I was goofing around with the ciechanowski moon model and noticed that either this image or ciechanowski's simulation is flipped 180 (mirrored not rotated).
So I googled moon images to see which one might be flipped (it would be amazing if the ciechanowski model was inverted) but after looking at about 100 images, 90/100 or more seem to be composites based on the same image. Not just that the moon presents the same face, but all the google results look based on literally the same image. So what if that image is flipped?
On an oblique note, I assume google reports such repetitions to almost any search— I've noticed there's a web dark pattern for results repetitions; see Amazon and Netflix. And AI results appear to be an obscenely amped-up repeater.
I'm interested in repetitiond news too: take Google news without any personalization— how the web may create an appearance of copious information that's actually very limited, and maybe very biased or completely wrong— e.g., Mandela Effect.
For example news of U.S. foreign affairs is routinely absurdly biased and narrow, such as the new leader in Syria leading "rebels" as in SW rebel alliance and not noting we've got a $10,000,000 bounty on his head for being a terrorist.
(Ask what you can do for Russia, not what Russia can do for you)
I keep second-guessing my own perceptions, like I'm cherrypicking, but the effect seems rampant, where very narrow and obviously contestable views are repeated as truisms and appear as such across many outlets.
I just saw a documentary called "The Program" which one more in and endless series of hype products about UFOs— this one tries to politicize the topic as a huge coverup a la JFK.
But what seems funny to me is term UFO! It's a fascinating term in its own right as it is used as a determinative noun based on an acronym where the key trait is "unidentified". In the truest sense all studies of UFOs must reveal nothing, by definition. And they do reveal nothing. As did this documentary. You may have never noticed, but nothing is something!
The moon is sort of like this: the biggest nothing in world. Does it even matter which is right (vs left vs correct) view?— I can't be bothered to look up. Besides some guys went there and all they found was rocks. Who would have guessed?! They brought some back and they've been completely forgotten about and misplaced out of boredom and irrelevancy.
It was more interesting when the noon could still possibly be green cheese. Now it's just orbital mechanics— a celestial pinball machine. A giant fusion reactor pours energy out across a gradient and somehow gives rise to everything we are. (Yawn, I'm sleepy).
Newton on gravity:
The last clause of your second Position I like very well. Tis unconceivable that inanimate brute matter should (without the mediation of something else which is not material) operate upon & affect other matter without mutual contact; as it must if gravitation in the sense of Epicurus be essential & inherent in it. And this is one reason why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate inherent & essential to matter so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of any thing else by & through which their action or force {may} be conveyed from one to another is to me so great an absurdity that I beleive no man who has in philosophical matters any competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether this agent be material or immaterial is a question I have left to the consideration of my readers.
Consider the expressive power of GIMP over ImageMagick, then imagine that Photoshop is an increment of expressive power over GIMP.
As you become familiar with Photoshop you will experience a usage gestalt that is unattainable with GIMP.
But why? Compared to Photoshop, GIMP's UI is a continually unfolding disaster by comparison.
Plus Photoshop includes Adobe Camera Raw which in and of itself is a UI majesty compared to anything available in Linux and its just an adjunct capability.
The programming language analogy is a good one. There's no point in arguing which language is the best, but everyone knows that language features have an obvious bearing on productivity in particular domains: this is demonstrated beyond all doubt via the enormous efficacy of levels of interface abstraction over the innate capabilities of a physical computer.
If you regard PS and GIMP as GUI languages for image manipulation, the expressive power and smoothness of operating PS compared to GIMP is obvious to any diligent user.
The joy of GIMP is that the advantage of GIMP over no image manipulator is infinite, while the advantage of PS over GIMP is merely incremental. This is the profound philosophical basis of Linux: it's something that can't be easily taken away from you. Photoshop is much more tenuous.
As to being able to appreciate the distinction, there's an old joke about advertising the advantage of color TVs on TV: if you can see the advantage, you already have a color TV. And if you don't have a color TV you can't see the advantage.
In any lineup by height someone is tallest and someone is shortest, so what's significant about Tesla in this spread? If not them then another.
A significant aspect is that Telsa, as a harbinger of "progress", by this measure is making cars less safe. That's a surprising development as it's contrary to the promises and prognostications for the devices.
It's expected that the distribution of harm from cars would change with increasing automation, but the promise of the automation is to make the devices safer overall. So is this a key metric by which we find that the progress is actually a hazard, or is the changing distribution part of an overall trend of improvement with some hazardous edge cases?
All we have with this article is yet another headline with no useful information.
> “A focused, alert driver, traveling at a legal or prudent speed, without being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, is the most likely to arrive safely regardless of the vehicle they’re driving.”
What does "focused and alert" mean for a robot? Does arriving safely allow a wake of carnage?
