Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Frames & pixels obsolete. The future is a p (Score 1) 72

Back in 2002 I was working with image processing, and I came up with a video compression idea: treat the video as a 3D image and apply 3D Fourier transform, then drop the weaker components as done with similar 1D/2D schemes. This would provide a natural balancing between temporal and spatial resolution, depending on the scene. I wasn't much of a programmer back then, but I later realized this would probably be too heavy for practical use. I also learned that the same idea had been put into development around the same time as Ogg Tarkin, but it didn't get very far either.

As a bonus, the Fourier/wavelet format could be decoded in arbitrary resolutions in space or time. This idea is actually used in some music playing libraries, producing 24-bit output from a format intended for 16-bit quality.

Comment Semantics (Score 1) 248

It depends what you mean by "complexity". Sure Conway's game of life seems like a set of simple rules but so does the axiomization of the natural numbers, see the Peano Axioms. Despite being "simple" it still leads to Godel's incompleteness theorem.

I would image the "complexity" of Conway's Game of life is more complex than you would think. I'm not even sure we could define the game as "simple" to begin with.

Comment Re:Coconut milk? (Score 1) 193

Here's the thing though. I don't think nut milk producers are trying to fake people out. A huge part of their value proposition is that their milk doesn't come from animals, just like goat milk suppliers aren't going to want you to miss that the milk comes from goats, not cows. Same for veggie meats and sausages.

Cow tittie milk should be labeled "cow tittie milk" to remind people where the product comes from. It's natural for mammals to drink the tittie milk of their own species when they're young, but drinking tittie milk (a) when you're grown up and (b) from another species seems downright perverse. Likewise, people could use a good reminder how the meat they eat is produced.

Comment Re: $400M for AOL (Score 1) 35

you're stuck in the 90s. nobody even cares for that!

you know those reports showing ad networks sending all your data to China? well, that's AOL. and now yahoo (which Apollo also bought).

the worst performer ad networks in the planet, but they still get campaigns from apple and other big brands with too much money. so they can participate in reverse bidding (when the site you visit send all your info to hundreds of ad networks to sell an Ad in realtime) which then stores all that data, build your user profile, and sell it.

Comment Re:Contempt or SEC violation? (Score 1) 21

It's really an opinion question, is AI going to dramatically alter the web or not? No one knows the answer to that. All that we do know is that AI is disrupting a lot of things and the web may end up being one of them. So depending on how you feel about AI that day, your answer can differ.

Comment Re:You mean realists? (Score 1) 211

I googled something like net worth of US billionaires and that was what came out on top. I was looking for the the $6.72T number, not the count of the billionaires, that count varies everyday be cause many up them are right at the $1B line. A strong up/down day in the market can change the number by 30.

My point is that even if you took every penny the billionaires have and passed it out to the general population you are only going to get a one time check for $17.920. And if they have to pay taxes first that one check will be closer to $14,000. Even though billionaires are extremely rich they are still nothing much when compared to the size of the overall US economy. The pandemic stimmie checks were of similar size and they weren't life changing.

People compare themselves one to one with a billionaire and feel very poor. But look at it collectively, if you confiscated everything the billionaires have they could only pay off the US deficit for about 18 months before they collectively went broke. And then we'd still have a giant deficit without anyone to tax. It's just a fantasy to think that taxing the billionaires can close the deficit or provide free healthcare for all. Use you brain and a calculator, it can't possibly work. Sure, make them pay more in taxes, but it isn't going to dramatically change things.

Slashdot Top Deals

The perversity of nature is nowhere better demonstrated by the fact that, when exposed to the same atmosphere, bread becomes hard while crackers become soft.

Working...