[sqmctnqk] Etymology dictionary

I'm sure this has already been done, but it is not easily accessible or searchable. Create a dictionary of words and their etymological stems, with stems of the same spelling but different meaning uniquely identified. Make it possible to search for all words derived from a particular stem. This is probably a recursive search, for example, for compound words.

[itvuajnl] Computer takes standardized test

How well can an artificial intelligence computer program do on the various standardized exams, such as the SAT AP GRE MCAT LSAT or even Putnam? Language understanding is important. Can a computer synthesize a good essay for exams with writing portions? TOEFL? (begins to be like a Turing Test).

[yiulkcwk] Video compression high CPU

Just how good can video encoding compression be if decoding does not have to happen in real time or online (that is, an offline algorithm) nor be doable on a device with low memory or CPU resources?

Load the whole thing into RAM and do a three-dimensional (2 space 1 time) Fourier or wavelet transform?

[fhegceds] Cryptography assistant

Query for and automatically derive mathematical functions with desired computational complexity properties, for example, automatically derive RSA and Diffie-Hellman from their mathematical properties, for example "Derive a function for which calculating y=f(x) may be done in polynomial time but calculating the inverse x=f^-1(y) requires exponential time".

Subroutine: The computer has knowledge of number theory, algebra, and operations which may be done in polynomial time. And "reduction" target problems which are thought to be hard. Combine these in an automated theorem proving like environment to prove, or guess, whether a new problem is hard.

This post was inspired by the mathematical description of various Identity Based Encryption schemes.

[rtwuztwn] Identity based encryption with kerberos?

Identity based encryption and Kerberos both require a trusted third party. Can one do both?

Web certificates also require a trusted third party. Can they help?

[hbskhzci] Anti-mirroring Misere Tic-tac-toe

In misère tic-tac-toe, the first to get three in a row loses. The drawing strategy for the player moving first is to play in the center, then play symmetrically across the center from each Player 2 move.

Cosider a variation in which, if the final position is point symmetric in this way, that is, Player 1 has marked the center and all pairs of opposing squares across the center are of opposite colors, then Player 1 has lost. We penalize the mirror strategy, even if played indirectly. Who wins this game?

If Player 1 does not play in the center on the first move, then I've heard Player 2 can win (i.e., force Player 1 to make 3 in a row). I don't know if there is a simple strategy. This might be an interesting variation in its own right, with draws counted as a first player win.

[tbmnodkp] Blues classifier

Can a computer tell the difference between sad blues music and sexy blues music (better than a human can)? Is it necessary to parse the lyrics?

Automatically adjust the lighting (red or blue) depending on the mood of the music.

[kgzkwbyd] 64 = 100

100 in base 8 (octal) is 64 in base 10.

64 in base 16 (hexadecimal) is 100 in base 10.

[yafmsrnp] 6144

Take 4 squares of the same size. There are 6144=4!*4⁴ ways of fitting those squares into a 2x2 block, counting rotations. A surprisingly large number for such a simple problem. Perhaps it can be the basis for a PIN or combination lock.

Surprisingly if you quarter a 3x3 or 3x4 array into 4 rectangular blocks at a lattice point, you get the same number again 6144 (counting each possible internal lattice point) though you lose uniqueness among the final permutations. Swap a 1x3 and 2x3, each of those can be cut two different ways.

[bjjucbpw] Store layout inconvenience factor

Obtain an unbiased sample of cash register receipts from a store. Given the actual layout of the store, compute the shortest path that each customer could have taken based on the items on each receipt. Calculate the optimal store layout that minimizes the average customer path length (subject to store layout constraints). The ratio between the average customer path length for the actual layout and the optimal layout represents the degree of inconvenience that a store inflicts upon its customers, time that the customer is forced to waste. Stores do insidiously and intentionally use an unoptimal layout to force their customers to walk past profitable items before reaching the items the customer wants to buy.

Publish a list of stores ranked by their layout inconvenience factor so that customers may avoid stores who play that game.

[xggszmav] An editor for trees

As a vestige from the days of assembler and Fortran, editors still think in terms of lines and columns.

Anything we want to edit these days, both code and structured documents, is a tree.

What navigation and edit operations should there be?

Points between children have meaning, for inserting Hard Returns.

Little right, much like right arrow

Word right. Staying on the same level? End of word if in the middle of one.

