Weird, you mention "black Nick Fury" but Heimdall, the nordic black dude, isn't "black Heimdall"? He wasn't black until Idris Elba was cast. Sam Jackson was cast because a later iteration of the Fury character was based upon him.
And what's this stuff about Hulk being the "black Bruce Banner"? Because he has remarkable pigmentation or because he's really angry?
You have a weird way of making a point about token black friends. You shall go watch all Lethal Weapon movies as punishment.

^ this is fucking hilarious to me and proves how stupid this new iteration of the ignore feature is, as some people are so retarded they can't help but to reply or talk about people even if they can't see their comments. Apparently the mere mention of my name in a thread is a "trigger".

Don't worry about it. Everything is fine. Just keep circle jerking yourselves down the drain. What's left? 20 people? What a damn shame.

Very cool and very clever, but if the goal is speed and simplicity what makes it better than cutting a v-groove with a router and folding that together? Is it that much stronger? Seems like something worth patenting, but unless the shape isn't as relatively arbitrary as it seems, surely there is some variation on it that's better in some way, and could you patent that? Seems like it might be jumping the gun to announce it before iterating the design and perhaps applying some computer analysis.

I disagree with the insinuation that that is intuitive...

I think to answer @Zawash 's concerns, the seven riffle shuffles is probably close to the "sweet spot" because even a card on the very bottom or very top will likely move at least 1-2 places away from those extreme positions (top or bottom) in a single shuffle. Then, on the second shuffle, it is likely to move even further -- the probable "distance moved" is even higher and goes up rapidly away from the extreme edges. By the time that you've riffle shuffled 7 times, it should easily have shifted far enough away from either extreme end to be sufficiently "random".

Sorta like the old elementary school math question of would you rather have a million dollars NOW, or one penny today and then double that amount each day for the next month. We tend to underestimate the value of option 2 (over $5 million after 30 days, $10m+ for 31) because our brains are much better at grasping/predicting geometric growth than exponential growth.

That doesn't have anything to do with "inability to perform a proper riffle shuffle", just a very human tendency to underestimate exponential changes over a few iterations.

Overall I like the layout. The hidden menus are slick. I'd like to see the voting buttons a smidge more prominent. I had to look around to find them (and did) but that something I was looking for. It should be super duper clear to a new user that this is an iterative site--to help get them engaged. I'd like to see the FAQ more prominent somehow.

And just as was already pointed out, tags? Where did they go? Are they off with the Channels enjoying a picnic? I can see neither.

You do realize the whole idea is that this is... technically... one continuous take? They add in another iteration every time she makes a circuit.

Video version of singing in the round...

My post is not hyperbole, but actual personal observation.



You also have to factor in cost+ funding.

On one hand, it's necessary. Because you don't know how much something truly new will cost - you haven't done it before. You'll discover as you go.
It would be unfair to bind a company to a fixed cost, when nobody knows what the cost will be. It's mathematically unreasonable to entertain a fixed cost on new technologies.

(Granted, everyone gives silly lowballed best-case estimates when bidding. Anyone that injects a sense of reality into their bid is too costly and doesn't get the contract).

On the other hand, cost+ means that you make more money by spending more money. So hiring hordes of nobodies for every little task, making 89347589374 different position titles, is only gonna make you more money. There's no incentive to save.



F35 wise, like I said, it's not designed for any war we fight now.
It's designed for a war we could fight in the future.
Because you don't start designing weapons when you're in a war, you give your best effort to have them already deployed, tested, and iterated into a good sustainable state, before the onset of a conflict that could require them.

F35 variations are not complicated. The VTOL variation is the only one with any complexity. The others are no more complex than historical variations from early to late blocks of any given airframe.

The splitting of manufacturing isn't in itself a complication ridden approach. It's rather normal for different companies to work on unrelated systems. Airframe will go somewhere, avionics elsewhere, engine elsewhere, etc. That's basically a given, because different companies specialize in different things.

