I am writing a book about this topic. I started my career in 1978 at Bell Labs and worked in 3 different startups after that. After 45 years in R&D, I have recently retired. So many times, the inspiration for new inventions we worked on came from unexpected sources; the arts, culture, music, history and many other sources. And I said we on purpose because rarely did a new invention come from one person, it was almost always from collaboration on a team. My conclusion is that invention so often comes from a team of well rounded people with knowledge in many areas and the ability to work in a team. I wonder if the decline in the productivity in R&D comes from a decline in these attributes?
Simple hack for Sam. Hire a bunch of people for some nominal amount. They do not have to do anything and they know nothing about AI. Then let Zuck waste his wad paying out signing bonuses to fake employees.
Can a human who is a sociopath express heartfelt condolences? Perhaps they can mimic words and phrases they know are the appropriate words for the occasion but lack the true emotion.
Sperm whales have the largest brains on earth but they have not invented fire, the wheel or internal combustion engine or nuclear weapons... Oh wait. Hmmm.
I recently retired after 45 years in tech. I started out in 1978 at Bell Labs. I have had great jobs and terrible jobs. Great bosses and horrific bosses. And all the things in between. I did not just survive, I thrived and beyond and worked at 3 start ups and a bunch of other companies large and small. What I learned is to not to be afraid. Regardless of what is happening around you. Fear is the enemy. Don't be afraid to be weird or crazy or whatever is causing you to be timid.
What if someone takes their license plates off and makes a fake temporary paper one, the kind you put in the back window when you get a new car? Not permanently but if you wanted to go do something illegal and not be tracked.
Can the LPR pick those up?
Weird it just popped up. Probably they cranked up a new algo that said, if they live near water, hit 'em with kayak ads. Why not paddle boards or boats too? Whatever.
Hmmm, I live alone and in a pretty remote area (on an island). I keep my wifi pretty secure, so, that seems pretty unlikely. But who knows, anything is possible I suppose. Maybe because I live on an island.
OK, but query me this batman. Lately, I have been inundated by ads for anything to do with Kayaks. I do not own a Kayak. I do not want to own a Kayak and have never even spoken the word as far as I can remember. But for some reason, I am seeing ads for a Kayak carrier, a Kayak launcher, roof rack, you name it. It is so weird. I cannot figure out why suddenly these idiots think I am remotely interested in Kayaking. Kayaking, it is just so random. But way back in the 2000s, a friend of mine worked for a web site dev company. Her job was to visit with clients and take pictures of whatever they were hawking, write some copy and the dudes back in her office would turn it into a web page. She would occasionally ask me to come along and stare at whatever crap they were selling and act like I cared about it while she snapped some photos. I joked that meant technically I was a model. But then one time she was doing a web page for a marketing company that did focus groups. That was back before we had smart phones tracking your every move. I posed in a fake focus group with some other people and after that, the dude that ran the place asked me if I wanted to be in real focus group and I agreed. They seemed to think there were certain connections that made no sense. For example, they were sure that they could market adult diapers to nerds that play video games who were to absorbed in their game to get off their ass to take a simple dump. Apparently that is actually a thing? Then I went to this one focus group where they were asking if you own a dog and buy a lot of peanut butter. Read between the lines. So gross. So, I am guessing, some marketing weirdo thinks there is some weird connection between something else in my life an Kayaks. It would be interesting to know what that is. But, I think, a lot of times, they might be right about those weird connections that make you feel like they are reading your mind. Just in this case, whatever it is, maybe that I watch a lot of documentaries and that means I like Kayaking? I guess they only have to be right some percentage of the time. Just not in this case.
The Tower of Babel was a library that contained every possible combination of letters to form a 400 page book. Or something like that. It made me wonder, what if you made a content honey pot full of just random text and a chatbot vacuumed that up? Does it's data vacuum have a garbage detector?
I am so sorry to see this. The absolute last thing we need is yet another fossil guzzling vehicle. Please stop what you are doing immediately and go back to the drawing board and help save our planet by inventing a craft that uses solar power to charge batteries to fly. I am sure I will get down voted to hell for this. But tough shit. The planet is chocking and we simply do not need more people burning fossil fuel for fun and pleasure. Stop. Please. Stop and rethink this.
And yet they persist.
And continue to evolve.
And TV, now streaming over the internet.
The way humans communicate evolves.
And so will the internet, and social media and all the rest to come.
Think of it like this...
Radio didn't die, it evolved, into streaming music.
TV didn't die, it evolved to streaming TV>
The printed medium did not die, it evolved into HTML and web pages, a fancier form of type setting.
The telegraph didn't die, it evolved into digital communications.
See, it's not that things die and go away, it is a process of improving how humans interact.
Some may find it difficult, or maybe the isolation is a problem, then there is an evolution.
It will not stop, it will evolve to the next step.
The person who wrote the article used the internet for all the sub-references. Had it not been for the internet, this person most likely would not have known all the things they mentioned. I don't know if they are listening, but it would be an interesting question.
I am old enough to remember when people said TV was a passing fad.
And the radio.
And the printing press.
And the telegraph.
And the written word. I mean come on you lazy shlubs, memorize Beowulf like we had to back in my day.
OK, I am not actually that old.
