Actually, the human is the benchmark here. Being able to recognize two different photos as coming from the same person is a feature, not a bug. That's the whole point of running a neural net classifier. Otherwise you just "diff" the photos and only accept byte-identical ones as similar. Mathematically correct, but not very useful in real life.

The point is that spreadsheets can become very complex and they don't have any serious provisions for code review and debugging. Spreadsheets are not meant to be numerically stable and bug-free. They are meant for presenting and manipulating simple data. People abuse spreadsheets for database work and data transformation that are best done in a combination of SQL + something like R. I have been confronted with big spreadsheets in my research activities and the first thing I do is just convert the raw data in CSV, load it in SQL or R and take it from there, writing proper code in the process.l

How can you possibly expect a CSV to contain a formula? It's a text file.

In fact, almost any source of information in an ever-changing science and practice will contain statements that can be contested. Even major medical textbooks disagree in details or between editions. So, I don't thing anyone expects a wikipedia article to be absolutely accurate because such an article rarely exists even in the "peer-reviewed" domain. In practice, I used wikipedia as a decent source of information several times. I suppose I would have noticed glaring omissions or errors and I'm not even looking for critical pieces of information (say, chemotherapy protocols). For professionals, wikipedia is a tool like any other. For patients, things can be a little more complicated. In the end, I think wikipedia is much better than wacky sites offering "natural cancer treatments" or other scams. So, overall, nothing to see here.

The main advantage of learning algorithms like neural nets is that they can automagically generalise and produce classifiers that are relatively robust. I wouldn't be surprised at all if a neural net misclassified an extreme artifical case that could fool humans (say, some sort of geometric pattern generated by a complicated function or similar artificial constructs). Here, however, it appears that the input is really, really similar and simple to recognize for humans. Obviously the researchers have recreated a "boundary" condition, but the fact that this becomes manifest in real-life examples is a bit worrying for the validity of the algorithm in general situations and especially its scalability in much bigger projects were similar cases may arise more frequently.

But we do expect some levels of performance, even from humans. You have to pass certain tests before you are allowed to drive a car or do neurosurgery. So, we do need some, relatively tight, margins of error before a machine can be acceptable for certain tasks, like driving a car. An algorithm that has provable bias and repeatable failures is much less likely to be acceptable.

The original article also mentions the great similarity between inputs. We expect a human to misinterpret voice in a noisy environment or misjudge distance and shapes in a stormy night. However, we would be really surprised if "child A" is classified as a child, while similar looking "child B" is mislcassified as a washing machine. Under normal conditions, humans don't do these kind of errors.

Finally, even an "incomplete" system (in a goedelian sense) can be useful it it is stable for 99.999999% of inputs. So, fuzzy and occasionally wrong is OK in real life. However, this will have to be proven and carefully examined empirically. We can't just shrug this kind of result away. Humans are known to function a certain way for thousands of years. A machine will have to be exhaustively documented before such misclassifications are deemed functionally insignificant.

Just like some people develop (autoimmune) disease after exposure to gluten, we could expect other environmental agents to trigger Kawasaki. I'm curious to see if this is confirmed. Unfortunately, I don't see we could avoid exposure. Maybe hosts with genetic susceptibility should wear masks? Still, not easy...

Some diseases leave lasting morbidity (say, itching) but are not expected to modify life span. People suffering from fibromyalgia, for example, don't seem to live shorter lives, but do have many symptoms.

[quote]
The neat thing about terminal cancer patients is that the answer is "Not much that would be worse than the alternative."
[/quote]

Needless, excessive suffering can be worse in some ways. At some point, futile treatments only serve to maintain an illusion of hope. That illusion is, of course, important in some ways, but can come at an unreasonable price.

It is difficult to appreciate the breadth of the free software movement and all its derivatives (open source variants) today because we take them for given. The influence of the free software movement has been subtle but longstanding and profound. Obviously, taken to its extreme and purest form, the ideology is restrictive. On the other hand, people who do this kind of stuff are expected to be passionate about their ideas, just like artists are passionate about their art and athletes are passionate about their training. I know I won't be getting up at 5am to run 10km, but those who do are not necessarily sick psychopaths and, in a healthy society, we need passionate people even if they seem to deviate from "normal".

In the end, I learned to code with Emacs and GCC and some of my favorite software is GPL. Even if the free software advocates did not give us facebook and twitter, they gave us a lot of good shit and this contribution must not be drowned in the noise.

To get back to some more specific points, I think that relying on free software for privacy (against government or other intrusion) makes much more sense than relying on guns. There can be no easy solution against government surveillance or other forms of spying, but free software is probably the most legitimate defense against abuse.

Finally, the push for "open" standards and documentation has given good results (open source GPU drivers are way better than ten years ago), but must certainly continue. Similarly, the push against DRM has given distributors like GOG (gog.com). I suppose, many of Stallman's ideas are worth fighting, even if in a very specific moment most of us look at more practical non-free options (yes, I own a phone, for example :-)).

Rigorous coding should be held to approximately the same standard as engineering and math. Code should be both proven correct and tested for valid and invalid inputs. It has not happened yet because in many cases code is seen as less critical (patching is cheap, people usually don't die from software bugs etc). As soon as bugs start costing serious money, the culture will change.

Anyway, I'm not a pro coder but I do write code for academic purposes, so I am not subjected to the same constraints. Robust code is easier with some languages and harder with others, but should be doable in any setting. In the end, some form of static and dynamic checking should provide reasonable security for almost any environment.

My impression is that there is a higher percentage of GOG games worth playing than Steam games worth playing. Obviously, Steam is a much bigger platform with thousands of games, but still, games on GOG have generally stood the test of time. Anyway, if you've never tried some of the best old games, you could be pleasantly surprised.

They have recently announced their intention to support ubuntu/mint.

See http://www.gog.com/news/gogcom...

It shouldn't be that hard. Anyway, wine is also a viable solution for many older games, although I haven't tried it myself. For the adventurous types, many games from GoG can be played under linux. Here is a quick list:

http://www.gog.com/mix/linux_n...

Let me see:
- Half-height 3.5" 200MB IDE hard disk: bought used in 1993, came from a server. Worked until at least 2002-3. Might still work.
- Non-name mechanical keyboard (not the original IBM!) from the 90s that still works after a lot of abuse. Still has a great touch..
- CD player: Marantz CD 52 MkII: still works after 20 years, contrary to ALL CD/DVD-RW drives that I have bought for my PC since then and fail after 1-2yrs.
- HP Deskjet 500C. One of the first consumer inkjet printers. Built like a tank. Probably still works.
- Logitech G3: great mouse, used it until something heavy fell on it and broke the button.

As a general note, anything "server/workstation" grade that I bought has generally lasted a lot.

Now the negative surprises:
- Any cheap CD/DVD-RW (with the exception of Plextor units). These fail all the time.
- Exploding capacitors in the Athlon XP M/B
- Exploding capacitors in a cheap 250W AT (not ATX) PSU. I now only buy high-end PSUs, usually Seasonic.
- NVidia 8800GS passively cooled. Failed in a few months.
- Razer Deathadder: weird failures after 1 yr of light use.

I generally get few failures, mostly thanks to great PSUs that have very low ripple and noise. I think this greatly prolongs the life of electrical components by reducing capacitor fatigue. In fact, most of my old hardware is now in the hands of family/friends, that still use it.

What bothers me most are endless DLCs required to get the "full experience". I can understand the difference between a "basic version" and a "deluxe" at +10$. But the fragmentation occuring with N DLCs and "season passes" is frustrating to say the least. I just want a clear pricing structure and a complete game.