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steamer25

654 karma · joined July 29, 2009

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steamer25··on It Costs $30 to Make a DIY EpiPen
> R&D, IP licensing, and (perhaps most significantly) regulatory compliance

I'm going to call the R&D costs a wash because that cost should also be factored into the price of the diabetic injector that forms the basis of the $30 homebrew design.

From your list, that leaves IP licensing and regulatory compliance which are both imposed by the state.

I believe we would still see plenty of (and actually probably more) innovation with a much more relaxed IP policy that favored small, incremental improvements and the diversity of product variations that competition would bring. In short, copyright terms should be 5-10 years max and should only be granted in cases where there's proof of significant research. Simply, if the ability to monopolize your 'idea' for the better part of a decade doesn't incentivize you sufficiently--it's likewise not worth depriving the public over it.

With regards to regulatory compliance, I believe we're seeing a case of the perfect becoming the enemy of the good. Imagine if the state extended the good-Samaritan policy to all medical providers--legally protecting anyone who exercises good-faith and due-diligence towards improving the health of their fellow man. Also, replace the old-west era FDA with information-age search engines, customer reviews and a plethora of private Consumer Reports -type organizations. In this scenario, there are several auto-injectors available on the market ranging from a $30 model which has failure rate of 50% to a $600 model that's been tested out the wazoo and only fails 1% of the time. Even under this very pessimistic scenario (50% seems pretty conservative to me), many lives are saved because there's a long tail of people who can't afford the $600 model but more than half of them end up surviving an episode of anaphylaxis because they can access the low and mid -range models.

steamer25··on Pardon Snowden
Human Rights Watch press release:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/09/13/us-obama-should-pardon-e...

steamer25··on The ESP32 has been released
Do you have particular terminology you're interested in?

The general subject is Micro Controller Units (MCUs) (and to a lesser extent System On Chip (SOC)s) which are becoming cheap ($5) and abundant enough to fuel the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) . There are various tangential topics such as:

* Computer architecture: e.g., "data bus", "SRAM", "Von Neumann architecture", "SPI flash", "Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC)", ARM, etc.

* Electrical engineering: e.g., "pulse trains", "servomotors", "Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) & vice versa (DAC)", "milliwatts (mW)", "milli-amp hours (mAh)", etc.

* Software engineering: "address spaces", "multi-threading", "stack", "Rust", "Low-Level Virtual Machine" (LLVM)", "[software build/compiler] toolchain", "Software Development Kit (SDK)", "GNU C Compiler (gcc)", etc.

* Network/Communication protocols: WiFi, "Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)", "run-length-encoding", "little-endian", "Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)", "Transport Layer Security (TLS)", etc.

Make magazine (especially their electronics and Arduino YouTube channels--see below) might be a good info gateway for you.

Given the low prices already mentioned, I'd say that if you're interested in learning more, a good way to go would be to order something like an AdaFruit Trinket (link below) (or a fully-fledged Arduino or one of the ESP8266 or ESP32 boards in this article) and seeing what you can accomplish with it. Sparkfun also has some good tutorials if you're already confident on the coding side.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwhkA66li5vCOKe4Rx50f...

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwhkA66li5vAmrRwrT8fO...

https://www.adafruit.com/products/1501

https://learn.sparkfun.com/

steamer25··on How to get your app noticed on Google Play
Disclosure: this is from my employer

We released a whitepaper not too long ago about App Store Optimization. I'm not very involved in mobile/client -side development but I heard the paper was well received.

Summary infographic: https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Native-X-... Whitepaper: http://nativex.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/NativeX_ASO_Wh...

EDIT/Clarification: I'm associated with the paper referenced in my comment--not the parent article.

steamer25··on Why California is so expensive: It’s not just the weather, it’s the regulation
Be careful about buying into the unassailable legitimacy of governmental/regulatory force. As often as not, regulations are the abuses. Winning a popularity contest (or achieving regulatory power through even less optimal means) does not automatically confer unwavering devotion to the commons or the general welfare. "If men were angels, no government [of likewise non-angelic men] would be necessary".
steamer25··on Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
> No one has a stake is seeing that Oracle be awarded $9 billion in damages just because it bought Sun Microsystems and found an opportunity through its lawyers to make a big money grab against Google

My paraphrase: ~[No one outside of Oracle is overly sympathetic to their money grab against Google. Everyone sees their claims as overly-litigious--based on the simple fact of having purchased Sun Microsystems rather than a legitimate defense of their own creative and value-creating effort.]

steamer25··on Why Anti-Authoritarians Are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)
Have an upvote. While I find your comment humorous, it's also insightful. I don't see why others would downvote it.
steamer25··on Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law
I didn't make it very clear in the parent comment but I don't consider murder to be an inalienable right either. My point was that it could be considered an 'alienable' right, if that makes any sense. I.e., because we ourselves don't want to be murdered and because we want to participate in civilization, we assent to limits on individual liberties--namely those in which individuals would infringe upon the rights of others.

