Post: #26

If you've got a relatively modern samsung smartphone (Which a lot of people do)
isn't the Gear VR a better buy than the Oculus Go?

Post: #27

(05-08-2018 04:51 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  If you've got a relatively modern samsung smartphone (Which a lot of people do)
isn't the Gear VR a better buy than the Oculus Go?

I`ve yet to try anything that I would even consider buying. I see no use for what`s out there currently. But I haven`t tried the Oculus Go as I said. I still thinks it`s gonna be some time until there is something that is really tempting to use. But It`s moving along quite fast.

Post: #28

Gear VR is pretty cool if you've got a samsung, and it's cheap as fuck (like 70-80 bucks).

Post: #29

(05-08-2018 05:32 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  Gear VR is pretty cool if you've got a samsung, and it's cheap as fuck (like 70-80 bucks).

The one`s I`ve tried made me motion-sick after a short while. I`m sure its fun if you can get over that, but I`m not really on board until they solve that issue. Also the field of view needs to get better. Etc...

Post: #30

clear aluminum

Post: #31

<<< That's where the future plane designs came from:

Post: #32

(05-01-2018 03:27 PM)polar Wrote:  So what potentially positive trends does everyone see?

What profit opportunities?

What changes to take advantage of?

What fields to get into, invest into, etc.?

There are always two sides to each coin.

I am investing in a few things.

1. Old age care, since Westerners simply cannot get enough facilities to shove their old folks into. I'm actually going to be opening one or two this year with a business partner. The start up costs are 25k in Australia.

2. Cryptocurrencies. Throw some on bitcoin and ethereum. Would recommend throwing at least 20% of your net wealth if you can afford to lose it all. Remember to buy a hardware wallet for safe keeping.

3. Becoming location independent. Unless you are drowning in quality pussy where you live, I'd recommend doing this as new tech will make you redundant eventually. Job security is a thing of the past and women in the west are not worth the effort or trouble.

Finally I'll impart some wisdom given to me from a successful young entrepreneur that made it big. He told me not to try to capitalize on investing in popular emerging tech but to offer a service to the people investing in it instead. For example, cryptocurrencies are being progressively investing into it. Instead of investing into Bitcoin myself, I become a reseller of crypto-hardware wallets in countries where demand is high and it is still hard to come by. In other words, sell the shovels and tools for gold mining.

Post: #33

(05-09-2018 02:20 AM)[email protected] Wrote:  1. Old age care, since Westerners simply cannot get enough facilities to shove their old folks into. I'm actually going to be opening one or two this year with a business partner. The start up costs are 25k in Australia.

I keep thinking about personal training for seniors. You can't take someone who's spent 50 years in front of a desk and just put them under a bench press bar. The kind of training that you'd want to give a senior citizen who's just starting to go to a gym for the first time in their life is probably completely different than what you'd want for a 25 year old who wants to learn to deadlift. But if I've had this idea, people smarter than me have had it, and I'm not at all interested in going into the personal training business anyways.

Post: #34

(05-09-2018 02:53 AM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  

(05-09-2018 02:20 AM)[email protected] Wrote:  1. Old age care, since Westerners simply cannot get enough facilities to shove their old folks into. I'm actually going to be opening one or two this year with a business partner. The start up costs are 25k in Australia.

I keep thinking about personal training for seniors. You can't take someone who's spent 50 years in front of a desk and just put them under a bench press bar. The kind of training that you'd want to give a senior citizen who's just starting to go to a gym for the first time in their life is probably completely different than what you'd want for a 25 year old who wants to learn to deadlift. But if I've had this idea, people smarter than me have had it, and I'm not at all interested in going into the personal training business anyways.

Seems like it's mostly YMCAs that are picking up this business, but one could be a trainer there:

https://www.verywellfit.com/personal-tra...rs-3120583

"As the baby-boomer generation ages, the need for trainers specialized in senior fitness has grown and will continue to grow for years to come. Some trainers market exclusively to seniors, but more often it's the senior-friendly gyms and organizations that market their programs. YMCAs across the country offer special programs and classes for older adults, and senior centers have also been providing senior exercise classes for years. It's only now that personal trainers are seeking the baby-boomers and making house calls."

