Isn't it funny how almost all the upvoted posts are saying something like "crypto is crap, it's a mirage that's about to vanish!"
Do we live in a world of deluded fools where only the commenters on Slashdot can see that the emperor has no clothes? There may be a lot of hype around crypto, but almost everyone you talk to has a negative view and says it's a balloon that's about to pop.
So... who are the idiots buying this stuff that don't have the brains of the highly elite Slashdot readership? Why can't they see the writing on the wall? If all it's going to take is someone shouting that crypto is crap for the whole illusion to collapse, I guess the word is out. Good work -- it'll be a relief to see this nightmare of a decentralized digital asset die tomorrow. It must be really horrible if almost everyone who reads a website dedicated to technology enthusiasts hates this particular piece of miraculous technology.
Rather than using a pseudo-commercial IDE with limited functionality, you could use a free cloud based Linux machine courtesy of the Sage cloud: cloud.sagemath.com.
The terminal they provide isn't the greatest, but with tmux and screen, plus vim, you should be able to easily create a decent multi-terminal programming environment, in addition to getting a couple of GB of free storage. Recently they have introduced a pay model under which network access costs $7/mo. This seems cheap to me. I doubt that they want you running a web server from their service, but you could easily rsync your code with your server of choice.
The Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) learning model is what formally justifies the tendency of neural networks to "learn" from data (see Wikipedia).
While the PAC model does not depend on the probability distribution which generates training and test data, it does assume that they are *the same*. So by "adversarially" choosing test data, the researchers are breaking this important assumption. Therefore it is in some ways not surprising that neural networks have this vulnerability. It shouldn't be an issue in real life, assuming that the training data and the testing data really do come from the same probability distribution.
That said, this shows why you wouldn't want to use neural networks for, say, cryptography.
I agree; I just read the original recently. Of course the invisible man was an albino, so he was already pigmentless (or so the story goes) except for blood etc. These pigments he somehow replaced. A lot of the scientific explanation has to do with changing the refractive indices of his tissues to make them match those of air though. It seems the mouse still has some problems with refraction.
This is great. Hopefully in the near future we can address price fixing in everything else, like text-messages, internet service, cell phone service.... etc etc etc.
As Nick Boston pointed out (http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf)
this is the worst news the human race has ever received.
The idea is that the Fermi Paradox must be the result of a Great Filter which stymies the creation of long lived intelligent races. The easier it is for life to evolve, the more likely it is that the Filter lies ahead of us, rather than behind.
I'm not a programmer, I'm a mathematician, but I notice the same thing in my field.
To those who say there is not a tendency toward weirdness in mathematical disciplines, I suggest the following experiment. First go to the weekly math colloquium at a local research university. Then, go to the weekly philosophy colloquium and see if you can discern a difference in the people who come. I believe you will almost certainly find that the mathematicians are less attractive and charismatic. You could argue that philosophy simply selects for attractiveness and charisma, but I believe you will have similar findings if many different subjects are substituted for phil.
To those who say that the strangeness of programmers is somehow reducible to various qualities of "geeks", this is clearly begging the question, as any good geek should know. The topic for this thread is very similar to asking "why are geeks the way they are?" but phrased differently.
I have spent large amounts of time wondering why mathematicians are weird, ugly, uncharismatic and so forth. My answer is that they live largely in their own imaginations, and spend correspondingly less time in the "real world." Therefore, not surprisingly, their real world appearance, manners etc gives evidence of a lack of attention. Conversely people in other fields are not selected for an ability to concentrate deeply, spend more time in the here and now, and reap consequent benefits in hygiene, social skills, etc.
I can think of some very important mathematical works from the last century, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to read them:
1. Principia Mathematica, Russell & Whitehead 2. On Undecidable Propositions, Kurt Goedel 3. Classification Theory, Saharon Shelah 4. Topology from the Differentiable Viewpoint, Milnor
I assume you are interested only in original documents, and not summaries or expositions. Unfortunately the technical and specialized nature of modern science is likely to make "accessible science" and "original science" mutually exclusive.
I'm a mathematics professor. I first became interested in math after reading Excursions in Number Theory during my junior year of college. It is a wonderful introduction to the power of proof, and requires no more background than simple arithmetic.
