I'd just like to recall how revolutionary Gmail's launch was back then - 1GB of free email space was completely and utterly unheard of back then. Free providers offered aprox. 10MB or maybe even 100MB of space back then, and emailing people was a really bad experience, because you would quite often get "the recipients mailbox is full" bounces.
The confusion of something as ludicrous as 1GB free mail space being launched on a 1st of April was just sugar on top. We REALLY didn't know if Google was being serious or not.
Optimizing for maintenance and readability is, in itself, also a way to optimice for meta-efficiency. Much like an industrial engineer might optimize a process for overall efficiency, instead of only shaving of some seconds off a single step.
The older I get, the more I notice that I am way more annoyed by problems in the big picture, vs. some small loop that could be slightly more funkyly coded.
It is relatively easy to get some super coder to make a routine more efficient, or geek out oneself to hyperfocus on that little annoying line of code. But it is often a case of pre-mature optimization, if the bigger system hasn't been designed properly.
I think this showcases how piracy and torrenting and DRM don't really matter - BluRay rips of basically anything are always available, if you know where to look. Sure - this 4k version is new, but whatever.
All that Netflix and iTunes etc. do is help keep honest people honest, by convenience. And they are doing very well with that. They don't really sell exclusive access to media - they sell the EASE of access to the media.
As an example: I use Netflix when possible, but fire up a very easy to use netflix-like interface to torrent streaming when I want to watch something not available there. My non-technical wife thinks that even having to consider stuff like different torrent health for the different available qualities is too much hassle, and sticks to Netflix.
This is also why I think that the really easy ways to pirate (torrent-based netflix alternatives, piracy enabled Kodi devices, etc.) should keep on being slightly suppressed in the mainstream media and general mindset. Not banned as such, but don't advertise them. This way, everyone can be happy.
In the country I live in, that's the way prostitution is legally handled: it is legal, but pimping or promoting it is quite illegal.
How come some relatively simple sensors malfunction so often in aircraft? Especially AoA or pitot sensors?
And why don't they run a backup system like GPS sensor, or cheap run-of the mill barometric and accelerometer sensors, and at least run sanity checks against these? This way, the aircraft could at least know that MAYBE something is s bit 'off' with the main sensors, and maybe light a 'soft warning" lamp?
In a expat facebook group here where in Costa Rica, where child vaccination is thankfully mandatory, a woman actually asked for tips and tricks on how she could fake the paperwork so that her kids wouldn't be vaccinated (because shes sooooo informed), but could still go to public kindergartens and schools.
I'd just like to point out that general anti-vaxers are bad enough - but many of them at least proudly announce it, and homeschool their kids and all that.
But now they actually seem to be trying to smuggle their risky kids with fake papers into the vaccinated population. This is a nother level of egoistical BS.
What exactly is the difference between low-end and higher-end NIC chipsets, as long as they manage their stated throughput speeds? The linux drivers are all open source and stable enough from what I can see?
IIRC, some chipsets (or cards?) offload things like packet checksumming to dedicated silicon, hence reducing CPU load - but I can't remember having seen network traffic ever using any noticeable CPU load?
Ah, hell no!
IQ might be useful for populations, but IQ definitely doesn't measure "intelligence", because intelligence is way more multi-faceted than a simple rather silly number. And IQ doesn't really belong into the field of "scientific analysis" - it's a crutch to have some kinda number that can be correlated with other stuff. But it doesn't go near trying to explain or accurately measure what sub-factors "intelligence" consists of.
Hell, even the definition of "intelligence" is wonky, if it even exists. Some people correlate it with surveys, some try to link it to neurological processes, etc. A famous phrase at the end of a thick book about the topic ended in "intelligence, basically, is whatever the brain does".
Well, in research circles, intelligence is generally regarded as multidimensional (in contrast to the gross oversimplification that is IQ). IIRC, one of the dimensions is generally regarded as being memory performance - i.e. you can have the best logical apparatus in the universe sitting in you brain, but if your memory capacity is basically zero, you still wouldn't be considered 'overall intelligent'. Same goes vice versa - only having a great memory doesn't make you smart.