Out up tree right 1 (important)

All the way out right to next left paren or token

All the way down in right, or Leaf right

End of children

End of siblings/end of word

Undo navigation

Push down all children to right (insert left paren) (1 2 3 4) (1 2 (3 4))

Or push up left (1 (2 3 4 5) 6 7) (1 2 3 (4 5) 6 7)

same with right paren

pull all children up

push down marked set or current word

mark this leaf

mark all siblings to right

yank as well as mark

transpose

delete

Rendering:

auto indent and pretty print, packing in as much as possible

parse often, highlighting. an API to the parser as a service

replace some parens with indents?

See the beginning of s-exps. Rules for special types for display

hide nodes

only view certain trees and subtrees in a "sandbox"

[adhajukl] Text width

Given a line of text in a variable-width font, calculate how wide it is in inches or pixels. Ligatures and kerning make the problem non-trivial. Also if the character format is permitted to change mid-line.

No doubt this has already been done; I am interested in a solution for LaTeX or Postscript.

[xfncxwwj] Real Defence Against the Dark Arts

Defense Against the Dark Arts should be part of the actual primary school curriculum, where pupils learn about, and how to protect themselves from, all the bad things, people, and bad things people do in this muggle world.

There will be plenty of controversy on exactly what should be on the curriculum, with disagreement of whether something is bad or how bad it is. In the grand scale of things, this controversy may actually be useful, as different people who go through different educations can get together and pool their knowledge.

How to avoid getting scammed should be on the curriculum. It's a very broad topic.

How to avoid sexual predators on the internet should be taught from a very young age. "Don't scare the little kids!" you might say, but because they are being taught countermeasures (how to avoid rather than just that they exist) they shouldn't feel powerless scared. In the bigger picture, if this is widely taught, it might lessen the need for all the "think of the children" censorship that abounds.

[szuqhjax] Asynchronous voice chat

Create a device or program for which voice messages are recorded, transmitted, and placed on the recipient's playback queue. Recording interrupts playback. This has a similar feel to how instant messaging or text messaging work now. It could even be deployed over such a network or protocol.

You may have a limited ability to take back what you've said if your recording hasn't reached the front of the recipient's playback queue yet.

[xnzpigji] Private tag OS

An operating system and file system that zealously maintains a private side and a shareable public side. The public side is for things like file sharing, your published blog, and social networking profile (though the latter two are managed by a central server rather than a personal server these days).

The private side contains for example all your webcam and microphone recordings, camera pictures, scanned documents, and any documents you've typed into your computer. It takes extra user effort and confirmation to copy something from the private side to the public side.

Internet applications are messy. By default they can only read from the public side, and only write to the private side (which means they cannot read what they write, so no cookies or other saved state).

[nobfodrh] Personal information bank

When a business has some valuable item as part of their business, the company often hires a trusted third party to safeguard the item. The most common example is the company's cash is held in a bank.

The trusted third party, due to specialization and economies of scale, is able to do a good job of safeguarding the asset.

Can this model work for safeguarding personal information? A business collects personal information, perhaps a customer database. But the database is not kept by the company itself; instead it is kept at a trusted personal information bank. This bank only allows the company to access the data in certain audited and well monitored ways. This is similar to how a money bank thwarts employees from embezzling from their own company.

The customer sees that the business uses a mutually trusted personal information bank, and consequently trusts the business.

Ideas: the customer sends data directly to the bank. The company can query agglomerated statistics only. Search queries must have fewer than 10 results. The company may download at most 10 records total per day.

[siwjtvud] Nearly lossless image or video compression

Is there a point where any further higher quality image compression is just recording camera noise?

For light images, probably not in brightness resolution (1 part in 256). For dark images, probably yes.

For spatial resolution, are most camera's optics as good as one pixel? Probably. Lens grinding is an old art. Then again, the Mars rovers took better pictures than most digital cameras despite having less megapixels because of better optics.

Temporal resolution in video: motion blur. Complicated relationship with spatial resolution.

We can fall back to the measure of a compression quality high enough that a sample of humans cannot perceive the difference from the original. There are a bunch of parameters of such a human test: whether the human is asked whether the samples are simply different, or asked to choose which has higher quality. Whether the human is told in advance the type of compression artifacts to look for. Whether the movies are seen side-by-side or one after another.

[adwdhspd] Library science degree

For accreditation in a library science degree, implement a digital codec (actually, just the decoding) or build a storage device reader from scratch.

