On the Commodore, you just need to turn the computer on, and get a BASIC interpreter prompt.
And then what? A prompt is useless if you don't know what it is, and don't already know BASIC.
Web programming interfaces are drag-and-drop, with plenty of sample code and Youtube tutorials for almost anything you can imagine.
I volunteer at my neighborhood school. We teach Scratch to 4th graders, and most of them are able to write their own programs in the first week. The 6th graders use Python, which is easier to learn and use than BASIC, and only about 20-30% are writing original code the first week.
Most plastic does not contain bisphenol-A. BPA is used in epoxy resins and in polycarbonate, which are together less than 2% of plastic production. It is not normally used in other plastics.
The most common plastic in the ocean is polyethylene, which is inert and basically harmless.
avoiding the Washington sales taxes I would have to pay if it was delivered.
You can do the same with Amazon by having your order delivered to a locker in Oregon.
But trying to get someone to help you at Walmart is a lost cause!
If you are trying to locate an item, they are helpful. If you are looking for a product recommendation then a store employee is the wrong person to ask.
Everything now is hype for headlines and continued funding
Not true. Most AI research is being done by tech giants (Google, Facebook, Alibaba, Amazon, Baidu, etc), where funding has nothing to do with "headlines".
The main incentive for these companies to publish is to help them attract talent. New graduates want to join a winning team.
This is not really the same issue. Replication failures in the physical and social sciences are difficult to fix, since they are can be caused by small differences in data collection, experimental procedures, and statistical analysis. It is a hard problem.
Fixing the replication problem described in TFA is drop dead easy, since it has exactly two causes: closed data, and closed source. The fix? Reject any paper for publication if full source and data is not available. Science is based on openness, not secrets.
OK, now have that AI figure out how to stop Chinese pig and chicken farmers from sending out the yearly influenza strains.
We already know how to do that.
Here's the problem: Birds don't get human flu, and humans don't get avian flu. But pigs can host both, as well as swine flu, and the viruses can swap DNA and hybridize. Then these franken-viruses can spread to humans.
There are two solutions:
1. Don't raise pigs and chickens together. Western factory farms don't, but Chinese farms often do, and this one reason why new flu strains often originate in China. This doesn't eliminate the problem completely because other birds can also spread avian influenza.
2. Vaccinate the pigs. This is common in the West, but less common in China.
Mass shootings get the press because they're dramatic. But if you can use that impact to do something about the gun problem, go for it. It will help all around.
Not true. The polarizing arguments that follow mass shootings do far more harm than good.
You might want to read up on the history on the gun control movement in America. In the 1980s, there was a strong advocacy movement for restrictions on handguns (responsible for 75% of gun homicides and even more gun suicides), and HCI and the Brady Campaign made it clear that they were not after "long guns" used for hunting. Their influence was growing.
That came to an abrupt end on the morning of January 17th, 1989, when Patrick Purdy walk onto a school playground in Stockton, California, opened fire with an SKS semi-automatic rifle, killing five children and wounding 32 more. The advocates took advantage of the publicity and outrage to completely abandon their assurances of focusing on handguns, and called for bans on "automatic rifles" (already illegal), and "AK-47s" (also already illegal). They got their "assault weapons" ban, but alienated millions of hunters and others that had supported them. The backlash swept dozens of gun control advocates from public office in the 1994 Republican mid-term landslide. The ban was repealed. NRA membership ballooned. Trust was gone. Willingness to compromise was gone. Any sort of new restriction on gun ownership is unthinkable in today's political climate.
Good. The more anal Microsoft is, the more incentive to rescue these refurbs from the dark side, and install Linux or FreeBSD on them. In the long run, we are not helping poor people by giving them computers with "free" closed source OSes.
Without taking sides, if a public shooting and innocent dead people aren't a good reason to discuss the issue of gun control and public safety, when is a good time?
Here's the problem: "Mass shootings" account for only about 0.1% of gun deaths, and are NOTHING like the normal quotidian killings that account for the other 99.9%:
* Mass shootings tend to be carefully planned and premeditated. * Normal shootings tend to be impulsive and emotional.
* Mass shootings are often done by people with no prior violent criminal record. * Normal shootings are usually by people with a history of violence.
* Mass shootings tend to be done with rifles. * Normal shootings are mostly done with handguns.
* Mass shooters are usually crazy people. * Normal shooters are usually stupid people.
So policies directed at mass shootings tend to be ineffective at actually reducing gun deaths. Because of the meticulous planning, mass shooters are difficult to detect. Because of their mental illnesses, they are difficult to deter. This is precisely where gun control will be least effective. The world's worst mass shooting was in Norway, not America.