So, if an implanted chip could somehow serve as a co-processor for these sub-dimensions if "intelligence" starting with memory, this could make us overall smarter.
> So it statistically correlated randomly-grouped information over millions of trials?
I don't get this "AI is just a lot of IF statements that do statistics!" argument that gets thrown around a lot these days.
Any algorithm is a series of if statements that work on data, and any data manipulation could be interpreted as being 'statistics'.
Also, from what we know, the human brain does exactly that, too. Lots of correlations and sums of different action-potential cascades. If something is above a certain threshold, it propagates. The magic is in the complexity and the parallelism of our neural networks. But if we want to simulate it, there is no way around using an algorithm that runs on a turing-complete machine.
Nothing will ever beat the sheer crazyness of the Curiosity landing - I know that very smart engineers came up with that procedure as the optimal way to land the thing.... but it just seems so much like something some 5 year old came up with in a fever dream. So awesome!
I don't understand all the social network hate - my Facebook bubble consists of relatively 'normal' (by my standards) people, with about 10% people I don't even remember having added, but their posts liven up the echo chamber a bit, so that's cool.
I mostly use it to share articles I found interesting online, some jokes and some of the nicer life events (hey! i'm at the beach! anyone want to hand out?). I don't really see the haem in that, and it helps me stay in touch with other people that wold otherwise have dropped of my radar.
I think social media is akin to gambling - it's a horrible life consuming thing if you fall into that hole too deeply, and even though you curse at the casinos, you still go. That is a real problem.
But if you choose to participate in gambling just by participating in some raffles or bingos, I don't think it is too bad.
The solution is quite simple: governments should feed all the geo data they have anyhow, collecting dust on some hard drive, into OpenStreetMap!
In theory, the government and municipalities already know exactly where each and every business is located, what it does, how it looks from the outside, if it passes health inspection, etc.
Same for almost any other kind of interesting Geodata. All that the governments have to do is feed this data into OpenStreetMap, or at the very least publish it on their websites in a CSV file or something.
I recommend to everyone that they read RAND Corp's PDF about 'the firehose of falsehoods' https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
It goes into detail about the asymmetric nature of these kind of mass manipulation techniques.
Thanks for the insights - may I ask how the hell a random slashdotter has such interesting detailed knowledge of the structural components of a fusion reactor? It just seems so cool to run into people like you online!
I don't get how jamming GPS is so easy?
If I\d encase the receiver's antenna with a type of metal bowl that opens to the top, so that only signals coming from the sky can be received - how could anything earth-based interfere or jam the signal coming from GPS satellites?
I saw a video by a supposedly ex-CIA make-up woman, and she recommended putting a pebble into your shoe when in disguise, because it changes your gait significantly, and humans also do gait analysis subconsciously.
If anyone else is wondering how they can afford a million cores with a budget of less than 20 million dollars: Wikipedia says they are some ARM cores in 10 19 inch racks.
Each core is supposed to be able to simulate 1000 neurons.
As someone whose servers updated to Debian-with-systemd: is it possible to migrate to a systemd-free Debian (Devuan or some other) without re-installing, in a safe way?
well, no!
9,223,372,036,854,775,807 shouldn't cause problems (asuming that YouTube starts counting at 0), being 2^631.
9,223,372,036,854,775,808 on the other hand...
But, if there is no evidence of god, Occham's Razor may be applied, and you get 'operational atheism'.
Sure, it is philosophically speaking better to make allowance for anything that might exist, but there is no evidence of (invisble pink unicorns, for example), but it is counterproductive to keep on babbling on about it.
Anectodeally speaking, mnay people use the word 'Agnostic' to mean 'i'm not sure, so but I believe there's something out there' - and many/most/all atheists would become theists if presented with proof of god.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd just like to recall how revolutionary Gmail's launch was back then - 1GB of free email space was completely and utterly unheard of back then. Free providers offered aprox. 10MB or maybe even 100MB of space back then, and emailing people was a really bad experience, because you would quite often get "the recipients mailbox is full" bounces.