As I think about it now, I would say that our inalienable human rights are derived from the fact that we exist self-aware with the desire and general capacity to assert our rights. I.e., to whatever end or purpose, we wouldn't have those abilities absent some reason. If you're alive, you want to live and you're not hurting anybody else; who's to say that you should be denied that life? If anyone, it's just some other guy who's opinion isn't actually any more important than your own. One might say it should all be self-evident :) .

At any rate, I think we're largely saying the same things.

steamer25··on Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law
Agreed. To expound a bit...

There is a perspective/philosophy* in which humans under anarchic/natural-law are born with 100% rights. E.g., if you were washed ashore with a number of ship-wreck-mates on an otherwise uninhabited island, there'd be nothing to stop you from implementing works copyrighted in other lands. Further, there'd be nothing to stop you from violating the terms of any contract or even murdering anyone--you'd have unlimited rights.

But let's say we're wiser than that. When we wash ashore, we all agree that it's in everyone's best interest to avoid killing each-other. Therefore, we each give up a measure of our unlimited rights and grant them to each-other in the form of governmental 'powers'--if someone kills one member of our new tribe, the other members will kill (or otherwise deprive the rights of) the one who initiated the aggression.

In it's ideal form, the government's purpose is to maintain the largest possible sphere of individual rights without allowing individuals to infringe upon the rights of others. It can only exist inasmuch as each individual condones and supports it's actions. To the degree it becomes imbalanced towards one party or another, the aggrieved parties retain the right to withdraw the powers they've delegated--in extreme cases they may fight the other party's government to reclaim their inalienable rights.

With this scenario in mind, imagine that you see me building a sand castle on my side of the beach. You like the design so you copy it on your side of the beach. I'm not flattered by the imitation but you haven't really deprived me of any rights either--I'm still free to do as I wish on my side of the beach. Since I'm not really harmed, I don't have an inalienable right to monopolize the castle's design. In fact, if I storm over to your side of the beach and knock your copy down, I'd be depriving you of the right to make that kind of sand castle should you see fit to do so.

Given such a dispute, the tribe (including yourself) might agree to relinquish the right to manipulate sand in particular ways and create a new governmental power. The creation of this power appeases and incentivizes me to continue voluntarily beautifying the beach with fresh and innovative sculptures and promotes continued peaceful cooperation. This a matter of policy, there are no higher laws or anything set in stone about the validity or duration of my claims, etc.

* I tend to agree with this philosophy but want to take a more objective tack for the sake of the great-grandparent poster.

steamer25··on White House: Share Your Thoughts on Strong Encryption
Here's what I wrote:

Expecting Americans to weaken encryption systems is analogous to mandating that all physical locks succumb to any copy of a government master key. This certainly violates the spirit of the fourth amendment--especially when you consider that the amendment explicitly guarantees the privacy of citizen's "papers, and effects".

Such a mandate would also be counter-productive in terms of reducing non-governmental intrusion. Building by-pass mechanisms into these systems inherently provides additional avenues for circumventing them. Returning to the master key analogy, if a copy of the master key was leaked into the public, the locks on every home, car and business in the entire country would have to be replaced or otherwise be rendered useless. Similarly, if, after significant research and experimentation a criminal or foreign organization was able to derive or otherwise reproduce the master key, no lock in the country could impede them.

The arguments of the few who oppose access to strong encryption as a human right imply that they consider it to be a weapon. If that's the case, then it's a right recognized by the second amendment.

Then again, while the pen may be mightier than the sword, communication is not truly a weapon. Sticks and stones can break bones but words and information are ultimately unable to cause direct physical harm.

The willingness of some men to overstep their rights and engage in violence is why we are called to count the cost of eternal vigilance and not give up our liberties for a little temporary security. This is government's raison d'etre: to protect us from the sticks and stones while upholding our inalienable rights to free speech and voluntary association--rights which also clearly encompass access to encryption.

steamer25··on Google Open-Sourcing TensorFlow Shows AI's Future Is Data, Not Code
I haven't tried it out yet but one of their 'selling' points is portability. From the current front page of tensorflow.org:

"TensorFlow runs on CPUs or GPUs, and on desktop, server, or mobile computing platforms. Want to play around with a machine learning idea on your laptop without need of any special hardware? TensorFlow has you covered. Ready to scale-up and train that model faster on GPUs with no code changes? TensorFlow has you covered. Want to deploy that trained model on mobile as part of your product? TensorFlow has you covered. Changed your mind and want to run the model as a service in the cloud? Containerize with Docker and TensorFlow just works."

steamer25··on Text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
You just need to get creative with your marketing. "ImProsciutto--it's not Prosciutto, it's improved", "I Can't Believe It's Not Champagne (tm)", "Parmigiano-Texicano", etc. :)
steamer25··on Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business
Related CollegeHumor/truTV info-tainment spin-off: Adam Ruins Everything - The Real Reason Car Dealerships Are the Worst

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMWmYJOa-BM&list=PLZxWJ6CTr6...

steamer25··on Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business
I think a better analogy would be a bear-trap or a land-mine. The powers granted to government exist to deny life, liberty and property to those who violate the law. They're fundamentally destructive. Although we intend that they only be used in suppressing illegitimate force and fraud, that's not always the case.