I second someone's earlier suggestion of "e" by Eli Maor. That is truly an outstanding book.
Unfortunately what's good for a high school student may not be good for the rest of us. I found Zero: The History of a Dangerous Idea to be completely vapid, but it is full of intrigue and controversy, and is not difficult.
A genuinely good book is John Derbyshire's history of algebra, though it is challenging in places.
It is worth remembering that Ramanujan (according to myth) was strongly motivated by the book "A synopsis of elementary results in pure and applied mathematics", written by George S. Carr. It shows that a book of facts (such as Excursions) may be as good or better than a popular or historical book.
I will go out on a limb and make a strange suggestion: Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, by Wittgenstein is completely fascinating, and no less comprehensible to a high school student than to the rest of us. It may create an appreciation for the mysterious and profound aspects of mathematics that could be powerfully motivational.
I'm a recent graduate with a PhD in mathematical logic; I can totally relate to this problem of having a non-standard background. Before Grad School I went to a liberal arts college, where my math major consisted of something like 9 courses. When my advanced studies began I felt totally lost.
But you have to ask yourself: Do I really have the time and energy to commit to a high level exposition of physics at this point? The answer to this question will depend on whether you intend to specialize in PDE's. If the answer is no, then I believe you should buy some good popular explication of the topics you're covering.
Unfortunately, I do not know what such a book would be, but having read extremely good expositions of several high level mathematical concepts (Prime Obsession; Unknown Quantity; "e", the Story of a Number, and Incompleteness) I have some confidence that a book of similar quality may exist in this area.
Of course, if you are intending to specialize in PDE's, it will be worth the time and effort you will need to invest in reading a serious text. Even so, keep in mind that you can never learn everything, even about a small subdiscipline. My advice is to find a particular area of PDE's, become an expert on that, and get out of graduate school as soon as possible.
Satellite photography and the GPS system have the property of being usable by large numbers of people with no reduction in quality. A wireless internet will degrade as usage increases. Therefore we may not see this technology open itself to widespread usage in the way Google Earth and GPS have.
I can't help pointing this out:
'This was the paradox of artificial intelligence: any system simple enough to be understandable will not be complicated enough to behave intelligently; and any system complicated enough to behave intelligently will not be simple enough to understand.'
The first argument in the semi-coloned statement is logically equivalent to (not in interesting contrast with) the second. This is by the contrapositive, or "modus tollens."
It sounds like you want to weight train. Clearly there are problems with doing that at home.
There are gyms that cater to women's sensitivities about being observed during exercise (eg Curves) but none for men, as far as I know.
If you are a woman, then go to Curves.
If you are not a woman, and you have flex time, I recommend going to the gym about 10 in the morning. I think it's likely you'll be virtually alone.
If you are resolute about staying home, then it sounds like you need something like Bowflex, or a small private "garage gym."
Consider getting advice from a professional, such as a personal trainer. This is a one-time expense that may have lasting benefits.
Hi,
I recently finished a PhD in math; while I probably haven't Texed as many pages as you, I have plunked out my share over the years. I've found the unix/linux front end program Kile to be extremely labor saving, particularly its newest version. It has forward/backward search, automatic completion for \ref commands, and a built in library of click-to-use symbols (and for these you are automatically advised of what packages are needed to use them.)
I am agnostic on the issue of whether something "better" than LaTex is possible, or whether with great power always comes irritating details, but for what's out there, I think Kile can greatly improve the experience.
Either there is a rational higher priority concern for the weather service, or else this is just the usual unfortunate result of criticizing people in power.
In pure dollar terms, surely accurate hurricane prediction is one of the biggest societal payoffs of the NOAA. I'm curious as to what the "higher ups" think would be a better priority for the organization.
In the case of Google in particular, their retaining information about the search habits of users seems to have hurt no one.
Why exactly they would want to keep and associate search records with individuals for two years or more seems an absolute mystery to me, and perhaps it's slightly creepy. But to my knowledge there's not a single instance of this data having been abused for blackmail, investigation for sedition, investigation for drug use, etc. All of these are clearly possibile, however.
