Messages

51

DC Gamer Club / MIT Morality game for self-driving cars

« on: October 08, 2016, 09:37 AM »

MIT has a morality game for self-driving cars.

http://moralmachine.mit.edu/

Take the results with a cowlick of salt. They're not very accurate, but you might have fun. It's pretty short too, so no major time investment.

I used 3 principles in the "game":

1. Save the people in the car.
2. If nobody is in the car, obey traffic lights.
3. If nobody is in the car, and you can't obey lights, swerve.

That results in prefering:

• Men over women
• Younger people over older people
• Large people over fit people
• Higher social value over criminals

All of those were simple accidents of how the questions appeared.

52

Site/Forum Features / Re: Code Highlighting Tags Broken

« on: October 01, 2016, 10:02 PM »

You could use Pastebin if needed.

53

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for Workbench Design SW :: $10 bounty for 1st accepted answer

« on: September 11, 2016, 11:16 PM »

UPDATE

Well, everything seemed to either be out of the price range or suck. Even those out of the price range seemed to suck for what I wanted.

So... with things as they are, I've decided to stick a high powered rifle (called SketchUp) in my mouth and pull the trigger.

CAD is so entirely alienated from actual normal human experience. It's stunning that there's nothing out there that lets you work in a normal human fashion. I'd have thought that something was there, but no... The market is all professional with nothing meeting the needs of the consumer market for simple design.

As for SketchUp, it is highly non-intuitive and definitely not something that you can just "use" out of the box. It requires significant effort. Sigh... Not something I wanted to put on my plate at the moment, but I'll just have to suck it up and pull that trigger.

54

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for Workbench Design SW :: $10 bounty for 1st accepted answer

« on: August 08, 2016, 09:11 AM »

@Attronarch -- Thanks. I'll give Autodesk Inventor a shot. The trial lasts 30 days, which should be way more than enough for me to get what I need done. (Cross fingers & hope it's not crippled...) I can't find a free version though. The price otherwise is far beyond my budget for this.


I'll update as I get through this stuff. I won't have time today to play around with it.

55

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for Workbench Design SW :: $10 bounty for 1st accepted answer

« on: August 07, 2016, 08:59 PM »

@Shades -- Thanks, but none work for me.


http://wooddesigner.org/
http://cabinetdesigner.net/

Those above 2 are about the same. They do shelves and cabinets, but not tables. It can be FORCED to do a table, but the UI is not set up for it and is far from intuitive.

I installed it and gave it a decent run for a couple hours. Seems great for shelves though...

www.mobi3d.ro

That Mobi3D looks better, but it's over $100. It lacks a lot of features, but getting what you want initially is far easier than something like SketchUp. Also, copyright is up to 2009, so... seems like it might be near to abandonware. Not sure.


www.pro100.co.nz

Over $4,000. Leasing is $300. Ugh. Pass.

http://www.rockler.com/sketchlist-3d-version-4-shop-windows-version

Sigh... Over budget. They have a trial at their site:

http://sketchlist.com/

But you can't save or print. Win10 reboots at will, so... can't fiddle with the software and come back reliably. I could do it from memory if I could do it in software.

i have looked for such a tool (see my woodworking software thread).

in the end, even though i initially hated it, and never grew to love it, i settled on google's SketchUp just because in the end it was the least fiddly.

-mouser (August 07, 2016, 05:10 PM)

I had a quick read in there, and didn't see anything that really looked quite right.

I may go back to SketchUp, but the inability to change a length is ticking me off. The videos show you how to do it, but it doesn't actually work in the software. I'll do a quick search for an answer, but after that... I think I'll be going to pencil & paper. This is seeming pretty futile.

56

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« on: August 07, 2016, 03:10 PM »

https://www.rt.com/n...relaunch-kim-dotcom/

-wraith808 (July 13, 2016, 07:24 AM)

From there:

“I’ll be the first tech billionaire who got indicted, lost everything and created another billion $ tech company while on bail,” he tweeted.

Original:

https://twitter.com/...s/752288313252257793

Still definitely one of the top bad-asses on the Internet. Right up there with John McAfee.

And he just doesn't stop:

https://twitter.com/...s/762200591170887680

Madman!

https://twitter.com/...s/761407503041073152

Absolutely wild.