The Trump administration figures as a harbinger for such questions in that he is a well-known champion of disinformation in favor of his self interest, as are all of his cabinet picks and advisors. But this is in keeping with the modern history of the GOP.
I think any idea that Apple doesn't thoroughly understand the capacity, value, market, price tradeoff is untenable.
The most obvious view is that Apple price gouges on storage. But this seems too simplistic.
My conjecture is that there's an inescapable tension between supply (availabilty/cost) sales forecasts, technological churn, and roadmaps that leads them to want to somewhat subsidize the lowest end, and place a bit of back-pressure on consumption at the high-end. The trick is finding the tipping point on the curve between growth and over commitment by suppliers. Especially, for tightly vertically integrated products.
The PC industry is more diffuse and horizontal and so more tolerant of fluctuations in supply and demand across a broader network of providers and consumers, leading to a lower, more even cost structure for components and modules.
In real terms, Apple's products keep costing less, just like all computer products. They seem to make a point of holding prices on an appearance point of latest tech that's held steady since the first Macs: about $2500 for a unit that meets the expectations of space right behind the bleeding edge while being reliable, useful and a vanguard of trends.
Seems plausible enough to me, but whether there's a business case or not isn't my concern as much as how it feels to price something out knowing that I'm deliberately gouged on arbitrary components instead of the the segmentation being somewhat more meaningful. They're already reaping very high margins, but by tightly coupling quantities of those components to even higher margin builds, it feels a bit gross, to the point where I just have to accept that I'd have to spend even more excessively than in previous years of similar models. As in, I'm happy to pay a bit more for more power if I find it useful, likewise with ram, but not being able to get more ram without first getting something I have no way to put to use seems a bit silly, akin to not being able to get better seats in a car unless I first get the racing spec version, otherwise I'm stuck with a lawn chair.
Much regard heaped upon 2001's effects, including the zero-G sequences, but if you just watch the people, they are so obviously carrying their own weight and the weight of objects: the posture and movement yells 1-G at you from the screen. When the stewardess reclaims the floating pen, she's balancing her weight with each step and touching the seat backs for support, then stoops and leans. In the ship crossing to the moon, the stewardess is walking and her hips sway to her weight with each step and her feet compress. The food trays slide out of kitchen console by gravity. When the trays are delivered to the flight staff, one reach out his hand under a tray to steady it from below. When an officer visits crew in the cabin, he comes up from behind their seats, leans in to talk and rests his arms on the seatbacks. As food is sipped through clear straws, it rises and falls with G pressure. Floyd stands with his own weight in contemplation before the long instructions for the zero-G toilet. In the Discovery, spacesuits hang from the wall and the crew sit at the table to perform the antenna-module diagnostic.
The toilet instructions are a static print on plastic with a backlight. The joke about the length of the instructions is now lost to absurdity of the display.
On the moon, the excavation of the monolith is surrounded with floodlights that reveal a distinct atmospheric haze.
The camera used at the excavation site is beautifully retro. That it's used to take a group photo is quaint, especially when you consider more modern ideas like the survey "pups" deployed to map the site of the Engineers' spacecraft in the movie Prometheus.
While 2001 has been one of the most affecting movie experiences of my life— I first saw it by myself in a nearly empty large auditorium in 1972 at the age of 10 and have seen it maybe 10 more times since 2001's effects seem more prosaic with every viewing and my mind wanders into disbelief about the entire mis-en-scene. Eroding amazement is replaced by a fascination with how quickly a fantasy about an amazing future has become retro in its fashion.
The Stargate crossing seemed like one of the weaker elements in the movies heyday, but to me it's holding up better than most other design elements. The ape costumes are holding up uncannily well, as do the intro landscapes. Other elements are quirky: the mule painted like a zebra, the vastly over-complicated landing pad on the moon with the pizza-slices retractable dome, the clouds of dust swirling at the landing, and the absurdly ornate elevator than descends beneath the moon surface. Hal's memory closet with arrays of keyed optical modules that slowly eject to inconsistent extents. The oddly opaque schematics and diagnostics for the Discovey's "malfunctioning" antenna unit. The external air supply hose for the space suit. The extendable pads for the pods. The chain of blocks design for the Discovery, with the large off-axis mass of the antenna. Why is a pod needed to reach the antenna? Etc, on and on.
The ultimate movie about the future of mankind is now a beautiful relic.
With every viewing of 2001 I recall with more appreciation Andrei Tarkovsky's lament about what he might have been able to achieve with his Solaris if he had access to the kind of wealth available to Kubrick.
>In the Discovery, spacesuits hang from the wall and the crew sit at the table to perform the antenna-module diagnostic.
The spacesuits might have been secured at both ends to keep them from getting bunched up and make them easier for crew to get into.
