest is to compare the 10 false positives to the 1 diseased.
Such medicinal tests help a lot to find candidates that should undergo more sophisticated (and much more expensive) tests, to see if they really have X (it'll reduce the expensive tests by a factor of 1,000), but patients need to be informed even with a "positive" result it's still unlikely that they have X, but advisable to do the more sophisticated test. One might think that the test is pretty useless if it delivers 91% false positives when in fact it is pretty accurate, only the occurence of disease X is so rare.
So such "frequencies" do not only help to get a (pretty) correct result without knowing any bayesian statistics tools, but also to understand how the information affects the result, and how the unintuitive (to someone not used to such statistics) result comes about.
If i understand the paper correctly, then the gedankenexperiment could be interpreted as a "double slit (#include "obviousjokes.h") experiment with scientists".
In the double slit experiment a particle (e.g. photon, electron) is aimed through a plate with two slits (a,b) at a screen. after repeating the experiment many times one will see an interference pattern. Notably some regions of the screen stay blank, according to quantum theory (QT) no particles can end up there.
The way QT works we need to consider the paths of the particle through both of the slits (i.e. path A, path B), behind the plate there is interference between those two possibilities which determines the probability that a particle ends up on a spot of the screen (including probability zero in some region). The interference breaks down once one determines (measures) which of the slits (either a or b) the particle has passed. In that case there will be no interference pattern and the particle may end up in one of the spots the interference pattern leaves blank.
There are different "interpretations", what it is that "interferes", in the many worlds interpretation the particle took path A in one world and path B in another, and both worlds interacted to produce the interference pattern. The moment a scientist measures if the particle went through a or b he is in one of the worlds, the other world is excluded and can no longer make interference. Important is, that for the interference to happen the particles must be "isolated" in the sense that nothing happened that could distinguish between path A and path B.
Now instead of a particle they made the gedankenexperiment with scientists complete with a laboratory instead of the particles. The "double slit" becomes a measurement in which the scientist in an isolated laboratory is given a specially prepared quantum state S from which he can measure either result a or result b, instead of the paths there are now two "stories", either A or B to unfold, depending on the measurement. An outside observer then measures not A or B, but superposition states |A>+|B> or |A>-|B> (not normalized). These states are "orthogonal", only one or the other can result, like |a> and |b> are orthogonal, the first scientist can only have one measurement result.
The superposition state is similar to the measurement at the screen of the double slit experiment. It is designed so, that a measurement deciding between |A> and |B> is incompatible with a measurement deciding between A>+|B> and |A>-|B>. If one knows which path was taken (A or B) the interference between both possibilities is destroyed.
Now the first scientist is given a specially prepared quantum state: S=|a>+|b>. After his measurement an outside observer that is isolated from the measurement result will assume for the isolated laboratory the state |a,A>+|b,B>. So the outside observer will always get the result |A>+|B>, never |A>-|B> if the isolated scientist is given this state. The |A>-|B> result is like the blank spot on the screen.
The experiment is extended", by making the quantum state S dependent on a measurement of another scientist in another isolated laboratory. While it makes the story more complicated it is all based on the incompatibility of measuring either in the {|A>,|B>} space or the {|A>+|B>, |A>-|B>} space. QT says you can only get the result of one of those measurements, knowing if |A> or |B> was measured destroys the interference, after that measuring {|A>+|B>, |A>-|B>} is no longer determined by the state S the first scientist started with but on his result. Like in the double slit experiment the interference pattern is destroyed once it has been determined if path |A> or path |B> was taken.
Going from double slit to this gedankenexperiment the paths A or B the particle could take are now replaced by stories A and B about the measurement the scientist did.
Sure, it's always a question of cost effectiveness. If that were not the case subdividing the hold into small enough compartments to avoid fatal shifts of cargo would do the trick, so any solution should be cheaper than that. A system that injects gas (not necessarily with moving components) raises the cost of the carrier and will require at least some maintenance. If and how it can be implemented at low enough cost is really an engineering question.