57

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for Workbench Design SW :: $10 bounty for 1st accepted answer

« on: August 07, 2016, 02:59 PM »

@Stephen66515 - Not quite. Those are all existing plans, and I'm looking for some software that will let me do the design.

58

General Software Discussion / Looking for Workbench Design SW :: $10 bounty for 1st accepted answer

« on: August 07, 2016, 02:31 PM »

I need some software to help me design a workbench.

I am NOT interested in learning 3D design, and I don't want to play fun & games with a 3D CAD program that makes me design screws and 2x4s and everything else. All of that stuff should be built in to the software.

In other words, I want to drag & drop 2x4s and other materials onto the design surface and get things done quickly.

Like LEGO.

Or like Visual Studio or any other typical software IDE where you can use and customise pre-made components. (Who in the world wants to write their own text input component when you can just drag & drop one?)

I tried Sketch (by Google) and hate it. There's no kind of "tool chest" with pre-made materials/items to use. Ick.

I don't want to spend a fortune on this either. If it's $100 or more, I'll stick to pencil & paper. Free is best. Also, I'm a total bigot and prefer open source software, e.g. MIT or GPL, etc. Proprietary is ok, but has to be worth it. Also, if it is proprietary, I'm also a total bigot again and prefer software from mISVs over large software development companies.

The workbench will be used for a variety of purposes, including working with wood, metal, and electronics.

So, requirements in brief:

• High level functionality
• Ease of use
• Cheap or free (no $gajillion CAD suites - free is best)
• No OS X software

Bounty: $10 in DC credits to whoever has a sane recommendation for me that I can actually use.

59

Living Room / Re: Programming/Coder humor

« on: June 30, 2016, 10:13 PM »

A programmer's wife tells him, "Go to the supermarket and get some bread. While you're there, get eggs."

Spoiler

He never comes back.

60

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« on: June 30, 2016, 09:44 PM »

61

Living Room / Re: Programming/Coder humor

« on: June 30, 2016, 09:41 PM »

A math programmer stumbles into his house at 3 am.

His wife is livid. "You're late!" She screams. "You said you'd be home by 11:45!"

"Actually," he responds, "I said I'd be in by a quarter of 12."

62

Living Room / Re: Programming/Coder humor

« on: June 30, 2016, 06:47 AM »

Not really a joke, but seriously funny nevertheless:

http://bipcot.org/

http://bipcot.org/?page_id=29

The BipCot NoGov License allows any use of software, media, products or services EXCEPT by governments. The BipCot NoGov License threatens no “government guns” for violators. It is not copyright-based, it is entirely shame-based.

63

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: June 13, 2016, 07:27 PM »

But is it full?

64

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« on: June 13, 2016, 04:02 PM »

Yeah, just a tiny bit political. Meh... Nothing wrong with science done right, even if it is uncomfortable.

And speaking of the Basement, I posted an interview with another heretic: Dr. Judith Curry.

Time for me to get back to my re-education classes. Had too much to think today, so I'll probably get detention.

65

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« on: June 10, 2016, 09:34 PM »

It took additional peer review after peer review and 3 years for this paper to correct a "minor" error that resulted in the exact opposite conclusion.

http://www.zerohedge...e-socially-withdrawn

When your conclusions are the exact opposite of reality, there might just be a tiny wee bit of bias there.

66

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« on: June 02, 2016, 09:06 PM »

Scientists Say Fraud Causing Crisis of Science - #NewWorldNextWeek

Story #1: 40% of Scientists Admit Fraud “Always or Often” Contributes to Irreproducible Research
http://bit.ly/1XkpU1b
How the National Academy of Sciences Misled the Public Over GMO Food Safety
http://bit.ly/1TY7cZ9
Portland, Oregon School Board Promotes Climate Justice, Bans Books That Deny Climate Change
http://bit.ly/1UwJBPf

67

Living Room / Re: Goodbye to my father

« on: May 24, 2016, 08:01 AM »

My condolences.

I hope you and your family can find some comfort in fond memories and celebrate his life.

68

Living Room / Re: Programming/Coder humor

« on: May 23, 2016, 02:04 PM »

What is the code trying to tell you?