In the diagnostic scene, there was supposed to be 1g there: that was in the rotating section of Discovery where they had spin gravity.
>she's balancing her weight with each step and touching the seat backs for support
Of course it's hard to get actors standing on Earth to act like they're in a zero-g environment, but in the story, the crew had Velcro shoes, so they were supposed to be acting like this. Touching seat backs in zero-g probably makes sense too, to stabilize yourself when you're just floating (with only your Velcro shoes holding you to anything).
>As food is sipped through clear straws, it rises and falls with G pressure.
Food rising in a straw happens because of atmospheric pressure: the person sucking creates a vacuum, and air pressure inside the container pushes the food out. Food falling in a straw is from gravity, but could also be explained by the person intentionally blowing, to prevent spillage.
> With every viewing of 2001 I recall with more appreciation Andrei Tarkovsky's lament about what he might have been able to achieve with his Solaris if he had access to the kind of wealth available to Kubrick.
He might have achieved the Steven Soderbergh version. /s
If you've never contemplated the value of your life, an encounter with death awakens novel feelings and thoughts, and may lead to changes in meaning.
But changes can't escape your circumstances, which you must suffer nonetheless. Make any change in priorities and you're still as beholden to your life's vicissitudes.
It's common with death to find sudden compassion for self and others, and a compassionate disposition may lead to remarkable changes of feelings about life and attenuate obsessive responses. This is not necessarily good.
All thinking about death misapprehends the finality of death for thought.
You can learn do what you want, but you can't conserve time. Life can't be optimized. Moreover, an efficient world would have prevented your existence in the first place.
But there are trails left by others to follow.
The time to make things right for yourself and others is always here and now. In any situation, there's a chance things can improve because you're here. And if you can't make things right here and now, maybe you can elsewhere later.
Going for treatment? Appreciate the work of those treating you.
Not going for treatment? Appreciate being of service to others.
Don't understand the importance of your work? You have something to work on.
Others don't understand where you're coming from? Be on lookout for others who need attention.
Pass on enjoyment.
——
Bob Dylan:
The man in me will do nearly any task
And as for compensation, there's a little he would ask
It take a woman like you
To get through to the man in me
Storm clouds are raging all around my door
I think to myself I might not take it any more
Take a woman like your kind
To find the man in me
But, oh, what a wonderful feeling
Just to know that you are near
It sets my a heart a-reeling
From my toes up to my ears
The man in me will hide sometimes to keep from bein' seen
But that's just because he doesn't wanna turn into some machine
It take a woman like you
To get through to the man in me
Too much efficiency countering too much efficiency makes everything worse.
This whole thesis easily tips over into a semantic gobbledygook, as efficiency is not a property of the larger world, but an utter contrivance of thought.
Focus on anything to the exclusion of everything use and things are going wrong. How has the obviousness of this observation has turned into a breakthrough? AI is the perfect nexus for such a discovery: trying to optimize a system when you don't understand how it works naturally has pitfalls.
So what can it mean to try to mathematically formalize a misunderstanding? Maybe there's a true breakthrough lurking near this topic: that all understanding is incomplete, so look for guiding principles of approximation?
The author is right to call out the forest for the trees.
The cause of the Chernobyl power facility disaster was caused by running a test to determine how long power could be maintained with turbine run-down to cool the reactor during an accident under blackout conditions.
The reactor control systems are powered by the reactor itself, but this isn't considered a liability, because once started, such a device is not intended to be stopped; shutdowns are large costly affairs intended to occur rarely for refueling. The reaction is regarded as a force of nature like a running river. But the reactor can be operated in high vs. low power modes. Notably, as a system, the device is most hazardous when transitioning between power modes, especially towards low power mode.
It was expected that in certain emergencies, reactor power would be lowered to the point where steam generator turbine inertia is intended to work like a battery of reserve power used to cool the reactor, but knowing precisely how well this works requires verification. To conduct tests the operators intentionally drove the reactor towards the edge of its low power operational limits, overriding safety protocols and subsystems to create the preconditions of the experiment. Disaster ensued eve when the operators feared they had lowered power to much to the brink of an expensive non-routine shutdown so they goosed it, creating a feedback loop into over power. Operators made a last ditch attempt to control the crisis using the emergency core shutdown system, a mechanism of last resort, but a poorly handled design edge case resulted in the shutdown mechanism to create an enormous power surge which caused the core cooling system to explode: A 3 giga-watt thermal core spiked to 30 giga-watt thermal and the lid blew off, so to speak.
The disaster was directly caused by testing of facilities to handle a theoretical emergency, and would have been avoided if the testing was not performed.
