I was hoping for more meat to his presentation, and was disappointed. I feel that he said absolutely nothing to help anyone in the audience understand what quantum computers actually DO or what sort of problems they'll help to solve. They'll absolutely not increase your FPS, as that's not what they're well-suited to do. What they are quite excellent at is taking a problem with many possible solutions and finding the correct (or best) one at an extremely high speed.

One example would be the Traveling Salesman problem. In brief, find the optimum route for traversing a number of points on a map. This is useful for things like scheduling package delivery routes, airline flights, etc. With a classic / current computer we write software that cleverly chugs through the possible solutions, throws out any that prove to be poor, and eventually gets to what appears to be the best or is at least a "good enough" solution. As the number of necessary points to be visited increases this problem scales in complexity quickly, so eventually a current computer would just choke on the problem and at best return an ok-ish solution in a reasonable period of time.

A quantum computer is a totally different beast. If it's "big" enough (IE, is comprised of a sufficient number of qubits), it takes the entire set of all possible solutions to the problem, and rather than iterate through them to find the best one, it checks them all simultaneously and immediately returns the optimum solution. It does this by using properties of quantum mechanics, and I think this is where the speaker was drawing his talk of parallel universes. If there are 3 qubits, they would exist as 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, and 111 simultaneously. The software would then define what the best answer would look like, and the computer returns the answer.

You can hopefully see how this totally breaks encryption. With a current computer and a long enough encryption key, an encoded message would take the fastest machines a huge number of years to decipher. With a quantum computer you hand it a gibberish encrypted message, it loads all possible transformations of that message simultaneously, and it then returns the transformation which looks most like a coherent message.

I'm excited to see what these machines can do for us, but they're going to necessitate some significant structural changes in how we handle sensitive data.

Settle the fuck down there Social Justice Warrior...I said nothing personal to you so cool your jets. I am honestly getting tired of taking the sane, reasonable route in everything I do. I just got off facebook responding to one of those "233 blacks, 411 whites" posts that "show" cops don't kill more blacks...and I get flak for not defending cops. I come here, point out that Marah and his minions are full of shit on one point, and I get flak...fuck both polar sides.

With that said let us get into the meat of your tantrum. I never even implied, hinted, suggested or whispered that many police actions are somehow mitigated or diminished because things are better. In fact, that whole distraction you ranted on is irrelevant to the whole meaning of my post. What the point was is this--THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO INCENTIVE FOR A SIDE TO BECOME A BETTER GROUP WHEN THE OTHER SIDE NEVER ACKOWLEGES PROGRESS. This is why Democratic and Republican lawmakers are so polarized. Why cops and blacks are so polarized. Why religions are so polarized.

I mean if we talked to our children like we talk about this, we would seem pretty fucking stupid. "Hey Timmy! I know you improved your D to a C+, but fuck you! That's not good enough you shit head. You miswell be an F student in this house!" Yeah, see how little Timmy might not come around to his dad's way of thinking? I swear, you mention some positivity and people flip the fuck out...like we are selling out to the bad cops or some stupid shit. And this is exactly what Marah's point was and is. His words were clear---NO PROGRESS. (You could argue that he meant only that there has been no progress in the thin blue line but then you would have to be a really belligerent asshole who takes words out of context to fit their meaning...)

Next, you mention all the tax dollars our police force gets...BWAHAHAAHA! Holy fuck, and I am sure the education system is overflowing with money too! Just because the numbers are large doesn't mean the actual tax dollars are significant nor does it mean the money flows to the actual police either. Now this does bring up your very serious observation that I find worrisome as well...the militarization of police...unfortunately our politicians cut sweet deals with companies that make war toys, just like in the military, and basically give away huge percentages of the police "budget." This drastically reduces the actual money police have to do their jobs while lining the politicians' pockets with contributions later.

As far as the shooting one unarmed person per week comment you made that should give YOU some perspective of how utterly stupid the side you are on is. 52 deaths a year in this manner (Say if your hyperbolic statement was actually right instead of being smartass.) 39 thousand deaths happen as a result of car accidents. Do I minimize the deaths? No. Do I put them in perspective? Of course.