Post: #35

(05-09-2018 01:29 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  <<< That's where the future plane designs came from:

I would love to fly on a plane like this. However, I find that on regular planes, a very large percentage of passengers close the windows. I hate being in a middle or aisle seat and having the person with the window seat close the shade.

Is there that large a percentage of people who are afraid of heights and don't want to see the view? Anyway, I think a glass roof airliner would have problems with these types.

Post: #36

(05-09-2018 02:20 AM)[email protected] Wrote:  

(05-01-2018 03:27 PM)polar Wrote:  So what potentially positive trends does everyone see?

What profit opportunities?

What changes to take advantage of?

What fields to get into, invest into, etc.?

There are always two sides to each coin.

I am investing in a few things.

1. Old age care, since Westerners simply cannot get enough facilities to shove their old folks into. I'm actually going to be opening one or two this year with a business partner. The start up costs are 25k in Australia.

2. Cryptocurrencies. Throw some on bitcoin and ethereum. Would recommend throwing at least 20% of your net wealth if you can afford to lose it all. Remember to buy a hardware wallet for safe keeping.

3. Becoming location independent. Unless you are drowning in quality pussy where you live, I'd recommend doing this as new tech will make you redundant eventually. Job security is a thing of the past and women in the west are not worth the effort or trouble.

Finally I'll impart some wisdom given to me from a successful young entrepreneur that made it big. He told me not to try to capitalize on investing in popular emerging tech but to offer a service to the people investing in it instead. For example, cryptocurrencies are being progressively investing into it. Instead of investing into Bitcoin myself, I become a reseller of crypto-hardware wallets in countries where demand is high and it is still hard to come by. In other words, sell the shovels and tools for gold mining.

Another potential sector that could be interesting for an investor these days;
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...ir-wallets

Not related to tech exactly, more "profit from the decline," but still!

Post: #37

Google Duplex revealed yesterday. Just tell your phone to get a reservation at the restaurant down the road, Google will make the call for you...

The conversations with the A.I. bot are scary real. Basically, in the near future you may be talking to an A.I. bot and not know it.

Post: #38

(05-09-2018 08:56 AM)heavy Wrote:  Google Duplex revealed yesterday. Just tell your phone to get a reservation at the restaurant down the road, Google will make the call for you...

The conversations with the A.I. bot are scary real. Basically, in the near future you may be talking to an A.I. bot and not know it.

I don`t think call-center worker`s have very good job security prospects to put it that way.

Post: #39

(05-09-2018 08:56 AM)heavy Wrote:  Google Duplex revealed yesterday. Just tell your phone to get a reservation at the restaurant down the road, Google will make the call for you...

The conversations with the A.I. bot are scary real. Basically, in the near future you may be talking to an A.I. bot and not know it.

Scary is right. I'm sure the people talking are convinced the AI is a real person.

Post: #40

The Asian chick on the other line...

#1 I couldn't understand her at all, but Google Duplex could

#2 She could have easily been a bot for all I know. To my ears, she sounded more like a bot than the bot.

The video just spurred a conversation between a coworker and I that got very virtual reality very quickly. This is a huge step toward virtual reality, where you don't know if you're interacting with a computer system or a person.

IQ will be a huge determinant in figuring out bots vs people. Nuanced humor is tough to fake.

Post: #41

(05-09-2018 08:56 AM)heavy Wrote:  Google Duplex revealed yesterday. Just tell your phone to get a reservation at the restaurant down the road, Google will make the call for you...

The conversations with the A.I. bot are scary real. Basically, in the near future you may be talking to an A.I. bot and not know it.

Saw this yesterday and all I could think was "How am I supposed to sexually harass that?"

Post: #42

One thing I`ve been contemplating lately is the idea of machine intelligence and AI`s becoming self-aware. And thereby taking over the world, killing of humans etc. As I see it there is a huge problem with the concept that if you just teach computers to learn in an hierarchical fashion, and develop powerful enough computing, (whether it be quantum computing or other forms) that AI`s will basically become "awake" or inhibit some form of consciousness.



Hugo de Garis might be a bit nuts, but his ideas are definitely worth a listen.

