QuantumRoar

Bands on Bandcamp usually pay more for their equipment and concerts than they earn from it. Those tiny independent bands are the most honest bunch of musicians you can find who do music by themselves and for the sake of music -- not for the sole purpose of generating revenue. There are people in there who rehearse in their own basements and who pay with the own money for recording sessions just for you to be able to listen to it.

You can listen to whole songs on Bandcamp because they want you to hear their music and they want you to enjoy it. That is the most important aspect (in contrast to these money-making, oppressive, DMCA-take-down-wielding music giants). If you don't like it, move on with your life. But if you like their music, consider tossing them a few dollars. It's a better investment than anything else related to buying music.

Support the music you like!

(Or there won't be any left of it...)

Try these:

Ochre https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N1OX319f9o

Atomos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwhZ3CC080E

Koan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-YgxXc9_w0

Kettel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0yv66Z3Nq0

Easily Embarrassed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOZuZWf9T5E

They generally float my coding boat.

I'm too young to remember anything about the earlier days of computing. But somehow, it always puts a smile on my face to see how these fossilized bitflippers look like and how they work.

> Instead of one startup spending a lot of time thinking and researching (and maybe missing the market window if there was one), let ten startups just assume and go for it. Maybe nine will be wrong and fail and one will be right and succeed.

But that'd be something like evolution or anthropic computing. In order to find a solution to a hard problem, write down something. If it is not a solution, kill yourself. Conditioned on looking at anything at all, you look at the correct solution.

Or we could use the distinct advantage of humans and think about it properly.

Really? Is that the way some people reason about their competitors? Something like: "Oh, I guess they're just stupid and we're so smart."

Who in their right mind would do such a thing. Even if the competitors really are stupid (who knows?), it doesn't give you any advantage to assume that.

I'm sad they didn't show how many people use "teeheehee." I don't know when I started that habit but now I'm using it occasionally.

It does say this as a footnote:

   "We limit this study to posts and comments and do not look at direct messages through Messenger."

"[...] in order to survive, we need to supplicate ourselves to horrible entities whose motivations we are literally not capable of understanding."

Feels familiar. I am trying to protect my privacy to the best of my knowledge but I feel that I'm losing it to several entities whose identities and ends are rather... cloudy...

There's definitely some truth in the Feynman algorithm. If I had to explain how I did some of my research, I'd probably say it similar to that.

While sometimes the manual work to actually show that it works is quite small, other times it may take a month or even longer just to write down the derivation properly.

Ideas that come up after step 2, i.e. "think really hard", are ultimately just that: ideas. You need to ensure that you're not fooling yourself or that you have a case of confirmation bias (skipping steps in a proof because you think it's obvious while it actually isn't). Thus, I'd say step 3, "write down the solution", is at least as important as step 2.

Would be nice if an error is thrown when the LaTeX can't be parsed instead of just printing whatever TeX-foo you've written down.

Also, I'd like to see Tikz and pgfplots support :)

Yeah, equations seem to be completely broken on Firefox. Is there a reason you use Mathjax?

Personally, I prefer using LaTeX -> PDF -> SVG and simply including them as images. Nothing's going to break with that, I guess.

SOI is better than the planar design since you can fully deplete the channel. But it's worse than FinFETs when you consider the control of the gate on the channel and when it comes to thermals. The oxide below the channel also acts as a thermal isolator. So the heat can't be transported away as efficiently.

The upside of SOI is that it's easier to manufacture. That's why we see so much of it around (AFAIK, GlobalFoundries and TSMC still do it).

But the actual way forward is the FinFET. The 7nm chip from the article is actually built with FinFETs. Otherwise that thing would probably not work very well.

There's no one way forward. A lot of things might happen and it will only be decided once a company actually ships a new and viable technology.

Remember what Intel did with the FinFETs. It was the same discussion then (What could the next thing be? III-V, SOI, blabla?). At one point, Intel simply came on stage, surprised us with FinFETs and everybody was like: "I guess it's FinFET, then." The idea of FinFETs is actually from the 90s or so. The sole reason why noone did it before is because noone could actually build them at scale (AFAIK, Intel is still the only company that ships FinFETs).

Keep in mind that manufacturing is very hard. It is very unlikely that there will be more than incremental steps. Just changing the channel material is already quite the task.

Also, don't believe any "This is the next transistor!" stuff. You can find these things a lot but they rarely mean more than some department trying to make a bit of publicity.