Another problem with discussing gun control in the aftermath of a mass shooting, is that gun control advocates tend to let their emotions get away from them, and say a lot of silly things that are factually incorrect about "machine guns" and "automatic rifles" (both of which are illegal in America). This just exacerbates the feeling among gun owners that they belong to a different culture, and that there is no room for compromise or moderation.
I would have been horrified to know that our military just uses Microsoft Windows and not some super secret flavor of a home grown operating system. What happened to security?
Even Windows is more secure that some crap OS slapped together by a low-bid defense contractor. These are the people that designed the F-35. To get a feel for milspec software, go try to write a program in Ada.
No, but you can be sure the CEO said the equivalent of "It costs too much money and takes too much time to do this right."
No, you can't be sure of that. Most likely the CEO was told it was being done right. Also, it rarely "costs more" to do it right. My company has never had a public breach, but we have had several security problems that were discovered internally. It was always some knucklehead taking shortcuts, not following procedures, or just screwed up, and the guilty party was being paid just as much as anyone else. The solution was not "spend more money", but "fire the serially incompetent".
Price and computational utility aside, they sound GREAT for researching how biological neural networks work.
I doubt that. This chip is designed to do fast and efficient matrix operations, which only work well if the neurons are in distinct and ordered layers. Biological brains don't do that . Also, biological brains learn by strengthening connections as they are used in a process very different from the backprop algorithm used in ANN, and it isn't clear if this new chip actually does any learning rather than just running a pre-programmed network.
We will learn much more about biological brains from projects like OpenWorm, which is an attempt to understand and emulate the brain of C. elegans, a nematode.
It is not clear that ANNs will be improved much by better understanding of BNNs. They work in different ways, and ANNs are much faster. You may be better than a computer at face recognition, but the computer is improving quickly and is WAY faster, scanning thousands of images per second.
I say it's high time that any and all text-ish messaging systems require just plain ASCII characters
Great idea. I totally agree that we should all adopt a single alphabet, but obviously the standard should be based on Chinese hanzi ideograms, not ASCII. Hanzi have a bigger user base, don't depend on a single spoken language, and are more compact since each character represents an entire syllable.
If everyone is in agreement, we can start working on the unification immediately.
Does anyone know how MIT's new chips stack up against what Google already has in operation?
This seems to be different.
Google's TPUs reduce power and increase speed, but are targeted for internal use in data centers. You can't buy one.
This MIT chip is targeted toward home use and mobile devices.
Both chips do fast low precision matrix ops. The TPU uses eight bit multipliers. TFA is poorly written, but it appears that the MIT chip does analog multiplication. From TFA: In the chip, a node’s input values are converted into electrical voltages and then multiplied by the appropriate weights. Summing the products is simply a matter of combining the voltages. Only the combined voltages are converted back into a digital representation and stored for further processing.
If this is true, then that could be a huge boost in efficiency, but results would not be exactly repeatable: You could get different results for the exact same inputs.
Another feature is that the neurons in each layer produce a single binary output. That is obviously simpler than the TPU's 8-bit outputs, and is analogous to how biological neurons work. But it limits which algorithms can be used. RBMs (Restricted Boltzmann Machines) use single bit outputs, and were used in the first successful "deep" networks, but have more recently fallen out of favor. Single bit outputs make backprop more difficult, although it sounds like this chip is targeted more for deployment than for learning.
Or force them to ditch annoying auto-playing audio/video ads and pop-ups/pop-unders, etc.
Not really. According to TFA, ads will have a grace period of 30 days before they are blocked, so plenty of annoyware will get through. Also, the standards are weak: autoplaying videos will be allowed as long as the are silent. Flashing ads are blocked on mobile devices, but not on desktops. Etc.
Slashdot Mirror
All employers will be advertising the lower value ...
Any company that does that will get fewer and lower quality applicants.
On the Commodore, you just need to turn the computer on, and get a BASIC interpreter prompt.
And then what? A prompt is useless if you don't know what it is, and don't already know BASIC.
Web programming interfaces are drag-and-drop, with plenty of sample code and Youtube tutorials for almost anything you can imagine.
I volunteer at my neighborhood school. We teach Scratch to 4th graders, and most of them are able to write their own programs in the first week. The 6th graders use Python, which is easier to learn and use than BASIC, and only about 20-30% are writing original code the first week.
Or maybe just look on the web?
Indeed. Programming has never been easier. Here is how you start:
1. Type "scratch.mit.edu" into your browser
2. Start coding
plastic usually contains Bisphenol A
Most plastic does not contain bisphenol-A. BPA is used in epoxy resins and in polycarbonate, which are together less than 2% of plastic production. It is not normally used in other plastics.
The most common plastic in the ocean is polyethylene, which is inert and basically harmless.
someone that knew the business and had a vision for the future.
