Category: Uncategorized

All software needs to be evergreen

ALL operating systems need to be on a evergreen release schedule a la chrome: new releases every 6 weeks, plus ability to deploy fixes like this within 24h.

The jumping cube

balancing isn’t just for segways anymore, or how to make physics high school class interesting for the dim-witted. i somehow missed this the first time around.

Full duplex wifi

This paper presents the design and implementation of the first in-band full duplex WiFi radios that can simultaneously transmit and receive on the same channel using standard WiFi 802.11ac PHYs and achieves close to the theoretical doubling of throughput in all practical deployment scenarios. Full duplex, if possible, has tremendous implications for network design, not least of which is the fact that cellular networks could cut their spectrum needs by half. With an in-band full-duplex system we could use a single channel to get the same performance.

Superintelligence

this book is a welcome antidote to wildly optimistic views of the emergence of artificial intelligence which blithely assume it will be our dutiful servant rather than a fearful master. Some readers may assume that an artificial intelligence will be something like a present-day computer or search engine, and not be self-aware and have its own agenda and powerful wiles to advance it, based upon a knowledge of humans far beyond what any single human brain can encompass. Unless you believe there is some kind of intellectual élan vital inherent in biological substrates which is absent in their equivalents based on other hardware (which just seems silly to me—like arguing there’s something special about a horse which can’t be accomplished better by a truck), the mature artificial intelligence will be the superior in every way to its human creators, so in-depth ratiocination about how it will regard and treat us is in order before we find ourselves faced with the reality of dealing with our successor.

2018-04-26:

2019-08-30:

What if future AI looks a lot like current AI, but better? For example, take Google Translate. A future superintelligent Google Translate would be able to translate texts faster and better than any human translator, capturing subtleties of language beyond what even a native speaker could pick up. It might be able to understand 100s of languages, handle complicated multilingual puns with ease, do all sorts of amazing things. But in the end, it would just be a translation app. It wouldn’t want to take over the world. It wouldn’t even “want” to become better at translating than it was already. It would just translate stuff really well.

Smart Birds Open Doors

birds learn to open doors by triggering the motion detector. now they no longer need opposable thumbs. dun dun dun

Mathematica for pure math

mr. wolfram is prone to hyperbole, but at least he’s not boring.

But could we systematically extend the Wolfram Language to cover the whole range of pure mathematics—and make a kind of “Mathematica Pura”? The answer is unquestionably yes. It’ll be fascinating to do, but it’ll take lots of difficult language design. One might think that somehow mathematical notation would already have solved the whole problem. But there’s actually only a quite small set of constructs and concepts that can be represented with any degree of standardization in mathematical notation—and indeed many of these are already in the Wolfram Language.

All The Comments on Every Recipe Blog

I just started Paleo yesterday, and I’m wondering if there’s a way to make this without the ingredients. Have you considered making a version of this margherita pizza for your readers who are trying to avoid gluten, dairy and nightshades? What if I shoved a roll of basil leaves in my mouth, do you think that would taste good?

Medicine 50 year outlook

Bionic man

bionic man features 14 technologies currently being developed: a powered prosthetic leg that helps users achieve a more natural gait, a wireless brain-computer interface that lets people who are paralyzed control computer devices or robotic limbs using only their thoughts, and a micro-patch that delivers vaccines painlessly and doesn’t need refrigeration.

Ebola

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rushed to complete a computer program it had been developing to track outbreaks; the program needed to be translated into French so it could be used in Guinea. The C.D.C. also dispatched a team, which grew to more than 12 and was led by Rollin, who arrived in Guinea on March 30. Some 3000 biohazard suits were flown in. Experts and volunteers poured in from the World Health Organization and the Red Cross.

The international health community doesn’t seem to have strong internet technologies, and wastes too much time forwarding shit to each other. In the US, there are too many dumb laws like HIPPA to make rational systems possible, but surely that’s not the case around the world?

Without additional interventions or changes in community behavior, CDC estimates that by January 20, 2015, there will be a total of ~1.4M Ebola cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone

It’s not looking good, between the rock (hard to get around, poor communications, not enough trained workers) and the hard place (religious practices that require touching the dead).
2015-05-11: That sounds like movie-plot science but is apparently real.

When he was released from Emory University Hospital in October after a long, brutal fight with Ebola that nearly ended his life, Dr. Ian Crozier’s medical team thought he was cured. But less than 2 months later, he was back at the hospital with fading sight, intense pain and soaring pressure in his left eye. Test results were chilling: The inside of Dr. Crozier’s eye was teeming with Ebola.

2015-08-13: There’s now a Ebola vaccine, which is great news. Let’s hope there’s never an outbreak in southern California with all the anti vaxxers there.

The outbreak of Ebola fever in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, which has killed more than 11K people, has dropped out of the news as it has been brought under control. Although new cases are now measured in 10s, rather than 100s, a week, the disease has not been stamped out—and a new epidemic could flare up somewhere else at any time. A vaccine against the virus responsible would be of enormous value. And a paper in the Lancet suggests one is now available.