III-V semiconductors like Gallium Arsenide have a high mobility and are probably tested right now in Research labs around the world for CMOS-transistors (it is already in use for something like solar panels). But there's always the problem of how to scale these things as well as silicon based manufacturing.

Further out is still some stuff like graphene or carbon nanotubes. Of course, the structure of the transistor itself might change, which could enable further downscaling. There's already been a switch from planar to Silicon-on-Insulator (e.g. GlobalFoundries, TSMC, Samsung(?)) and Intel has the TriGate (everybody else calls it FinFet).

One day we might see the natural evolution to the gate-all-around FET, which would be something akin to a silicon nanowire (note: planar has the gate on top, FinFET has gate on top, left, and right of the channel). However, there are huge roadblocks in manufacturing to solve. And this could really be an issue. We might very well be able to build at the 5nm node. But if we can't build them fast and cheap enough, noone's going to do it. Manufacturers are already triple-patterning and doing all kinds of voodoo just to keep up with Moore's law.

Good old silicon might actually stay a central part for a much, much longer time.

I don't think that this is targeted at HPC. I suppose it's more for people who already know C# and need a bit of symbolic computation.

I looked for that once but couldn't find anything. However, it's quite easy to write and manipulate expressions in Haskell. The type system and recursion are a good fit for that kind of task (also, there's an expression parser).

If you only need it for some simple things, I'd recommend writing it yourself. It shouldn't take too long.

It's some time ago that I tried exporting, so I don't recall exactly what I did. As far as I know, I tried it with that command line tool but it simply wouldn't export everything.

There's also the issue that if it does export something, you have to accept every exported item individually. If you search the internet, you'll find people who wrote scripts for "automatic accept-clicking."

But as I said, once I looked up what it exported, I noticed that it was far from complete.But maybe there's some command line option buried somewhere that will accomplish what I wanted to do...

The whole export thing is just terribly broken.

It would be nice if I could at least export from the OS X keychain (you can always write up a simple script to add them to pass). Internet accounts can be exported, but all the rest won't work.

I've given up on it, but I'd like to know if anyone might have found something that I overlooked.

Recently, I bought a Macbook Pro 13" and it was unusable for me. The effective resolution is to large in the standard pixel doubling mode. Switching it to something smaller cripples the operating system. Since I switch workspaces quite frequently, I can't live with a stuttering animation. That would have driven me crazy.

Not only that, the panel (or diffuser oder backlight or whatever is in there) is loose. So if you tilt it, it's going to move and make a soft but audible sound. I had two brand new Macbook Pros which had that issue. One of them should have been repaired but I was told that it is "normal."

Look, we've moved away from spindles to No More Moving Parts. And they tell me, that the display panel moves around depending on the direction of gravitation?

These things pretty much make the Macbook Pro such an annoying computer that I couldn't use it and sent it back.

The sad part about the rant of the article's author and my complaints is that there is nowhere else to go once you've been locked into OS X. It becomes a question of what is the least terrible choice.

You wait generation after generation hoping they'd make a computer that is just right for you. But they won't. That's the point where you end up ranting on the internet or otherwise get really pissed.

And once you decide to go Linux, you might end up happier but you can forget any interoperability between Linux and OS X/iOS. That is, if you care about that. I don't even care about the last 321 iOS interoperability features for OS X. I just want a computer that works like I want it, not like Apple wants it.

It's not about it being a surprise that this happens as long as it is allowed. It's a surprise that there are no laws in place to protect consumers.

Especially in times when most "tech savvy" people advice the use of cloud services for backups, syncing, sharing and communication, a sale of a company becomes a privacy nightmare for those who listened and tried out these services. There should be more people that spell out that it is not safe to upload your data to someone else's computer.

Would you upload a backup of your data to my computer? Of course not. Would you do it if I made an over-designed one page website and offered an iOS/Android app? There are a lot who do that every day. Once the deed is done, I shouldn't be allowed to do whatever the hell I want with your data. Selling or sharing data with third parties should be strictly opt-in, no matter the circumstances.

Imagine your Dropbox, Password manager or backups being sold to the highest bidder. A company which you previously trusted becomes greedy and sells you out. There's nothing you can do about it because "you should have read the small print 10 years ago, when you started using the service." It's not surprising that there are people who'd sell you out. What is surprising is that it is allowed.

Switzerland publicly voted on a strict 12x salary limit for CEOs compared to junior employees. The proposal was rejected after 65% of voters opposed it.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-11-24/swiss-vote...

The article also says that the same law (with public voting) would have had a much larger success rate in Germany where apparently three quarters of the population would vote in favor.