This whole question makes you aware of what a new medium the internet is. Should the content of a Google search be considered public or private information? My inclination is to consider it public. If people want a privacy friendly search engine, let them pay for one.
At any rate, as all this is evolving, why not give Google the benefit of the doubt. I say wait and see if there's actually a problem.
This is the beginning of one of those Star Trek episodes, where everyone on an advanced planet has forgotten how everything works.
Computer science cannot become "dead" because there will always be attractive problems of an algorithmic nature, which is in essence what computer scientists study. Software development, on the other hand, could devolve into something like accountancy in relation to math--a task streamlined enough to be performed by non-specialists. But even though accountants no longer need to be mathematicians, mathematics is still alive and well.
I've been wanting a cheap laptop to essentially be a dedicated word processor for years. I hate waiting for a machine to load, and I abhor the distractions that a full service operating system offers while I'm trying to compose something.
A command line interface and a 6 second boot time sound ideal to me.
I can't be the only person who has an interest in a machine like this--witness the Alphasmart product line and its popularity with writers.
If I had the ability to mass produce such machines, I would certainly try to market and sell them.
If you were applying to grad school instead of college, I would highly recommend "crashing" a conference in the subject that interests you. This recently worked at my own university for someone who otherwise might not have been a very attractive applicant. This same person also pulled weight with a connection he had to a post-doc already in the department.
I suppose there are undergraduate analogues for this approach. If you don't have a personal connection, there's not much you can do. However, you can still crash a conference, colloquium, seminar, and meet the acceptance committee without too obviously being a schmoose.
The people who select candidates are human beings, and if they find you attractive as a person, they'll find you more attractive as a potential student.
I agree statistics is an exception. There's nothing gained by computing chi-squared statistics over and over again by hand. (Once by hand is good, though).
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't it funny how almost all the upvoted posts are saying something like "crypto is crap, it's a mirage that's about to vanish!"
Do we live in a world of deluded fools where only the commenters on Slashdot can see that the emperor has no clothes? There may be a lot of hype around crypto, but almost everyone you talk to has a negative view and says it's a balloon that's about to pop.
So... who are the idiots buying this stuff that don't have the brains of the highly elite Slashdot readership? Why can't they see the writing on the wall? If all it's going to take is someone shouting that crypto is crap for the whole illusion to collapse, I guess the word is out. Good work -- it'll be a relief to see this nightmare of a decentralized digital asset die tomorrow. It must be really horrible if almost everyone who reads a website dedicated to technology enthusiasts hates this particular piece of miraculous technology.
Rather than using a pseudo-commercial IDE with limited functionality, you could use a free cloud based Linux machine courtesy of the Sage cloud: cloud.sagemath.com.
The terminal they provide isn't the greatest, but with tmux and screen, plus vim, you should be able to easily create a decent multi-terminal programming environment, in addition to getting a couple of GB of free storage. Recently they have introduced a pay model under which network access costs $7/mo. This seems cheap to me. I doubt that they want you running a web server from their service, but you could easily rsync your code with your server of choice.
The Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) learning model is what formally justifies the tendency of neural networks to "learn" from data (see Wikipedia).
While the PAC model does not depend on the probability distribution which generates training and test data, it does assume that they are *the same*. So by "adversarially" choosing test data, the researchers are breaking this important assumption. Therefore it is in some ways not surprising that neural networks have this vulnerability. It shouldn't be an issue in real life, assuming that the training data and the testing data really do come from the same probability distribution.
That said, this shows why you wouldn't want to use neural networks for, say, cryptography.
I agree; I just read the original recently. Of course the invisible man was an albino, so he was already pigmentless (or so the story goes) except for blood etc. These pigments he somehow replaced. A lot of the scientific explanation has to do with changing the refractive indices of his tissues to make them match those of air though. It seems the mouse still has some problems with refraction.
The proof I do in my classes uses the formula for summing a geometric series.. .999.. = .9*10^0 + .9*10^-1 + .9*10^-2 + .....
= .9/(1-(1/10)) = .9/.9 = 1
This is great. Hopefully in the near future we can address price fixing in everything else, like text-messages, internet service, cell phone service .... etc etc etc.
What happened to trust busting?
