swernli

To be fair, as the author points out, they did it to themselves to get coverage to work on the project. The name means that WASM can be used in a big way on the web, but I appreciate the perspective that it’s applicable to way more than just the web. Even if the article title is definitely exaggerated for effect in service of that point.

The Azure Quantum website has some good resources for learning about what’s required for performing error corrected runs of Shor’s algorithm in order to defeat current cryptographic schemes: https://quantum.microsoft.com/en-us/tools/quantum-cryptograp...

You can also try a small scale simulation of Shor’s algorithm and a resource estimation sample in the interactive playground available via VS Code for Web: https://vscode.dev/quantum/playground/

Hi Austin, nice to see you on here! Glad you find it useful. If you want to try out the VSCode.dev experience too, check out https://vscode.dev/quantum/playground/. Let us know what you think!

An alternative to this that also runs in the browser is the Azure Quantum katas at https://quantum.microsoft.com/en-us/experience/quantum-katas. It has an introduction to quantum computing concepts with exercises in Q# you can evaluate in the browser, as well as a quantum focused Copilot you can use with login.

(Full disclosure: I work on the team that builds the developer tools for Q#)

Fair point, but still nothing compared to OS development, where you usually can't release a new version without having to worry about people trying to run it on 10 year old computers and everyone expecting entrenched, old enterprise software that uses all APIs you wish you could deprecate to continue working flawlessly. A lot of developers can't have the luxury of using the latest and greatest tech because they have to worry about existing customers. They can't start from scratch without upending existing revenue streams.

This is exactly what Microsoft has been building towards with the Xbox. The espn app on there is fantastic, and just added the ability to watch two events in split screen, while watching a customized news/score crawl at the bottom of the screen. You can invite friends to watch with you, and participate in quizzes relevant to the game you are watching. All this with Kinect voice support too. It feels pretty damn futuristic. And now they've announced apps for exactly the kind of services the article talks about: HBO Go, SyFy, Comcast On-Demand, etc. Add in the fact that it's already a game console, and I'd say they are closer to creating a central media hub than anyone else.

Yes, it would help show that the term "app" is generic, but that isn't really Amazon's claim. It's a bit more subtle than that. They are claiming that "app store" is a generic term for a store that sells downloadable applications. Apple isn't denying that either "app" or "store" are generic, but rather that the combination into "app store" has specific meaning when applied to the realm of applications that provide a digital storefront to sell additional applications. They might even have a case here, as these kinds of trademark things usually come down to whether or not the public associates the term with a specific source. Basically, it would be considered unfair for Amazon to use the term "app store" if it has a connection to Apple in the public mind, because that would mean that Amazon is technically trading on Apple's reputation. That's what the law would seek to protect, and that might be how Apple could win this case.

Your response reminds me very much of Atlas Shrugged. That idea is central to the book. I recommend it as an interesting read, though not everyone cares for Aynn Rand's style.

That's exactly the problem. From what I've seen, the reason people don't want to hire overqualified applicants is because they know those people would be doing exactly what you are advising: coasting in the job for 3 months while waiting for something better to come along. There's nothing wrong with that from the point of view of the person, but what about the company? They spend time and money training someone, only to have the bail at the first sign of greener pastures? Where's the return on investment there? Employers tend to prefer to hire someone who at least seems like they might stick around long enough for them to get their money's worth.

I think that's exactly the point: while those myriad of technologies allow you to mitigate some of the downsides of distance, they still don't have the accidental factor that random hallway conversations have. I can walk by someone having a cool conversation in the break room and join in. I can have lunch with my coworkers and seamsly switch back forth between work discussions and personal ones. And I don't have to follow anything, check any mailboxes, or type any responses arbitrarily limited to a certain number of characters.

So funny, and so true: "When I get a text alert, it always makes me happy, even before I read the message. When my phone rings, I think, Uh-oh, what fresh hell is this?"

The term "Face Book" as a resource for seeing peoples names and a info along with a photo in a less formal yearbook-style setting is not new at all. My high school had a "Face book" in paperback form that was distributed at the beginning of the year to help folks get to know one another. That was in 2001. The Harvard site was merely an online version of this kind of flat, searchable list, with no user edittable content. You put in a name, major, or dorm, and it would show you a list of pictures of students that matched that search criteria. That's it. Much as I love tales of Zuckerberg sneakily stealing the idea for thefacebook.com, the Harvard site you mention was so basic that I'd say it's no more the precursor to facebook than any online yearbook or student directory.

