tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post503188581199576195..comments2024-03-28T09:30:58.096-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Science Fiction WondersDavid Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-74869245090566456752013-12-18T11:50:10.532-08:002013-12-18T11:50:10.532-08:00onwardonwardDavid Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-91725739686676401142013-12-18T08:35:43.908-08:002013-12-18T08:35:43.908-08:00Re: Tax havens and tax cheats
(where DATCA = dome...Re: Tax havens and tax cheats <br />(where DATCA = domestic FATCA for US banks as part of the reciprical IGA's that are being signed)<br /><br />" do speculate that a DATCA certainly must have been part of a secret goal of some of the sponsors, as America is the BIGGEST tax haven in the world and the resting place for trillions of dollars undeclared around the world. They wanted to stop that.<br /><br />Switzerland is a piker by contrast."<br /><br />Mexico has been asking for this information for decades to go after drug cartel members hiding funds in US banks in Miami. <br /><br />"According to Florida’s office of financial regulation, the regulation could lead to tens of billions of dollars being withdrawn from Florida banks and moved to overseas accounts. Posey said his Amendment would delay the IRS rule until unemployment drops to 6 percent. The House approved this Amendment with a bipartisan vote of 251-165. "<br /><br />http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2013/06/27/hr-2299-calls-for-withdrawal-of-fatca-iga-reciprocity-tool-datca-lite/Joelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09707861909013671695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-69385656759748781912013-12-18T07:44:05.449-08:002013-12-18T07:44:05.449-08:00sociotard said...
And will the inexperienced trade...<i>sociotard said...<br />And will the inexperienced traders know when to take over from glitch autotraders?</i><br /><br />The controls or safeguards will ironically probably have to be software based - monitoring software will activate kill-switches should certain parameters be breached. Human beings are lousy managers in general, and all the worse when computers can go ballistic in less time than it takes for the words to be displayed on the screen.<br /><br />The exchanges have some such kill switches - a trade that is 10% higher or lower than the previous trade will cause a Halt on an individual stock. Those were in place 10 years ago - but like all algorithms, there's always a set of data that will activate the worst case scenario (in my computer science course, we would measure a Sorting algorithm's efficiency using 'O' notation - O(nlog(n) is the worst case to sort a list of length 'n').<br /><br />Now we need a notation to indicate how financially destructive an HFT algorithm is.<br /><br />We also need monitoring software to turn it off when extremes are breached. By turning it 'off' however, HFT algorithms pull their orders (eliminating the liquidity they were providing) causing even mor destruction.<br />Joelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09707861909013671695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-39867028106505821062013-12-18T02:09:50.034-08:002013-12-18T02:09:50.034-08:00No one has time to take over from glitching autotr...No one has time to take over from glitching autotraders.Paul451https://www.blogger.com/profile/12119086761190994938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-49512917920115562762013-12-18T00:16:18.706-08:002013-12-18T00:16:18.706-08:00And will the inexperienced traders know when to ta...And will the inexperienced traders know when to take over from glitch autotraders?sociotardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11697154298087412934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1969325591620872742013-12-17T18:44:23.214-08:002013-12-17T18:44:23.214-08:00Joel, 60 Minutes had a bit on the other night whic...Joel, 60 Minutes had a bit on the other night which talked about how many pilots of the newer generation were so reliant on software that they failed to notice when the software put them into a dangerous situation. Plane crashes are caused when inexperienced pilots fail to take over from glitchy autopilots. Worse, many new pilots don't have the experience to take over, make quick judgements and correct for bad software.<br /><br />TheMadLibrarian<br />gedshow: Yet another remake of A Wizard of EarthseaTheMadLibrariannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-66944087240026779152013-12-17T04:09:33.541-08:002013-12-17T04:09:33.541-08:00An interesting (admittedly off-topic) variation on...An interesting (admittedly off-topic) variation on the whole "voter id" thing.<br /><br />The team leader on my IT project is, as many are these days, from India. I'm not clear if he's here on a green card or an H1-B visa, but I know he's not a United States citizen.<br /><br />Today, he has to go in for jury duty. I told him that jury duty is only for US citizens, but he insisted he is supposed to go in anyway. Sure enough, we looked it up on the county website. He will be excused because he's not a citizen, but he has to appear with valid paperwork to prove that he is <b>not</b> a United States citizen. Presumably (not really), if he cannot prove the negative to the court's satisfaction, he could be empaneled on a jury.<br /><br />I'm not claiminng this is an outrage or anything--it just struck me as ironic and funny.LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-23589162126688359902013-12-16T23:53:30.224-08:002013-12-16T23:53:30.224-08:00Shades of what Brin's proposed inspectorate co...Shades of what Brin's proposed inspectorate could become?