The confusion of something as ludicrous as 1GB free mail space being launched on a 1st of April was just sugar on top. We REALLY didn't know if Google was being serious or not.
Optimizing for maintenance and readability is, in itself, also a way to optimice for meta-efficiency. Much like an industrial engineer might optimize a process for overall efficiency, instead of only shaving of some seconds off a single step.
The older I get, the more I notice that I am way more annoyed by problems in the big picture, vs. some small loop that could be slightly more funkyly coded.
It is relatively easy to get some super coder to make a routine more efficient, or geek out oneself to hyperfocus on that little annoying line of code. But it is often a case of pre-mature optimization, if the bigger system hasn't been designed properly.
I think this showcases how piracy and torrenting and DRM don't really matter - BluRay rips of basically anything are always available, if you know where to look. Sure - this 4k version is new, but whatever.
All that Netflix and iTunes etc. do is help keep honest people honest, by convenience. And they are doing very well with that. They don't really sell exclusive access to media - they sell the EASE of access to the media.
As an example: I use Netflix when possible, but fire up a very easy to use netflix-like interface to torrent streaming when I want to watch something not available there. My non-technical wife thinks that even having to consider stuff like different torrent health for the different available qualities is too much hassle, and sticks to Netflix.
This is also why I think that the really easy ways to pirate (torrent-based netflix alternatives, piracy enabled Kodi devices, etc.) should keep on being slightly suppressed in the mainstream media and general mindset. Not banned as such, but don't advertise them. This way, everyone can be happy.
In the country I live in, that's the way prostitution is legally handled: it is legal, but pimping or promoting it is quite illegal.
How come some relatively simple sensors malfunction so often in aircraft? Especially AoA or pitot sensors?
And why don't they run a backup system like GPS sensor, or cheap run-of the mill barometric and accelerometer sensors, and at least run sanity checks against these? This way, the aircraft could at least know that MAYBE something is s bit 'off' with the main sensors, and maybe light a 'soft warning" lamp?
The summary says "to within 10cm". VR controllers generally need millimeter positional precision to feel natural.
In a expat facebook group here where in Costa Rica, where child vaccination is thankfully mandatory, a woman actually asked for tips and tricks on how she could fake the paperwork so that her kids wouldn't be vaccinated (because shes sooooo informed), but could still go to public kindergartens and schools.
I'd just like to point out that general anti-vaxers are bad enough - but many of them at least proudly announce it, and homeschool their kids and all that.
But now they actually seem to be trying to smuggle their risky kids with fake papers into the vaccinated population. This is a nother level of egoistical BS.
What exactly is the difference between low-end and higher-end NIC chipsets, as long as they manage their stated throughput speeds? The linux drivers are all open source and stable enough from what I can see?
IIRC, some chipsets (or cards?) offload things like packet checksumming to dedicated silicon, hence reducing CPU load - but I can't remember having seen network traffic ever using any noticeable CPU load?
Ah, hell no!
IQ might be useful for populations, but IQ definitely doesn't measure "intelligence", because intelligence is way more multi-faceted than a simple rather silly number. And IQ doesn't really belong into the field of "scientific analysis" - it's a crutch to have some kinda number that can be correlated with other stuff. But it doesn't go near trying to explain or accurately measure what sub-factors "intelligence" consists of.
Hell, even the definition of "intelligence" is wonky, if it even exists. Some people correlate it with surveys, some try to link it to neurological processes, etc. A famous phrase at the end of a thick book about the topic ended in "intelligence, basically, is whatever the brain does".
McDonalds fries are famously also double fried at exactly the 'correct' temperatures.
Serious Eats reverse engineering of McDonalds fries
Well, in research circles, intelligence is generally regarded as multidimensional (in contrast to the gross oversimplification that is IQ). IIRC, one of the dimensions is generally regarded as being memory performance - i.e. you can have the best logical apparatus in the universe sitting in you brain, but if your memory capacity is basically zero, you still wouldn't be considered 'overall intelligent'. Same goes vice versa - only having a great memory doesn't make you smart.
So, if an implanted chip could somehow serve as a co-processor for these sub-dimensions if "intelligence" starting with memory, this could make us overall smarter.