I have a weird theory about that, actually. I have seen some similar issues in the Seattle area when moving from one part of the city to the next; the signal is at full strength, but the call suddenly drops, almost as if I'm crossing a boundary. Now, I preface this by saying I know little to nothing about the cell phone network handles calls, but thinking about this made me wonder if it had anything to do with handing off the connection from one tower to the next. Maybe it's better to have fewer, higher power towers to minimize hand-off than many low powered ones. Of course, that's exactly what most people don't want: high powered cell towers blasting them with radiation.

But I have to wonder if this problem is exaggerated by the 3G connection maintained by the phone. My dad used to have the same problem in NY (not the city), but he switched to edge and stopped dropping the calls. He just turns on 3G when he knows he wants to do some faster web browsing, which is rarely for him. Maybe you could try turning off your 3G and see if it reduces your problem in LA?

I can't believe there hasn't been more buzz about this. I own an iPad already, but I still find myself wanting one of these. Toshiba needs to do something to get some Apple-style publicity behind this so people can see what's coming.

More info on specs from here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100621/tc_pcworld/toshibal...

Funny, because this particular article seems to argue the opposite. Two places in particular stand out to me where the article raised the specter of automation and outsourcing to scare people away from engineering-type jobs: >Meanwhile, well-paying white-collar jobs such as computer programming have become vulnerable to outsourcing to foreign countries.

and

>But he offers this advice: "Don't train yourself or your children [in work] that a computer can do or a smart kid in China or India can do. Because that's ferocious competition."

Why the gloom and doom over science/engineering/math fields, when it's those fields that other articles have pointed to as the few with strong job prospects? There is some serious inconsistency between this article and other articles that have been posted around here lately, and the general tone leads me to believe this was a last minute fluff piece put together by someone who wasn't really paying very close attention.

> There are huge ranges of jobs that a humanities degree qualifies you for that you can't get without one--- even a bunch of stuff that's unrelated to the degree, like HR or various secretarial jobs.

I think that's exactly the problem. Why should that degree qualify you? It's unrelated! That's what the article and some of the comments are trying to point out: we shouldn't have careers where the college degree is treated like a checkbox instead of being a relevant indicator of your ability in the field in question. What does close examination of Chaucer or Shakespeare have to do with being a secretary? Why would someone who doesn't have a degree in Comparitive Literature make a worse secretary than someone who does? The answer is that it shouldn't.

Fair point (though those numbers only include Xbox360, PS3, and computer, not the myriad of mobile incarnations). There could be a lot of RTS players out there who have been quiet over the years, just waiting for this opportunity. But the same way the post brings up Street Fighter 4 (a non-FPS modern sequel to original old school game with "big" following) and it's ability to parley huge buzz and vocal fanbase into decent but not great sales, I have major doubts about how StarCraft II can stack up against the current industry standards of success. Even more so if they are alienating their core demographic by removing cherished multiplayer features.

Maybe this will find success not through the older generation that remembers the original, but instead by giving rise to a new generation of RTS players who never even knew what they were missing in this FPS and MMO dominated world.

No, that is not a lot of StarCraft players. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (a game I have not interest in, personally) sold 4.7 million units in it's first day. That's 3 times as many units in 24 hours as the entire year of StarCraft sales you quoted. Over 5 million sales in it's first month in the US alone, compared to 9.5 million over 10 years worldwide for StarCraft. Was StarCraft a big deal in it's heyday? Sure, no one is trying to deny that. But compared to the modern gaming industry, it's a drop in the bucket. Modern Warfare 2 apparently has approx. 25 million unique players as of March 2010. We live in a world now where a video game release can outdo a major motion picture in openning weekend profits. StarCraft may have a venerable history and loud crowd of fervent fans, but they have a frighteningly small portion of today's gaming crowd, especially in the US and UK.

Note: Sales data from Wikipedia, which has links to the original articles with the results.

> The benefit of a highly expressive language is that you can make your code more obvious.

