Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Is there a skier...
Claire Berlinski...
Claire Berlinski ... seems to share my sense of doom. Read the comment threads...
Quote of the day...
Quote of the day... This time from Nick Gillespie, writing at Reason:
It's easy to be cynical about this (and to be frankly terrified of a Trump presidency), but Trump is the least cynical politician in the 2016 race.That “least cynical politician” is a fascinating measure, isn't it?
An igniting match...
Farming is a dangerous occupation...
Farming is a dangerous occupation ... much more so than most urban folks realize. Yesterday evening that fact struck us here: a young man was killed in an accident at Rosehill Dairy, just 3 miles north of us (and the source of the milk we drink every day)...
The reign of Moore's Law...
The reign of Moore's Law ... may be about to end. Or not; the end of Moore's Law has been predicted a few hundred times before, too :)
But suppose for a moment that it does end, that we really have reached the end of IC density increases. The linked article talks about other things that will almost certainly be explored to keep improving computers. One possibility I personally find intriguing: it may become more important again – like it was up until roughly 1990 – for programmers to know how to write efficient programs.
At the moment, the need for algorithmic efficiency has been nearly wiped out by the rapidly growing power of computers. The exceptions are relatively few and far between. When I started programming back in the '70s, the exact opposite was true – nearly every program needed to be written in a very efficient way, as the constraints of computer speed and limited memory were quite severe.
Maybe the pendulum will start to swing back the other way again...
But suppose for a moment that it does end, that we really have reached the end of IC density increases. The linked article talks about other things that will almost certainly be explored to keep improving computers. One possibility I personally find intriguing: it may become more important again – like it was up until roughly 1990 – for programmers to know how to write efficient programs.
At the moment, the need for algorithmic efficiency has been nearly wiped out by the rapidly growing power of computers. The exceptions are relatively few and far between. When I started programming back in the '70s, the exact opposite was true – nearly every program needed to be written in a very efficient way, as the constraints of computer speed and limited memory were quite severe.
Maybe the pendulum will start to swing back the other way again...
Things I'd never heard of, part 9,442...
Things I'd never heard of, part 9,442... There's a thing called an “escape room”, and they're all over the world. There's even several near us. They're a big, profitable business.
The ones near us charge around $20 for the privilege of being locked in a room with a dozen or so strangers. You have 90 minutes to collectively try to solve the puzzles and riddles in the room that will allow you to escape. If you fail in that amount of time, they just let you out. That's it – that's the entire “entertainment”.
I'm afraid this is (yet another) one of those things that I will never understand. Why on earth would I pay $20 for something like that, when (for example) $20 worth of gas will take me to a wonderful place in nature, or when $20 each will buy Debbie and I a great meal at a local restaurant, or when $20 will buy me several great books, or when I can learn anything I want to learn for free on the Internet. I just don't get it...
The ones near us charge around $20 for the privilege of being locked in a room with a dozen or so strangers. You have 90 minutes to collectively try to solve the puzzles and riddles in the room that will allow you to escape. If you fail in that amount of time, they just let you out. That's it – that's the entire “entertainment”.
I'm afraid this is (yet another) one of those things that I will never understand. Why on earth would I pay $20 for something like that, when (for example) $20 worth of gas will take me to a wonderful place in nature, or when $20 each will buy Debbie and I a great meal at a local restaurant, or when $20 will buy me several great books, or when I can learn anything I want to learn for free on the Internet. I just don't get it...
It's 2016...
It's 2016 ... and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) just now approved a rear-view mirror that uses cameras. And they only approved it because it was a combined mirror/camera.
Let's get one thing out of the way right at the start: cameras and video screens readily available for at least the last ten years are unequivocally superior to a plain glass mirror. They have wider fields of view, they're unaffected by the placement of windows or interior obstructions, they see better in both low and high light situations. In addition to those safety considerations, they eliminate the safety problem (to pedestrians) and aerodynamic problems of external mirrors. They're better in every way.
But car companies are not allowed to build them into cars. Not allowed.
You can add one to your own car if you'd like, though. No problem with that.
Even if you believed (which I do not) that a government bureaucracy should be regulating something like a rear-view mirror ... it's still unconscionable that the NHTSA is taking so long to approve these things. If anything, they should have mandated rear (and side) view cameras years ago. It's as though some government agency required the use of vacuum tubes in radios, or vinyl records for your music.
Man, I really loathe big government. It blocks progress in so many stupid and costly ways...
Let's get one thing out of the way right at the start: cameras and video screens readily available for at least the last ten years are unequivocally superior to a plain glass mirror. They have wider fields of view, they're unaffected by the placement of windows or interior obstructions, they see better in both low and high light situations. In addition to those safety considerations, they eliminate the safety problem (to pedestrians) and aerodynamic problems of external mirrors. They're better in every way.
But car companies are not allowed to build them into cars. Not allowed.
You can add one to your own car if you'd like, though. No problem with that.
Even if you believed (which I do not) that a government bureaucracy should be regulating something like a rear-view mirror ... it's still unconscionable that the NHTSA is taking so long to approve these things. If anything, they should have mandated rear (and side) view cameras years ago. It's as though some government agency required the use of vacuum tubes in radios, or vinyl records for your music.
Man, I really loathe big government. It blocks progress in so many stupid and costly ways...
Another taxpayer-funded boondoggle...
Another taxpayer-funded boondoggle ... that's biased towards progressives. No surprise, really: the National Endowment for the Arts spends (in recent years) around $150 million of taxpayer money annually. Some of this goes to art with a political message, and that message is overwhelmingly progressive – definitely not conservative and not libertarian.
Outrageous? Yes. Should we fix it? Yes. How? By ending taxpayer subsidies of art! I don't really care that the art has a progressive bias. What I care about is that I'm helping pay for it! Nobody asked me if I wanted to do that, but if they did, the answer would be loud and clear: no! That would be true even if the art being subsidized had a message near and dear to me, because I don't believe that even one taxpayer dollar should go to something that certainly isn't an essential communal service...
Outrageous? Yes. Should we fix it? Yes. How? By ending taxpayer subsidies of art! I don't really care that the art has a progressive bias. What I care about is that I'm helping pay for it! Nobody asked me if I wanted to do that, but if they did, the answer would be loud and clear: no! That would be true even if the art being subsidized had a message near and dear to me, because I don't believe that even one taxpayer dollar should go to something that certainly isn't an essential communal service...
What it's like to be an introvert...
Ever since I discovered what an introvert really is, and that I was one, I've been fascinated by the impacts of introversion vs. extroversion. I was in a profession (engineering) where introverts have a distinct intellectual advantage, and yet the management of engineering organizations is dominated by extroverts – a situation that's bound to cause friction (and it does!).
Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the movement toward “open offices” (cubicles) for engineering teams – something only an extrovert could love, and that's guaranteed to lower an introvert's productivity. Extroverts were positive that open offices would improve the productivity of engineering teams, but ... not so much (as engineering teams are, generally, dominated by introverts). What's most interesting to me about this is how the extrovert proponents of open offices just don't get it. It is – I think perhaps literally – beyond their ken.
My last employer was a great example of this. The founder is a brilliant engineer and a flaming extrovert, and he was certain that having engineers work together in shared spaces was one of the keys to engineering creativity and productivity. Nothing I (or anyone else) could say would dissuade him from this. I'm not sure he still holds this belief, though, as it must be true that the results are discouraging for him...