This keeps alive the human experience to prevent us from losing encoded data because we can no longer read or decode it.

It also verifies that a written description of a codec is enough to actually implement it.

[jdkdxwul] Afternoon

This blog documents my thought over time. Will it be possible to tell as I get stupider with age?

Intelligence wanes.

[ubpkxwzb] Homegrown cipher

Contrary to popular belief, it's actually not hard to design your own unbreakable (practically unbreakable) cipher. The catch is, what's hard is to design a cipher that is fast and compact and unbreakable. And "idiot-proof" (no weak keys).

But sometimes compactness is not a desirable feature in a cipher, for example the hard-to-steal cipher. In that case an amateur-designed cipher with thousands or millions of rounds, with a huge block size, alternating huge S boxes and huge P boxes will probably do. Consider a substitution-permutation network with block size 65536 bits, with 16-by-16 bit S-boxes, so 4096 different S-boxes per round, and different S-boxes between rounds. The substitutions alternate with permutations of the 65536 bits in the block, a different permutation for each round. 2^29+2^17 bytes per round. Repeat for 200000 rounds. The key is simply the 100 terabytes of S and P boxes so it is up to the user to choose them. Initializing them from a truly random source is usually sufficient unless you are fantastically unlucky.

[fmzggwxb] Guru on the mountain top

Two kingdoms cannot agree on who gets a disputed territory. But the catch is, if they both decide to go to war over it, the cost of the war will exceed the value of the territory.

\	Cede	Fight
Cede	0 \ 0	-1 \ 10
Fight	10 \ -1	-90 \ -101

Recognizing this situation, the two kings travel to seek judgment by the High Priestess at the Oracle of Delphi. The High Priestess slaughters a sacrificial cow, examines its entrails to divine the will of Apollo, and renders a decision of who shall get the disputed territory.

Both kings accept the Oracle's decision as final, for the myths of old and the Odyssey and the Iliad epics are contemporary reminders of the terrible things that happen to men who defy the will of the gods.

The modern world no longer has such a general mechanism for conflict resolution, though in limited contexts it is binding arbitration.

This is an example of the correlated equilibrium game theory solution concept. Does the high priestess need to know the utilities in order to define the probability distribution? How can we guarantee a Pareto efficient result?

[vpkffcir] Evil bullet

A bullet, or shrapnel in a bomb, designed specifically to confuse medical imaging equipment that surgeons use in the process of removing the bullet.

For X-rays and CAT scans, it seems tricky: X-ray resolution etching on the surface of the bullet to project a X-ray hologram.

I have no idea how to confuse MRI.

Ideas aren't inherently dangerous; their implementations are. MRI holograms?

[aexywvwv] Easily reverifiable wikipedia

The things one can trust are those that are easily reverifiable by the reader. The most straightforward examples are plot summaries of books and other singular media, though excessively long summaries are unfortunately frowned upon by Wikipedia.

In general, articles with a closed universe. Only a limited number of citations exist.

The grade school "book report".

Another arena: mathematics. Proofs may be checked automatically or by the human reader. Not sure what to do if different editors want to define things differently.

Create a closed universe "view" (live subset) of Wikipedia.

[hlkykuzv] Letter Frequency

Natural log of letter frequency

-1.758 Space
-2.407 e
-2.588 t
-2.801 a
-2.822 o
-2.866 i
-2.959 n
-3.002 s
-3.142 r
-3.246 h
-3.441 l
-3.639 d
-3.768 u
-3.803 c
-3.895 Shift
-3.956 m
-4.089 g
-4.093 y
-4.160 p
-4.186 w
-4.217 f
-4.358 b
-4.369 .
-4.826 ,
-4.857 v
-4.955 k
-5.130 '
-5.719 "
-6.049 -
-6.180 ?
-6.322 )
-6.454 j
-6.492 x
-6.637 (
-6.690 :
-6.721 0
-6.988 1
-7.163 q
-7.250 z
-7.301 2
-7.564 /
-7.700 5
-7.752 *
-7.804 3
-7.942 9
-7.985 !
-7.986 4
-8.138 ;
-8.232 8
-8.232 6
-8.357 7
-8.457 _
-8.533 $
-8.698 >
-8.725 [
-8.804 %
-8.921 ]
-9.047 =
-9.063 @
-9.609 <
-9.747 ~
-9.801 ^
-9.915 &
-9.974 +
-10.393 `
-10.600 #
-11.038 }
-11.115 \
-11.367 |
-11.476 {

Assumes auto-capitalization of "I" s/\bI(\b|')/i$1/g; and auto-capitalization after a period. Other capital letters are done with Shift.