But beyond this, the test protocol required driving the machine into a hazardous state, leading to the operators' accidental discovery of tripwire for a catastrophic failure mode that, although it had been a matter of conjecture in contingency planning, was regarded as so unlikely by planners that needed retrofitting of the emergency shutdown system was deferred. "Off" is the least-desired operational state of the reactor, so making an expensive effort to address a conjecture with a hazard of the systems most unlikely mode of operation was not a high priority.
There's a vague parallel between the Chernobyl disaster and the Pan-Am, KLM airport disaster at Tenerife, where a constellation of exceptional conditions led to a collision of two fully loaded 747s. The ostensible cause was an off-by-one error by an arriving flight crew member in the counting taxi-ways, bringing his plane into the path of the other during the others take-off, and the other assuming that a routine but ambiguous figure of speech on the part of control meant clearance to take off, when actually it just meant control's acknowledgment of the departing captain's statement of readiness to proceed with take off.
And Titanic will not be forgotten.
In these disasters, everybody was fully engaged and driving into mayhem with everything running according to plan, but under an unlikely confluence of conditions.
Philosophically, a proper plan depends on equality between the conditions of the plan and the execution of events, but paradoxically there's only one place for true equality in the entire universe: in concept. So all plans are at best provisional. This observation could lead to more wonder about the contours of probability gradients in systems designs.
If the effort of booby-trapping supplies of communications devices was certain enough that enemies combatants would be specifically targeted, why didn't they just stop the shipments? You need possession to plant the trap.
At the superficial level of the news reports about this event, booby-trapping incidental items to render life and limb across a wide field and a diffuse population doesn't sound like legitimate combat under civilized conduct in warfare; it sounds like text-book terrorism in the lexicon of the U.S.
In my view the crucial question for a society is how does action represent our values and sense of responsibility. In such regards, Israel is far gone off its reservation.
* A west-aligned country is at war with a terrorist organization which is part of the Russian-Iranian-North Korean axis of evil.
* A war which the terrorist organization started unprovoked
* The ally country conducts the most precise strike against militant combatants in history (also completely legal by my understanding of international rules of war)
* Your suggestion is that they should've confiscated their walkie talkies instead
I was goofing around with the ciechanowski moon model and noticed that either this image or ciechanowski's simulation is flipped 180 (mirrored not rotated).
https://ciechanow.ski/moon/
So I googled moon images to see which one might be flipped (it would be amazing if the ciechanowski model was inverted) but after looking at about 100 images, 90/100 or more seem to be composites based on the same image. Not just that the moon presents the same face, but all the google results look based on literally the same image. So what if that image is flipped?
On an oblique note, I assume google reports such repetitions to almost any search— I've noticed there's a web dark pattern for results repetitions; see Amazon and Netflix. And AI results appear to be an obscenely amped-up repeater.
I'm interested in repetitiond news too: take Google news without any personalization— how the web may create an appearance of copious information that's actually very limited, and maybe very biased or completely wrong— e.g., Mandela Effect.
For example news of U.S. foreign affairs is routinely absurdly biased and narrow, such as the new leader in Syria leading "rebels" as in SW rebel alliance and not noting we've got a $10,000,000 bounty on his head for being a terrorist.
(Ask what you can do for Russia, not what Russia can do for you)
I keep second-guessing my own perceptions, like I'm cherrypicking, but the effect seems rampant, where very narrow and obviously contestable views are repeated as truisms and appear as such across many outlets.
I just saw a documentary called "The Program" which one more in and endless series of hype products about UFOs— this one tries to politicize the topic as a huge coverup a la JFK.
But what seems funny to me is term UFO! It's a fascinating term in its own right as it is used as a determinative noun based on an acronym where the key trait is "unidentified". In the truest sense all studies of UFOs must reveal nothing, by definition. And they do reveal nothing. As did this documentary. You may have never noticed, but nothing is something!
The moon is sort of like this: the biggest nothing in world. Does it even matter which is right (vs left vs correct) view?— I can't be bothered to look up. Besides some guys went there and all they found was rocks. Who would have guessed?! They brought some back and they've been completely forgotten about and misplaced out of boredom and irrelevancy.
It was more interesting when the noon could still possibly be green cheese. Now it's just orbital mechanics— a celestial pinball machine. A giant fusion reactor pours energy out across a gradient and somehow gives rise to everything we are. (Yawn, I'm sleepy).
Newton on gravity:
The last clause of your second Position I like very well. Tis unconceivable that inanimate brute matter should (without the mediation of something else which is not material) operate upon & affect other matter without mutual contact; as it must if gravitation in the sense of Epicurus be essential & inherent in it. And this is one reason why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate inherent & essential to matter so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of any thing else by & through which their action or force {may} be conveyed from one to another is to me so great an absurdity that I beleive no man who has in philosophical matters any competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether this agent be material or immaterial is a question I have left to the consideration of my readers.