Probably the risk analysis of insurance companies can express in dollars what a system that mitigates the risks of loss of carrier, cargo and crew would be worth.
So i agree: cost effectiveness is paramount, the question is, can my idea be implemented cost effectively (after finding out if it works at all).
And sure, a monitoring system might be the cheapest to install, but i wonder how it helps unless there are also means to stop or reverse the shift of cargo.
As far as i understand they have a mixture of solid particles surrounded by liquid, the particles are more compressible, so under pressure the whole structure loses coherence as effectively the solid fraction is reduced, since the liquid is less compressible.
I wonder if this could be helped by injecting some gas from the bottom after loading, so there are pockets where the granular solid is surrounded by compressible gas instead of liquid. If the density of the liquid is less than that of the solid surplus liquid would be driven to the top where it could be extracted.
It might help if the gas pockets are well enough dispersed.
I took this as "friction between the solid particles". Maybe the particles shrink more from compression due to pressure than the surrounding liquid, at some point they are no longer in direct contact, and before that the force with which the particles are pressed against each other at contact points goes to zero, which also makes the friction between particles go to zero.
Or maybe it's just engineers talk meaning "the friction is reduced by some orders of magnitude".
Sure, spam filters make sense because they spare you to deal with a text you don't want to read anyway (and even then you have to check the spam box every once in a while), but those are far more sophisticated now.
But "profanity filters", especially those that replace "fuck" by "f..k" and are easily circumvented by "f*ck" don't help at all. Everyone knows what it's supposed to mean and just replaces "f..k" with "fuck" in their own head. The stupid beeping in TV-shows is even worse. Not only is it annoying as hell, it also nicely highlights all the swearwords, and everyone just replaces it in their own head anyway.
Language is there to convey meaning, when "f..k" conveys the same meaning as "fuck", then what difference does it make. To try to keep the meaning intact and at the same time censor it doesn't work.
It's not about "protecting" kids either. They're usually pretty quick to figure such things out and have enough peers who'll tell them anyway. They will learn about swearing and foul language anyway. They should learn that such language is inappropriate for them to use, or for adults to use in their presence, just like they learn that it's inappropriate for them e.g. to drink alcohol or for an adult to offer them alcohol.
So who is more offended by "fuck" than by "f..k", when both mean the same thing and both make you think the same word?
Whoever uses "f..k" want's you to replace it with "fuck" in your own head but at the same time claim not to use "foul language". Now that i find offensive.
I commented on the Guardians misleading headline and intro:
"Child drownings in Germany linked to parents' phone ‘fixation’ Lifeguards warn parents to put phones away, after more than 300 people drowned this year"
This makes it seem like a majority of the 300 people drowned due to negligent parents, which is simply wrong.
It also suggests a society where parents are negligent of their children at a time when children are under more adult supervision than ever before. Also i don't see a real difference between parents occupied with their mobile phones and parents reading books/magazines or sunbathing as was common for family visits to the outdoor pool a few decades ago. And yes, pool attendants were trusted to keep an eye on everyone including children.
Of course most children were taught to swim at the age of 6 or so, and trusted to go to the outdoor pool and back on their own initiative at age of 10 to 12.
The Guardian headline makes it seem like parents distracted by mobile phones was a major factor in the drownings.
But according to the article: "Among the drownings have been more than 20 children under the age of 15, and 40 young women and men between the ages of 16 and 25."
Note that most drownings happen in rivers and lakes. I think it likely that the nice 2018 summer led to more people swimming at outdoor locations, hence we see an alarming number of drownings. The statistics by age doesn't indicate that parents distracted by mobile phones are the major reason for drownings, and i doubt that changed in 2018.
Nevertheless it is good advice to at least keep an eye on your child while it is in the water.
... as it is the foundation of the scientific method.
Also someone who can apply critical thinking to scientific or technological problems can also apply it to other subjects, what he may be lacking is knowledge.