As Nick Boston pointed out (http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf)
this is the worst news the human race has ever received.
The idea is that the Fermi Paradox must be the result of a Great Filter which stymies the creation of long lived intelligent races. The easier it is for life to evolve, the more likely it is that the Filter lies ahead of us, rather than behind.
Therefore microbes on Mars is bad bad news.
I'm not a programmer, I'm a mathematician, but I notice the same thing in my field.
To those who say there is not a tendency toward weirdness in mathematical disciplines, I suggest the following experiment. First go to the weekly math colloquium at a local research university. Then, go to the weekly philosophy colloquium and see if you can discern a difference in the people who come. I believe you will almost certainly find that the mathematicians are less attractive and charismatic. You could argue that philosophy simply selects for attractiveness and charisma, but I believe you will have similar findings if many different subjects are substituted for phil.
To those who say that the strangeness of programmers is somehow reducible to various qualities of "geeks", this is clearly begging the question, as any good geek should know. The topic for this thread is very similar to asking "why are geeks the way they are?" but phrased differently.
I have spent large amounts of time wondering why mathematicians are weird, ugly, uncharismatic and so forth. My answer is that they live largely in their own imaginations, and spend correspondingly less time in the "real world." Therefore, not surprisingly, their real world appearance, manners etc gives evidence of a lack of attention. Conversely people in other fields are not selected for an ability to concentrate deeply, spend more time in the here and now, and reap consequent benefits in hygiene, social skills, etc.
I can think of some very important mathematical works from the last century, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to read them:
1. Principia Mathematica, Russell & Whitehead
2. On Undecidable Propositions, Kurt Goedel
3. Classification Theory, Saharon Shelah
4. Topology from the Differentiable Viewpoint, Milnor
I assume you are interested only in original documents, and not summaries or expositions. Unfortunately the technical and specialized nature of modern science is likely to make "accessible science" and "original science" mutually exclusive.
I very much second paiute's opinion (above).
I'm a mathematics professor. I first became interested in math after reading Excursions in Number Theory during my junior year of college. It is a wonderful introduction to the power of proof, and requires no more background than simple arithmetic. I second someone's earlier suggestion of "e" by Eli Maor. That is truly an outstanding book. Unfortunately what's good for a high school student may not be good for the rest of us. I found Zero: The History of a Dangerous Idea to be completely vapid, but it is full of intrigue and controversy, and is not difficult. A genuinely good book is John Derbyshire's history of algebra, though it is challenging in places. It is worth remembering that Ramanujan (according to myth) was strongly motivated by the book "A synopsis of elementary results in pure and applied mathematics", written by George S. Carr. It shows that a book of facts (such as Excursions) may be as good or better than a popular or historical book. I will go out on a limb and make a strange suggestion: Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, by Wittgenstein is completely fascinating, and no less comprehensible to a high school student than to the rest of us. It may create an appreciation for the mysterious and profound aspects of mathematics that could be powerfully motivational.
I'm a recent graduate with a PhD in mathematical logic; I can totally relate to this problem of having a non-standard background. Before Grad School I went to a liberal arts college, where my math major consisted of something like 9 courses. When my advanced studies began I felt totally lost. But you have to ask yourself: Do I really have the time and energy to commit to a high level exposition of physics at this point? The answer to this question will depend on whether you intend to specialize in PDE's. If the answer is no, then I believe you should buy some good popular explication of the topics you're covering. Unfortunately, I do not know what such a book would be, but having read extremely good expositions of several high level mathematical concepts (Prime Obsession; Unknown Quantity; "e", the Story of a Number, and Incompleteness) I have some confidence that a book of similar quality may exist in this area. Of course, if you are intending to specialize in PDE's, it will be worth the time and effort you will need to invest in reading a serious text. Even so, keep in mind that you can never learn everything, even about a small subdiscipline. My advice is to find a particular area of PDE's, become an expert on that, and get out of graduate school as soon as possible.
Satellite photography and the GPS system have the property of being usable by large numbers of people with no reduction in quality. A wireless internet will degrade as usage increases. Therefore we may not see this technology open itself to widespread usage in the way Google Earth and GPS have.