Nobody that "knows the business" has a vision for the future of book retailing because there is no future.
there are plenty of independent book sellers still in business and actually thriving
In your dreams. Every independent bookseller in my city went under a decade ago. Then Borders folded. B&N is the last to close.
B&N's management took the path of selling board games and coffee
That was a smart move, and helped them outlast their competitors, but it wasn't enough.
avoiding the Washington sales taxes I would have to pay if it was delivered.
You can do the same with Amazon by having your order delivered to a locker in Oregon.
But trying to get someone to help you at Walmart is a lost cause!
If you are trying to locate an item, they are helpful. If you are looking for a product recommendation then a store employee is the wrong person to ask.
The expensive management that steered the ship into the rocks don't get cut:
Different management would have made no difference. Retail bookselling was doomed. Nothing could have saved it.
Everything now is hype for headlines and continued funding
Not true. Most AI research is being done by tech giants (Google, Facebook, Alibaba, Amazon, Baidu, etc), where funding has nothing to do with "headlines".
The main incentive for these companies to publish is to help them attract talent. New graduates want to join a winning team.
AI is an attempt to mimic the human thought process
This is no more true than claiming that the Boeing 747 was designed to mimic a hummingbird's flight process.
Science has a Replication problem
This is not really the same issue. Replication failures in the physical and social sciences are difficult to fix, since they are can be caused by small differences in data collection, experimental procedures, and statistical analysis. It is a hard problem.
Fixing the replication problem described in TFA is drop dead easy, since it has exactly two causes: closed data, and closed source. The fix? Reject any paper for publication if full source and data is not available. Science is based on openness, not secrets.
OK, now have that AI figure out how to stop Chinese pig and chicken farmers from sending out the yearly influenza strains.
We already know how to do that.
Here's the problem: Birds don't get human flu, and humans don't get avian flu. But pigs can host both, as well as swine flu, and the viruses can swap DNA and hybridize. Then these franken-viruses can spread to humans.
There are two solutions:
1. Don't raise pigs and chickens together. Western factory farms don't, but Chinese farms often do, and this one reason why new flu strains often originate in China. This doesn't eliminate the problem completely because other birds can also spread avian influenza.
2. Vaccinate the pigs. This is common in the West, but less common in China.
Another obvious solution would be ultrasonic sensors embedded in either the phones or the foreheads of the employees.
Mass shootings get the press because they're dramatic. But if you can use that impact to do something about the gun problem, go for it. It will help all around.
Not true. The polarizing arguments that follow mass shootings do far more harm than good.
You might want to read up on the history on the gun control movement in America. In the 1980s, there was a strong advocacy movement for restrictions on handguns (responsible for 75% of gun homicides and even more gun suicides), and HCI and the Brady Campaign made it clear that they were not after "long guns" used for hunting. Their influence was growing.
That came to an abrupt end on the morning of January 17th, 1989, when Patrick Purdy walk onto a school playground in Stockton, California, opened fire with an SKS semi-automatic rifle, killing five children and wounding 32 more. The advocates took advantage of the publicity and outrage to completely abandon their assurances of focusing on handguns, and called for bans on "automatic rifles" (already illegal), and "AK-47s" (also already illegal). They got their "assault weapons" ban, but alienated millions of hunters and others that had supported them. The backlash swept dozens of gun control advocates from public office in the 1994 Republican mid-term landslide. The ban was repealed. NRA membership ballooned. Trust was gone. Willingness to compromise was gone. Any sort of new restriction on gun ownership is unthinkable in today's political climate.
M$ also has an extremely shallow soul.
Good. The more anal Microsoft is, the more incentive to rescue these refurbs from the dark side, and install Linux or FreeBSD on them. In the long run, we are not helping poor people by giving them computers with "free" closed source OSes.
He didn't sell the discs.
Yes he did. Both TFS and TFA make that clear.
He provided the discs for free ...
No he didn't.
If the computer didn't have a license sticker then he didn't provide a disc.
He claims to have sold the discs to "refurbishers" who may, or may not, have checked for stickers.
Without taking sides, if a public shooting and innocent dead people aren't a good reason to discuss the issue of gun control and public safety, when is a good time?
Here's the problem: "Mass shootings" account for only about 0.1% of gun deaths, and are NOTHING like the normal quotidian killings that account for the other 99.9%:
* Mass shootings tend to be carefully planned and premeditated.
* Normal shootings tend to be impulsive and emotional.
* Mass shootings are often done by people with no prior violent criminal record.
* Normal shootings are usually by people with a history of violence.
* Mass shootings tend to be done with rifles.
* Normal shootings are mostly done with handguns.
* Mass shooters are usually crazy people.
* Normal shooters are usually stupid people.
