jonmrodriguez's comments

If you would like to request access to the training data she has been gathering / labelling, you may email [email protected] . To her knowledge, hers is the most comprehensive and best-labelled dataset to date in this problem domain.

Please understand that I have no problem with genetic engineering in general, and am probably one of the few people on this thread with genetic engineering experience. I have customized a DNA sequence and had my custom version synthesized into a plasmid, which worked as designed. I am a huge proponent of genetic engineering technology when applied to extend human life and augment human capabilities.

I think that an arms race mentality is a dangerous approach to engineering ethics. I would rather that the arms race of the Cold War have been avoided if it were possible, even if it meant one or both sides being willing to lag behind when it comes to ethically dangerous technology.

Do you have a citation for the supposition that Neanderthals are not legally human? I believe that the legal personhood of Neanderthals has not yet been established, and would likely have to go the Supreme Court. If legal personhood was denied to Neanderthals (homo sapiens neanderthalensis), would you say that it should be denied to mentally challenged homo sapiens sapiens as well?

I am Catholic and have no choice but to align with the Vatican. I am just trying to do the right thing no matter whether it's with the help of a national government, a religious authority, or simply individuals who want to do the right thing.

Please don't accuse me of not doing enough. I have invested 10 years of my salary into animal welfare companies and outrighted donated 2 years of my salary to other philanthropic organizations including medical and educational organizations. I'm just trying to do the best I can and there's not much more I can do.

This is not satire. If it helps explain my position, I also agree with the scientific consensus that animals, not just humans, are sentient, and that sentience comes in varying degrees rather than just a binary yes or no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_consciousness#Cambridge...

For what it's worth, I am vegan and have invested 10 years worth of my salary into synthetic meat companies to help save animal lives.

The Vatican these days is no longer regressive, at least on scientific issues. Here is a letter from the Pope in 2015 urging action on climate change: http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/docume...

Here is a video produced by the Vatican along with the letter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXA5_juFgDg

The Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe was invented by a Catholic priest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre

I've also spoken with a retired Bishop who mentioned that in his personal view, it is possible that a multiverse with more than one universe could exist. All in all, Catholic leadership today is impressively open-minded.

Patrick, don't you think you should reflect on what you are doing before taking sentient neurons and forcing them to live their entire lives confined inside a machine, with no possibility of escape? How would you enjoy being born into such captivity?

What would you do if you were experiencing an endless state of pain but lacked the language ability to communicate your pain to your owner?

I have written to the Vatican already suggesting that they push to make neural slavery illegal, as it violates the principle of the dignity of sentient life. I hope you will please reflect on what you are doing and stop doing it voluntarily instead of waiting for the laws to change and make what you are doing illegal. Whether legal or not, any form of slavery is immoral.

Don't you think this would constitute slavery? Shouldn't this be extremely illegal?

Speaking as a vegan: The reason I am vegan is for utilitarian reasons. Neuroscientists agree that there is firm evidence that all animals (NOT PLANTS) are sentient to varying degrees. I believe that in the future it will be possible to quantify exactly how sentient each species is (e.g. a dog is 1/4 of a person or a cow is 1/5 of a person). Furthermore, through technology such as EEG, fMRI, and intravenous monitoring of hormone levels, it will be possible to quantify whether a given species is, on average, happy more than sad. Speaking as a living being, I believe that life is on the whole vastly more positive than negative. The balance only tips for the worse when factors such as slavery and torture come into play, which is why I choose not to consume products produced in factory farms, which are the modern implementation of slavery.

In the second paragraph: "In 2017, a reported 11 Titans had gone vegan".

I feel like part of the cultural fascination with flying saucers is that we intuitively feel like it should be possible for someone with advanced technology to levitate without expending power.

We are starting to get there, with quantum locking, which can levitate a type-II superconductor relative to a supporting magnetic field.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws6AAhTw7RA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_pinning

I wonder if it would be physically possible to utilize the Earth's extremely weak magnetic field to support any meaningful mass?

Along similar lines, since AI is considered to be potentially dangerous, by figures from Elon Musk to Stephen Hawking, I would rather our civilization never open this pandora's box. We can solve Earth's problems and even spread to the stars without AI. We can invent fusion reactors and thus nearly free energy without AI. We can engineer biological immortality into our very genes without AI. Why risk playing with a loaded gun?

At least in electrical engineering, we use mental math every day. More specifically, we use approximate mental math (trying to calculate to within about +/- 25% of the correct value) because it's faster than calculating the exact answer when we need a rough estimate of a power, current, voltage, or impedance number. I imagine that fast, approximate mental math is similarly useful in other engineering disciplines.

Is it common for military electronics to have a self-destruct feature to protect technology secrets?

E.g., when damaged beyond repair or abandoned in a hasty retreat, the hardware could ignite a little thermite to incinerate the electronics boards.

> you have to power it to have it hold still

Is it common to work around this by supplementing the electric motor with a disc brake?

Depending where you want to be on the tradeoff between complexity vs energy-efficiency, you could use a hydraulically-powered disc brake in order for the brake to not need power except during state transitions.

This seems like it would make Xperia phones a potentionally great platform for prototyping of IoT devices that would benefit from a cellular radio. The UART port would be used to connect to a microcontroller which would use protocols such as I2C, SPI, and SDIO to connect to peripherals.

Speaking as an engineer, you're supposed to design for the worst-case tolerance stack to be viable...

If 0.01% is out of spec then you need tighter tolerance specs on your individual components or otherwise your design does not mathematically make sense.

This sounds like a design and process control issue as much as anything.

Let me start by saying that I agree that desktop electronics manufacturing will be the "next big thing" in the maker movement, and I am a huge fan.

However, this article does not mention two very important issues. In order to make a circuit board of any interesting complexity (i.e. more than an Arduino and a few LEDs), you need more than 2 copper layers to route your traces on. And, you need VIAs (Vertical Interconnect Access), which are columns of copper that make electrical connections between the layers.

I have used a PCB mill and while it is very useful for making extremely simple circuits, it only lets you mill 2-layer boards, and it does not let you make VIAs (instead you have to manually drill a hole through the board and solder a pin into the hole, and this approach has a much much larger diameter than a real via).

In order to be interesting for "maker" goals such as Linux machines, IoT, and robotics, there needs to be a desktop fab solution that can at the very least make 4-layer boards, with VIAs.

Would the DEC2 mutation be amenable to being given to adults via a gene therapy?

An example of "tangible interaction" is pressing this checkbox in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=100&v=AoWi10YVmfE

In terms of what the projection feels like, this article explains that to some people the laser feels like sandpaper, and to some people it feels like a static shock:

http://www.popsci.com/secret-interactive-holograms-plasma-an...

Haha maybe it's just me, but I actually dislike having my real-life nose block part of my view.

> Binaural means a recording with two microphones spaced at the distance of a human head.

I don't think that's enough. It's about the effect of the shape of the head and ears on the propagation of sound waves. For example, the definition of binaural in the page that you linked to says:

> the head and ear structure affect the way sound waves are picked up