I can't help pointing this out: 'This was the paradox of artificial intelligence: any system simple enough to be understandable will not be complicated enough to behave intelligently; and any system complicated enough to behave intelligently will not be simple enough to understand.' The first argument in the semi-coloned statement is logically equivalent to (not in interesting contrast with) the second. This is by the contrapositive, or "modus tollens."
It sounds like you want to weight train. Clearly there are problems with doing that at home. There are gyms that cater to women's sensitivities about being observed during exercise (eg Curves) but none for men, as far as I know. If you are a woman, then go to Curves. If you are not a woman, and you have flex time, I recommend going to the gym about 10 in the morning. I think it's likely you'll be virtually alone. If you are resolute about staying home, then it sounds like you need something like Bowflex, or a small private "garage gym." Consider getting advice from a professional, such as a personal trainer. This is a one-time expense that may have lasting benefits.
Hi, I recently finished a PhD in math; while I probably haven't Texed as many pages as you, I have plunked out my share over the years. I've found the unix/linux front end program Kile to be extremely labor saving, particularly its newest version. It has forward/backward search, automatic completion for \ref commands, and a built in library of click-to-use symbols (and for these you are automatically advised of what packages are needed to use them.) I am agnostic on the issue of whether something "better" than LaTex is possible, or whether with great power always comes irritating details, but for what's out there, I think Kile can greatly improve the experience.
I suspect this is correct as well.
Either there is a rational higher priority concern for the weather service, or else this is just the usual unfortunate result of criticizing people in power.
In pure dollar terms, surely accurate hurricane prediction is one of the biggest societal payoffs of the NOAA. I'm curious as to what the "higher ups" think would be a better priority for the organization.
Is firing chronometers into whales instead of exploding spear points. Preferably ones that can be read without a chainsaw.
It exploded on impact. I imagine a bottle rocket exploding inside an asscheek might be a fair comparison.
In the case of Google in particular, their retaining information about the search habits of users seems to have hurt no one.
Why exactly they would want to keep and associate search records with individuals for two years or more seems an absolute mystery to me, and perhaps it's slightly creepy. But to my knowledge there's not a single instance of this data having been abused for blackmail, investigation for sedition, investigation for drug use, etc. All of these are clearly possibile, however.
This whole question makes you aware of what a new medium the internet is. Should the content of a Google search be considered public or private information? My inclination is to consider it public. If people want a privacy friendly search engine, let them pay for one.
At any rate, as all this is evolving, why not give Google the benefit of the doubt. I say wait and see if there's actually a problem.
Beloit in Wisconsin has been doing the same thing since at least 1995.
Jules Verne documents his science pretty obsessively, Cavorite notwithstanding.
On the other hand, your not going to make friends with many young people forcing them to read his prose.
This is the beginning of one of those Star Trek episodes, where everyone on an advanced planet has forgotten how everything works.
Computer science cannot become "dead" because there will always be attractive problems of an algorithmic nature, which is in essence what computer scientists study. Software development, on the other hand, could devolve into something like accountancy in relation to math--a task streamlined enough to be performed by non-specialists. But even though accountants no longer need to be mathematicians, mathematics is still alive and well.
I've been wanting a cheap laptop to essentially be a dedicated word processor for years. I hate waiting for a machine to load, and I abhor the distractions that a full service operating system offers while I'm trying to compose something. A command line interface and a 6 second boot time sound ideal to me. I can't be the only person who has an interest in a machine like this--witness the Alphasmart product line and its popularity with writers. If I had the ability to mass produce such machines, I would certainly try to market and sell them.
If you were applying to grad school instead of college, I would highly recommend "crashing" a conference in the subject that interests you. This recently worked at my own university for someone who otherwise might not have been a very attractive applicant. This same person also pulled weight with a connection he had to a post-doc already in the department. I suppose there are undergraduate analogues for this approach. If you don't have a personal connection, there's not much you can do. However, you can still crash a conference, colloquium, seminar, and meet the acceptance committee without too obviously being a schmoose. The people who select candidates are human beings, and if they find you attractive as a person, they'll find you more attractive as a potential student.
I agree statistics is an exception. There's nothing gained by computing chi-squared statistics over and over again by hand. (Once by hand is good, though).