My point is, that with every technology that has been invented to improve, or expand the ability of humans to communicate, there have been the detractors and naysayers predicting the inevitable doom of said technology.
I am still waiting for that whole writing things down instead of memorizing them thing to finally go out of style.
I have been lucid dreaming for many years and about five years ago, I started keeping my tablet on the nightstand and when I wake up, if I remember it, which I generally do, I use speech to text to record it. If I don't do that I often forget them. I have categories, the movie type are like 3rd person and it plays out like I am watching a movie. A ride along dream is like first person, I feel like I am riding along with someone else, but I know it's not me, but I know their thoughts. The me dream is when I am me in the dream. Some of them repeat multiple times over several nights In all cases I know I am dreaming. I started turning some of them into short stories. No idea where some of them come from. Often it seems like I just tuned into someone's story, but the subconscious is a funny thing.
My grandfather wrote something one could only describe as a manifesto while he was in prison in the 1930's for moonshining, which he was doing to save the family farm during the depression. He sighted Spinoza multiple times which is when I first discovered Spinoza. He included it in his memoir and it really influenced me in a lot of ways. So, thanks to the poster for throwing this up.
When I was working on m Masters degree in Electrical Engineering way back in 1978, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth :) I had a prof who was really amazing, he was a Comp Sci prof and he gave me a copy of GEB and it changed my life. OK, I'm probably overstating a bit, but that first edition copy, it's one of my prized possessions. Even to this day, every once in a while I pull it out and re-read a chapter.
A few years back, I had a condo on Lake Washington (east of Seattle) and a buddy of mine is a microwave engineer and we were hanging out one day out on my deck with our laptops and he mentioned how amazing it was that there were so many WiFi signals and he said he had a 4 foot dish from a 2ghz MW link in the junk pile at work that they had replaced with a newer 11Ghz link. He went and got it and we put a USB WiFi dongle on the feed horn on a tripod and it was amazing, we could point it across the lake and get all these WiFi hot spots some were open. It just shows, a big antenna on one end really helps with the link budget, of course, the beam width is super narrow so it's pretty finiky on the positioning. I am not sure the distance exactly there but it had to be a mile or two.
I always thought they totally missed an opportunity with their moronic Xfinity brand, why not just flip the cards and call it InfiniG, Yeah, forget 5G, 6G, or the 8G band (Seth Meyers sub-reference) and simply say we having infinity G, hell yeah, if you are going just make shit up, go for it, am I right? We out G everyone else. I know, you have not idea what the G thing even is, but don't worry, we got you, our G is infinite. There, all you problems and worries are solved for $275/mo.
I know ahead of time that what I am about to say, will result in me getting yelled at by the HN crowd that what I am saying is anecdotal and all that. But, after refraining for a while, I guess I have to say something so, I know you will down vote me because this is not based on a scientific A-B test blah blah. Cool.
People's lives are at risk. And No, I DO NOT work for Boeing and never have. I work for a company that makes a product that does not involve any risk to people's lives, we make a dumb thing.
I live in Seattle, and yeah, I know a lot of people who currently do, or have worked for Boeing. So, yes, this is not a scientific study, again, down vote button is in the lower left over there. Have fun with that.
But from what I have heard, there is something "wrong" at Boeing. And yeah, this is not scientific, got it.
But, from my, unscientific study, that plant in Renton seems to be especially problematic and it sounds like from what I have heard, the Renton operation where the Max 9 and all the other Max N's are were made, there is something especially "wrong:' there. I just cannot NOT say something.
It seems like there is a pattern here, I know this is all anecdotal and all that. But it seems like that particular operation has a management problem that is putting peoples lives at risk.
CHEESE/CHEDDAR Origin: US. Meaning: Slang term for money. Derived from the fact Americans on welfare used to receive cheese as part of their benefits. Explanation: This well-known American phrase was born at the end of WWII.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cheddarhttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheddar
I think it's interesting that there is this alternate meaning.
Sniff Sniff, when I was a kid, I loved these guys. I didn't have a brother, I had two sisters, love them of course, but always fantasized that if I did have a brother, I would be Tommy. I guess he had that socially awkward nerd like vibe. That's all I have to say. God love ya bro.
Dear eff.org, I am informing you that you are in violation of intellectual property laws by having a contest for "The Stupidest Patent of the Month" you are infringing on the property rights covered by patent No. 8,655,715 which covers all such contests.
In a funny way, it proves the point about people with power being corrupted because the researches were the ones with power and abused it in order to generate a fake study to gain notoriety for themselves perhaps.
Right, and you know how when you visit another country, how the racial make up of that other country is often different. So, that sort of is the point I was making, it's like another country with in the U.S.
In some ways, I think it continues to exist as a separate country within the United States. Every demographic map you look at, political, health, education etc. you can see it. And whenever I have visited some of those states, it almost feels like another country. They even speak a different language, or at times sounds like it.
Hahaha, thanks for the flash back. Waaay back in m1975 when I was a freshman in college studying EE one of the first things they made us do is program a PDP8 manually with the switches and load the bootstrap loader for the paper tape. By then I had already played around with an Altair 8800 in high school running basic and cassette so I thought it was stupid at the time but then later I appreciated what I learned about machine code. Very cool web page. Great memories.