[elyzamjj] Cutting a large image into a bunch of smaller ones

A program to generate a script to cut a large image (29566x14321) into a bunch of smaller ones.

module Main where{ import IO; import System; import Data.Char; import List; import Data.Ord; main :: IO(()); main = (do{ (hPutStrLn stderr rcs_code); (getArgs >>= (\lambda_case_var ->case lambda_case_var of { ["nothing"]-> (return ()); ["test", (x), (y)]-> (test (read x) (read y)) })); }); powers_of_two = ((:) 1 (map ((*) 2) powers_of_two)); rcs_code :: String; rcs_code = "$Id: kenserve.ll,v 1.2 2009/02/06 19:35:45 o Exp o $"; div_rounding_up :: Int -> Int -> Int; div_rounding_up x y = (case (divMod x y) of { ((d), (0))-> d; ((d), (_))-> (succ d) }); cut_points :: Int -> Int -> [](Int); cut_points big small = (let { numpieces :: Int; numpieces = (pred (div_rounding_up big small)); last_one :: Int; last_one = ((-) big small); f :: Int -> Int; f i = (div ((*) i last_one) numpieces) } in ((map f)((enumFromTo 0 numpieces)))); one_pnmcut :: Int -> Int -> String; one_pnmcut height vcut = ("pnmcut 0 " ++ (show vcut) ++ " 0 " ++ (show height) ++ " a "); one_pipeline :: Rescale -> [](String) -> Int -> Int -> Int -> String; one_pipeline rescale rotations hcut height vcut = (do{ rot :: String <- rotations; ((one_pnmcut height vcut) ++ (do_rescale rescale) ++ (do_rotation rot) ++ "| cjpeg > x-" ++ (show rescale) ++ "-" ++ (show hcut) ++ "-" ++ (show vcut) ++ rot ++ ".jpg\n"); }); data Rescale = Rescale(Int); do_rescale :: Rescale -> String; do_rescale rscale = (case rscale of { (Rescale(1))-> []; (Rescale(x))-> ("| pnmscale " ++ (show ((/) 1.0 (fromIntegral x))) ++ " ") }); do_rotation :: String -> String; do_rotation rot = (case rot of { ([])-> []; (_)-> ("| pnmflip " ++ rot ++ " ") }); instance Show (Rescale) where { show x = (case x of { (Rescale(x))-> ((show x)) }) } ; big_column :: Int -> Rescale -> [](String) -> Int -> Int -> Int -> String; big_column big_height rescale rotations width height hcut = ("pnmcut " ++ (show hcut) ++ " 0 " ++ (show width) ++ " 0 original >| a\n" ++ (concatMap (one_pipeline rescale rotations hcut height) (cut_points big_height height))); big_big :: Int -> Int -> Rescale -> [](String) -> Int -> Int -> String; big_big big_width big_height rescale rotations width height = (concatMap (big_column big_height rescale rotations width height) (cut_points big_width width)); double_size :: (Int, Int) -> (Int, Int); double_size x = (((*) 2 (fst x)), ((*) 2 (snd x))); fits :: Int -> Int -> Int -> Int -> Bool; fits width height x y = ((&&) ((<) x width) ((<) y height)); size_series :: Int -> Int -> Int -> Int -> []((Int, (Int, Int))); size_series width height monitor_width monitor_height = (zip powers_of_two ((takeWhile (uncurry (fits width height)))((iterate double_size)((monitor_width, monitor_height))))); run_big_big :: Int -> Int -> [](String) -> (Int, (Int, Int)) -> String; run_big_big big_width big_height rotations rwh = (case rwh of { ((rescale), ((width), (height)))-> (big_big big_width big_height (Rescale rescale) rotations width height) }); run_rescales :: Int -> Int -> Int -> Int -> String; run_rescales big_width big_height width height = ((++) (concatMap (run_big_big big_width big_height ["-r90", "-r270"]) (size_series big_width big_height height width)) (concatMap (run_big_big big_width big_height ["", "-r180"]) (size_series big_width big_height width height))); test :: Int -> Int -> IO(()); test width height = (do{ (putStrLn "set -x"); (putStrLn "set -C"); (putStrLn "set -e"); (putStr (run_rescales 29566 14321 width height)); }) }

[tcpzhqsq] Global warming

The question of global warming breaks into four separate questions.