I personally think that the no snitch code to crimes, whether on the street or in the force, should be a crime. Nowhere should be safe, period.

I'll just leave this here:



Canada backed out of their F35 purchases last year. McCain is the head of the Senate Armed Services committee and he has told the pentagon that they will need to reduce the buy. For the first time, they are reconsidering doing so.

Also, the latest 'little' hiccup? Concerns over ejection safety have forced the Pentagon to ground any F-35 pilots under 138 pounds from flying the jet.

I hate to break it to you, but this plane is rapidly going the route of the F22. We need to completely reconsider what we need a proper 5th gen fighter to accomplish and we need to do it with a minimum of cost. It also needs to not be a swiss army plane.

A wise man would have found an alternate route. A Boss would have just driven across on that concrete embankment.

doesn't seem as bad as my personal experience with Emirates...
a 40-minute flight was delayed about 6 hours, then cancelled, then re-routed, then had to stand in "customer service" line 4 hours, then got new flight (another 5 hours later), and they said they rebooked the final connecting flight, but when I landed - nothing. The connecting airline had zero record of me or my supposed-ticket. Stuck in HK airport another 6 hours.

At least I finally got there and didn't lose cost of flight ticket.

I did also have AA flight cancelled (in Barcelona), but to their credit they had entire plane (300+) rebooked within 45 minutes. And hotel+meal+shuttle.

I am up in the air about his fear.
He reacts at first like he's afraid, but once the dogs are out of his range, he doesn't look for an escape route like someone in fear would do, or even look around to be sure neither dog is coming back, he continues to advance towards the back of the property, directly towards the now injured, semi cornered dog. He also certainly doesn't look at all afraid in the second view when he's leaving, I see no fear in his walk or stance, and certainly not in the lunging swipe at the barking dog.

...but, giving him every benefit of a doubt, assuming he was terrified of the dogs and just didn't show it clearly, HE'S still 100% at fault for trespassing, more so (if that's possible) in a yard with dogs (the gas company keeps a record of which houses have dogs, and the meter readers insist you put them away when they come...at least here in Cali before we got wireless meters) and therefore he's 100% at fault for his injurious reactions, even if they were in self defense, making him and the company 100% liable for any bills IMO. I hope they get excellent medical care for both dogs and get their child a good, expensive therapist, and I hope it's all at gas company expense...a high enough bill might make them change their policy. A dead tech in someone's yard would make them change, I'm pretty sure of that.

Sadly, I'm relatively certain this isn't the first time something like this has happened with that company. Any company that sends people to enter your yard once a month is going to have issues with pets now and then, but it's not like people have much choice in gas companies, so bad customer satisfaction ratings aren't a real issue for them.

I wish they posted the part where he enters, I'm curious about whether there was a closed gate that he opened, or if the yard was just open like it is when he leaves.

@newtboy, it's not that they shouldn't be doing anything about the water situation; obviously, they should.

But just because problem 1 (water) is worse doesn't mean you can't deal with problem 2 (animal abuse).

Think about it this way: if Jones HAD proposed removing the anti-sodomy laws as part of this legislation, the state senate would have wasted even more time having a completely pointless debate about it. Instead, he chose the pragmatic route of ignoring something that isn't and hasn't been a problem* to use his limited legislating time to pass a useful law around animal abuse.

Also, IANAL, but from what I've read on the topic, one bad section does not invalidate an entire bill.

It saddens me greatly that in 2016 in a developed country, there's even a debate on an anti-sodomy law, and quite frankly, anyone who supports one is a terrible person and should get the fuck out of politics (and preferably life) at the earliest opportunity.

But that's the US political climate.

* when was the last time anyone was actually prosecuted under this law? Honestly, someone should confess to sodomy, get prosecuted and have the law struck down in court.

I'm certain you're correct, yet they did seem to say those things, and that's bad enough for me unless they edited out "this is the behavior and attitude we absolutely will not tolerate". It's hard to believe that's the case this time, even considering the source (but I'll admit, he is well known for producing bullshit).

