tompccs

17 ms·

151.
by tompccs 7y ago
Something I think I would miss if I ever moved to the US (particularly the west coast): all of your place names sound like they were made up by property developers or estate agents. Maplewood this and Ruby Valley that. In the Old World (or
152.
by tompccs 7y ago
While I applaud the entreperneurship, there is something wrong with the numbers here. 16 spin-outs in one year, at least 16 "founders" of biotech companies...last time I checked most research labs have more than one PhD-trained sc
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by tompccs 7y ago
This reminds be so much of the novel The Trial by Kafka. The sinister feeling of a machine beyond anyone's control or comprehension was a commentary on authoritarianism and bureaucracy but it fits just as well, if not better to our age
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by tompccs 7y ago
This is factually true. There is some controversy regarding PSA screening programmes that they do not improve all-cause mortality. Making surgeries less invasive and less liable to complication, as well as improving screening, is likely to
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Scaling Lifestyle Medicine with Technology – An NHS Doctor's Perspective(blog.pinfoldtech.com)
1 points by tompccs 7y ago|0 comments
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by tompccs 7y ago
Problem is if drivers are spread more thinly between them. But just the news today should have prompted drivers to sign up to other apps.
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by tompccs 7y ago
A few things going on here. This is a continuation of an ongoing battle between Tfl and Uber. Last year Tfl threatened to revoke Ubers' license unless it complied with regulations involving basic safety checks and coorporated with Brit
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by tompccs 7y ago
I think this is correct. The bad news is we are creating systems which minimise the number of geniuses entering each field. In the past, science was an eccentric hobby, not particularly valued and certainly not a viable career option. Today
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by tompccs 7y ago
Great quote. I'd add to that (or perhaps supplant) Tom Holland's observation that our collective cultural points of reference are all steeped in christianity, even when not explicity christian. The superhero trope has strong overt
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The Future of Health(blog.pinfoldtech.com)
1 points by tompccs 7y ago|0 comments
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by tompccs 7y ago
I wrote the parent comment last thing at night before going to bed. On reflection, and having read the article again, I still stand by it, although I couched it in strong terms in response to the smugness and sneering tone of the article. Y
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by tompccs 7y ago
Have you read the whole patent, or are you assuming they just made that one drawing and sent one copy to the manufacturer and one to the patent office?
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by tompccs 7y ago
"Bad for Google" - you're making the opposite point that you think. In practice it doesn't matter who owns the patent, what matters are the licensing terms. Google make hundreds of millions in a day now, and PageRank was
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by tompccs 7y ago
Generally it's not uncommon for companies to be started by licensing existing patents from other companies. The nature of that license matters more than who owns it - things like how long it will last, what you can and can't do, d
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by tompccs 7y ago
What technologies can you think of which didn't have profitable waypoints? - Internet - packet-switching routers for LANs - Microchips - ballistic missile guidance - Nuclear - radioactive tracers, radiotherapy, watch faces, ... - Micro
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by tompccs 7y ago
The only "moonshot" projects which ever worked were military ones. Ie, moon landing, the Manhattan project, etc. In these situations you have a state which can throw virtually unlimited resources at a project (even if it fails! se
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by tompccs 7y ago
The more times someone feels the need to tell you a particular technology is inevitable, the more sceptical you should be. Translation: "we need more money, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future". People working on
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by tompccs 7y ago
Actually, in the UK at least there are VC firms which invest solely in retail and food businesses. Usually they take an already existing restaurant with a single location and turn it into a chain. It is possible to create scalable value in
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by tompccs 7y ago
I am very bear-ish on biotech. These are not systems we humans have built from the ground up. Computers are built by humans from the ground up: literally every aspect of a computer is deterministic and documented. And yet even computers c
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by tompccs 7y ago
Unlike a general, Jobs didn't enter into a series of battles with binary outcomes. He built a company - Apple - from scratch which changed the shape of the world. I'm not saying that Jobs was the only person with that vision and t
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by tompccs 7y ago
People talk about CEOs with "vision", and usually it's a substitute for a more concrete explanation of what the value-add of non-technical upper management is. Reading this exchange is fascinating. Jobs doesn't spell out
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by tompccs 7y ago
Not had a chance to read the paper yet but the ability to find computational shortcuts in a epistemically minimalist way (ie, essentially admitting that we have no idea how to solve the problem and let a computer iteratively work it out) fo
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by tompccs 7y ago
This is so stupid that it reads like a funded hit-piece. To take a few choice quotes: "its battery is a half-a-ton electrochemical machine with thousands of parts and welds, along with wiring, electronics, and cooling. It’s every bit a
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by tompccs 7y ago
Officially, they only store a hash, but this is only a software restriction - I believe it is possible to obtain full images but this may not be possible with the public APIs. In practice it may be possible to reverse-engineer the stored ha
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by tompccs 7y ago
A bit of background on this (I am involved in the ultrasound industry): - The chip Samsung uses is by Qualcomm. Their big claim is that their ultrasound fingerprint scanner is the only US government approved non-optical way of electronicall
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by tompccs 7y ago
Oh yes I agree, and if some enterprising engineer wanted to buy the trademark and start producing them again I'm sure they'd use a servo and a microcontroller to achieve the same effect. The design of the toaster reminds me of the
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by tompccs 7y ago
There's a simple reason why this toaster was discontinued, and that's because it can't be made from commodity components which are used by all toaster manufacturers, as well as in a variety of other domestic appliances. Plus,
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by tompccs 7y ago
WeWork and Uber are viable businesses which are heroically trying to absorb flood of excess capital sloshing around the world today. Both WeWork and Uber have potentially enormous TAMs which can justify insane valuations despite being loss-
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by tompccs 7y ago
Some of the problems are unique to America - for instance, states each have their own regulations, as well as federal ones, which makes nationwide roll-out far costlier. You also have way more geographic concentration of homes in Europe, wh
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by tompccs 7y ago
I enjoyed that, but the physics content is badly wrong, which leads me to doubt the historical accuracy of the rest of it. Still, even if not factually correct it was an interesting essay. A post-modern version of pg's essay on Refragm

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