<br /><a href="http://www.iconnectblog.com/2013/12/checking-institutions-and-the-institutional-control-of-politics/#more-2738" rel="nofollow">Members of the press are wondering whether the Procurador, Alejandro Ordóñez, is now the most powerful person in Colombia.</a><br /><i>This week, the Colombian National Procuraduria [a sort of National Attorney General or Inspector General] removed the leftist, democratically-elected mayor of Bogota, Gustavo Petro, from office and banned him from participation in politics for 15 years.</i>sociotardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11697154298087412934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-72457879897067905852013-12-16T23:44:03.668-08:002013-12-16T23:44:03.668-08:00Even if 'something truly awful' happens, I...Even if 'something truly awful' happens, I think we will still avoid rewriting everything to an Asimov-style AI. It's not that we won't want to do it, but that we won't be able to do it. We will miss something like a Y2K bug.<br /><br />I suspect the key work to be done for emergent 'raise it like a child' AI's is to further understand how humans accrete language as they mature. We certainly didn't design languages, yet they are at the core of everything we can do that goes beyond what the other animals do. Kids and parents don't really design language learning opportunities either, so I think AI designers are off track. I tend to find Hofstadter's work relating categories & analogies more useful when I think about this stuff. 8)Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-43161100352114394842013-12-16T18:16:29.308-08:002013-12-16T18:16:29.308-08:00One thing to consider with that "teacher pay&...One thing to consider with that "teacher pay" website is the average cost of living in those regions. Because you can buy a house in some of those low-pay states for half of what it costs in Massachusetts. Or less. So the cost-of-living ends up being lower and that "reduced wage" goes a bit further.<br /><br />Another thing to consider is how much the schools have for finance and how well funded they are. Sadly, textbooks and the like don't scale according to the region so poorer regions end up having inferior or older textbooks and the like. <br /><br />Interesting about Alaska though. That is definitely a Supply and Demand issue: supply of teachers is quite low, so teacher pay is higher to lure people with teaching certificates into the state.<br /><br />So really, this is just an example of lies, damn lies, and statistics. It fails to account for little details like "cost of living" and how far that paycheck goes. Or in other words, I'd bet that the teacher in Colorado probably lives more comfortably on his or her paycheck than the teacher in Massachusetts.<br /><br />Rob H.Acacia H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07678539067303911329noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-143264208333344222013-12-16T17:40:29.687-08:002013-12-16T17:40:29.687-08:00look at the map
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...look at the map<br />http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/12/16/where-teachers-get-paid-the-most-and-the-least/David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-12171064907472676912013-12-16T16:37:15.628-08:002013-12-16T16:37:15.628-08:00New research finds that stimulating a specific par...<i> New research finds that stimulating a specific part of the brain can increase appreciation of certain types of art.</i><br /><br />I recall reading about an unusual form of dementia in which the person becomes increasingly compelled to make art. Their skills in this one activity become superlative, even as their other faculties fail.Tony Fiskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14578160528746657971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-69942751784930082582013-12-16T14:59:59.422-08:002013-12-16T14:59:59.422-08:00Asimov's Robots Universe assumes (...) civiliz...<i>Asimov's Robots Universe assumes (...) civilization keeps investing in refining and perfecting the underlying code for AI, while weaving into that code a set of laws so interwoven and repeated that no subsequent designers will ever be able to get rid of it.</i><br /><br />I'm not sure I would fully agree with that statement. Asimov had somewhat different universes for his robot stories. <br /><br />I would agree that there appeared to be a presumption that robots had a finite positronic brain capacity that could be tinkered with to add new skills on the production line (although not the case in the Bicentennial Man?). What I liked was the assumed complexity would need a robot psychologist to interpret defects, rather than programmers. This seems consistent with current ideas of required complexity and the need for brains to develop, rather than be fully formed and functioning with pre-programmed skills. <br /><br />It does seem as if some basic approaches are working. We have the power of "deep learning" systems for unsupervised pattern finding. We have symbolic processing algorithms to solve particular problems. We have very rudimentary algorithms for analogy making. Natural intelligence is constrained by the evolutionary constraints on brains, constraints that are absent in our artificial brains. <br /><br />While most of the focus on AI is plastic learning, to mimic the human cortex, I also think that innate behaviors are fascinating as the brains have apparently been able to wire themselves without training. Then of course, we just had a "sensational" report that mice can pass on olfactory memories to their offspring. If that gets confirmed (and I am not betting it will) that would certainly require some interesting genomic mechanism, which could shed light on innate memories. <br /> Alex Tolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01556422553154817988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-69678017386777624152013-12-16T10:07:09.921-08:002013-12-16T10:07:09.921-08:00I am still hoping that Ben Goertzel or someone wil...I am still hoping that Ben Goertzel or someone will provide us with a list of the five or six General Approaches to developing AI, from fact-and-syllogistic types like IBM's Watson to evolving or emergent systems and so on. I would then add my own... the physical experience approach, which would allow us to "raise" young robots to think they are human.