I remember hearing a long time ago that the guvmnt was using encoded signals in power lines in order to detect a region a video was based in or something along those lines. What this is now telling me is that pulse width modulating light signals can encode 10 GBPS of data, which I now remember a university was proving with lasers around the time of that other power line story. My whole point is that with with everything being in sight of a network connected camera, there is a whole bunch of floating one-wire (or as many wires as you want) signals all around us lacking any data. The human eye cant detect lights being turned off then back on that fast, it just looks like it is on, maybe slightly dimmer. How hard will it be to hijack this open yet hidden communication system. I guess you could even just point your phone at an led, and if someone else had access to the light sensor, you could communicate basically completely silently and without any tells

Tried to put in paragraph breaks but apparently failed. Excuse my wall of text.

Why don't we actively open up the doors for finding the next Einstein or Faraday. The physicists in TFA are reaching in the right direction with crowdfunding. The right step in my mind is crowdsourcing. Einstein was working a crappy job while developing his physics shattering ideas. Faraday spent alot of time on problems that had been solved already, because he never got the formal training that would tell him they were solved. We could have someone who writes computer games that might have a novel approach that changes our understanding of dark energy. Who knows who we have amongst the 7 billion of us that are just stuck outside the field, that might have only a spark of an idea at least that leads to the next big breakthrough. That power of ai is already here with machine learning and crowdsourcing. See my post below for more ranting about it.

I agree completely about questioning our assumptions. Feynman. A Nobel winning Physicist was led to his Nobel idea by realizing that this one quantum particle didn't always have the same spin, despite the certainty within the community that it did. He found out it was all based on one poorly performed experiment. Questioning assumptions is another strength of crowdsourcing, which I ranted about already in my post below.

I met a young man who had just returned from interning at CERN, where they have the Large Hadron Collider. He told me they are sitting on mountains of data. My first thought was they should release raw data to the public in a crowdsourcing format. At least letting people donate their computing power to crunch numbers if not actually letting amateur mathematicians and physicists look at preliminary results and contribute to the discussion. I was told that it is likely due to the physicists own ego and or selfishness that they wanted to be sure to make the discoveries. This is unacceptable in my mind. Crowdfunding is not what they need but crowdsourcing. My facts are a little hazy but I know that at one of the old World Fairs a scientist decided to see how averaged answers from the public stood up to a limited number of expert opinions, guessing the weight of his cows when attending his booth would be closer to. So he took every answer given by the public and averaged them versus five (maybe seven) livestock experts. The crowdsourced answer was nearly correct (within a pound or two), with high standard deviation. While the experts had a less correct answer, something like 10-15 lbs off, but with lower stdev. This was in the early 1900's, and I it has been proven many times since then. Yet we still seem convinced that only experts can contribute to the bleeding edge of a field. Another example, Faraday. Who's work is tought to physics students today. Was an amateur mathematician who even spent time solving problems that had already been solved, only because he did not know they were solved already. My point is that these physicists have the right idea in terms of involving the general public, but this is not far enough. Release the data and let the masses get involved more than superficially. 3 things can happen. 1 nothing is solved by people and the physicists get to make their own discovery in their own time. No loss except probably a few more interns getting "hired" to respond to annoying people 2. We find more people like Faraday who can contribute to the field, despite their lack of formal membership in the Elite category Physicists place themselves. 3. We tap into crowdsourcing aka group thought, where problems are solved in little pieces by many different people in new and creative ways possibly faster than a single expert team could.Plus cheaper. (eg Hyperloop) Why do you think Musk has his patents all open source. So innovation is accelerated, and he still owns the original patent... he's kinda like a modern day Edison, minus the bad parts. Mostly. I digress... Even open source examples apply here. The robustness of their peer reviewal process enhances the end product. Don't get me wrong. I love physicists for what they have given the world, and Feynman was just great. But the internet has changed the world. Open source data mining, or machine learning, software gives amateurs the chance to move the world forward in giant leaps and bounds. I do not respect people who limit that progress for personal gain. That was what Edison did, whilst electrocuting elephants in the name of "Evil Tesla". He stifled innovation for the sake of his company's profits. Come on physicists. Dont let history see you as resisting the future while you act like there is only one way to do things. It's true that nobody can be an expert in everything these days. It doesn't mean that experts between fields can't meaningfully contribute. Plus there's gotta be more people like Faraday out there today. We have alot of people these days. Hope there's no character limit....

After reading most if not all of this debate on microaggressions (first, it's pretty funny that the leading cause of feeling butt-hurt is microagression...) Butt we are not discussing how to move past it, the only relevant discussion once a problem is identified. can we please get some sort of conensus on how to ask people where they are from, conversationally. I have always thouroughly enjoyed discussing any persons' ethnicity or cultural upbringing within friendly conversation. (also often interested by the answer, all we americans, or at least our families first came here from somewhere else, many times including amazing stories) but I have learned today that I offend non white people with those questions. Can anyone come up with an acceptable way to bring up the topic of individual cultural heritage sans microaggression?

my favorite quote concerning alternative medicines is... "If Alternative medicine practices worked, they wouldn't be alternative any more" not sure where it came from.