Ideas that like the artist-formerly-known-as-Prince, are made out of a bit of everything.
Quick thought: While it is true that sharing your wealth is a potential disincentive to earning it, the primary issue of socialism/communist government structures regarding productivity is that it removes the process of creative destruction. More aptly that central planning can stay on a narrative even after that view becomes obsolete. This is most easily … Read more
Random thought. A foreign nation could become the de facto monetary policy player replacing the ‘central bank’ of a nation just by owning a majority of its bonds This means that when a nation undertakes to lower the interest rate etc. Any open market monetary policy could be undermined, by countering the central banks actions, … Read more
A potential strategy to avoid or further reduce potential rejection of an organ by a recipient may be to ‘slow’ accumulate the presence of the foreign body into the system over a long period of time. This could work potentially with both biological and synthetic (plastic and metal) organs. Developing a tolerance to the foreign … Read more
In thinking through other tech revolutions, there is some cause in my opinion to view A.I. slightly differently. While I do not think it is happening quite yet, if A.I. can eclipse the total capabilities of humanity, than it would be replacing labor with capital, in a full substitution. So long as the cost of … Read more
Allowing those companies to choose how they spend their tax dollars.. One main reason why tech companies often go south (or domicile in Ireland) is simply taxation. Very easy to understand. While any company in Canada generally pays more as a share in taxes, which is a deterrent, there may be some companies who would … Read more
If you look through what is brought into the cultural canon of a society, it looks a lot like how merge requests are adopted by the main branch of a codebase. The value of an individual contributor in the example of a codebase is often seen through the number and depth of changes brought by … Read more
Deep Springs College This educational institution is one of the only ones that really make sense to me. It only has about 30 students, admitting 10-15 each year. It’s a full scholarship school like Cooper Union. It’s 40 miles from the nearest town. Students spend a portion of their time operating a ranch which sustains … Read more
This entry is published on Medium. You can find the entry here: https://medium.com/@alwinian/dogs-in-the-wild-b67e9ac95a2e A recent encounter with a bobcat while jogging had me thinking about how we must have domesticated our closest friends, dogs. While we can’t say for certain, deeper thinking about the circumstances can shift the probability in favor of one scenario over … Read more
#Chess Inspired while watching videos about AlphaZero. As a thought experiment, imagine that each piece is an investment, with the potential of certain pieces to be multiple times their initial value. A knight or bishop, normally worth 3 points may in time become +9 points during a game, such as the famous ‘octopus knight’ in … Read more
Not sure how I went so far without coming across this concept, it is an ancient one: Arete. Having run across it – it really is my favorite word in the world. Some things about it: not gender specific it relates to excellence in any field the bar is individually defined I simply love this … Read more
Had never realized this until thinking it through now, but the beautiful yield and inverted yield curve in finance that we all know and love can be considered the same as the forward contracts concept of contango and backwardation. A yield curve that is inverted is identical to an asset in backwardation – we just … Read more
If you were to study gravity, you’d want nearly a perfect Zero-G enviroment and then introduce 2 spheres. It would give the ideal experimental result by removing all other noisy variables that you’d find in the real world. Enter the Lemon… If one were to think about how multiple items are produced and purchased. I … Read more
One concept that I’m pondering is the act of bringing people along… in the same referential frame. An unfinished idea currently.. In my mind’s eye, I see sort of a drivable bus on a rollercoaster type image. On the bus, what the driver sees is for argument’s sake, exactly what the passenger can see. … Read more
Most people take issue with speaking about things they are not qualified to discuss, but apparently I am lacking this better judgement :) The result of which is just being wrong… Posting some wild speculations to the Quora question: What do you personally think dark matter is? Alwin: Just finished reading the the book 4% … Read more
Sketched a quick idea based on the idea of the classic model 500 telephone, (on a watch). Here it is.
posted this question on Quora: https://www.quora.com/q/astrophysics1/What-unusual-geometries-on-the-Reimannian-rubber-sheet-of-spacetime-exist-according-to-general-relativity What unusual geometries on the Reimannian ‘rubber sheet‘ of spacetime exist according to general relativity Hello Astrophysicists, a very specific question for you. It seems that the Reimannian ‘rubber sheet’ model of spacetime is useful in describing phenomena that we observe. Some examples below. vanilla gravity: curved spacetime given … Read more
I think of myself as long lived. Growing up in a computer store, seeing many twists and turns within the technology space – I often bounce around as a tech veteran – then you see this, the Queen of England trying email for the first time in 1976 and realize that those among us are … Read more
Just a brainstorm. If the power is provided from above the center of gravity, then it will be easier to land. Sent to @ElonMusk through twitter. : )
With the decline of both libraries and bookstores. It makes sense to consider that: 1. Lifelong learning and retraining of skills is more important than ever 2. Bookstores often are burdened by bricks and mortar (ie. rent) for an otherwise favorable public good 3. Libraries suffer from low user bases and are becoming obsolete in … Read more
It was my first time at CES this year (2017) and was thrilled to see so many products and innovative ideas under one roof. I guess under any other year, things may be highly seasonal like fashion, but because we are changing as a society so quickly technologically, it really was a display of the … Read more
Hi – just kind of throwing this out there. One of those what if ideas…Would be kind of cool to DIY bookscan. Calling it FlipperOCR. If you think you can make this, please do!
This is an extremely ‘meta’ post about life and happiness. But with that said, perhaps a hard won truth. Without being too ‘abstract’ about it: Above the basics needed, the expression of courage is what brings happiness to life. It is why having kids, or giving to charity, climbing everest or making something beautiful is … Read more
Between 2001-2005, It was common for a technista to be carrying around a palm pilot, an iPod and a cell phone. 3 devices in the same form factor. It was obvious to those who saw it then that these functionalities would merge eventually to create the smart phone as we know it today (given enough … Read more
It seems very clear to me that the origins of human intelligence was selective pressure, especially at the group level. That unwritten history is likely bloodier than written history seems almost certain. Inter-species warfare created the ever larger brain, much like deer’s antlers or any other tool in a virtuous feedback loop. That is what … Read more
Paradigm shifts, Creative destruction, call it what you will. The end of store in America, how can an employee hourly model compete with an online no-rent/no-brick model. Commercial landlords in malls must be scratching their heads as my beloved Barnes & Noble is. What survives will likely be a hybrid -> commission sales based / … Read more
Finance ‘storming’ here… Is living on the top of a 10 story building exactly as safe as the 2nd floor? Can you say that 100 oranges are equal to 200 christmas cards. Is paramount pictures worth as much as a mining company? Is there true fungibility. Is one slightly riskier than the other and is … Read more
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/nyregion/eight-charged-in-45-million-global-cyber-bank-thefts.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 This was an interesting article, there is a certain meritocracy in people using information more adeptly and cleverly than others, likely in this case the others being gulf banks, with laggard security systems and high networth Emirati accounts. Brainstorm time:: Reading about quantum computing stuff right now ::: we are close but still far … Read more
Luckily the world is mostly full of ‘white hats’ as the term is used. In a day to day / data form driven world. The sweet spot of rigorous authentication while allowing people to forget passwords doesn’t really take into account the ‘systemic’ risk of standardizing authentication questions and other unique ways to identify you … Read more
Found an old pic from Montreal Barcamp… Sneaksend was a steganography app which embedded images by appropriating the least significant bits in an octet of an image. For eg. 11110101 and using the last digits (0101) to encode information. Ran on Django+Chery.py — will have to recreate one day. Sneaksend from guest779445