Phrase of the week

December 29, 2013 at 9:10 AMMichele Mottini

A well-defined job is a job at risk.

Arnold Kling in ‘PSST: Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade’

Posted in: Opinion

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Phrase of the week

December 22, 2013 at 11:23 AMMichele Mottini

This makes it incumbent upon society to spread opportunity to all who can compete—shaking the national cornflake packet, as he perplexingly put it—and helping those who cannot

The Economist, referring to a Boris Johnson speech, in ‘Top of the class’

Posted in: Opinion

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Preventing Skynet

December 17, 2013 at 9:38 AMMichele Mottini

Weird things you find following links: MIRI, a research institute devoted to prevent future artificial intelligence to take over the world.

Maybe they are actually right, and I should not define them ‘weird’, but ‘taking over the world’ AI seems a bit farfetched considering were we stand now with software development.

Posted in: Opinion | Programming

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Phrase of the week

December 15, 2013 at 11:16 AMMichele Mottini

In fact, we can think of few more difficult jobs [Civil Liberties & Privacy Officer at the NSA] since the post of Staff Rabbi to the Spanish Inquisition

The Register in ‘The NSA's hiring - and they want a CIVIL LIBERTIES officer’

Posted in: Opinion

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HTML5

December 10, 2013 at 5:31 PMMichele Mottini

Selected HTML5 technologies:

  • Canvas (2D drawing) – like Windows GDI
  • WebGL (3D drawing) – like Windows OpenGL
  • WebSocket – like Windows Winsock
  • Indexed Database – like Windows MSDE
  • Offline Web applications – like Windows normal applications
  • File API – line Windows NTFS
  • Font support – like Windows GDI font handling
  • Video/audio support – like Windows Media Player and associated APIs
  • Web Workers – like Windows threads

So we are re-developing all this stuff (and more) in various browsers running on different platforms – and then develop (or re-develop) applications on top of it.

Tell me again, why are we doing all this? Wouldn’t have been simpler just to stick with Windows?

Posted in: Programming | Opinion

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Phrase of the week

December 8, 2013 at 11:27 AMMichele Mottini

And we are supposed to be upset because the technology that makes [blogging] possible has cut down on the number of bowling leagues? That’s like condemning butterfly metamorphosis for decreasing the number of caterpillars.

“Scott Alexander” in ‘The anti-reactionary FAQ’

Posted in: Opinion

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Learning quantum physics

December 7, 2013 at 2:51 PMMichele Mottini

I just finished Coursera’s Exploring Quantum Physics. It was pretty good: the Coursera Web sites works well, both lectures and homework exercises were good and the discussion forums were helpful.

The course starts from the basics, but it is not an introductory course: it requires a decent mathematical background (linear algebra and calculus, Fourier transforms) and some previous knowledge of quantum physics is useful, although not strictly necessary.

The course is taught by two teachers with very different styles covering quite different material, this makes it a bit disjointed. I would have preferred a single teacher thorough the whole course.

The program covers various advanced subjects like the Feynman path integral, quantum localization, superconductivity, the Dirac equation, the time-dependent Schrodinger equation and so on. The problem is that having to start more or less from the basics it is impossible to cover any of these advanced subjects in any detail: they are just introduced but not explained enough to get a real understanding. I think it would be better to limit the course to the more ‘standard’ introductory stuff, with maybe just one or two advanced topics covered in more details.

Through a post in one of the Coursera’s forum I discovered the ‘Theoretical minimum’ Stanford lectures. It is not a course but just a collection of live lectures by the same professor. I watched a couple of them on quantum field theory, the first particle physics series and now I am watching the quantum entanglement ones.

The lectures are for a general audience, so they usually start from the very basics and then build the whole theory step by step. The teacher – professor Susskind – manages to introduce very complex stuff in an approachable way.

Being live lectures, there tend to be quite a lot of question from the audience, backtracking and interruptions – these makes them much longer that the recorded Coursera lectures, but I found that this makes the material more easily absorbed (by me at least).

They are very good introduction to modern physics for anyone with some scientific background and enough time to watch an entire series: watching individual lectures would probably not work.

Posted in: Opinion | Physics

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Phrase of the week

December 1, 2013 at 1:53 PMMichele Mottini

3D printing is about to redefine paradigms, rewrite/defenestrate/burn textbooks and give the unwashed masses the power to print iPhone covers at will

The Register in ‘3D printing: 'Third industrial revolution' or a load of old cobblers?’

Posted in: Opinion

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Phrase of the week

December 1, 2013 at 9:41 AMMichele Mottini

In Warsaw, the negotiators were tasked under the Durban Platform track (the so-called “ADP” track) to develop a work plan of substantive topics and a related calendar that will lead to the development of the text of an agreement of a new comprehensive policy architecture that can be discussed at COP-20 in Lima one year from now and then subject to final consideration and adoption a year after that at COP-21 in Paris

Robert Stavins in ‘The Warsaw Climate Negotiations, and Reason for Cautious Optimism’

Posted in: Opinion

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