Code Puzzle:

Code: C# [Select]

1. void Main()
2. {
3.   GetEwe();
4.   Console.WriteLine($"You have been given: {Ewe}");  
5. }
6.  
7. public enum Directions { Up, Down, Left, Right, Forward, Backward, Diagonally };
8. public Directions? Ewe;
9.  
10. public Directions GetEwe()
11. {
12.   Random rand = new Random(DateTime.Now.Millisecond);
13.   do
14.   {
15.     Ewe =
16.     (
17.       from direction in Enum.GetValues(typeof(Directions)).OfType<Directions>()
18.       //let u = Directions.Down    
19.       select direction
20.     ).ElementAt(rand.Next(0, Enum.GetNames(typeof(Directions)).Length));
21.   }
22.   while (Ewe == Directions.Up);
23.   return Ewe.Value;  Around();
24. }
25.  
26. private void Around()
27. {
28.   Ewe = null;
29. }

Solution

This code is never going to give you (Ewe) up, because the loop will assign a random direction to ewe as long as it is up
It is never going to let you (u) down, because the line//let u = Directions.Down is just a comment.
Since the return statement happens before calling Around(), it is obviously never going to run around.
And, because the method Around() is never called, it is also never going to "desert you", because it will never assign a null-value to Ewe.

Bonus points here.


Via StackExchange

69

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« on: April 18, 2016, 11:32 PM »

http://theweek.com/a...1/big-science-broken

Big Science is broken


Science is broken.

That's the thesis of a must-read article in First Things magazine, in which William A. Wilson accumulates evidence that a lot of published research is false. But that's not even the worst part.

Advocates of the existing scientific research paradigm usually smugly declare that while some published conclusions are surely false, the scientific method has "self-correcting mechanisms" that ensure that, eventually, the truth will prevail. Unfortunately for all of us, Wilson makes a convincing argument that those self-correcting mechanisms are broken.

For starters, there's a "replication crisis" in science. This is particularly true in the field of experimental psychology, where far too many prestigious psychology studies simply can't be reliably replicated. But it's not just psychology. In 2011, the pharmaceutical company Bayer looked at 67 blockbuster drug discovery research findings published in prestigious journals, and found that three-fourths of them weren't right. Another study of cancer research found that only 11 percent of preclinical cancer research could be reproduced. Even in physics, supposedly the hardest and most reliable of all sciences, Wilson points out that "two of the most vaunted physics results of the past few years — the announced discovery of both cosmic inflation and gravitational waves at the BICEP2 experiment in Antarctica, and the supposed discovery of superluminal neutrinos at the Swiss-Italian border — have now been retracted, with far less fanfare than when they were first published."

What explains this? In some cases, human error. Much of the research world exploded in rage and mockery when it was found out that a highly popularized finding by the economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt linking higher public debt to lower growth was due to an Excel error. Steven Levitt, of Freakonomics fame, largely built his career on a paper arguing that abortion led to lower crime rates 20 years later because the aborted babies were disproportionately future criminals. Two economists went through the painstaking work of recoding Levitt's statistical analysis — and found a basic arithmetic error.

Then there is outright fraud. In a 2011 survey of 2,000 research psychologists, over half admitted to selectively reporting those experiments that gave the result they were after. The survey also concluded that around 10 percent of research psychologists have engaged in outright falsification of data, and more than half have engaged in "less brazen but still fraudulent behavior such as reporting that a result was statistically significant when it was not, or deciding between two different data analysis techniques after looking at the results of each and choosing the more favorable."

Then there's everything in between human error and outright fraud: rounding out numbers the way that looks better, checking a result less thoroughly when it comes out the way you like, and so forth.

More at the link.

Link to the article at First Things:

http://www.firstthin...5/scientific-regress

SCIENTIFIC REGRESS

he problem with ­science is that so much of it simply isn’t. Last summer, the Open Science Collaboration announced that it had tried to replicate one hundred published psychology experiments sampled from three of the most prestigious journals in the field. Scientific claims rest on the idea that experiments repeated under nearly identical conditions ought to yield approximately the same results, but until very recently, very few had bothered to check in a systematic way whether this was actually the case. The OSC was the biggest attempt yet to check a field’s results, and the most shocking. In many cases, they had used original experimental materials, and sometimes even performed the experiments under the guidance of the original researchers. Of the studies that had originally reported positive results, an astonishing 65 percent failed to show statistical significance on replication, and many of the remainder showed greatly reduced effect sizes.