Under this analogy, I think it's quite reasonable to question why we have so many of these very dangerous laws just lying around waiting to ruin someone's life. Absent very compelling and readily apparent reasons for keeping them in place, the default course of action should be to disable and remove them as quickly as is safe to do.

"A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson on the dubiousness of pre-supposing that perfect and timeless wisdom guided anyone who's ever deigned to enact a law.

steamer25··on Medical Breakthrough in Spinal Cord Injuries Was Made by a Computer Program
Do you recommend any good primers on topology? I thought this (https://colah.github.io/posts/2014-03-NN-Manifolds-Topology/) was an interesting article and I see what looks like some great papers and videos available at http://www.ayasdi.com/approach/data-scientist/, but I don't know the difference between homotopy and homology (yet) :) .

What kinds of infrastructure/tech do you think will have the most utility for topological data analysis in the near future? E.g., GPUs, Apache Spark, FPGAs, etc.

Any thoughts on an Ayasdi public offering? I'd like to consider investing but I don't have millions of dollars (yet) :) .

Thanks for your time.

steamer25··on Breakthrough in cloaking technology grabs military's attention
If I understand the article correctly, the material can be designed to absorb, rather than reflect, certain frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. When this occurs in the visible spectrum, we call such materials, "black". If it were really effective, clothing made from it would appear to be so dark that it couldn't get any more black--aka none more black. Existing clothing might not be quite that dark but it probably gets pretty close in terms of human visibility.

The article would probably be more accurate to call this advancement a potential improvement to stealth technology since it sounds like the intent is to conceal planes from radar.

steamer25··on An Intuitive Explanation of Fourier Theory
Curious... If the Fourier transform can be 'calculated' by photons passing through an optical lens, has anyone ever produced a component that could capture the computation numerically? I.e., some sort of capsule/chip with:

* A digital-to-analog converter with pixel array on one end * A lens in the center * A sensor array with an analog-to-digital converter on the other end

steamer25··on Immersive Linear Algebra – A free interactive online book
There's also this interactive page for eigen- vectors and values: http://setosa.io/ev/eigenvectors-and-eigenvalues/ (as well as a sibling for PCA: http://setosa.io/ev/principal-component-analysis/)
steamer25··on Edward Snowden at IETF 93
If the election were held tomorrow between a generic Democrat and a generic Republican, I'd write in Edward Snowden. Right now, I can't imagine either of the parties yielding a better candidate. If enough others did the same, I think the discussion might actually be elevated enough to make a difference--I won't be holding my breath, though.
steamer25··on Pliny the Elder on Dolphins (77 CE)
Many Pliny was conflating dolphins and sharks?

E.g., "his mouth is situated much below his muzzle, almost, indeed, in the middle of the belly" could be reasonably applied to a picture like this one: http://www.sharkwallpapers.net/bulkupload/wallpapers/Great%2...

Maybe there are other animals mixed in there too. This seemed odd to me (although I'm far from a marine biologist): "...would present his back for him to mount, taking care to conceal the spiny projection of his fins in their sheath..."

steamer25··on Nvidia Pascal GPU to Feature 17B Transistors and 32GB HBM2 VRAM
The 1000 low-margin customers also come with the added benefit of diversification.
steamer25··on Frequency Counting Algorithms Over Data Streams
My understanding is that HyperLogLog will estimate the cardinality e.g., the number of different types of events in the stream. The frequency counting algorithms in the article can be used to estimate the number of occurrences of each of the most frequently occurring types.

E.g., Where the frequency counting algorithms might estimate the following counts for a given stream: A: 2, B: 5, C:1 ...HyperLogLog would estimate that you have three types of events (A, B and C but you only get the count: 3) in it. Presumably, HyperLogLog requires fewer time and space resources to achieve this more summarized perspective.

steamer25··on Livestream of Rand Paul Filibustering Reauthorization of the Patriot Act [video]
Just as newspapers, radio and television, etc. have brought increased transparency and clarity to the inner-workings of government, likewise we should definitely be using even more recently developed tools like branching, revision histories, hyperlinks and various diffing algorithms to elucidate exactly what has been or is being proposed or adopted and by whom.
steamer25··on FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote
Market forces would have handled racial discrimination if the government had done the one job it had to do of equally protecting businesses that were owned by or catered to racial minorities.
steamer25··on A Designer's War on Misleading Parking Signs
I think that tax-payers should be the ones to pay for enforcement of regulations that are claimed to benefit them. Governments, local and otherwise, should be barred from using fine money for the 'general welfare'. To do so sets up a conflict of interest and condones extortion.