So policies directed at mass shootings tend to be ineffective at actually reducing gun deaths. Because of the meticulous planning, mass shooters are difficult to detect. Because of their mental illnesses, they are difficult to deter. This is precisely where gun control will be least effective. The world's worst mass shooting was in Norway, not America.
Another problem with discussing gun control in the aftermath of a mass shooting, is that gun control advocates tend to let their emotions get away from them, and say a lot of silly things that are factually incorrect about "machine guns" and "automatic rifles" (both of which are illegal in America). This just exacerbates the feeling among gun owners that they belong to a different culture, and that there is no room for compromise or moderation.
I would have been horrified to know that our military just uses Microsoft Windows and not some super secret flavor of a home grown operating system. What happened to security?
Even Windows is more secure that some crap OS slapped together by a low-bid defense contractor. These are the people that designed the F-35. To get a feel for milspec software, go try to write a program in Ada.
COTS > Milspec
No, but you can be sure the CEO said the equivalent of "It costs too much money and takes too much time to do this right."
No, you can't be sure of that. Most likely the CEO was told it was being done right. Also, it rarely "costs more" to do it right. My company has never had a public breach, but we have had several security problems that were discovered internally. It was always some knucklehead taking shortcuts, not following procedures, or just screwed up, and the guilty party was being paid just as much as anyone else. The solution was not "spend more money", but "fire the serially incompetent".
Indeed. The purpose of the Russian bots is not to change opinions nor be "pro-gun", but to sow discord and increase social and political polarization.
you KNOW that some low level IT guy is going to be crucified for this lapse of security procedures.
If he is the one that violated security policies, then why shouldn't he be fired?
Never mind that NONE of this data should EVER live unencrypted on hardware outside of your direct control
Who do you think put it there? The CEO? Most likely this was some cowboy IT guy taking shortcuts.
... OR that FedEx actually collects such information in the first place....
They are required by law to do so in many of the countries where they operate.
Price and computational utility aside, they sound GREAT for researching how biological neural networks work.
I doubt that. This chip is designed to do fast and efficient matrix operations, which only work well if the neurons are in distinct and ordered layers. Biological brains don't do that . Also, biological brains learn by strengthening connections as they are used in a process very different from the backprop algorithm used in ANN, and it isn't clear if this new chip actually does any learning rather than just running a pre-programmed network.
We will learn much more about biological brains from projects like OpenWorm, which is an attempt to understand and emulate the brain of C. elegans, a nematode.
It is not clear that ANNs will be improved much by better understanding of BNNs. They work in different ways, and ANNs are much faster. You may be better than a computer at face recognition, but the computer is improving quickly and is WAY faster, scanning thousands of images per second.
I say it's high time that any and all text-ish messaging systems require just plain ASCII characters
Great idea. I totally agree that we should all adopt a single alphabet, but obviously the standard should be based on Chinese hanzi ideograms, not ASCII. Hanzi have a bigger user base, don't depend on a single spoken language, and are more compact since each character represents an entire syllable.
If everyone is in agreement, we can start working on the unification immediately.
Does anyone know how MIT's new chips stack up against what Google already has in operation?
This seems to be different.
Google's TPUs reduce power and increase speed, but are targeted for internal use in data centers. You can't buy one.
This MIT chip is targeted toward home use and mobile devices.
Both chips do fast low precision matrix ops. The TPU uses eight bit multipliers. TFA is poorly written, but it appears that the MIT chip does analog multiplication. From TFA: In the chip, a node’s input values are converted into electrical voltages and then multiplied by the appropriate weights. Summing the products is simply a matter of combining the voltages. Only the combined voltages are converted back into a digital representation and stored for further processing.
If this is true, then that could be a huge boost in efficiency, but results would not be exactly repeatable: You could get different results for the exact same inputs.
Another feature is that the neurons in each layer produce a single binary output. That is obviously simpler than the TPU's 8-bit outputs, and is analogous to how biological neurons work. But it limits which algorithms can be used. RBMs (Restricted Boltzmann Machines) use single bit outputs, and were used in the first successful "deep" networks, but have more recently fallen out of favor. Single bit outputs make backprop more difficult, although it sounds like this chip is targeted more for deployment than for learning.
Or force them to ditch annoying auto-playing audio/video ads and pop-ups/pop-unders, etc.
Not really. According to TFA, ads will have a grace period of 30 days before they are blocked, so plenty of annoyware will get through. Also, the standards are weak: autoplaying videos will be allowed as long as the are silent. Flashing ads are blocked on mobile devices, but not on desktops. Etc.
I'll stick with my 3rd party blocker.
Many around the world are clean, fast, and safe. I've never seen any body wastes in a subway or tram in Europe.
That may change. If the ride is free, they may soon have homeless people living on the train.