124912996
submission
minstrelmike writes:
Good article in Infoworld on why we can send a man to the moon but can't build an app to count votes.
Code was simpler:
"The best way to get a feel for what NASA’s job was like is to read some of the code, now immortalized in a GitHub repository. Choose a file at random. GROUND_TRACKING_DETERMINATION_PROGRAM.agc, for instance, has 204 lines and more than 85 of them are comments. Each of the lines consists of only one operation, unlike modern languages, which can pack dozens of operations with multiple options into one line. The simplicity becomes obvious .... The Apollo Guidance Computer had only 36k of ROM to hold the compiled version."
You didn't need security, function was the only thing that counted, and you only had to do one thing.
"A Go app compiled with version 1.7 that only prints “Hello World” is 1.6 megabytes alone, and the Go world was totally thrilled with this news because it was 2.3 megabytes before."
And you didn't need to deal with lawyers.
"there are 22 thousand words in the basic Terms of Service for renting a machine in Amazon’s cloud. There is also an entirely different TOS for using the website to rent the machine. Then each individual product often has its own TOS, like this one for Activate. Add them up and they’re much longer than the 36 thousand instruction words in the ROM in the Lunar Lander’s computer."
76555727
submission
minstrelmike writes:
Mattel is coming out with a Talking Barbie designed by a huge team to be your best friend. She is pre-scripted with thousands of responses controlled by an AI with designs to be your best friend.
The design team remembers the "Math is hard" debacle of the 1990s and if a girl asks if she's pretty, Barbie will respond, "Yes. And you're smart, too." If she asks if Barbie believes in God, she says a person's beliefs are personal. And suggests talking to grownups about some problems.
Barbie Wants to Get to Know Your Child even discusses trying to avoid edited vids on YouTube by scripting out words such as cockroach.
75562977
submission
minstrelmike writes:
Polyera is working on a flexible, fabric-like screen that uses eInk technology (like the Kindle) and can go days without recharging. Sounds good if it really works.
75498505
submission
minstrelmike writes:
"The culprit of the air traffic snafu that left 492 flights delayed and 476 flights cancelled at Washington, D.C. area airports was related to a recent software upgrade at the Leesburg, Va., high-altitude radar facility."
The software had been upgraded to display customized windows of reference data that was supposed to disappear once deleted. They ran out of memory (although the article doesn't say if it was because the controllers didn't delete or because the delete function failed).
Wonder what programming language they used?
72047625
submission
minstrelmike writes:
"At the core of Uber’s wild success and market valuation of over $41 billion is its data and algorithmically fueled approach to matching supply and demand for cars. It’s classic economics, supposedly....but is Uber’s surge pricing algorithm really doing what they claim? Do surge prices really get more cars on the road?
My analysis suggests that rather than motivating a fresh supply of drivers, surge pricing instead re-distributes drivers already on the road."
The writer goes on to analyze 4 weeks of pricing info from 5 areas in D.C. and plotted prices versus wait times. "Price surging can work in any of three ways: by reducing demand for cars (less people want a car for a higher price), by creating new supply (providing an incentive for new drivers to hit the roads), or by shifting supply (drivers) to areas of higher demand."
It moves current drivers from one side of town to the other. It does not put new drivers on the road. It can't because the prices change every 3-5 minutes.
65208685
submission
minstrelmike writes:
If we give up all our privacy on-line for contextual ads, then how come so many of them are so far off the mark? Personal data harvesting for contextual ads and content should be a beautiful thing. They do it privately and securely, and it's all automated so that no human being actually learns anything about you. And then the online world becomes customized, just for you. The real problem with this scenario is that is we're paying for contextual ads and content with our personal data, but we're not getting what we pay for.
Facebook advertising is off target and almost completely irrelevant.
The question is: Why? Facebook has a database of our explicitly stated interests, which many users fill out voluntarily. Facebook sees what we post about. It knows who we interact with. It counts our likes, monitors our comments and even follows us around the Web. Yet, while the degree of personal data collection is extreme, the advertising seems totally random.
63613181
submission
minstrelmike writes:
In Leeds, England, architects are adding a plethora of baffles and other structures to prevent the channeling of winds from a skyscraper that have pushed baby carriages into the street and caused one pedestrian death by blowing over a truck (lorry). Other architectural mistakes listed in the article include death ray buildings that can melt car bumpers and landscape ponds that blind tenants.
50195899
submission
minstrelmike writes:
Japan is planning to install a 2 mile around the Fukushima nuclear plant. The technology has not been used to that extent nor for more than a couple years. "Plus the frozen wall won't be ready for another two years, which means contaminated water would continue to leak out." But at least they have a $470 million dollar plan ready to present to the Olympic committee choosing Madrid, Istanbul or Tokyo.
44027447
submission
minstrelmike writes:
Two page editorial in the NYTimes (10 free articles / month then firewalled) about what would have been different legally, morally, and security-wise:
"If Manning had delivered his material to The Times, WikiLeaks would not have been able to post the unedited cables, as it ultimately did, heedless of the risk to human rights advocates, dissidents and informants named therein. In fact, you might not have heard of WikiLeaks. The group has had other middling scoops, but Manning put it on the map."
He also discusses what the Times would and would not have done, admitting they probably wouldn't have shared with other news outlets but also admitting they would definitely have not shared everything.
