Fake Style at Cosmic Variance
From comments to Fake Stile
Ahmed say:
….
- It is not always clear what emotions the author is trying to communicate, and that sucks. Smileys/emoticons can help here. For e.g., “This is problematic 
” can mean the problem is finally resolving some bigger issue. “This confirms X 
” means a problem is persisting. The smileys will serve as guiding points in the storyline of a paper, so we don’t have to read all of it.
Moving from style to more general regulations:
- Every paper not within the technical grasp of a good undergrad in physics/math/similar should be accompanied with a sister-paper explaining it to (at minimum) such an audience. Just to make sure the author (and the committee!) actually knows what’s going on. String theorists can of course just write an apology or something.
Video Surveillance is Useless
Found this interesting slide presentation form Peter Kovesi, inventor of phase congruency edge detector. It basically saying, that on current tech level video surveillance is useless for face identification. What follow is that it’s actually harmful, due to wrong impression of it’s reliability.
Also on his page – some fun animation or How to Animate Impossible Objects
PS Fourier phase approach to feature detection looks really promising, especially if to find some low computation cost modification.
(augmented) reality imitate art
Abstrusegoose
predicted it:
Zen of debugging
Shenxiu produce gatha:
The project is a source tree,
the code a standing mirror bright.
At all times polish it diligently,
and let no bugs crawl.
When a fra passed the rice mill chanting Shenxiu’s gatha, Huineng immediately knew this verse lacked true insight. He went to the wall, and asked a avout there to write a gatha of his own for him. The avout was surprised, “How extraordinary! You can not write assembly code, and you want to compose a gatha?” Whereupon Huineng said, “If you seek supreme enlightenment, do not slight anyone. Lowly java programmers may have great insights, and assembly coders may commit foolish acts.” In veneration, the avout wrote Huineng’s gatha on the wall for him, next to Shenxiu’s, which stated:
Project has no tree,
nor is the the code a standing mirror bright.
Since all is originally empty,
where does the bugs appear?
Huineng then went back to rice pounding. However, this gatha created a bigger stir; everyone was saying, “Amazing! You can’t judge a person by his looks! Maybe he will become a Living Saunt soon!” However, when the alarmed Hongren came out, he just casually said, “This hasn’t seen the essential nature either,” and proceeded to wipe the gatha off with his shoe.
Huineng refactoring code
10,000 Year Clock construction is moving forward
Via slashdot
And if you are reading this blog and havn’t read Anathem yet, you should give it try
Randomness: our brain deceive us
Here two points distribution : one is random, and one is not:
Which is which ?
The thing is that left image is not random, and right is.
Sean Carroll from Cosmic Variance write:
“Humans are not very good at generating random sequences; when asked to come up with a “random” sequence of coin flips from their heads, they inevitably include too few long strings of the same outcome. In other words, they think that randomness looks a lot more uniform and structureless than it really does. The flip side is that, when things really are random, they see patterns that aren’t really there. It might be in coin flips or distributions of points, or it might involve the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, or the insistence on assigning blame for random unfortunate events.”
GE “Smart Grid” conspiracy unveiled :)
GE “Plug Into Smart Grid” conspiracy was unveiled by xkcd:
