api

281 ms·

1. 16321.▲
   by api 15y ago

   People will defend their self-inflicted misery. This is a big part of the dynamic of alcoholism, drug addiction, bad relationships, and stupid dogmatic ideologies. I've always thought that hell would be a place where everyone burns for eter
2. 16322.▲
   by api 15y ago

   The whole virtual reality idea has been completely destroyed for me by a couple things. The simplest of these is: why impose a 3D real-world access model on an N-dimensional random access memory system? I mean, that's what the web is. I can
3. 16323.▲
   by api 16y ago

   North Korea is effectively an abusive cult in the form of an entire nation. It's amazing that such a thing can exist, and when I really think about it the existence of something like North Korea raises disturbing questions about the nature
4. 16324.▲
   by api 16y ago

   Can't you avoid this by just always buying content via Amazon.com and then downloading it to your device, and avoiding actually shopping on the device? That's what I do.
5. 16325.▲
   by api 16y ago

   Math is a language. The problem is that this language is archaic, difficult to teach, and is generally taught very poorly. I remember learning calculus in college. The professor went up to the board, scribbled down symbols, and took us thro
6. 16326.▲
   by api 16y ago

   In terms of the "cold sterility of their design," I only have this to say: In industrial design, minimal is a synonym for good.
7. 16327.▲
   by api 16y ago

   Two words: peak oil. Two more words: electric car. In the next 30 years a significant fraction of the transportation and other oil-powered infrastructure is going to get connected to the power grid. Solar and wind can barely make a dent in
8. 16328.▲
   by api 16y ago

   I would put it toward the high end myself: 2100 or later. We have achieved decent success at specialized AI: pattern recognition, chess players, text to speech, speech to text, flying planes, even driving cars (which is harder for AI than f
9. 16329.▲
   by api 16y ago

   I never got the Hadoop craze. It performs terribly on memory and CPU, which is odd for something that prides itself on being HPC-oriented.
10. 16330.▲
    by api 16y ago

    The barrier to ubiquitous encryption on the web is the requirement that everyone purchase an overprice certificate. What we need is HTTPC, which would be SSL without verification. It would not show up as verified like HTTPS-- no green bar,
11. 16331.▲
    by api 16y ago

    Consciousness uploading? Consciousness uploading is to the iPod as interstellar starships are to commuter aircraft. Actually, it might be worse than that. Right now I think we have better ideas about how to build an interstellar starship (O
12. 16332.▲
    by api 16y ago

    I disagree that fashion is frivolous. A shirt is not a shirt is not a shirt. One whole half of the human brain seems dedicated to aesthetics. Are you saying that one half of the totality of the human intellect is worthless and frivolous? Ae
13. 16333.▲
    by api 16y ago

    This is getting off-topic but... I don't think it's just underestimating the rate. The problem is that they're just way off, and their hype has a defocusing effect. I don't think it's harmless. If you look into where real innovation happens
14. 16334.▲
    by api 16y ago

    I'm sure it will be done by governments and/or big business, and will be under their control... at first...
15. 16335.▲
    by api 16y ago

    Not quite. The missing tech is, I think, in the area of manufacturing. The settlers would have to unpack and boot up a complete industrial infrastructure since the nearest Radio Shack or Home Depot is 300,000,000 miles away. But we're movin
16. 16336.▲
    by api 16y ago

    Theoretically true... maybe I'm being too harsh. I just really dislike fantasy hype being sold as just-around-the-corner tech by the likes of Drexler and Kurzweil, so I enjoy bashing it upside the head every now and then. As far as I can se
17. 16337.▲
    by api 16y ago

    Nanotechnology is hype. It already exists... it's called biology. It is possible to get a fair idea of its limitations from studying biology, since nature has been exploring it for about five billion years. What is not hype is this: http:/
18. 16338.▲
    by api 16y ago

    What I love about Apple's success? It's mostly based on design : good UI design and good aesthetic design. Apple is almost a fashion company. It's not based on any of the things that the windup MBA idiots always harp on: marketing, perform
19. 16339.▲
    by api 16y ago

    Reddit is down, so I got more work done today.
20. 16340.▲
    by api 16y ago

    I've thought for a very long time that the MBA is the western equivalent of the Soviet apparatchik: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparatchik "Members of the "apparat" were frequently transferred between different areas of responsibility,
21. 16341.▲
    by api 16y ago

    That is a huge blind spot in libertarian thinking: the failure to realize that a lot of "private" industry is not actually private.
22. 16342.▲
    by api 16y ago

    Actually, evolution does tend to be progressive from the point of view of selfish genes. It's just not necessarily progressive from the point of view of things like creature comforts. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. Following
23. 16343.▲
    by api 16y ago

    Other stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avida http://adam.ierymenko.name/nanopond.shtml
24. 16344.▲
    by api 16y ago

    "I don't wanna use IPv6! I'll have to change things! Waaaah!" Just shut up. Do it. Do the transition. Yes, it will be hard. Yes, it might break shit. No, IPv6 is not perfect. But do this transition once and we have enough address space
25. 16345.▲
    by api 16y ago

    If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough to push yourself to the boundary-of-ability where you learn. There is actual basis for this in learning theory.
26. 16346.▲
    by api 16y ago

    All on the strength of design and aesthetics .
27. 16347.▲
    by api 16y ago

    In terms of actual real-world tangible importance, I consider Alan Turing more important than Einstein. He and von Neumann are possibly the greatest scientists of the 20th century. BTW, another thing people often don't know about Turing and
28. 16348.▲
    by api 16y ago

    Well then I'm mistaken about that, but I don't think the cultural trend that I'm talking about is vapor. I sometimes feel like an idiot for spending my life getting good at doing things, when I should have spent my life getting good at self
29. 16349.▲
    by api 16y ago

    Watch Rocky II, the one with Rocky fighting the almost-robotic Russian. That movie explains a lot about the American myth-of-itself. (And it is rubbish, of course. During the cold war the USA was far more high-tech-- far closer to the robot
30. 16350.▲
    by api 16y ago

    Raising the social status of scientists is one of the most important things the U.S. can do to shake off our 30 year slump... I think part of the problem is how we've deified the MBA/"executive" as a fundamentally higher class of being. I