Their findings made the news, and quickly became a club with which to bash the social sciences. But the problem isn’t just with psychology. There’s an ­unspoken rule in the pharmaceutical industry that half of all academic biomedical research will ultimately prove false, and in 2011 a group of researchers at Bayer decided to test it. Looking at sixty-seven recent drug discovery projects based on preclinical cancer biology research, they found that in more than 75 percent of cases the published data did not match up with their in-house attempts to replicate. These were not studies published in fly-by-night oncology journals, but blockbuster research featured in Science, Nature, Cell, and the like. The Bayer researchers were drowning in bad studies, and it was to this, in part, that they attributed the mysteriously declining yields of drug pipelines. Perhaps so many of these new drugs fail to have an effect because the basic research on which their development was based isn’t valid.

When a study fails to replicate, there are two possible interpretations. The first is that, unbeknownst to the investigators, there was a real difference in experimental setup between the original investigation and the failed replication. These are colloquially referred to as “wallpaper effects,” the joke being that the experiment was affected by the color of the wallpaper in the room. This is the happiest possible explanation for failure to reproduce: It means that both experiments have revealed facts about the universe, and we now have the opportunity to learn what the difference was between them and to incorporate a new and subtler distinction into our theories.

The other interpretation is that the original finding was false. Unfortunately, an ingenious statistical argument shows that this second interpretation is far more likely. First articulated by John Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, this argument proceeds by a simple application of Bayesian statistics. Suppose that there are a hundred and one stones in a certain field. One of them has a diamond inside it, and, luckily, you have a diamond-detecting device that advertises 99 percent accuracy. After an hour or so of moving the device around, examining each stone in turn, suddenly alarms flash and sirens wail while the device is pointed at a promising-looking stone. What is the probability that the stone contains a diamond?

Most would say that if the device advertises 99 percent accuracy, then there is a 99 percent chance that the device is correctly discerning a diamond, and a 1 percent chance that it has given a false positive reading. But consider: Of the one hundred and one stones in the field, only one is truly a diamond. Granted, our machine has a very high probability of correctly declaring it to be a diamond. But there are many more diamond-free stones, and while the machine only has a 1 percent chance of falsely declaring each of them to be a diamond, there are a hundred of them. So if we were to wave the detector over every stone in the field, it would, on average, sound twice—once for the real diamond, and once when a false reading was triggered by a stone. If we know only that the alarm has sounded, these two possibilities are roughly equally probable, giving us an approximately 50 percent chance that the stone really contains a diamond.

More at that link as well.

70

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: January 26, 2016, 12:11 AM »

BITCOIN: TOO BIG TO FAIL

-Renegade (January 24, 2016, 12:36 AM)

I bet they used to say that about the Knights Templar ... Until the first Friday the 13th rolled around.

-Stoic Joker (January 25, 2016, 06:56 AM)

Wow! Way to go SJ!   Interesting observation when you think about the not inconsiderable similarities between the services offered by the two. Or their relative status in the eyes of the respective Powers That Be...

Just goes to illustrate why it may be a good thing to be considered useful by kings - but never so useful that kings start to feel beholden to you after a while. They're somewhat notorious for requesting "new game" by the simple expedient of flipping the table over...and then shooting their unarmed opponent.

Bitcoin holders better hope that doesn't turn out to be prescient on your part. 

-40hz (January 25, 2016, 03:14 PM)

You guys are talking about an absolute totalitarian system. So... yeah... I completely advocate... I'll cut it there. Read my mind. Let your imaginations go to very, very dark places. Those places are very well lit.

When you want to restrict my ability to buy milk for my family, you deserve <insert depraved horror here />.

Bitcoin is a way around that kind of economic totalitarianism.

Just wait. It will come. All of our freedoms are being systematically raped and destroyed. All of them.

Bitcoin represents the ability to freely transact with other people without any permission needed.

Look at Europe.

How much can you spend in France in cash? 3,000 euro? Nope. It's only 1,000 euro now. WTF?!? You can't buy a good oven for that. You can't buy a good computer for that.

The war on cash is on. The war on your freedom to buy things without being tracked is on.

This isn't rocket appliances!




































I want to scream.