Sadly there's a spreading trend in humanities to teach "critical theory" instead of critical thinking, and the former is the precise opposite of the latter. "Critical theory" is political indoctrination, pure and simple. The Lindsay Shepherd affair at Wilfried Laurier University is a prime example: Lindsay wanted an open discussion and students to come to their own conclusions but her superiors wanted indoctrination with their political agenda.
Tl;dr: Teaching students to chant "Hail Hillary" is not critical thinking.
This is quite different from quantum Turing machines/universal quantum computers which is usually referred to as quantum computers.
Basically the D-Wave allows to search for a ground state in a system where the quantum states interact in a well controlled way.
The quantum states might represent logical bits, the interactions logical clauses (e.g. A & B = 1) and one might seek a state in which as many clauses as possible are satisfied. Such problems are known as SAT (satisfiability) problems.
Another application could be, that the quantum states represent e.g. (valence) electrons in a crystal lattice (preferably a metal), which interact with their neighbors. The ground state of such a system might give insights to magnetic properties of (abstract models of) materials (when the interaction makes electron spins flip in a coherent manner that might cause ferromagnetism). Determining such ground states with classical computing can quickly lead to time- and memory demanding problems even for few quantum states.
It's funny how The Verge tries to scandalize this after SJWs weaponized "shit storms" and it has become "industry standard" to fire people when a "big enough stink" is raised via social media. Thank the #metoo campaign etc. for this and meditate about the merits of due process.
Also in this case the "stink" can be traced back directly to the unprofessional manner in which Price and Fries communicated as representatives of their employer, in violation of company policy. And sure, when you advertise your employment on your twitter page (probably for the merits as GameDev), then people visiting that page or reading tweets in which the employment is mentioned will see you as "representative" and your utterances may be damaging to the employers image.
And here a nugget of wisdom from Jessica herself: "Shdn't have to keep saying, but 1st only protects from gov censorship. Social/financial consequences are FREE SPEECH WORKING AS INTENDED."
... an officer looks at the match and dismisses it. Where exactly is the harm in that?
Sure one might discuss if CCTVs everywhere and facial recognition are desirable, but the fraction of "false positives" is no valid argument in that discussion, since all positives are checked a second time by a human. The automated system serves as a first filter, meaning less comparisons by humans are necessary so the whole system becomes more efficient. A more interesting number are false negatives, but about those we know nothing.
To all those who now are opposed to the software because it generates so many false positives: Ask yourself if you'd really prefer an improved software that has a much higher accuracy. If not, then the high number of false positives is not really an argument in favor of what you want.
It's funny, how Warner is compared to the "dark forces" like Voldemort and the dementors in Harry Potter.
Obviously marketing is concerned with making money from the content using copyrights, trademarks, licensing and by employing the law to protect their business model, sometimes with heavy handed methods. OTOH the content often idealizes rebellious figures which accept no authority and make up their own rules according to their own morals. This contrast can also be seen in the success of "Pirates" while the movie industry tried to fight "Movie pirates", or in the music industry where songs praising anti corporate and anti capitalistic ideals are in total contradiction to the actions of the RIAA.
That "data repository" is simply mass doxxing of ICE employees. It has absolutely no legitimate use, at best it is intended to intimidate the ICE-employees. Whoever sees that as a legitimate way to influence (immigration) policy is obviously unwilling to play by democratic rules.
Implementing secure protocols takes development time and knowledge. Time equals money: either more developers are needed or more development time (i.e. the shiny new product/version comes out the door later).
When eye candy sells better than some footnote about security in an advert, then guess which qualifications will be in demand from developers and which parts of a project will get more development resources allocated (time, qualified developers)?
OTOH the costs of even a major security blunder is a bit of bad press that'll soon be superseded by the next big story.
Now imagine you're the controller for the project, what would be your recommendations with respect for allocating resources in development or qualifications demanded when hiring new developers?
Teach people to seek a broader view by comparing different accounts, to keep in mind the source of a news story and its possible motivations and biases, to analyze texts for their true information content, presented facts, rhetorical devices and omissions, and most of all teach them to think for themselves.