Keep in mind that the large prime contracts (Lockheed/GD/etc) don't actually "make" many things. They are systems integrators. They farm out the actual development for most pieces (be it in house contractors or external contractors - because they are easy to let go after the main dev is over), and they themselves specialize in stitching the pieces together. Connecting things is not difficult when they are designed with specified ICDs from the get-go. The black boxes just plug up to each other and go.

The issues that arise are often a matter of playing telephone. With one sub needing to coordinate with another sub, but they have to go through the prime, and the prime is filtering everything through a bunch of non-technical managers. Most problems are solved in a day or two when two subs physically get their engineers together and sort out any miscommunications (granted, contracts and process might not allow them the then fix the problem in a timely and affordable manner).

The F22 and F35 issues are not major insurmountable tasks. The hardest flaws are things that can be fixed in a couple months tops on the engineering side. What takes time is the politics. Engineers can't "just fix it". There's no path forward for that kind of work.

Sure, in a magic wonderland you could tell them "here, grab the credit card, buy what you need, make any changes you need, and let us know when you're done" - and a little while later you'd have a collection of non-approved, non-reviewed, non-traceable, non-contractually-covered changes that "just fix the damn thing"... and you'd also have to incur the wrath of entire departments who were denied the opportunity to validate their existence. The 'high paid welfare' system would be all over your ass.

-scheherazade

The answer is the anthropic principle =
It had to be that way for us to evolve here to then look at the universe and ask "why are we here?"
Likely the universe has had many iterations, and may even have regional laws of physics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

It's pretty much the same argument that goes into Evolution

The Gist:

Guy in business suit looking thoughtfully out of window.
(Doubtful anyone who designs fine consumer goods, *actually designs consumer goods*, wears a suit). Maybe its supposed to be you! You avant-garde millionaire, you!

Person sketching watch designs. This is probably semi-close to reality, though they don’t show the hundreds of designs the visual designer creates that are dismissed at whim by the aforementioned, assumed (but inevitable even if not shown) suits.

People fiddling with plastic representations of what one would assume as the model for said watch design. Maybe realistic, though with the caveat that two people are sitting there going over said physical design, in any serious discussion concerning the actual physics of the end product. I can *not* imagine that nearly the entirety of this process today, both visual and mechanical design, are not done digitally.

Okay, there’s some CG. Because CG is the next step, rather than the first, least expensive step in any design process today. Who wants to quickly model everything in a matter of hours when you can fabricate expensive, physical material for iterative testing?

Holy shit, was that guy just looking at a wood cutout? I can’t even think of a shitty, sarcastic/realistic remark about that one. I might have misunderstood that shot.

Alright, now we’re machining shit. You can’t really fake that with a few grand for marketing. That’s the real stuff. (1.5m in)

No, they don’t sand/polish things by hand during the fabrication phase. That’s entirely too inaccurate and subjective to the assembler to leave up to human hands. (But hey: it’s a 2.5 million dollar piece of metal, so lets make those buyers feel good about their money spent).

Oh look: gemstones! (???) That's kingly.

More faux machining that is veritably inferior to quality mechanical assembly.

Oh shit, someone just turned a nob!

3.5 minutes in, and we see some actual hand-polished work that is legitimately viable to perform by hand.

Hey lets sand those nodules off the finished pieces, and micro-inspect those printed markings, because nothing about us says “accuracy” without a fallible human to do it. Also: what are they printing shit on there for? Was it pushing the price to $3mil to engrave the timestamps on the faces? That better be the highest quality electroplated coating, but even then I can't imagine that's superior than a tactile, physical representation.

Now they’re hand-engraving the sculpted ornamentation, but it’s one more point I can gladly give them because those kinds of human touches let you know at least some sort of artisan was involved. I can appreciate that, though realizing what I just said causes me to reflect on the inaccuracies of mass-production, and why we would take one over the other…

More microscopes. (Because if one notch is off, it’s back to the furnace for you!)

Awe shit, payday. A guy in a suit looking confident is walking towards your building!

Finally, the gear assembly. It certainly looks fantastic, photographically speaking. I can’t help but notice that all that detail is lost to hundreds of textural indentations or are due to stylized alternating polish/grinding. However, I’m confident that spending $2.5mil on this product would get me the absolute, most accurate, unnoticeable details (hand-made!) within a micro-millimeter of accuracy. Those indentations are like chrome on a street-racer in the 90’s: the more you have, the greater they perform.