I also agree with @oritteropo, I'm also certain there is no campaign that hasn't had someone push the envelope in this election cycle or worse. That said, it does seem some campaigns are more willing to go the 'ends justify the means' route than others. That bothers me quite a lot.
I want my choice to be as honest as possible, and I also want their subordinates to have clear direction from the top down that they should strive to be honest and follow the rules, not ever instructed to do 'whatever you can get away with' or to 'ask for forgiveness instead of permission', and when they clearly go against that mindset, I want to see a clear, public rebuke by the candidate, and removal of the 'offender(s)'.

The years after the crash but before the appearance of Nintendo were Golden Years for my brother and me. We were picking up cartridges for our Intellivision for a dollar a piece (or less) at retail stores and sometimes for free at local garage sales. I know our game library was over 50 games at one point, which as kids we never would have been able to afford if not for the crash.

We also switched to PC gaming. My dad received one of the very first laptops (with an LCD screen) from his job and I managed to get Bard's Tale up and running on it. Some of my friends went the Commodore 64 route.

So after the crash, we never stopped gaming, really, and just transitioned to the NES when it came out. But of course games became more expensive then. We gave up on owning anything but the most popular games (Mario, Zelda, etc.) and instead would swap games with classmates to try out other stuff. Mom and pop used games stores also popped up around that time and usually we could trade in an old game for a new one with an out-of-pocket expense at around $5, which was around my weekly allowance at the time and let me get a new game once a week.

At 9:33: This congress doesn’t lack for workable ideas for how to rout out the influence of money in politics. This congress just lacks the spine to do it.

There was a lot of posturing from Star Wars fans (from stardestroyer.net, I think) for a long time, with exaggerations about the power of imperial starships. However, some fans have done an extensive (and pretty ridiculous) amount of work to make a lengthy comparison, that, while only as accurate as can be interpreted from the provided material, does come out in strong favor towards Star Trek technology:
http://www.st-v-sw.net/
So yes, NdGT is correct, and really, you don't need to do the extensive research the fans did to confirm that. Logistics in a post-scarcity civilization alone gives a significant advantage.
But this is to be expected. When you have a TV show as focused on science and technology as Star Trek, it will certainly excel.
Meanwhile, Star Wars isn't supposed to be about high end technology. For them the technology is only there to highlight the story. The charm of the Millenium Falcon is not that it's a god-like ship that can mop the floor with everyone else, but that it's some guy's souped up junker that's full of surprises. The Death Star isn't the ultimate weapon, but a weapon of fear. (A weapon that destroys excessive amounts of available resources is impractical for anything else, and that especially includes Starkiller Base.)
And if there really needs to be some sort of sci-fi-peen competition, you can go the complete nonsense route with Doctor Who, where one Dalek could probably conquer both the Trek and Wars universes with minimal effort.
Or the overkill route with the Culture, where wiping the rest out would be an idle task, pursued for entertainment.
Star Wars fans just need to chill and embrace their universe of junkers and quaint technology. Star Trek fans have already embraced the fact that their universe isn't about action and explosions. (No, we don't include the Abramsverse.)

I think almost all atheist already would prefer Sanders over Clinton, and if voting in a primary will likely choose him over her. Nothing new here.

At the general election though we likely have a choice between Clinton and either the fascist regime of Trump, or Cruz who is fairly scary on his own right. Actually any of the lead candidates for the eventual nomination, brokered or not, are fairly scary.

The choice for President isn't between Clinton and Sanders, and if she gets the nomination then we have to show out in force to insure our nation doesn't go the fascist route the Republicans seem to be pushing towards.

Thanks for the responses, gang. I guess I'm just surprised that we're going this route since it seems so inefficient. Kinda like the skycrane for the curiosity rover seems so convoluted and so much could go wrong. Which reminds me, it amuses me that they refer to the earlier explosion as an "anomaly"

The AI in terrorist hunt mode might actually be the best I've ever faced in an FPS. I play that mode more than the PvP tbh.

They react to sound like people, shoot blind through cover to probe for you, attack you where your are weak, pull back where you are too strong etc.

Bastards even recognise your choke points and sabotage them by opening other routes and or destroying obstacles. (Or recognise you are outflanking theirs if you make too much noise etc.)

Make you think and move more in terms of what makes real world sense than simply what will outfox the AI.

TBH they are often smarter than the human players who play like they are in COD or BF and wonder why the tactical players keep shafting them.