Instead, fine moneys should be ear-marked towards remediation and reparation of the 'crime' committed. E.g., in this case, all parking fine money could be put into a fund towards building parking ramps. In the case of speeding tickets fine money should go towards rumble-strips, guard rails, additional lanes and other features that make it safe to drive at higher speeds. Etc. Etc.

steamer25··on The CPAN Pull Request Challenge
From the article: "You don't have to be an experienced Perl programmer, CPAN author, or githubber. The goal is to help others, possibly learn something, and hopefully have a bit of fun."

It might be possible to help with e.g., documentation (which could also be taken as an opportunity to learn just enough Perl to read less-documented code).

steamer25··on Y Combinator has filed an official comment with the FCC
The same could be said of the grocery stores or car dealerships in my town. The problem is that as soon as you say it'd be more efficient to have all our eggs in one basket, the human nature of the carrier kicks in and says, "Hey I've got it made now. I can take it easy because no one's allowed to compete with me". Unfortunately, hiring some delegate who's multiple-times removed from the consumer/voter and is likewise unmotivated to improve the situation doesn't change that.

Yes doing the trenching and tunneling through various neighborhoods is disruptive and requires heavy machinery, etc. but that's just to create a hole in the ground. Once some conduit is laid (as a public good by the municipality?) it should be relatively easy for new carriers to come in and pull fiber or what-have-you. You just have to make the channel big enough for e.g., several cables and then you lease the space to the x highest bidders for five years at a time where x > 1.

There are probably better ways to finance things and minimize the disruption, etc. but overall it doesn't seem infeasible to me.

steamer25··on Y Combinator has filed an official comment with the FCC
Instead of trying to get politicians and bureaucrats to thoroughly understand the technology and hoping that they'll steer these monopolies in a favorable direction, why don't we demand that said monopolies be dissolved? I.e., if the terms of the deal are going to be altered, why not declare that there may be two or even several players? Also, why can't this be resolved at the regional level? Why does Netflix have to be as uniformly slow as obscure-and-poorly-optimized-cat-pics.com across the entire country?
steamer25··on An Introduction to Reactive Programming
> my brain doesn't want to think about those UI elements as streams

The UI elements themselves aren't streams. Also, you're missing an important keyword--they're "event" streams. Stream in this context just means an ordered set of momentary events occurring in more or less real time--a button was clicked, the server responded, a sensor reading was taken, an item was purchased, etc.

In order to get a good understanding of FRP, it would probably first help to understand laziness as found in Haskell or .NET IEnumerable/yield return or Python's generators, etc. The gist is that you have a function that can return a value and then effectively pause it's execution until you call it again. A simple example is an infinite counter: the first time you call it, it returns 1; the next time it remembers that it had previously returned 1 and so it adds one more and returns two, etc.

Usually when this kind of laziness is considered, it's the job of the calling code to say, "I'm ready for more data" and then 'pull' the next chunk. In FRP, this is reversed--the client/calling code says, "let me know if/when anything interesting happens" and the stream 'pushes' data to the subscriber. The functional part comes into play when you start manipulating the pulled or pushed data by specifying functions as arguments to the 'higher-ordered' functions that work on the data. I.e., when we get the data, do this() to it and then do that()--where 'this' and 'that' are variables/function-pointers.

steamer25··on Do not learn another programming language
Kind of reminds me of portions from: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/advice.html

...and I agree that there's a whole world of skills out there to master e.g., Audio Engineering, Cooking, Electronics, Linear Algebra, Rhetoric, etc.

That said, if you want to be a better programmer, I'd say keep learning languages until you've at least got a good representative from three different paradigms e.g.,

  Statically-typed, objected oriented: C++, C# or Java
  Dynamic/Scripting: JavaScript, Perl, Python or Ruby
  Functional: Erlang, Haskell or Lisp
Of course, there are plenty of other categories as well. E.g.,

  Data Access/Transformation: SQL or XSLT
  Low-level/hardware: Assembly or Verilog
  Stack-based: Factor or Forth
  Special purpose (Proof Assistance/Logic/Statistics/etc): Coq, ProLog or R
Etc. etc. etc.

...and many languages cross-over between various categories but the point is to be exposed to the different ways of thinking and to get a sense of which tools are the best fit for a given class of problems.

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