Also everyone should be aware, that our view of our world is incomplete and be ready to reevaluate and adapt our world view when new facts are presented.
In the end the people will build their own opinions anyways, the best we can do is give them the tools to use reason in the process.
... you have to stop at just the right point to see it like this.
"Pravda", a Russian newspaper named after the Russian word for truth, was used by the government to distribute their version of the truth.
Now why should Elon Musks project, apparently ironically given the same name, not follow in the footsteps of its namesake?
I have yet to see a "Fact Finder" or "Anti Fake News" project that is unbiased (if that is even possible), many of them are among the worst in terms of propagating biases.
Slashdot Mirror
To my understanding these are the core arguments of the article:
1) The feasibility of quantum computing is based on the assumption, that the effort (e.g. for error correction) scales with the number of qbits (in the example 1000), not the dimension of the superimposable state vector (2^1000). According to the author it is not yet proven that that is the case.
2) For a useful quantum computer it must be possible to manipulate qbits (with quantum gates) at will, i.e. move them around and "process" them like we do with classical bits in a classical computer nowadays.
3) In theoretical concepts of quantum computers perfect quantum gates are assumed, but quantum gates are physical devices. Rotating a spin by 90 deg might be achieved by applying a magnetic field of a given strength for a precise length of time. But in the physical world the precision of such manipulations is always finite, so maybe the result is somewhere between an 89 and 91 deg rotation and the axis might be slightly off too. Such imprecision might even occur when storing or transferring qbits (the information) in/between their physical storage. In lengthier calculations such errors add up, a bit like in analog computers. That would (severely?) limit the usefulness of quantum computers.
This is very unlike classical logical gates where anything above a certain voltage is interpreted as "1", anything below as "0" and logical gates consist of voltage controlled switches (transistors) in either "on" or "off" state that is clearly defined and leaves a wide error margin in terms of voltage.
To summarize: The physical world is far messier than the theoretical concepts of quantum computing and it has yet to be shown, that error correction mechanisms to control that "messiness" are feasible.
These problems are not new, and AFAIK there are theoretical as well as experimental efforts made to counter them. The article presents a very disillusioned view of the advances in that respect and suggests that it might be even impossible to overcome the problems. Sadly, instead of making the points by giving examples of the efforts and the advances or non-advances that were made, a lot of space in the article is simply wasted by pointless comparisons of the number of superimposable quantum states to the number of particles in the universe and the like. The question is not how big that number is but if it really represents the size of the obstacle/necessary effort on the way to quantum computing.
OTOH it should be noted, that even the theoretical concepts of quantum computing, i.e. quantum information theory, broadened our understanding of quantum mechanics. E.g. experiments on entangled states like EPR, delayed quantum eraser or "quantum teleportation" (which should really be named "quantum state teleportation") can be viewed from a new perspective.
Instead of unpredictable (e.g. sales of Windows 8, Windows ME) bursts of income at the release of a new Windows version in addition to relying on sales of new devices, selling Windows as a service generates a steady flow of income, which is really great for the cash flow and predictability of it. From a development point of view it might even be a motivation to put out a steady stream of improvements instead of bundling them up as a sales argument for Windows n+1. That'd be closer to open-source development where larger version jumps are dictated by the development process, not by the sales department.
For some big customers windows as a service may well make sense, to them it's the flip side of the same cash flow problem: they may prefer a steady flow instead of decision making and paying whenever a new windows is on the market, but usually they already got deals to upgrade their license pool.
For a private PC- or Laptop owner it makes no sense at all. Someone who buys a PC doesn't want it to run under a rented license so his device becomes a useless brick the moment he doesn't pay his fees or there is a hiccup in the licensing system.
Will Falk seems to fit right in with "fallists" that demand "de-colonization" of science (i.e. regarding voodoo and science to be on an equal footing).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Such folks really should adhere to their own standards and refuse any use of electronic devices.
