Category Archives: Talk

Talk about politics, society, science, computers, internet, psychology, and philosophy.

We would never have…

Perhaps you’ve seen a discussion about how justice was performed in the old days, where someone says “we would never have done it like that” or “if it had been today, that case wouldn’t even have gone to court.”

The latest such discussion I came across was on the execution of Joe Hill :

Like many historians, Gibbs M. Smith, author of a Hill biography, said the trial was unfair. “Under today’s laws of evidence, he never would have been convicted and executed,” Mr. Smith said.

Then it hit me. If we say these things today about things that happened a century ago. People a century from now will most definitely say the same about things we’re doing today.

And that’s why I will never ever under any circumstance believe in the death penalty.

The Rise of Special AI Chips

General purpose CPUs have been complemented with special purpose hardware accelerators since soon after they made an entrance on the consumer market.

The first PC in my childhood home had a math co-processor, and no gamer today would run a system without a dedicated graphics card with a GPU.

With the emergence of AI, the need for a new type of special purpose hardware accelerator is rising; an AI-chip specially designed to run deep neural nets.

Continue reading The Rise of Special AI Chips

Two Anti-Piracy Measures

Two super simple, crazy smart, really business intelligent, and extremely easy to implement measures against software and digital media piracy:

Availability and Price.

(For maritime anti-piracy measures, see here.)

Let me rephrase that:

High availability. Low price.

Do I have to say more? I guess I do.

So, I’m going to enjoy NOT next weeks “Crisis on Earth-X, part 4” on Netflix.

Don’t get me wrong. They don’t even have Supergirl on Netflix so that one’s not really an issue. But they do run The Flash… but only season 1 and 2 (?!?) and the Arrow but not season 6 (?!?!?!)

Even more curious. I just found “The Good Place.” It’s produced by Netflix and they only have season 1, even though half of season 2 has already aired according to IMDB. Aired where?

What are they trying to say with this?

Of course, they are telling me to go buy the other episodes somewhere else.

It’s just so childishly blatant.

I’m sorry, but I think I’d rather stop watching the whole fucking DC-universe than fall for that one. Otherwise, I’d suffer from cognitive dissonance for decades.


Header image: by Robert L. Murphy – self-made, CC BY 3.0, Link

OSX 9

“When was this updated? OSX 9?”

/Grumpy comment about an application on a discussion board

For anyone who doesn’t get the humor: “OS X” actually stands for OS 10 (as in roman number “X”). “OS 9” was the Mac operative system before OS X. However, with Sierra, it’s just called “macOS.” Some versions of OS X has also been called “Mac OS X.”

The pain is the same, the causes differ

I just came across this tweet when trying to figure out if the #prewriting-tag really was what some people might say it is (it kind of was. I’d say it has two meanings; before writing a novel and before writing at all. But this is a huge parenthesis!)

https://twitter.com/mrswhiteacs/status/909842875264802816

My first reaction was to laugh and think; wow, I wish those were my problems, not these existential angsty things about doing something meaningful with my life and making my economy work out, especially the one after I retire.

Then I realized that my gut reaction is likely why young people find older people stuffy and dumb.

Of course, these problems are huge for young people. A few will even consider jumping off cliffs because of them!

In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the pain is the same but the causes differ.

Something worth thinking about when you’re older and thinking about younger people’s problems.