I completely agree with your point about the expressiveness of poetry. Yes, there is some high initial investment in understanding poetry (in spoken language or programming language). And in return, you get a higher level of expressiveness. People look at the high level of investment, and say that the poetry isn't worth it, because they mistakenly think that it will require that level of investment every time. But like any language construct, once you really learn it, it becomes natural to you and doesn't require that high investment each time.

I wrote a Turing machine generator in arc once. To me, that was the prime example of the power and pitfalls of poetic language. At the time, I was practicing lisp like languages a lot, so it just flowed out off me. It was short and very powerful, and I could read through the dozen or so lines and see the equivalent logic expanding in my head. It would've taken many more lines of C++ or Python to get that logic working. Now that I'm out of practice, going back and reading it makes the whole thing seem completely inscrutable. That doesn't mean the language is any less easy or less expressive, it means I'm less good at seeing it.

My guess is that much of the syncing and streaming will require the devices to be on the same local subnet/wifi. Otherwise things get hairy, as you pointed out.

Proof of concept can also mean a demonstration that the technology is effective, not just "I got a bunch of users and I think I might be able to monetize them." If he's patenting a method of distribution, I'd assume the former is more useful than the latter.

But the time required to learn a new technology, at least enough to use it successfully, is much lower for "millenials." And it's scary low for the kids in middle school now, who learned how to spell from animated computer programs and could probably click a mouse before they could write. I think your point is valid, that the older management don't have the time, but I'd say because of the difference in time it takes to learn, younger management would be able to make the time for a new system.

This generation gap is apparent to me, and it's all the more frustrating as I consider myself an outlier in it. I'm young (firmly in the middle of the millenials by this definition), but I identify more with the values and communication styles of the older generation. I love the technology behind it, but I don't use it. This leaves me with the prospect of looking like a horrible anachronism when myself and my peers are in the positions of power.

Sorry for the accidental downvote. I was trying to upvote and missed!

Maybe that's what all this discontent with Facebook is growing toward. As people look around and realize that their relationships aren't really being enhanced by this new technology, but instead trivialized and put to work for advertising dollars, they will start to develop an electronic/social immune system that causes them to operate in a way that more clearly protects their privacy and best interest. Perhaps then we'll see more technology designed to submit to the user, instead of the other way around.

Unlikely, and perhaps too much to ask. But I'm hopeful.

Couldn't an HTML parser be art? I don't think of an a parser as being like the wood used for a sculpture. The HTML itself is the wood, and perhaps the parser is the lathe. I think there is a false dichotomy between tools as purely functional and the product as the art. There can be real artistry in a well constructed tool. A well written, efficient parser can be beautiful to behold.

Maybe this comes down to the difference between something constructed purely for artistic purposes and something constructed in an artistic way to fulfill a broader purpose. Or maybe it's just a matter of personal taste, the way some people will spend hours arguing about whether a soup can is modern art or just pretentious trash. Personally, I'd say that if people are moved and/or inspired by it, than you can make the case that it is art.

Yep. I can't seem to edit it now, but the first sentence definitely meant have "protects" not "projects."

I think the tact that it is hardware might make it a different game. When viewing patents on circuit design or specific hardware devices, there are usually circuit diagrams and drawings. In general, hardware patents have a lot more reproducable specifics internally than software patents.

Whether or not people understand encryption doesn't change how well it projects them. The difference between "encrypted" and "unencrypted and not evil" is like the difference between a car with airbags and a car that has a little sticker on the dash that says "Try not to crash."

Obviously, no security is perfect, and given sufficiently evil central repository you'd still end up a situation of mistrust. But rather than take a chance with my private information simply because the people holding it tell me they aren't evil, I'll take responsibility for my own data and do my best as a user to make the right choices about how to treat that which I desire to keep private. If that means being picky about what I share/post, that's fine. If that means I need to run my own host and control access myself, well that's the burden I can choose to take to give me the peace of mind I'm looking for.

Yes, and children are still taught that Bernoulli's principle is the reason why planes can fly. There are a lot of interesting physics misconceptions that have become widely accepted, but because physics (and perhaps science in general) is not a major focus of our culture, no one really worries about these misconceptions being out there.

Well, no one except the physicists :).