My guess would be, that the researchers aren't specifically endeared to Trump, but that they see a fine opportunity for their research in the controversy around Trump resulting in frequent protests about a subject that is relatively easy to find in keyword searches ("president" and/or "Trump").
By focusing on Trump they can severely cut down on the amount of social media chatter they have to work with and see what methods they can apply to it (e.g. simply seeking words like "protest" in the vicinity of "Trump", frequency of words with negative connotations etc.) to predict protests. Once they got that (reasonably) pat they can apply said methods to a wider range of subjects.
Surely one can discuss the morality of such research, but when doing so it shouldn't be seen as a "Trump thing" but as a "predict protests thing" that can (and if feasible will) be applied to all kinds of controversial subjects (climate, environment, police shootings, gun laws, abortions, ...).
Once algorithms are in place to filter out social media posts that lead up to protests a next step in research might be a better understanding how momentum builds up in the public discussion, and that might lead to ideas how to manipulate and "guide" such discussions to get back some of the control that journalistic "gate keepers" had before wide spread social media. That aspect should be of far more concern than the current research focus on "anti-Trump" protests of a research that probably won't see much (if any) real world application during Trumps presidency anyway.
"Golden Parachutes" (i.e. excessive severance payments) are a quite common business practice, and those who decide to hand out such payments to high executives and so perpetuate the "tradition" are themselves high executives that hope to benefit from said "tradition" in the future.
From https://www.theverge.com/2018/...
(cited in the previous story)
"According to the report, Google was under no obligation to offer such an enormous sum to Rubin or any of the other executives that the Times says received separation agreements after leaving the company over sexual misconduct allegations. They could’ve all been fired, but were instead protected by the company and given millions. In Rubin’s case, the deal prevented him from working for any of the company’s rivals or publicly disparaging Google."
That sounds very much like Rubin was handed a "golden parachute" to make him leave.
That's not it.
It's easier to grasp what to do to those numbers. Presented with percentages it's often hard to see what mathematical operations are necessary to arrive at the desired answer in bayesian statistics problems.
E.g.
A medicinal test for disease X gives false positives in 0.1% of cases. It gives a false negative in 1% of the cases (i.e. correct positive in 99% of the cases). The disease afflicts 0.01%.
Of those tested positive, how many have disease X.
Of course one now could employ the statistics toolbox to solve that problem. OTOH one could compare the 10 in 10,000 false positives (with a slight error since only 9,999 are without disease), to the 1 in 10,000 diseased (noticing that the false negatives have negligible impact for the question at hand and we can work with 100% correct positives as well as 99% if we want an estimate).
So now we need to compare only small numbers, 10 false positives to 1 diseased positive or 1 in 11 which is about 9%.
(the correct result without the approximations is 10 in 111 or 9,009...%).
Also note the easy expansion of 1 in 1,000 to 10 in 10,000 to get to comparable numbers. It's not important to have an accurate image of those 10,000, what's of interest is to compare the 10 false positives to the 1 diseased.
Such medicinal tests help a lot to find candidates that should undergo more sophisticated (and much more expensive) tests, to see if they really have X (it'll reduce the expensive tests by a factor of 1,000), but patients need to be informed even with a "positive" result it's still unlikely that they have X, but advisable to do the more sophisticated test. One might think that the test is pretty useless if it delivers 91% false positives when in fact it is pretty accurate, only the occurence of disease X is so rare.
So such "frequencies" do not only help to get a (pretty) correct result without knowing any bayesian statistics tools, but also to understand how the information affects the result, and how the unintuitive (to someone not used to such statistics) result comes about.
If i understand the paper correctly, then the gedankenexperiment could be interpreted as a "double slit (#include "obviousjokes.h") experiment with scientists".
In the double slit experiment a particle (e.g. photon, electron) is aimed through a plate with two slits (a,b) at a screen. after repeating the experiment many times one will see an interference pattern. Notably some regions of the screen stay blank, according to quantum theory (QT) no particles can end up there.
The way QT works we need to consider the paths of the particle through both of the slits (i.e. path A, path B), behind the plate there is interference between those two possibilities which determines the probability that a particle ends up on a spot of the screen (including probability zero in some region). The interference breaks down once one determines (measures) which of the slits (either a or b) the particle has passed. In that case there will be no interference pattern and the particle may end up in one of the spots the interference pattern leaves blank.
There are different "interpretations", what it is that "interferes", in the many worlds interpretation the particle took path A in one world and path B in another, and both worlds interacted to produce the interference pattern. The moment a scientist measures if the particle went through a or b he is in one of the worlds, the other world is excluded and can no longer make interference. Important is, that for the interference to happen the particles must be "isolated" in the sense that nothing happened that could distinguish between path A and path B.
Now instead of a particle they made the gedankenexperiment with scientists complete with a laboratory instead of the particles. The "double slit" becomes a measurement in which the scientist in an isolated laboratory is given a specially prepared quantum state S from which he can measure either result a or result b, instead of the paths there are now two "stories", either A or B to unfold, depending on the measurement. An outside observer then measures not A or B, but superposition states |A>+|B> or |A>-|B> (not normalized). These states are "orthogonal", only one or the other can result, like |a> and |b> are orthogonal, the first scientist can only have one measurement result.
The superposition state is similar to the measurement at the screen of the double slit experiment. It is designed so, that a measurement deciding between |A> and |B> is incompatible with a measurement deciding between A>+|B> and |A>-|B>. If one knows which path was taken (A or B) the interference between both possibilities is destroyed.
Now the first scientist is given a specially prepared quantum state: S=|a>+|b>. After his measurement an outside observer that is isolated from the measurement result will assume for the isolated laboratory the state |a,A>+|b,B>. So the outside observer will always get the result |A>+|B>, never |A>-|B> if the isolated scientist is given this state. The |A>-|B> result is like the blank spot on the screen.
The experiment is extended", by making the quantum state S dependent on a measurement of another scientist in another isolated laboratory. While it makes the story more complicated it is all based on the incompatibility of measuring either in the {|A>,|B>} space or the {|A>+|B>, |A>-|B>} space. QT says you can only get the result of one of those measurements, knowing if |A> or |B> was measured destroys the interference, after that measuring {|A>+|B>, |A>-|B>} is no longer determined by the state S the first scientist started with but on his result. Like in the double slit experiment the interference pattern is destroyed once it has been determined if path |A> or path |B> was taken.
Going from double slit to this gedankenexperiment the paths A or B the particle could take are now replaced by stories A and B about the measurement the scientist did.
If QT applies to the macroscopic syste
Sure, it's always a question of cost effectiveness. If that were not the case subdividing the hold into small enough compartments to avoid fatal shifts of cargo would do the trick, so any solution should be cheaper than that. A system that injects gas (not necessarily with moving components) raises the cost of the carrier and will require at least some maintenance. If and how it can be implemented at low enough cost is really an engineering question.
Probably the risk analysis of insurance companies can express in dollars what a system that mitigates the risks of loss of carrier, cargo and crew would be worth.
So i agree: cost effectiveness is paramount, the question is, can my idea be implemented cost effectively (after finding out if it works at all).
And sure, a monitoring system might be the cheapest to install, but i wonder how it helps unless there are also means to stop or reverse the shift of cargo.
As far as i understand they have a mixture of solid particles surrounded by liquid, the particles are more compressible, so under pressure the whole structure loses coherence as effectively the solid fraction is reduced, since the liquid is less compressible.
I wonder if this could be helped by injecting some gas from the bottom after loading, so there are pockets where the granular solid is surrounded by compressible gas instead of liquid. If the density of the liquid is less than that of the solid surplus liquid would be driven to the top where it could be extracted.
It might help if the gas pockets are well enough dispersed.
I took this as "friction between the solid particles". Maybe the particles shrink more from compression due to pressure than the surrounding liquid, at some point they are no longer in direct contact, and before that the force with which the particles are pressed against each other at contact points goes to zero, which also makes the friction between particles go to zero.
Or maybe it's just engineers talk meaning "the friction is reduced by some orders of magnitude".
Sure, spam filters make sense because they spare you to deal with a text you don't want to read anyway (and even then you have to check the spam box every once in a while), but those are far more sophisticated now.
But "profanity filters", especially those that replace "fuck" by "f..k" and are easily circumvented by "f*ck" don't help at all. Everyone knows what it's supposed to mean and just replaces "f..k" with "fuck" in their own head. The stupid beeping in TV-shows is even worse. Not only is it annoying as hell, it also nicely highlights all the swearwords, and everyone just replaces it in their own head anyway.
Language is there to convey meaning, when "f..k" conveys the same meaning as "fuck", then what difference does it make. To try to keep the meaning intact and at the same time censor it doesn't work.
It's not about "protecting" kids either. They're usually pretty quick to figure such things out and have enough peers who'll tell them anyway. They will learn about swearing and foul language anyway. They should learn that such language is inappropriate for them to use, or for adults to use in their presence, just like they learn that it's inappropriate for them e.g. to drink alcohol or for an adult to offer them alcohol.
So who is more offended by "fuck" than by "f..k", when both mean the same thing and both make you think the same word?
Whoever uses "f..k" want's you to replace it with "fuck" in your own head but at the same time claim not to use "foul language".
Now that i find offensive.
I commented on the Guardians misleading headline and intro:
"Child drownings in Germany linked to parents' phone ‘fixation’
Lifeguards warn parents to put phones away, after more than 300 people drowned this year"
This makes it seem like a majority of the 300 people drowned due to negligent parents, which is simply wrong.
It also suggests a society where parents are negligent of their children at a time when children are under more adult supervision than ever before. Also i don't see a real difference between parents occupied with their mobile phones and parents reading books/magazines or sunbathing as was common for family visits to the outdoor pool a few decades ago. And yes, pool attendants were trusted to keep an eye on everyone including children.
Of course most children were taught to swim at the age of 6 or so, and trusted to go to the outdoor pool and back on their own initiative at age of 10 to 12.
The Guardian headline makes it seem like parents distracted by mobile phones was a major factor in the drownings.
But according to the article:
"Among the drownings have been more than 20 children under the age of 15, and 40 young women and men between the ages of 16 and 25."
Here one can see statistics for 2016/2017:
https://www.dlrg.de/presse/pm-...
by age:
https://www.dlrg.de/fileadmin/...
by location:
https://www.dlrg.de/fileadmin/...
Note that most drownings happen in rivers and lakes. I think it likely that the nice 2018 summer led to more people swimming at outdoor locations, hence we see an alarming number of drownings. The statistics by age doesn't indicate that parents distracted by mobile phones are the major reason for drownings, and i doubt that changed in 2018.
Nevertheless it is good advice to at least keep an eye on your child while it is in the water.
... as it is the foundation of the scientific method.
Also someone who can apply critical thinking to scientific or technological problems can also apply it to other subjects, what he may be lacking is knowledge.
Sadly there's a spreading trend in humanities to teach "critical theory" instead of critical thinking, and the former is the precise opposite of the latter. "Critical theory" is political indoctrination, pure and simple. The Lindsay Shepherd affair at Wilfried Laurier University is a prime example: Lindsay wanted an open discussion and students to come to their own conclusions but her superiors wanted indoctrination with their political agenda.
Tl;dr:
Teaching students to chant "Hail Hillary" is not critical thinking.
The D-Wave is an "adiabatic quantum computer".
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This is quite different from quantum Turing machines /universal quantum computers which is usually referred to as quantum computers.
Basically the D-Wave allows to search for a ground state in a system where the quantum states interact in a well controlled way.
The quantum states might represent logical bits, the interactions logical clauses (e.g. A & B = 1) and one might seek a state in which as many clauses as possible are satisfied. Such problems are known as SAT (satisfiability) problems.
