For comparison, the Little Ice Age --- frozen rivers, advancing glaciers, and famine --- was a cooling of less than 1 degree C (if you can believe Wikipedia).
I used to own some snakes. The recommended practice was to put the heat lamp at one end of the cage, giving the reptile a choice of temperatures. Maybe there's a lesson here.
Games don't get worse as they age. Don't hundreds of years of chess and poker teach us that? How about Scrabble or Monopoly? Is Tetris no longer fun?
Prettier graphics aside, if games are outdated after a few years, they're either poor games to begin with, or the game was deliberately designed to be obsolete and no longer fun after you "solved" it, or it's a completely illusory perception encouraged by game makers who want to sell you more stuff.
Man, now I feel so stupid for sitting at my desk all day using my desktop with its two 30" monitors. I could just do all my work on my mobile!
And thanks for setting me straight on that 5K Retina IMac. I don't want to make a mistake and buy something "half-assed".
People usually point to the "expected value" as an argument that it's a bad bargain.
But it seems to me that the expected value is meaningless unless the experiment is performed often enough for the Law of Large Numbers to even out the results.
So, if a person plans to buy daily a ticket at 1/100 odds, you can make an expected-value argument. But if they plan to buy daily a ticket at 1/175000000 odds... well, yes it's inadvisable, but it's hard to make an expected-value argument.
1. Not fair that some offenders get shamed and some don't (on top of paying the normal penalty), depending on the whims of the police; in the U.S. this would be a violation of the Equal Protection clause;
2. Illegal that the police are effectively adding their own punishment, without any legal basis, on top of the punishment put into law by elected lawmakers --- if lawmakers had wanted public shaming to be part of the punishment, they could have made it so;
3. Unconstitutional that the punishment will apparently be put on accused rather than convicted people.
There was a Doctor Who novel, I think this one, The Murder Game by Steve Lyons, where there was an "Assassination program"... a sophisticated malware package that just required to be configured with the victim's name, and it would search out means to physically kill them via computer-controlled objects.
I'm no expert, but even today it sounds almost possible. You need: (1) a way of tying victims to physical objects and locations (DMV records, toy purchases, planning permission applications,... ), (2) hacks for physical objects (cars, street lights, Mindstorm Legos, home automation systems,...),
(3) a worm/virus base to spread the code to computer systems physically near the objects.
If that sounds like an implausible engineering effort, remember that malware packages are incrementally improved on and made more powerful over time... it would start out with some simple and unlikely-to-succeed algorithms, and evolve into something with a huge array of killing options.
(Maybe at that point people would start taking privacy seriously.)
But for an example of when this is a bad idea, look at Netflix. Their decision to become a content provider puts them in direct competition with those with whom they're trying to negotiate streaming contracts. They lost track of their original raison d'être --- to be a place to watch whatever you want --- and have been doing a poor job of expanding their rental/streaming catalog.
Yeah the Second Amendment sucks. But the Bill of Rights is too important. PLEASE DON'T MESS WITH THE BILL OF RIGHTS.
Do you really want to open up a discussion on whether freedom of speech or freedom of religion needs a little "fixing"? For every enumerated right that you care about, there are huge numbers of people who'd be glad to see it deleted.
If 1/10 of users use "password" as the password, randomly pick a set of N users (where N is the "threshold", they suggest a small number like 1
To another point, if only administrators have threshold accounts, this has the same result (and is more complicated) than using Secret Sharing to have N administrators share an ordinary encryption key (which would then be retained only in memory) for encrypting the salted hashes.
BTW look toward the bottom of the paper for a nice roundup of alternative techniques.
Comments aren't supposed to (redundantly) tell you what the code does. They're to tell you why the code had to be written, or the reason one coding choice was made over another, or known issues and todos.
We need a standard for swappable batteries, so you can pull up to a fueling station, have your exhausted batteries replaced in under a minute, and drive on.
OK, yeah there are potential issues of fraud with getting served with an undercharged battery. There would have to be some mostly-trusted monitoring tech to record actual energy extracted, and we'd have to eat whatever fraud slips by. But electric cars will never become mainstream until the long-distance travel issue is addressed, by (1) swappable batteries, (2) batteries rechargeable in a couple of minutes, or (3) gas prices so high that people will put up with waiting a long time for recharges at waystations.
The article also advocates a move to all-digital payment/transfers... it would cripple criminal operations such as drug cartels, human traffickers, and so forth.
Yeah, and other dubious operations like speaking freely or engaging in outside-social-norm behavior.
By itself, allowing more people to create books quickly isn't going to make a difference
Lots of good books already get published that aren't used for education, because textbook selection isn't based on quality or price, it's based on politics, and on complex, draconian, ever-changing standards --- which are so difficult to keep up with that perhaps $150 isn't surprising.
Retailers gripe about people using their shop for browsing, then buying on Amazon --- but nobody mentions the people (I'm one) who use Amazon for reading reviews, while they're shopping and buying in the retail store.
As far as the tax goes --- I don't buy it. Local taxes help pay for local services. The fireman will come if there's a fire in their shop. Amazon already pays taxes in the location where they do business, and the fireman will come if there's a fire in their warehouse. And UPS and other shippers pay taxes where they operate, too.
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For comparison, the Little Ice Age --- frozen rivers, advancing glaciers, and famine --- was a cooling of less than 1 degree C (if you can believe Wikipedia).
I used to own some snakes. The recommended practice was to put the heat lamp at one end of the cage, giving the reptile a choice of temperatures. Maybe there's a lesson here.