@~8min, I’m pretty sure no one works like that at their desk. That posture would kill you in a month.

They know you can’t spin the head of a watch while it’s on your wrist, right?

Awe! It’s got 5 ringtones! That’s way more than any other watch I’ve even heard of! Except everything that doesn’t cost $2.5mil.


If I can take anything away from this that’s even remotely positive, it’s that at least millionaire shitheads are now being just as suckered as the rest of the consumer base. Let me sell ONE of those watches, and I would have enough money to overtake their business within a year, except for that I don't have the greed, dishonesty, and overall lack of morals that it would take to set up a quality factory, and trick such dickheads into buying (even superior BS) products.

I think the next iteration of the Sift should allow you to use power points to keep upvoting comments...

Real reason? Reality shows are cheap to make, music videos are expensive to show. But before MTV stopped playing music, they went thru phases where each iteration did bring us only the top 10 or record label promotion paid them to play their new artists, then that was mixed with reality and finally they stopped pretending and just switched on full reality tv that they can sell. MTV could see it like this parody video on their end "people are watching less and less music" but it was exactly the cancellation of Headbangers Ball, Yo Raps, Alternative Nation etc. that lead to declining numbers.. I stopped watching wh en headbangers and Alt nation stopped as it was only top hits from that point on. Everything even remotely alternative or indie was gone, there were no one selecting new music as there were no more people to host the shows, VJs were gone, it was just automated playlist that plaid literally the same songs over and over. It was an attempt to get more profit from casual music listeners but even they turned it down: it seems like you need and want to hear music you don't like every now and then to make your favorites a lot more important.. Even i wouldn't watch a music station that plays only the things i like, i need to hear one or two really awful crap every now and then just to remind me that music can be truly awful and soulless product and not everyone is Radiohead.

And mind you, those alternative shows only aired at odd hours, headbangers ball was around midnight and really hard stuff like Into the Pit was aired around 2am, it still was top 20 during the day. But it did mix it up a little, one alternative or indie video per hour. You take that one exception away and it is boring no matter what your music taste is.

Maybe the designer programmed the language of life in more simpler means than "perfect engineering". Does fucking Dawkins know how to create all of the necessary tools for evolution of a giraffe? I think not. He assumes a lot and he knows nothing. Theoretically, if we are living in some sort of programmed Universe that is somewhat randomized then the actual programming might be for self-replication and change in the simplest means in evolution over time... why would the program pull it all back for a re-drafting to make a current iteration, perfect? It doesn't appear to me that the "magic" of life is into re-drafting for perfection. That is something we have to figure out ourselves... I guess that's the whole trans-humanist sort of thing.

Science is science. No need to try and prove God or whatever does not exist, or is not an "intelligent designer" or "engineer"... focus on the Science! I really do not like Dawkins and I rarely say that about anyone.

Just another iteration of the weapons against all of humanity being cranked-out by cunts above all laws with a unilateral mandate to subdue, disrupt, and destroy lives in (insert country here).

...pathetic self-deluded "little...thing" unsuccessfully, incessantly peddling his self-promoting, illusory, persecution complex effused, over compensatory inflated self-worth dribbling in a never-ending vain campaign of misrepresentation and deceit to unsuccessfully justify his existence to himself and to whomever else he deludedly believes hasn't the experience, acumen or awareness to know or see otherwise.

Exchange...unworthy of but a shoe wipe on the grass.


chingalera said:

I have been here chicco, for many years in one iteration or another and have been ganged-up on by others like yourself-The only reason I would banned at this point is by those unwilling to see their reflection in the mirror, who would rather accuse than communicate, or burn bridges rather than build them.

I am not an enemy of anyone, or anybody on this site, sir. Deal with a reality through the eyes of your peers please rather than foment discord?? An humble and sincere request for change. I'm an amenable chap and always welcome two-sided conversations which you have continually and steadfastly avoided in exchange for continued dysfunctional cat-calls and attacks from the insulated comfort of your cozy computer-hole...