Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

Do you have a phone at your workstation?

The washing machine and dryer managed to tie such a complex knot with the duvet cover that it took me 15 minutes to untangle it. If someone invents a drum capable of reliably tying knots, they would certainly deserve a Nobel prize

A very good video about the corner stone of statistics, Bayes’ rule. Worth watching for anyone who has ever thought about the chances of getting sick after receiving a positive test. This is probably covered in school, but somehow few are familiar with the topic in practice. The video about the paradox from 3Blue1Brown is also beautifully made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG4VkPoG3ko

I kept thinking about how to compare voice control and the confusion of a failed attempt with something in real life.

For instance, if you need to throw away an empty bottle into a bin, you can walk over and simply throw it, or you can try throwing it from a distance to save steps and even attempt to look cool and accurate. When nobody is around, it’s okay to miss once, but if someone is watching… then — you feel the difference between “I hit the bin on my first try” and “I missed the bin and it loudly bounced aside”. It’s the same with voice control. Everything is fine when your phone understands you the first time or when no one is around. As soon as there are witnesses, failing the first try feels like having to go pick up the bottle, walk back, and try hitting it again. It’s easier to just walk up and throw it properly. And on the phone, it’s simpler to just press the buttons on the second try.

Are there any biologists here? Can you explain why a felled tree cannot be connected to some life support system so that it doesn’t even realize it has been cut down and moved to a new location?

Wolfwalkers on the new projector was a total hit. If you haven’t watched it, take note of the entire worthy collection from Cartoon Saloon – also The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, and The Breadwinner.

I wonder why no news outlet removes read news from the front page to somewhere down? Has anyone experimented with this already?

A bit of futurology. It will be interesting to come back to this post sometime in the future.

I believe that the next monumental breakthrough in the next 15-20 years will involve the use of living “external” muscles, specially grown for specific tasks. The technology for cultivating muscles for any purpose will take longer to develop, but growing such “technical” laboratory animals from a test tube, essentially “for parts,” seems not so impossible a task. Of course, everything is complicated from an ethical point of view: nobody wants to think about a horse with a microprocessor on its back whose will is essentially disabled, but it’s hard to predict where ethical principles will stand in 20 years if we are still unsure about the ethics of IVF, for example. But the principle is just so: a reference organism is taken, and its development is controlled in such a way as to give it the desired properties at the output.

As soon as the artificial muscle is obtained, and the issue of “energy supply” to keep it in “form” for the necessary time is resolved, humans will obtain mechanization of a completely different kind. And from there, artificial wings are not far off 🙂

Technically, growing animals or even individual organs (including muscles) for technical needs is already possible now. Also, myostimulation has long been used to make the necessary muscles contract. It remains to combine this with electronics.

Sources:

–https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8NkAlNQd50

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9ZY4DeIdW4 – from U.S. Army CCDC Research Lab Dec 17, 2020

–https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5127204

– https://www.technologynetworks.com/cell-science/news/engineers-grow-functioning-human-muscle-from-skin-cells-296111

– https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/emmm.201404062

– https://www.pnas.org/content/111/15/5508

My projector burned out. Decided to buy a new one. Not quite ready to shell out for a brand-new 3LCD, so I’m looking for a used one. Found one option. Suggested meeting up – but it’s already 10 PM. The guy agrees, gives the address. I check the address – it’s a normal townhouse in a decent area. Heading there. It’s about a half-hour drive to Maryland.

On the way, I receive a message from him. “Basically, you pay, and I’ll leave the projector in the garage, you come in and take it. To maintain social distancing.”

I write back saying, buddy, I’m definitely not paying for a pig in a poke. He replies, no problem, I’ll show you via video right now that it works. And he sends a video. Everything looks good in the video.

I say, what’s the deal, come out to the garage, connect it there, I’ll stand way back from the street. It’s a projector, I can see it working. Then you disconnect it, bring it out, I verify that it’s in good shape (even though it’s already off by that point), and I transfer money on PayPal, and take the box.

No, he says, I’m really worried about the virus, and my wife is too. Can’t come out. So, I can show it to you through the window that it works and shine it on the driveway in front of the house.

He did. It works.

Doesn’t want to bring it out, says that he has had bad experiences, and he wants the money upfront.

Had to tell him goodbye and leave.

I can’t figure out if this is a scam or if the guy is really that paranoid about COVID? Technically, he couldn’t trick and not hand over the device—I would just immediately call the police to his house, show the chat, the money transfer, and the house of the owner refusing to bring out a projector. The police might not be much help, but the prospect of dealing with the police is clearly unwanted—if he wanted to deceive, he wouldn’t have met at his own home. He could bring out a different device that doesn’t work but looks exactly the same—yes, that’s possible. Actually, I couldn’t dismiss this thought, so I left. On the other hand, this guy has an open Facebook account with family photos, which he has maintained for a long time.

First time facing this in the States. Usually, sales through platforms like Facebook Marketplace, Offerup, Craigslist operate quite smoothly here.

Interestingly, imagine N identical computers with empty disks and a clean OS installation, all connected to a single keyboard and mouse. There is one user sitting at the keyboard and mouse, doing their usual work, looking at one of the screens. How quickly will they lose synchronization and why? This question resonates with the theory of determinism.