The problem as I see it is the following; What we are possibly teaching computers to do, is somewhat similar to what the human neo-cortex does. Organize the inputs from the world into an hierarchy, and connect the dots so to speak between stored memories, which allows it to emulate possible outcomes (abstractions) based on this stored information. I think it was a great insight by Ray Kurzweil to realize that the cortex is organizing inputs in this hierarchical manner since that`s the way the outside world works. (The world of our primate and hominid ancestors at least.) Computers are already outperforming humans in this process of learning and organizing of course, but in (decreasingly less) narrowly programmed fields. You might image in not to long a machine that could learn everything in a Nano second, and use that to make accurate predictions in all possible areas.

In the context of a Turing test, the computer (AI) might be able to answer every question you have, inform you of any mistakes you are making, or the smartest move regarding any outcome of your future. It can use all knowledge accumulated by humans, and put it together in such a manner, and with such speed that it will far exceed what all humans can do together. This would no doubt be extremely useful. It might give us the exact answer as to how we can develop cold fusion, or what`s the best way to go about finding extra-terrestrial intelligence etc.

But to get to the point finally, why I don`t see computers (or AI`s if you could use that term under such conditions) becoming self aware is this; Where will it`s motivation to act come from? I think this might be an overlooked aspect. Remember that in humans, the cortex of course evolved last, and quite recently in an evolutionary context. It`s the source of rationality yes, but it`s important to understand that the cortex is basically just a tool. It`s not where the motivation to act comes from. Those things evolved far earlier, and of course also exist in animals without much cortex. Most of those urges reside in the Paleo-Mammalian brain (limbic system) and even deeper brain regions. And it`s not just sex and hunger we`re talking about. Importantly curiosity, the will to know what`s over the hill, is also an evolved trait that does not come from the cortex. It`s easy to see how curiosity would have been an evolutionary advantage. Finding greener pastures basically. So the way I see it we use the cortex as a tool, but of course there will be a "feedback loop" there. But if you removed the deeper brain, and you where all cortex, there would be no will to act. As a sidenote it`s been noted that psychopaths/ serial killers have a smaller limbic brain. Probably also risk takers in the more positive sense also. They feel less pure and simple, for good and for bad.

So I can`t see how a very advanced, even a quantum computer, could evolve a sense of self and find motivation to act etc. It would basically be all cortex, and would still rely on a human guiding it in a direction. It wouldn`t start a conversation out of curiosity so to speak. (Only if you programmed it to do so in order to be polite.)All of this does not mean it couldn`t be extremely useful though, as mentioned. I`m sure I could be missing something major here, and time will tell, but I don`t see anything at the moment.

Post: #43

(05-08-2018 07:00 PM)SpiderKing Wrote:  clear aluminum

For those who don't know: What allows metals to conduct electricity is also what gives the metallic appearance. Anything that's transparent is usually a horrendous electric conductor. A few exceptions apply, and they're aptly called transparent conducting oxides, and they're quite hard and nasty to make (e.g. ITO).

The material mentioned in the video is aluminum oxynitride, a ceramic! Ceramics don't conduct electricity. It's just a fancy glass - useful for some niche applications, but that's it.

A pure transparent metal (that could conduct electricity well) would be a supreme game-changer. That video however was quite frankly just clickbait.

Post: #44

(05-09-2018 08:56 AM)heavy Wrote:  Google Duplex revealed yesterday. Just tell your phone to get a reservation at the restaurant down the road, Google will make the call for you...

The conversations with the A.I. bot are scary real. Basically, in the near future you may be talking to an A.I. bot and not know it.

This new use for AI is a worry for me.

Soon, AI will know how the human mind works, down to the last nerve cell.

How easy will it be to "prime" a human mind to act in a way they would not in other times?

To paint an image, think what an AI would do if it would like a man to jump out in front of a car.

Show the man lots of sad news, maybe fake a break up text from his girl, and when he calls for help, the AI bot will give him soft words like "maybe it's best you end it all..."

Or the FBI false flag fuck who wants to prime Jake Ultra. AI would for sure do the job much better.

From the pick up point of view, we all know how weak women are to words said in a very clear way, to make their pussy wet. Think of AI in the role of the PUA, and the rest of us as marks.

Post: #45

(05-02-2018 04:32 AM)redpillage Wrote:  

(05-02-2018 02:50 AM)BlueMark Wrote:  We'll have fusion reactors in 10 years. /s

A prototype - maybe. But commercially produced energy based on fusion reactors I'd wager it'll take another ten years, so maybe around 2025 - 2030. I hope I'll be alive to witness that.