<br /><br />There are so many aspects to all this... thought the most urgent is (I believe) to cancel Wall Street's headlong rush toward building AI that is rapacious and predatory-parasitical at its very root and core.<br />http://www.davidbrin.com/transactionfee.html<br /><br />As for programming AI to be "friendly." we need to remember;<br /><br />Software does not advance incrementally, like hardware. Software is vastly harder and it goes in fits and starts and punctuation equilibria, as when humanity had successive leaps 400k years ago then 40kya and 10kya and 500 ya. <br /><br />Alex: "I'm reminded of Vernor Vinge's description of Software in his "Zones of Thought" series where there is layer upon layer of Software as no-one rewrites the old code, so it just accretes new layers. Now if those layers are buggy, that would be an awful mess." Well guess what?<br /><br />Asimov's Robots Universe assumes the opposite situation, in which civilization keeps investing in refining and perfecting the underlying code for AI, while weaving into that code a set of laws so interwoven and repeated that no subsequent designers will ever be able to get rid of it. That is the notion of the "friendly AI" folks and it is naive. Society will not invest those kinds of resources. Not until something truly awful happens. <br /><br />Indeed, even if such efforts at embedding happen, won't some humans try to install trap doors that let them come back and exploit the system? David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-15569908467468087042013-12-16T08:03:52.925-08:002013-12-16T08:03:52.925-08:00Software on a plane is just as buggy as any other ...<i> Software on a plane is just as buggy as any other software</i><br /><br />And I thought TSA kabuki was bad. <br /><br />Do you happen to know which language[s] avionics software is written in currently? Is military aircraft avionics software less buggy than commercial S/W, or the same?<br /><br />I'm reminded of Vernor Vinge's description of S/W in his "Zones of Thought" series where there is layer upon layer of S/W as no-one rewrites the old code, so it just accretes new layers. Now if those layers are buggy, that would be an awful mess.<br /><br />Maybe civilization grinds to halt as resources are increasingly spent fixing bugs (and defending against attacks).Alex Tolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01556422553154817988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-66182335753644441522013-12-16T06:31:27.206-08:002013-12-16T06:31:27.206-08:00I have a father-in-law who job it is to ensure air...I have a father-in-law who job it is to ensure airplanes continue to match the specifications they had when they left the factory to be licensed to fly (unlike say, cars). Software on a plane is just as buggy as any other software, and pilots are required to know various work-arounds to fly the aircraft. <br /><br />Last night my Android phone rebooted twice for no reason. On Friday my top-of-the-line laptop at work started grinding its hdd which required a hard reboot.<br /><br />The latest aircraft from Boeing and Bombardier are completely reliant on software. There is no "Manual" mode any more.Joelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09707861909013671695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-11836679093133268582013-12-15T19:45:30.368-08:002013-12-15T19:45:30.368-08:00re: the screens or technology interfaces shown in ...re: the screens or technology interfaces shown in 99% of movies. <br /><br />My sense is that most SciFi movie interfaces are about visual eye candy, not about sensible design (although if used in a tv series, regular actors make the interface usage consistent, even if the writers don't care). Although I am a huge fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Donald Norman explains the awfulness of the information displays in the book, <i>"HAL's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality", edited by David Stork.</i><br /><br />Interestingly enough, even though we may assume real world interfaces for aircraft might be expected to be highly evolved for efficiency, often they are not, and faulty mental models of their operation have been responsible for accidents.<br /><br /><br />Alex Tolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01556422553154817988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-88238222615559045992013-12-15T17:08:55.973-08:002013-12-15T17:08:55.973-08:00Quoted from the article… which was not totally cle...Quoted from the article… which was not totally clear.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-20002811001316197672013-12-15T17:08:55.107-08:002013-12-15T17:08:55.107-08:00Sorry for that comment; the term is "topologi...Sorry for that comment; the term is "topological insulator", even though the cool thing is that it is (at its edges) a superconductor.Ethan Bradfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285442152260252130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-67184945626340389392013-12-15T17:04:46.987-08:002013-12-15T17:04:46.987-08:00You say that a mono-atomic layer of tin would be a...You say that a mono-atomic layer of tin would be a "topological insulator". I think you meant "topological superconductor".Ethan Bradfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285442152260252130noreply@blogger.com