ajmarcic's comments

You're absolutely correct about the presence of listings. I agree with your skepticism towards describing this as anything more than a one-off bad copyright flagging on eBay AU. That being said, the event does warrant attention to check whether it is part of broader (perhaps regional) behavior.

The answer is, yes, a small third-party used listing was removed by eBay. The fact that large retailers are recirculating used Pis has no bearing on what makes this intriguing (see my reply).

The open question is whether this is part of broader efforts by parties such as eBay or the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Pure speculation, but it's more difficult to fingerprint device users when buying used. Linux is obviously more protective of privacy, as is the entropy of having many near-identical setups.

I expected this to be another post about geometric algebra (or maybe tensor algebra)

In 2016, there was furor regarding third party data analytics. The $5 billion FTC fine was ostensibly about protecting user privacy. It can be seen here as a fine for inadequate exercise of data authority: Facebook was letting outsiders see what's in the castle.

Now, the walls are opaque, and privacy situation is worse. Outsiders can no longer observe and audit Facebook's output information to users, let alone the information users offer as input.

A better metric for text difficulty might be mean tf-idf. Essentially the average "rareness" of each word used.

This topic is fun to analyze, but it's not really aligned with the objective of a political debate. Simple words can broadcast competence, and big words can be taken as pretentious.

Both performance and power usage are physically functions of transistor density. Assuming the apples-to-apples comparison of similar transistor counts, operating TDPs, and processor designs.

I don't find the examples listed notably precognizant.

CNN Jan 21 "First US case of Wuhan coronavirus confirmed by CDC"

The entrepreneur blog posts linked seem to have been posted in March. This was the month of shutdowns and widespread recognition.

Thanks for the links. I know little on the topic. It may be a while before a litigious content owner identifies their work as having contributed to another generated one. I have yet to see in-your-face examples being monetized.

From a technical standpoint using copyrighted text to train a text translator is similar to using copyrighted movies to train a movie generator. Which of these are acceptable?

Does anyone have cites on litigation specific to generative works?

The nearest neighbor precedent I'm aware of is the dismissal of Authors Guild v Google

Every time evidence leans the author towards "viruses might come from space", I find myself leaning the other way.

My general view is that cellular life and viruses mutualistically co-evolved from life-like junk at the very beginning. Cells provide the metabolisms necessary to fight entropy. Viruses promote genetic diversity while acting as a stress-test to ensure cells can survive their environments. This seems separate from the trichotomy offered: - Virus first - Reductive virus - Escaped genes

"If viruses originate from the cells that they interact with, one would expect there to be significant genetic overlap between the host and the parasite"

The generally small amount of genetic material in a virus is being used for viral reproduction. I assume most functions encoded in the genomes of cells are useless and expensive for a virus to replicate. Hence, they'll drop out; we'll be left with oddball viral genes for viruses to do virus things.

[clipped list of reasons] "All of these facts together suggest that viruses are the raw material from which living creatures build their genetic material. They’re like bricks in a building, ..." I think of viruses more as clipboards (like copy-paste in your OS). Great for moving info around, but wholly dependent on a cell metabolizing somewhere. Hardly building blocks.

"If that’s the case, it’s possible that the absolute simplest viruses, ones who consist of genetic information encased in a capsid made from a single repeating subunit, could be abiotic products of the cosmos. If that’s the case, we would expect to still find viruses as you got further and further away from the surface of the Earth."

Considering the density of viruses in the ocean (mentioned by the author), it seems a simple gust of wind would be enough to cover the earth in viruses.

I believe extraterrestrial life is nearly certain and that viruses can survive in space. I also think viruses depend on host cells to reproduce. A virus would have to land in the primordial soup to be of any life-generating use. By that point there would be enough lifelike junk for the virus to be an unnecessary step in the recipe.

I list the low-hanging fruit first:

Look up nerve flossing exercises on YouTube. Routinely doing these had the largest impact for me. You'll feel the ones that work on whatever nerve is inflamed.

Try to improve your posture. My general mantra is "lift your head as much as possible. Pull your shoulders back". It gets easier eventually. If your head lies forward from the spine you have a hunch. You may notice a small lump of muscle behind your neck. That's bad. There are exercises to try and strengthen the opposite muscles.

If you sleep on your arms try to stop as well. I recommend sleeping on your back. Fluffy couches and back rests sacrifice posture. Don't use a laptop in bed.

Sleep, eat nutrient-dense foods, and run or swim. Avoid alcohol. If you do pushups or bench press, make sure to exercise your upper back equally to avoid imbalance.

The spectrum of these lamps is much closer to sunlight than others: https://sound-au.com/lamps/sp-lamp-f2.jpg

This would be ideal for offering indoor sunlight substitutes.

This study was done on anesthetized rodents. In conversation I've heard support for sleeping on one's side (laterally).

This doesn't suit me physically. My shoulders are too wide. I twist into horrible positions and hurt the following morning.

This article misses an actual definition of Big O.

This forces us to skip crucial points like why O(n^2) truly identically equals O(n^2/2 + 5n). The author instead seems to think they are approximately the same because the lower order terms are small compared to the highest one.

We only need to explain the definition and the reader could understand why an O(n) algorithm is in O(n^2), why some O(n^3) algorithms are much faster than others in O(n^~2.4), etc.

Why would a physicist embrace superdeterminism? Present science holds the falsifiability of a theory as a necessity for its utility. Under the light of SD every experimental result may be impossible to interpret as supportive of a theory.

Free will seems to be the most difficult philosophical question. Accepting SD invalidates the scientific method's approach to learning about the world.

You may be interested in other non-local hidden variable theories as a way to sidestep Bell's Theorem & the Copenhagen interpretation.

Non-commercial vacuum cleaners are acoustically engineered to be loud for this reason. Other examples of intentional loudening include the opening of car doors and aluminum beverage cans.

I suspect that the loud "powerful" noise level was selected to be in line with Dyson's brand image.

Graphite is stacked and fragmented layers of graphene (search "graphene scotch tape"). It occurs naturally when carbon deposits are subjected to the right temperature and pressure. Meteorites, igneous, and metamorphic rock.

Elders' need for care may have burdened the success of their living descendants. In this sense we may have evolved to die.

A counterargument is that past generations lived too rarely to the point of natural death ("Intrinsic senescence") to experience selective pressure. I feel the burden of proof is in showing this.

An interesting discussion is whether or how an encoded trait that's negatively selected for is different than one that was never factored into the equation.

Has any progress been made towards single view 2D -> 3D inference?