Dave Duchene RSS

Stuff that
interests me - and maybe you, too.

Blog

Archive

Feb
1st
Wed
permalink
I think Steve is right—that as he so elegantly put it, they could do things that would make us shit in our pants.
permalink
Google is too powerful, too arrogant, too entrenched to be worth our love. Let them defend themselves, I’d rather devote my emotional energy to the upstarts and startups. They deserve our passion.
permalink
Jan
30th
Mon
permalink
permalink
The rate of incarceration in most other rich, free countries, whatever the differences in their histories, is remarkably steady. In countries with Napoleonic justice or common law or some mixture of the two, in countries with adversarial systems and in those with magisterial ones, whether the country once had brutal plantation-style penal colonies, as France did, or was once itself a brutal plantation-style penal colony, like Australia, the natural rate of incarceration seems to hover right around a hundred men per hundred thousand people. (That doesn’t mean it doesn’t get lower in rich, homogeneous countries—just that it never gets much higher in countries otherwise like our own.) It seems that one man in every thousand once in a while does a truly bad thing. All other things being equal, the point of a justice system should be to identify that thousandth guy, find a way to keep him from harming other people, and give everyone else a break.
permalink

What does this mean?

It allows the automation of global coercion. Simply comply or die coercion. Call up the target on his/her personal cell. Ask them to do or stop doing something. If they don’t do what you ask, they die soon therafter due to drone strike (unless they go into deep hiding and disconnect from the global system).

The mid term future of a national security apparatus in secular ($$) decline? Drones, drones, and more drones. Shrink the headcount. Cut training. Put manned weapons systems in life support mode. Cut mx.

All the money is on cyber intel (to generate targets based on “signatures”) and drones to kill them. When domestic unrest occurs in the US due to economic decline, these systems will be ready for domestic application.

Jan
29th
Sun
permalink

PROBLEM: You are a web programmer. You have users. Your users rate stuff on your site. You want to put the highest-rated stuff at the top and lowest-rated at the bottom. You need some sort of “score” to sort by.

WRONG SOLUTION #1: Score = (Positive ratings) - (Negative ratings) Why it is wrong: Suppose one item has 600 positive ratings and 400 negative ratings: 60% positive. Suppose item two has 5,500 positive ratings and 4,500 negative ratings: 55% positive. This algorithm puts item two (score = 1000, but only 55% positive) above item one (score = 200, and 60% positive). WRONG.

Sites that make this mistake: Urban Dictionary

SOLUTION #2: Score = Average rating = (Positive ratings) / (Total ratings) Why it is wrong: Average rating works fine if you always have a ton of ratings, but suppose item 1 has 2 positive ratings and 0 negative ratings. Suppose item 2 has 100 positive ratings and 1 negative rating. This algorithm puts item two (tons of positive ratings) below item one (very few positive ratings). WRONG.

Sites that make this mistake: Amazon.com

CORRECT SOLUTION: Score = Lower bound of Wilson score confidence interval for a Bernoulli parameter

permalink
78X - Somebody Else’s Problem
781 - Operations
782 - QA
783 - It was a customer request, honestly
784 - Management, obviously
785 - TPS Cover Sheet not attached
Jan
28th
Sat
permalink
Now, some people will say to you that Virgin space tourism counts as human spaceflight. But to put a bit of perspective on that, what they do is what Alan Shepard did in Freedom 7 in 1961 — a suborbital lob of fifteen minutes duration, an order of magnitude below what Yuri Gagarin did a month earlier. So what you can say about Virgin Galactic in 2012 is that it’s matched capability with, um, 1961.
Jan
26th
Thu
permalink
permalink
  • We have a radical proposal for the hive: Embrace Beck. Don’t flame him or DDoS him or d0x him or anything. In fact, make him your official spokesman. Make him the King of Anonymous. Consider the benefits: When someone is looking for an Official Statement From Anonymous, you can direct them to ask their questions to Beck and get the hell out of your chan.
  • 1. ...
  • ...
  • 4. A new level of WTF for Anonymous to aspire to. We all need heros.
permalink
permalink
America is a super power not because we make the biggest guns. We’re a superpower because our culture has saturated the planet: Levis, Apple, Nike, Disney, Coke, Pepsi, McDonald’s, Jazz, Rhythm n Blues, Rock ‘n Roll, and Hip Hop. Our culture dominates the world far more than any nuclear bomb can. When you can make a person think a certain way, you don’t have to bomb them. Just give them some credit cards, a wide screen 3D TV, some potato chips, and watch what happens. This kind of cultural war, a war of propaganda and words, elements that both Hollywood and Washington know a lot about, makes America powerful beyond measure. The hard metal of this cultural weaponry, much of it, emanates from the soul of Blacks, the African American experience in music, dance, art and literature.
permalink
  • Like no-www.org, we have a www.www.extra-www classification system:
  • BUNK: No site at domain, www.domain or www.www.domain
  • FAIL: www.www.domain does not work, but www.domain or domain does
  • BAD: Either www.www.domain presents a different site, or www.www.domain is redirected to www.domain or domain
  • GOOD: www.www.domain and www.domain or domain work and present the same site
  • GOOD (alternative): Either www.domain or domain redirect to www.www.domain
  • BEST: www.domain and domain redirect to www.www.domain
  • HARDCORE: www.domain and domain don't work, www.www.domain presents the site
Jan
25th
Wed
permalink
So the next thing you know we’re on I-95, because women, it’s never enough for them. We’re on I-95, and she unhooks the pole, and she’s holding the morphine bag over her head with her gown that’s flying up in the air so you could see her entire naked, bony body with the morphine bag whipping in the wind, and we’re passing by these guys in their Lamborghinis, and I’m looking at them like, What the hell kind of life are you living? Look at me, I’m on top of the world here.