Another application could be, that the quantum states represent e.g. (valence) electrons in a crystal lattice (preferably a metal), which interact with their neighbors. The ground state of such a system might give insights to magnetic properties of (abstract models of) materials (when the interaction makes electron spins flip in a coherent manner that might cause ferromagnetism). Determining such ground states with classical computing can quickly lead to time- and memory demanding problems even for few quantum states.
It's funny how The Verge tries to scandalize this after SJWs weaponized "shit storms" and it has become "industry standard" to fire people when a "big enough stink" is raised via social media. Thank the #metoo campaign etc. for this and meditate about the merits of due process.
Also in this case the "stink" can be traced back directly to the unprofessional manner in which Price and Fries communicated as representatives of their employer, in violation of company policy. And sure, when you advertise your employment on your twitter page (probably for the merits as GameDev), then people visiting that page or reading tweets in which the employment is mentioned will see you as "representative" and your utterances may be damaging to the employers image.
And here a nugget of wisdom from Jessica herself:
"Shdn't have to keep saying, but 1st only protects from gov censorship. Social/financial consequences are FREE SPEECH WORKING AS INTENDED."
... or putting a paper bag over ones head.
Probably removing the head altogether would also do the trick.
... an officer looks at the match and dismisses it.
Where exactly is the harm in that?
Sure one might discuss if CCTVs everywhere and facial recognition are desirable, but the fraction of "false positives" is no valid argument in that discussion, since all positives are checked a second time by a human. The automated system serves as a first filter, meaning less comparisons by humans are necessary so the whole system becomes more efficient. A more interesting number are false negatives, but about those we know nothing.
To all those who now are opposed to the software because it generates so many false positives: Ask yourself if you'd really prefer an improved software that has a much higher accuracy. If not, then the high number of false positives is not really an argument in favor of what you want.
It's funny, how Warner is compared to the "dark forces" like Voldemort and the dementors in Harry Potter.
Obviously marketing is concerned with making money from the content using copyrights, trademarks, licensing and by employing the law to protect their business model, sometimes with heavy handed methods. OTOH the content often idealizes rebellious figures which accept no authority and make up their own rules according to their own morals. This contrast can also be seen in the success of "Pirates" while the movie industry tried to fight "Movie pirates", or in the music industry where songs praising anti corporate and anti capitalistic ideals are in total contradiction to the actions of the RIAA.
That "data repository" is simply mass doxxing of ICE employees. It has absolutely no legitimate use, at best it is intended to intimidate the ICE-employees. Whoever sees that as a legitimate way to influence (immigration) policy is obviously unwilling to play by democratic rules.
Implementing secure protocols takes development time and knowledge. Time equals money: either more developers are needed or more development time (i.e. the shiny new product/version comes out the door later).
When eye candy sells better than some footnote about security in an advert, then guess which qualifications will be in demand from developers and which parts of a project will get more development resources allocated (time, qualified developers)?
OTOH the costs of even a major security blunder is a bit of bad press that'll soon be superseded by the next big story.
Now imagine you're the controller for the project, what would be your recommendations with respect for allocating resources in development or qualifications demanded when hiring new developers?
Teach people to seek a broader view by comparing different accounts, to keep in mind the source of a news story and its possible motivations and biases, to analyze texts for their true information content, presented facts, rhetorical devices and omissions, and most of all teach them to think for themselves.
Also everyone should be aware, that our view of our world is incomplete and be ready to reevaluate and adapt our world view when new facts are presented.
In the end the people will build their own opinions anyways, the best we can do is give them the tools to use reason in the process.
... you have to stop at just the right point to see it like this.
"Pravda", a Russian newspaper named after the Russian word for truth, was used by the government to distribute their version of the truth.
Now why should Elon Musks project, apparently ironically given the same name, not follow in the footsteps of its namesake?
I have yet to see a "Fact Finder" or "Anti Fake News" project that is unbiased (if that is even possible), many of them are among the worst in terms of propagating biases.
It's not 1:1 but some aspects like exploiting groupthink to "do good", "nudging" people to conformity etc. are common.