But frankly speaking the U.S. is already energy self sufficient, given oil sands, shale, the amounts of NG we have access to. There's no reason to keep babysitting the fucking middle East.

Not happening.

ITER won't come live until 2028, and that's the proto-prototype. DEMO is unofficially the next step (prototype). And then you finally get your first commercial fusion power plant. I'd look at 2100 or beyond to have a realistic timeline. And even that might be too optimistic.

The fact is that fusion research hasn't made any real progress in the past 2 decades, some of it due to uncertain funding (hard to press for a multi-decade reactor design when Congress can't decide on the budget every year). But some of it is also due to hard limits they're facing now. One in particular: cost. Even best estimates of fusion energy would put it at 10c/kWh cost, which is miles above 3-5c/kWh for gas. Who's going to pay for electrons from fusion energy? The average consumer definitely isn't. Oh man, and let's not take about the materials science aspect of it all. You need an inner wall made out of materials that don't exist yet (or potentially ever will) to withstand the enormous heat from the plasma, even if it's significantly cooler at the plasma edges which will react with the wall. A plasma reacting with materials causes atomic dislocations - atoms in a solid actually move! And they move a fuck ton. Imagine the atoms of your laptop screen all moving around 100s of time. You think your screen will still work after a few months?

ITER/DEMO are magnetic confinement fusion, tokamaks specifically. Stellarators, like the German Wendelstein 7-X, might hit commercial viability sooner. But don't bank on anything before 2075.

China could make the process go a few decades faster (maybe hitting 2075) as they can fund projects on a multi-decade scale.

The private endeavors, like Tri Alpha, are a fucking joke - taking millions from investors based on ideas that have been theoretically proven to not be viable.

Fusion...just not happening in our lifetimes.

Post: #46

When it comes to discussions of human behavior and performance, I am finding that the more technically oriented bloggers such as Steve Hsu, Gregory Cochran, and Razib have more interesting things to say than the more politically oriented bloggers such as Vox Day, Adam Piggott, and the like. The former are certainly more intelligent than the latter.

Steve Hsu and Razib have recently posted stuff that indicates that there is an tsunami of data coming that will confirm that both cognitive ability and most behavioral traits (executive function, conscientiousness, etc) are mostly biologically determined (80% or greater) and very little determined by social environment. If this is true (and I suspect it is) it seems to me that politics, religion, and ideology will prove to be rather useless for developing ways to improve human performance and behavior. Rather, neuro-biology and bio-engineering strike me as being far more useful for these purposes.

I use myself as personal example. Bio-engineering such as SENS, some kind of robust regeneration, and neuro-technological methods to increase my cognitive ability strike me as being far more profoundly useful to my future self than any religion or ideology. Indeed, once we have truly functional neurobiology (say, around 2050 or so) it seems to me that philosophy, religion, and ideology will be relegated to the history books (like alchemy) with regards to understanding and modifying human behavior.

One of the best SF novels I ever read is "Queen of Angels" by Greg Bear. In it, Bear depicts a near future (SoCal in 2047) society that is driven by the use of bio-engineering to improve human performance and behavior. The nevel was written about 30 years ago. In the time since then, I have become convinced that mid-century society will be a lot like that depicted in the novel.

Post: #47

https://alfinnextlevel.wordpress.com/201...edundancy/

The sole purpose of any memetic system (religion, ideology, philosophy) is to encourage people to make themselves more resilient and self-reliant. Religions such as Christianity are useful as long as they serve this purpose. However, many of us are already motivated to improve ourselves and to make ourselves more resilient even in the absence of belief systems such as organized religion. Does religion and other memes offer useful utility to such individuals?

Post: #48

The future of medicine will revolve around curing the "upstream" cause of almost all other diseases, namely ageing. I really believe that this is starting to manifest itself into real world therapies.



Sadly as smart as she is, she is in the blue as to the cause of diabetes T1 and autoimmunity. Mostly caused by grains, low fat dairy, legumes and to some extent also sugars and seed oils.

Post: #49

(06-18-2018 01:30 PM)Johnnyvee Wrote:  

WB

(someone had to do it)

Post: #50

(06-18-2018 06:42 PM)questor70 Wrote:  

(06-18-2018 01:30 PM)Johnnyvee Wrote:  

WB

(someone had to do it)

Already did months ago my friend!
I agree though.