71

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« on: January 26, 2016, 12:00 AM »

Because it's Australia Day

Spoiler

[ Invalid Attachment ]

-4wd (January 25, 2016, 11:58 PM)

 



Second row there because tongue is required!

72

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« on: January 25, 2016, 11:58 PM »

ive split off the latest post in this topic and moved it to the basement; if there are particularly family inappropriate posts on this thread they should go to that thread.

-mouser (January 25, 2016, 07:11 AM)

But it was funny. People like that actually exist! They're not just imaginagoria fantasies. They're real!~

How is that not hilarious!

Anyways... more hilarity...




USC...

73

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: January 24, 2016, 08:16 PM »

Ah forget it! I'm starting to sound as conspiracy theory loving as Ren. :-))

-40hz (January 24, 2016, 03:47 PM)

Just wait until you're kidnapped by aliens and see just how much you like the old Buttvader 2000!

P.S. Hey Ren! How's it going? Move completed ok?

-40hz (January 24, 2016, 03:47 PM)

Done over 6 months ago now. But, probably moving again in August... However, this time it will only be a few days drive away, so we won't have to throw everything in the garbage like the last time.

74

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: January 24, 2016, 08:11 PM »

Can't get to link.  At least, not without disabling ad blockers.

-wraith808 (January 24, 2016, 10:02 AM)

Odd.

Anyways, here it is:

The death of bitcoin has been proclaimed once again. Prominent developer Mike Hearn’s recent comments that the bitcoin experiment was over mark the 89th time the digital currency has been pronounced dead since it first launched in 2009, at least according to one website dedicated to tracking bitcoin obituaries. While it’s sad to see a talented programmer like Hearn turn his back on bitcoin, there are still thousands of people working on making the world’s first digital currency a success.

The bitcoin network has been running without interruption for seven years now; a feat no banking system can claim. Bitcoin and its underlying blockchain technology—an online ledger that records every bitcoin transaction—represent a fundamental innovation that can dramatically speed up transaction times. The first step is replacing our need for financial middlemen. Next, we can restructure notaries, land registries, stock markets and much more.

People have criticized bitcoin for its price fluctuations but there are applications now that lock the value of bitcoin to dollars, euros or gold; people have insinuated it could be used by drugs or arms dealers operating on the dark web even though the U.K. government said bitcoin was the least likely funding tool for criminality; people have worried that regulation might discourage innovation. Meanwhile bitcoin continues to grow.

Subscribe now - Free phone/tablet charger worth over $60
Hearn’s criticisms that the bitcoin network isn’t set up to support the ever-increasing number of transactions performed on it is more a reflection of the currency’s success. It’s true that if bitcoin keeps growing as quickly as it has in the past few months parts of the network will need to be upgraded. This is a good problem to have.

What began as a small experiment is now a rapidly expanding ecosystem. There are so many people using it now that we have to plan for more capacity. It was never a secret that the software powering bitcoin would have to get upgraded occasionally—just like the software on your iPhone. Let’s look at the data. According to Bloomberg, bitcoin was the best performing currency in 2015. Why? More than 5 million new users started transacting in bitcoin last year alone. More importantly, the total transaction volume has more than doubled over the past 12 months.

bitcoin too big to fail blockchain
A graph displaying the increase in Bitcoin transactions since the beginning of 2009.
BLOCKCHAIN.INFO
The Bitcoin blockchain will catalyze innovation over the coming years. As citizens of the internet we demand transparency and ease of use. In 2016 people expect to be able to send money over the internet as quickly and cheaply as sending an email. The fact that it still takes several days to send an international money transfer is a throwback to yesteryear. Bitcoin solves that problem.

This currency is not a “failed experiment,” as Hearn suggested. Our firm, Blockchain (a bitcoin wallet provider), had its best month yet in December. All successful projects face problems as they grow, thankfully there are a multitude of brilliant minds working to solve them. In five years, hundreds of millions of users will be sending money on the internet as easily as they send chats, and the only obituaries being written will be those of the traditional banks.

Nicolas Cary is the co-founder of Blockchain, the world's leading bitcoin software company with over 5.5 million wallets.

75

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« on: January 24, 2016, 01:31 AM »

THE STUPID! IT BURNS! IT BUUUURNS!!!




Christine Lagarde is the head of the IMF, and one of the most influential people on the planet.

We're fucked.