I wonder how such a public vote would turn out in the USA.

I think you can still boot from the network. If that's correct, then this whole thing gets ever more mysterious for me.

Well, I was arguing with them for 10 Minutes. They tried to get my administrator password (because I use FileVault) and I refused. They wouldn't even look at the display issue (not software or data related) without the password.

In the end I just wiped the hard drive. They should've asked for that immediately.

How about asking to backup your data (which they ask anyway) and asking that the disk be wiped. There are no problems then.

Handing over your password means that there is practically no barrier for a technician to obtain all your data, all your private keys, etc. It only takes one guy with malicious intend to make your life miserable. Often, people also store their work related keys on their computers. So how about opening your company up for someone else?

The issue is that not all people are careful with that. And the code of conduct of Apple to just trust any technician 100% is completely wrong. Setting up a secure infrastructure means, you should assume that parts of it are already compromised. In that case, assume the technician is trying to obtain as much private data as possible, how can they still keep their customers safe?

I disagree. Not even someone who's there to help you should know your passwords. Consider that many people use the same password for a lot of accounts. On top of that, they already have your email address. By asking their customers for their passwords, they don't just ask them to hand over all the data on their computers, but they also make them vulnerable with regards to their internet accounts.

If I have a hardware problem with my display, I don't want them to read my hard drive. Apparently they still try to do so, which I think is a severe violation of privacy.

I'd have completely understood if they'd asked me to wipe my hard drive because of some data crawling Apple hardware test with an uplink to HQ. So they do have a choice "Can you make a backup and wipe your hard drive?" But asking me for my encryption password means they fail to understand why people encrypt and they don't care for the integrity of your computing.

It works with a Guest account, if you don't encrypt your hard drive. If you use FileVault, they specifically need your administrator password. So what are they actually doing there?

I added a little bit to my comment above. They are asking people for administrator passwords and put them into forms in their computer system. Rule number one of computing is that you shouldn't ever tell anybody your passwords. Asking for it is ridiculous. Considering how casual they acted, I can only assume that quite a lot of people actually told them. That makes me really worried.

Making a speech is easy, compared to actually doing the right thing.

Just a month ago, I was asked by an employee of an Apple Certified Service Provider to decrypt my hard drive in order for Apple to make a "hardware test". There was an issue with my display, but they insisted that Apple's hardware test needed to have access to the data on my hard drive and send information back to Apple via the Internet. What about privacy, now?

So, don't believe anything they tell you. If you want to be secure, you need to take care of it yourself.

Edit: Just to make it clear, the employees were asking me, to hand over my administrator password, which should be added to their database, in order for the technician to successfully run Apple's hardware tests. This is literally the most insane thing that ever happened to me...

> I think there is a stigma attached going out alone though - I have random people ask me if I am alone and seem surprised by the answer.

I've been doing things alone a lot since I moved to another city. And it really seems weird to the people I talk to.

"Are you waiting for someone?"

"No."

"Are you alone?"

"No. Look around. There are so many people here."

I think the article is quite correct with the spot light theory. People are way too concerned about what others might think. So it actually seems to be a good thing that I mostly don't care about that.

One downside for me is that – I asked a random stranger about that – it seems I don't look approachable. She said, it seemed to her that she needed to say something smart to me rather than just asking me if I want to have a drink with her. I haven't figured out what the reason is but I would really like to change that.

> If they make you feel good, or convince you that they are doing good work then should they get more business? Is that rational? What if they are lying or exaggerating?

It is certainly more rational to believe a company should get more business if they can convince you that they're doing good work or better work than others. In order to protect customers from lying or exaggerations, there are (ideally) laws in place that should give you the right to return whatever it is that you bought. The whole discussion loses its purpose if we include fraud or otherwise illegal tactics.

> How about morality? How about if a charity uses these tactics in their fund raising?

That's a tricky question. I think you could reframe it into: Is it morally justifiable to do bad things in order to ultimately achieve a greater good? Morally, the answer is no since the morality of a society are a set of rules that determine what can be done and can't be done (instances of these rules can be found in the law). So, if something can't be done morally (e.g. child labour), you simply can't do it, whatever the context might be.

On the other hand, pricing tactics are not illegal and there's probably not enough consensus to derive morality from it. However, ethically, from my personal viewpoint, I would argue that it amounts to manipulation and therefore deceits people. Thus, I can not endorse charities that use manipulation, no matter the context. After all, if you want to do something good for people, why would you try to manipulate the ones trying to help you?