How the 404 Error Created the World Wide Web - Engineering vs Science

How the 404 Error Created the World Wide Web

Popular Mechanics

By Jesse Dunietz, Dec 5, 2016

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Good Enough vs Perfection! How fault-tolerant is your solution?


I remember having similar thoughts about how the World Wide Web grew so fast. Prior to the World Wide Web, there already had been lots and lots of academic literature and research done on hypertext/hypermedia. 

Tremendous effort/thinking had been put into schemes to upkeep the integrity of the links - and this ultimately slowed down the development of practical systems. Most of the solutions were unwieldy and impractical.

Similarly the popularity of HTML vs the more formal markup languages like GML and SGML points to the fact that HTML was a lot more fault-tolerant language - putting the onus on the creator (or individual) to ensure system integrity.

I also see similarities  in human nature (and by extension social and economic systems) - the more fault-tolerant the system, the more they tend to be popular, pervasive and successful.

Key takeaway:

This is a classic philosophical difference between Engineering (good enough) solutions and Science (complete/perfect) answers. The real-world tends to favor the Engineering paradigm.

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The 404 did for Hypertextwhat the zero did for Math: It was obvious ... but formalizing and creating a notation for it revolutionized the rest of the system.




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Alcohol and Caffeine Built Civilization ?

How Alcohol and Caffeine Built Civilization

PJ Media

by Tyler O'neil, Mar 14, 2017

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Choose your Poison (Antiseptic)! 

Of the two, alcohol is definitely more important. Imagine if Man hadn't discovered how to domesticate alcohol. We'd still all be hunting and gathering - and a lot more inhibited. 

All advanced cultures have developed alcohol in one form or another. In the early days, alcoholic beverages were much safer to drink than plain water.

The impact of caffeine only arrived much much later (15th Century as compared with 16,000 BC for alcohol)

The article though presents a small mystery -  did Man begin cultivating for food with alcohol as a by-product, or was it the other way round? One of the comments in this article offers a very plausible answer 😉 :

Man started farming specifically to make beer. Why would mankind give up a meat diet, hunting and fishing..... for a bowl of barley?

Key takeaway:

Poison doesn't always kill you - sometimes it can create Civilization.

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Alcohol is famous for being toxic — after all, it kills 3.3 million people each year, causing 5.9 percent of all deaths and 25 percent of those among people aged 20 to 39, according to the WHO. But research also suggests that alcohol may have helped create civilization



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CIA Leak Reveals Gaps in Patchwork of Android Software

CIA Leak Reveals Gaps in Patchwork of Android Software

Morningstar

By Jack Nicas , 9 Mar, 2017

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Real Scary - WikiLeaks seems to have helped confirm what most of us has known regarding Android vulnerabilities. The fundamental weakness is the Android business model (vs. the iOS one) where the partnership between Android, the phone makers and the telcos is relatively loose.

That Google has imitated the Apple model with its Nexus and Pixel phones sort of highlights this fact.

Imagine if somehow the supply chain of some of these partners got compromised. Oh wait... seems we don't have to work that hard -  "Malware found preinstalled on 38 Android phones used by 2 companies"

Key takeaway:

It has always been a tradeoff between cost and security - but these recent developments has certainly brought this into much starker relief.

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The CIA appears to have been exploiting vulnerabilities in Android smartphones and other devices for years, according to the WikiLeaks documents, though it is unclear which versions of Android could be affected.



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Could Cognitive Scientists Eliminate ISIS?

Could Cognitive Scientists Eliminate ISIS?

Scott Adams Blog

Scott Adams, 9 Mar, 2017

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Scary but potentially exciting developments.  Scott writes a lot on persuasion and skill stacks and his twitter feed is "enlightening".

While he doesn't provide specific details or links or elaboration on "The science on how to do it is super strong now.", only that "It will be everywhere. And it is totally legal". 

He does say that the critical factor is what in the software business is called A/B testing - rapidly test one approach after another to get the best one - only this time they do it on specific people. 

Key takeaway:

"We used to call it “marketing” when it didn’t work that well. This new stuff is something else. It works so well it makes your ethical alarms go off."

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In a word, yes, assuming they had lots of help from the CIA to deliver their persuasion.

I would not have said this was possible five years ago. But in 2017, cognitive scientists know how to reprogram a human brain fairly effectively. They have weaponized what hypnotists have been doing for decades.

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Regression analysis - Explained

Regression analysis - Explained

MIT News

Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office, 16 Mar, 2010


Short, simple and straightforward description of Regression Analysis - a technique very commonly used for "measuring the link between two or more phenomena".

Key takeaway:

"So it still takes critical thinking and careful studies to locate meaningful cause-and-effect relationships in the world."

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Regression analysis. It sounds like a part of Freudian psychology. In reality, a regression is a seemingly ubiquitous statistical tool appearing in legions of scientific papers, and regression analysis is a method of measuring the link between two or more phenomena.

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WTF is lidar?

TechCrunch

Devin Coldewey, 12 Feb, 2017



Short, simple and straightforward description of Lidar - a technology we'll probably see a lot more of, and in more applications and settings than in just autonomous automobiles. 

It also has a neat video and this gif:

A caveat is added, though - "Lidar doesn’t do everything, though: it can’t, for example, read the letters on a sign since they’re flat. And the systems can be disrupted relatively easily if there’s limited visibility: heavy snow, fog, or something obstructing the unit’s view" - to which can be added various other forms of 'disruptors' that result from intentional malfeasance. Consequently, it may take a bit longer than most might be led to believe for truly ubiquitous "self-driving cars".

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Long ago, people believed that the eye emitted invisible rays that struck the world outside, causing it to become visible to the beholder. That’s not the case, of course, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a perfectly good way to see. In fact, it’s the basic idea behind lidar, a form of digital imaging that’s proven very useful in everything from archaeology to autonomous cars.

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"A Global Riot Against Psuedo-Experts"

This is an interview with Nassim Taleb conducted by Suhasini Haidar of TheHindu.com.

The views and insights resonate with (and probably explains accurately) all the recent supposedly 'seismic' and 'unexpected' world events like Brexit and Trump. Taleb really expresses the issues and insights succinctly. Is a fun read. Best lines:

• ... a mathematician thinks in numbers, a lawyer in laws, and an idiot thinks in words.
• The real problem is the ‘faux-expert problem’, one who doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and assumes he knows what people think

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ZeroHedge

by Tyler Durden Feb 7, 2017

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After predicting the 2008 economic crisis, the Brexit vote, the U.S. presidential election and other events correctly, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the Incerto series on global uncertainties, which includes The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, is seen as something of a maverick and an oracle. Equally, the economist-mathematician has been criticised for advocating a “dumbing down” of the economic system, and his reasoning for U.S. President Donald Trump and global populist movements. In an interview in Jaipur, Taleb explains why he thinks the world is seeing a “global riot against pseudo-experts”.


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