If you think the market potential for custom-fit clothing is unknown and risky, talk to just about any female about what it's like to shop for jeans.

But there are other costs as well, like shipping. Then there are benefits beyond cost. Let's say you can get a garment custom-sized for you because computer vision tailoring systems are a real thing. Now you want to be able to try it on in real-time to verify the fit. You don't want to wait for it to ship from Asia to be able to try it on, so a local robot makes it cheaper and faster than local humans would. You get to try it on the same day, and the deal gets closed more quickly. A lot of people would be willing to pay somewhat more for quick delivery of custom-made clothing.

The NEW here is increased capability. 2 years ago it was making bath mats. Now it's making t-shirts, and it can make most of a pair of jeans.

There's a number of companies that have made a lot of progress on automated tailoring using computer vision systems. The problem has been that they were either a) limited to high end markets by the high costs of 1st world labor for the actual sewing, b) using 3rd world sewing labor with only a web presence in the 1st world and thus slow shipping and no instant feedback on the fit, or c) limited to suggesting the best fit among existing mass-manufactured clothing.

I've been thinking for awhile that the first company to get the patents necessary to combine automated tailoring with automated clothing manufacture would make a killing in women's clothing. The history of clothing sizing for mass manufacture is basically that only a few measurements are needed for most men but women's measurements were complicated to the point where the experts threw up their hands and said, "We'll just boil it down to one number. It'll be good enough for dresses." (This was 1940s and 50s when women still tended to wear dresses more than pants, so it wasn't completely without sense.) Having computer vision systems that can measure arbitrary curves and not just a few sample lengths, plus the sewing to follow such a pattern, would be a huge boon to, say, women's jeans, which are particularly notoriously hard to find great fits for many body types.

The memo is referring to neuroticism as it is used in the Big Five personality assessment. I hate the connotation of that word (I'm a man but score very high on the neuroticism scale), but it is unfortunately used in real psychological research.

(The link in the non-stripped version of the memo makes it clear that's what he's talking about - I'm not sure if it's there in all distributed versions of the memo. Even though neuroticism has a distinct meaning in psychology, it was stupid to use that word in the memo because it is so easily misunderstood. Not everyone is familiar with the big five personality test or will follow the links in a highly controversial memo, so it is very likely that some will latch onto a word like that with the results you outlined. Choosing the proper words is particularly important when jargon overlaps with commonly used language.)

They have been applying technology to real world problems. They used the exact same method to reduce their data center cooling bill by 40%.. They're also using it to assist doctors in quick, accurate diagnosis.

Go makes a nice test bed because the rules are well defined, it's easy to judge success, and nobody get hurt if you screw up. But playing games is not their ultimate goal.

...then all of his billions are just simulated, and the scientist isn't getting paid in anything real.

Thanks for linking real research, but your studies don't support your claim.

The McCollough and Reedy papers showed that diet does make a difference in life expectancy, but they said that adherence to any of a number of different healthy dietary guidelines had nearly the same effect. The diets tested were high in "fruit, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and legumes," but they also permitted moderate amounts of meat and low fat dairy. (In fact, the only kind of meats the dietary guidelines avoided were red and processed meats.)

The Fraser study used Seventh Day Adventists as the study group. Some Adventists are vegan, but others are lacto-ova vegetarians. All are supposed to eat a balanced diet and avoid gluttony.

The conclusion of the Martinez-Gonzalez study states, "Among omnivorous subjects at high cardiovascular risk, better conformity with an FP (food pattern) that emphasized plant-derived foods was associated with a reduced risk of all-cause mortality." There's nothing vegan about this study; it suggests eating more plant based foods has a positive correlation with mortality even for those who don't want to become strict vegetarians.

Now maybe there is some research to support a vegan diet, but these studies don't do that. They do suggest that making fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and legumes the core of a well-balanced diet is important.

The Korean drama Misaeng / Incomplete Life does a great job of capturing some of the pressures of Korean office culture. I was drawn into it because the main character was once an aspiring Go professional and there are frequent references to the game throughout the show, but the office drama is really the centerpiece of the show.

Without a waiver of the experience under a supervising PE, only software engineers working in cross-disciplinary companies have much hope of fulfilling those requirements in the foreseeable future. It will take a long time to spread out into general software development.

Is there a Professional Engineering Exam for software engineering now? When I was a college senior in computer engineering (which incorporates both hardware and software, I chose to specialize more on the software side) 11 years ago, I recall a professor saying that one was in the works but not ready yet, so if we wanted to get a PE certification we had to do it in a different discipline or the general engineering test. Some of my classmates who specialized more on the hardware side probably took it using the electrical engineering discipline, but most of us didn't bother. I checked online a few years ago, and I found no evidence that the PE board ever added another test with any kind of computer focus.

I have worked on projects tangential to aviation software that had to be DO-178B certified. That is rigorous beyond the point of programming in a straight jacket. The code must be completely deterministic from its inputs, which meant that networking was limited to UDP. TCP was thought to introduce non-deterministic aspects that would kill the certification.

Chernobyl cockroaches!

That was my first thought too, but if that's the case, why a cockroach? Sure, it has a small size that can go unnoticed much of the time, but if someone sees a cockroach their first instinct is to kill it, and crunching down on a bunch of electronics is going to have a different sound and feel than squishing a real cockroach. At that point the spies are suspected.

I'd choose something cute, cuddly, dumb, and not particularly agile, like hamsters.

Does it matter? They'll be just as crazy as the rest.

that this will leave the insane tea partiers in charge of the asylum that is the House of Representatives. It's like the last adult is leaving the room.