> So it statistically correlated randomly-grouped information over millions of trials? I don't get this "AI is just a lot of IF statements that do statistics!" argument that gets thrown around a lot these days.
Any algorithm is a series of if statements that work on data, and any data manipulation could be interpreted as being 'statistics'.
Also, from what we know, the human brain does exactly that, too. Lots of correlations and sums of different action-potential cascades. If something is above a certain threshold, it propagates. The magic is in the complexity and the parallelism of our neural networks. But if we want to simulate it, there is no way around using an algorithm that runs on a turing-complete machine.
Nothing will ever beat the sheer crazyness of the Curiosity landing - I know that very smart engineers came up with that procedure as the optimal way to land the thing .... but it just seems so much like something some 5 year old came up with in a fever dream. So awesome!
I don't understand all the social network hate - my Facebook bubble consists of relatively 'normal' (by my standards) people, with about 10% people I don't even remember having added, but their posts liven up the echo chamber a bit, so that's cool.
I mostly use it to share articles I found interesting online, some jokes and some of the nicer life events (hey! i'm at the beach! anyone want to hand out?). I don't really see the haem in that, and it helps me stay in touch with other people that wold otherwise have dropped of my radar.
I think social media is akin to gambling - it's a horrible life consuming thing if you fall into that hole too deeply, and even though you curse at the casinos, you still go. That is a real problem.
But if you choose to participate in gambling just by participating in some raffles or bingos, I don't think it is too bad.
The solution is quite simple: governments should feed all the geo data they have anyhow, collecting dust on some hard drive, into OpenStreetMap!
In theory, the government and municipalities already know exactly where each and every business is located, what it does, how it looks from the outside, if it passes health inspection, etc.
Same for almost any other kind of interesting Geodata. All that the governments have to do is feed this data into OpenStreetMap, or at the very least publish it on their websites in a CSV file or something.
I recommend to everyone that they read RAND Corp's PDF about 'the firehose of falsehoods'
https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
It goes into detail about the asymmetric nature of these kind of mass manipulation techniques.
Thanks for the insights - may I ask how the hell a random slashdotter has such interesting detailed knowledge of the structural components of a fusion reactor? It just seems so cool to run into people like you online!
I don't get how jamming GPS is so easy?
If I\d encase the receiver's antenna with a type of metal bowl that opens to the top, so that only signals coming from the sky can be received - how could anything earth-based interfere or jam the signal coming from GPS satellites?
I saw a video by a supposedly ex-CIA make-up woman, and she recommended putting a pebble into your shoe when in disguise, because it changes your gait significantly, and humans also do gait analysis subconsciously.
If anyone else is wondering how they can afford a million cores with a budget of less than 20 million dollars: Wikipedia says they are some ARM cores in 10 19 inch racks.
Each core is supposed to be able to simulate 1000 neurons.
I am under the impression that many fruit are already sprayed with a neutral edible wax?
Wikipedia says this has been done since the 12th or 13th centuries (for fermentation? How does that work? Do you end up with alcoholic apples? Sounds neat!), and since the 1920 commercially for preservation and aesthetic purposes.
> I think one time I cycled through picking objects something like 15 times! Absurd.
have you considered the possibility that you are a bot?
But why did they use Electron, instead of simply making it a bring-your-own-browser javascript app? (genously curious)
As someone whose servers updated to Debian-with-systemd: is it possible to migrate to a systemd-free Debian (Devuan or some other) without re-installing, in a safe way?
well, no!
9,223,372,036,854,775,807 shouldn't cause problems (asuming that YouTube starts counting at 0), being 2^631.
9,223,372,036,854,775,808 on the other hand...
But, if there is no evidence of god, Occham's Razor may be applied, and you get 'operational atheism'.
Sure, it is philosophically speaking better to make allowance for anything that might exist, but there is no evidence of (invisble pink unicorns, for example), but it is counterproductive to keep on babbling on about it.
Anectodeally speaking, mnay people use the word 'Agnostic' to mean 'i'm not sure, so but I believe there's something out there' - and many/most/all atheists would become theists if presented with proof of god.