zeteo

91 ms·

811.
by zeteo 15y ago
A really interesting melange. This is a Spanish guy, using Japanese metalworking techniques, and Imperial measurement units... (They use metric in Japan and Spain, don't they?) For the purists: using modern technologies is OK, as long as yo
812.
by zeteo 15y ago
>Just think about computer chips. On any long voyage they'd break down so you need to be able to make new ones. Chips are small and light enough that you can bring along a thousand times more chips than you need, at negligible additiona
813.
by zeteo 15y ago
Take the tomato genome and look at any random pigmenting gene. There are a finite number of mutations (flips, insertions, deletions) to change that into a gene producing glow-in-the-dark proteins. All of those mutations can, and do, occur w
814.
by zeteo 15y ago
>should we really be messing with systems so much more complex than we currently understand? The first stage in understanding complexity is invariably "messing" with it. If people always chose to stay away from things they didn't unders
815.
by zeteo 15y ago
Yes, submarines managed to sink a few battleships when they had the element of surprise on their side. As soon as anti-submarine tactics adapted, the battleships were again reasonable safe against torpedo delivery systems. (Even in the 1890
816.
by zeteo 15y ago
Encirclement was by no means discovered at Stalingrad! The Germans themselves created plenty of kessels in '39-'43. And the classical example is, of course, Hannibal's strategy at Cannae.
817.
by zeteo 15y ago
The phalanx was a really bright idea for its day. The Greeks were able to defeat much larger Persian armies (Marathon, Plataea) with their phalanxes. And the phalanx was a crucial part of Philip II and Alexander's combined arms system and t
818.
by zeteo 15y ago
"in their heyday of displacement speed vessels, [battleships] were the fastest things on the high seas" Cruisers and destroyers were always faster than battleships (they had to be), displacement hull and all. It gives no confidence when you
819.
by zeteo 15y ago
You seem to be issuing a wholesale approval of the Soviet economic system as just and moral. Are you actually serious? There's a very big difference between the Washington Monument and a dairy farm. A dairy farm is supposed to be an economi
820.
by zeteo 15y ago
"some more machismo [...], some cooking experience [...] or maybe some more muscle -- all those would've done a lot more to get me a higher paying job than math." In the short run.
821.
by zeteo 15y ago
I should have been more clear and said "require" instead of "involve". Yes, math can improve almost anything, but you can do an acceptable job at McD with no math knowledge. Still, it's a McD job, and if you had learnt some math then you co
822.
by zeteo 15y ago
I think the question is badly formulated. "When" will you use math implies that, no matter what, you will end up using it. This is simply not true. The vast majority of jobs out there, from flipping burgers to fixing toilets, involve nothin
823.
by zeteo 15y ago
Today's CompSci programs consist of an unholy melange of Software Engineering and theory. Both aspects are rather messed up. The Software Engineering part is done badly because the slope is too abrupt and ends too quickly. The Java-based cu
824.
by zeteo 15y ago
"Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing [...] Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. Destruction is a variant of done." Sounds like an elephant trying to run the china shop. A little dose of
825.
by zeteo 15y ago
"It is only a small exaggeration to say that the Spitfire was the plane that saved the free world." There are many other reasons why Britain was never invaded in 1940: the Dunkirk evacuation saving the trained part of the army, the extensiv
826.
by zeteo 15y ago
It sounds more like a case of political corruption, rather than unregulated market failure. I'm not saying market failure does not exist, just that this article doesn't seem to prove it.
827.
by zeteo 15y ago
This whole argument amounts to "X is different, therefore you should be scared of X". It may hold some water for aliens, but not for AIs because of a very simple reason: it will be us who will create them. We will know more about their inne
828.
by zeteo 15y ago
Basing a whole argument upon the extensive use of the term human will not do much good, unless it's very carefully defined first. What exactly do you mean when you say AI won't be human? After all, a mere 70 years ago the ability to play
829.
by zeteo 15y ago
> I suspect the vast majority of people wouldn't kill someone even if it benefited them and they knew they would never get caught. I wasn't referring to individualized, but rather to large-scale violence. And, having read a bit about hi
830.
by zeteo 15y ago
The evolutionary baggage is most definitely not one of cooperation, at least not beyond our immediate "monkeysphere"; millennia of wars and massacres bear witness to that. The primary reason we usually avoid violence is not that we find it
831.
by zeteo 15y ago
Yes, any intelligence can and will be selfish to some degree. But we can live with that. It might require some legal and cultural adjustment, but it's perfectly possible to have artificial intelligence in our midst without having it decide
832.
by zeteo 15y ago
And the AI also can use you for something else, or leave you alone altogether and follow other pursuits. It's also theoretically possible that some intelligent person you just met is actually dr. Hannibal Lecter and would like to use your
833.
by zeteo 15y ago
The fact that, ninety years later, (slightly) less outlandish scenarios can be imagined for the human species' Suicide By Robotics does not change the fact that the whole concept was originally a marginal offshoot of thinking about the prol
834.
by zeteo 15y ago
I find it frustrating that the null hypothesis for the outcome of Artificial Intelligence is always The Coming Robot Rebellion. The historical roots of this go back all the way to the play R.U.R., back in a time when Marxism was all the int
835.
by zeteo 16y ago
The first half of the article, which makes the point that there are enough contradictions in law to allow for the deduction of any politically desirable conclusions, is quite compelling. I believe that most judges are rather moderate in thi
836.
by zeteo 16y ago
Google Maps has a slightly older picture. The whole neighbourhood has been under development in the last decade, with bin Laden's compound being built around 2005 and other houses coming up around it afterwards (you can notice the differenc
837.
by zeteo 16y ago
The Google Maps location that is ventured around (starting with Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8487... ) is not the actual location of the compound. There are aerial photos of the compound in the briefi
838.
by zeteo 16y ago
>When C was created, it’s main competitor was assembly language C was created at a time of great effervescence in programming language design. FORTRAN and COBOL were well-entrenched, and it also had to compete against the likes of Algol
839.
by zeteo 16y ago
I don't think either the rule of law or the corruption situation are significantly better in Africa or the Middle East than in Russia.
840.
by zeteo 16y ago
How lucky for prof. Smil that he included that tangential sentence about Lise Meitner's Austrian passport! Otherwise the whole of his learned research might have become "weird and suspect" for our non-whiny, non-defensive, full of political

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