baobabaobab's comments

GNU's Not Uber, FOSS won't give me a ride to the airport. So, there are nice things you don't get either way.

>But I doubt it is really in the interest of the manufacturers who want to be able to offer a complete "solution".

Then they'll be leaving room for a newcomer to do it.

>but definitely options for professionals that make their living outdoors

My thinking was also that this makes a great platform for professional tools that are currently standalone devices. Multimeters, surveying equipment, thermal inspection tools. Maybe a microscope or even a microfluidics device.

The physical world is so slow to give you feedback, I think DeepMind has the right approach with video games, you can move to 3d games, then games with physics where the agent directly controls artificial muscles, while iterating much faster than you can in the real world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMR5mjCFZCw&feature=youtu.be

>While it seems intuitive that most individual "intelligent" systems in animals can be seen as unsupervised, isn't life itself driven in a reinforced manner?

I think apparently unsupervised systems could be explained by models that predict a future input given their current state and input. Correct predictions are reinforced. An RNN-like model.

(If the network is small, it should learn some compressed representation, which can be used as an input to a more abstract layer that makes more general predictions over a longer time period)

>What we don't know is whether there is a logistic curve on technology as a whole. Belief in the Singularity is premised on this not being the case.

That's a version of the Singularity to extreme even for Kurzweil. It's premised on technological growth not hitting the log portion of the curve before machine intelligence passes humans.

Their owners want safe and steady profit. They aren't interesting in taking risks.

Look at how the plastics industry handled the scientific evidence that Bisphenol-A affects development. They switched to closely related chemicals with less data available, Bisphenol-B, Bisphenol-S. Unsurprisingly, studies are now finding that exposure to these chemicals has similar effects.

I suppose we'll ban those now too, and we can see we can test some other plasticizer out on a few billion people.

Experiential and statistical evidence presented in a summary meant to convince a person of something would be known as an argument.

The West Antarctic Ice sheet is still flowing into the ocean, and accelerating. It's actually not even clear atmospheric warming is the ultimate cause. But it is clear that it's reached a literal tipping point. The glaciers have retreated past a point where the slope tips inland, and warm water is running down hill, melting the bottom. No amount of emissions reductions can stop it, we would need to pump heat away from the underside of the glaciers to slow it down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:West_Antarctic_Collapse.o...

The other sources are glacial melt, heat expansion, and water storage on land decreasing.

You need both the models and the data. Facts without theory answer only what happened, not why, you can't make projections without theory. Theory without facts... pretty obvious problem there.

Sea levels are rising 2.6-2.9mm per year.

“The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,” Zwally said. “But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.”

Complete conjecture, but my money is on IPCCs estimates for other sources being a little too conservative, not some entirely new explanation.

You might have a tip about a merger because a PI is watching a corporate parking lot. Just because something is a secret, doesn't mean an insider leak is the only way for it to be known.

Convincing people to buy things using psychological manipulation is what marketing is all about.

>The hobbyist. Why would anyone else be liable for something a person did that then failed and caused harm?

The hobbyist isn't the one with money. The manufacturer will be sued, and they usually settle because there is probably something they could have done that would have made the failure less likely, injury trials are bad press, and jury sympathy is always on the injured little guy's side.

This is how it plays out with physical products, I don't see why it would be any different with code.

He didn't have a stable enough income to always maintain a gym membership. I doubt a daily commute and rent would be cheaper.

You're looking at a piece of equipment that can be used to generate income, maybe that's what it's for. It also could have been cheap/broken/free, and they intend to flip it.

>I think it's easier to defend the claim that the kids lacked guidance and support to take advantage of the education provided for them.

That guidance is a critical part of a "good" education. Unfortunately, we leave it up to parents and don't have a way to teach them how to raise a successful kid.

>How would you propose I monetize creating my own free open-source programming language?

Forget it, work for the man, save your money, retire young, then work as much as you want on your GIF art syntax programming language.

That's the proof of concept prototype. If they achieve their stated targets, it would be a leap in computing capability.

http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/08/06/exascale-breakthrough-weve...

"The analysis unit works in tandem with a traditional supercomputer. Initial models will start at 1.32 petaflops and will ramp up to 300 petaflops by 2020.

The Optalysys Optical Solver Supercomputer will initially offer 9 petaflops of compute power, increasing to 17.1 exaflops by 2020."