Games don't get worse as they age. Don't hundreds of years of chess and poker teach us that? How about Scrabble or Monopoly? Is Tetris no longer fun? Prettier graphics aside, if games are outdated after a few years, they're either poor games to begin with, or the game was deliberately designed to be obsolete and no longer fun after you "solved" it, or it's a completely illusory perception encouraged by game makers who want to sell you more stuff.
Man, now I feel so stupid for sitting at my desk all day using my desktop with its two 30" monitors. I could just do all my work on my mobile! And thanks for setting me straight on that 5K Retina IMac. I don't want to make a mistake and buy something "half-assed".
People usually point to the "expected value" as an argument that it's a bad bargain.
But it seems to me that the expected value is meaningless unless the experiment is performed often enough for the Law of Large Numbers to even out the results.
So, if a person plans to buy daily a ticket at 1/100 odds, you can make an expected-value argument. But if they plan to buy daily a ticket at 1/175000000 odds ... well, yes it's inadvisable, but it's hard to make an expected-value argument.
No, it was given (symbolically) to Americans for not voting in another Bush.
Yeah! When I purchase something, please make sure my account can't be identified as the one to subtract from!
I wouldn't want to get hurt and not have my medical insurance card or ID, when my phone battery happens to be dead.
There was a Doctor Who novel, I think this one, The Murder Game by Steve Lyons, where there was an "Assassination program"... a sophisticated malware package that just required to be configured with the victim's name, and it would search out means to physically kill them via computer-controlled objects.
I'm no expert, but even today it sounds almost possible. You need: (1) a way of tying victims to physical objects and locations (DMV records, toy purchases, planning permission applications, ... ), (2) hacks for physical objects (cars, street lights, Mindstorm Legos, home automation systems, ...),
(3) a worm/virus base to spread the code to computer systems physically near the objects.
If that sounds like an implausible engineering effort, remember that malware packages are incrementally improved on and made more powerful over time... it would start out with some simple and unlikely-to-succeed algorithms, and evolve into something with a huge array of killing options.
(Maybe at that point people would start taking privacy seriously.)
But for an example of when this is a bad idea, look at Netflix. Their decision to become a content provider puts them in direct competition with those with whom they're trying to negotiate streaming contracts. They lost track of their original raison d'être --- to be a place to watch whatever you want --- and have been doing a poor job of expanding their rental/streaming catalog.
Simulations and real tests aren't mutually exclusive. They have different strengths, and you should do both.
"Pseudo-autonomy" is where the driver is expected to be alert and ready to take over. Therefore,
Autonomous car is to Chauffeur
as
Pseudo-autonomous car is to Student Driver
Ever chaperoned a student driver? Nerve-wracking, and harder than just driving the car yourself. Forget it.
Yeah the Second Amendment sucks. But the Bill of Rights is too important. PLEASE DON'T MESS WITH THE BILL OF RIGHTS.
Do you really want to open up a discussion on whether freedom of speech or freedom of religion needs a little "fixing"? For every enumerated right that you care about, there are huge numbers of people who'd be glad to see it deleted.
If 1/10 of users use "password" as the password, randomly pick a set of N users (where N is the "threshold", they suggest a small number like 1
To another point, if only administrators have threshold accounts, this has the same result (and is more complicated) than using Secret Sharing to have N administrators share an ordinary encryption key (which would then be retained only in memory) for encrypting the salted hashes.
BTW look toward the bottom of the paper for a nice roundup of alternative techniques.
No. I bill my time at $200 per hour. Someone wants me to spend half an hour fixing their logistics error, for free? And involuntarily?
There appears to be a rainbow on the faint outer ring (top, just right of center) when viewed at full resolution. Is that for real?
Comments aren't supposed to (redundantly) tell you what the code does. They're to tell you why the code had to be written, or the reason one coding choice was made over another, or known issues and todos.
How about this one: every time you get a robocall, call your phone company, the FTC, and your senator to complain.
(How about this one: do whatever it is you're doing to block these calls from cellphones. I haven't got one on my cell in a couple of years.
How about this one: tell your phone company they need to block them or you'll switch. (Then do it.)
How about this one: "Can you call me back on my other phone?" Give them an FBI number.)
OK, yeah there are potential issues of fraud with getting served with an undercharged battery. There would have to be some mostly-trusted monitoring tech to record actual energy extracted, and we'd have to eat whatever fraud slips by. But electric cars will never become mainstream until the long-distance travel issue is addressed, by (1) swappable batteries, (2) batteries rechargeable in a couple of minutes, or (3) gas prices so high that people will put up with waiting a long time for recharges at waystations.
We need to get the phrase "evidence-based lawmaking" into the public mind, as we've started to do with "evidence-based medicine".
Nonsense. If their stunt loses them 99% of customers and let's them rip off 1% in a big way, then yes, they'll try it again.
The article also advocates a move to all-digital payment/transfers ... it would cripple criminal operations such as drug cartels, human traffickers, and so forth.
Yeah, and other dubious operations like speaking freely or engaging in outside-social-norm behavior.
By itself, allowing more people to create books quickly isn't going to make a difference
Lots of good books already get published that aren't used for education, because textbook selection isn't based on quality or price, it's based on politics, and on complex, draconian, ever-changing standards --- which are so difficult to keep up with that perhaps $150 isn't surprising.
Retailers gripe about people using their shop for browsing, then buying on Amazon --- but nobody mentions the people (I'm one) who use Amazon for reading reviews, while they're shopping and buying in the retail store.
As far as the tax goes --- I don't buy it. Local taxes help pay for local services. The fireman will come if there's a fire in their shop. Amazon already pays taxes in the location where they do business, and the fireman will come if there's a fire in their warehouse. And UPS and other shippers pay taxes where they operate, too.