1. Is the earth warming?
2. Do greenhouse gases cause global warming? In particular by the amounts we see.
3. Is the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increasing?
4. Is the increase in greenhouse gases caused by human activity?

If the answers to the previous four questions are positive, then it logically follows that global warming caused by human activity.

Critics of global warming neatly break into four camps, one for each question. (There is actually a fifth category of people who acknowledge that global warming is caused by human activity, but disagree with proposals to stop it, namely curbing greenhouse emissions. )

It is possible to doubt global warming, thinking the evidence is inconclusive for one or more of the questions above, yet still support trying to curb carbon dioxide emissions. You can take the mentality of a scientist or of a engineer/adventurer. For the scientist, the way to gain conclusive evidence is to perform the experiment, forcibly changing greenhouse emissions by human activity and measuring what happens. The engineer/adventurer can look upon the project like climbing Everest, exciting and ambitious: We do it simply as a test to see what we as a civilization are capable of.

[glehrmtp] Tiller Memorial Scholarship idea

There is already a shortage of abortion doctors, and the assassination of George Tiller only makes it worse. But it has shed light on this acute shortage.

Someone, or more than one entity, should set up George Tiller Memorial Scholarships to help pay for education expenses of medical students (or even current doctors) to learn the specialty and offer abortions.

If you are pro-choice and believe it strongly enough to make a difference with your checkbook, you should donate to such a scholarship. It would be sweet irony if the murder of one abortion doctor ended up funding the creation of many more.

[xzumbnoj] Excising camera

Consider a public camera which initially one would think is the worst case scenario: the camera is tied to a vast database of biometric (e.g., gait) and other data (it also detects radio emissions from your electronic devices), perhaps it notices you using some sort of identifiable card or token, etc. The camera automatically uses many means to identify you.

When it identifies you, it automatically excises you from the footage, replacing it with a placeholder encrypted with your public key. Philosophically, images of you, identifiable as you, even if taken in public places, belong to you, and may not be viewed by Big Brother without your permission (private key).

So if a crime was committed against you, you can unlock the footage to help discover the perpetrator. But only if it's in your best interests.

We require a bit of cryptography magic to encrypt something with a public key so it cannot be identified which public key it was without the corresponding private key. This should be easy.

There is also a messy problem of spatial and temporal locality of the region surrounding your videoed image.

Make the law that any public "smart" camera continually (or capable of continually) identifying people must excise identified people. "Dumb" cameras don't have to. It requires a warrant to watch a particular person not to excise.

[zxqepzrd] Private Keyserver

Public keyservers are all well and good, but in these days of internet kiosks, personal mobile devices that get lost or replaced, people need private keyservers (the server is public, it stores private keys) as well to have easy access to their private key.

Of course, the private key is stored on the keyserver encrypted with a password not known even to the keyserver.

The private keyserver can offer value added in many ways. The keys should be protected by CAPTCHAs to thwart an attacker downloading many keys and doing an offline attack against all of them.

The keyserver can notify the key owner whenever anyone accesses his private key.

The keyserver can monitor the dark side of the internet, watching for lists of sniffed passwords, try them against all the private keys, and automatically issue key revocation certificates when a key is potentially compromised (and notifies the key owner).

Of course, the keyserver can additionally protect the key with an account with a username and password, but it should be stressed that it should be a different password than the one that protects the key, and the server can enforce that by trying the account password and variations against the private key.

This makes it inconvenient for the key owner to have to remember two different passwords, so it should be configurable to just use CAPTCHAs or other delaying methods (e.g., Hashcash).

[evkqgzxb] Nuclear proliferation

They say nothing good can come from nuclear proliferation. But imagine an Axis Of Evil nuclear scientist, having built his bombs, now having to deal with the inevitable nuclear waste left over from the bomb-making process. Radioactive nuclear waste disposal is a problem faced by every nuclear installation (both power and weapons) and is unsolved.

Imagine this Axis Of Evil scientist comes up with a brilliant solution to this unsolved problem that no one else had thought of, benefiting everyone through the advancement of knowledge.

Though realistically, the solution will probably involve burying the waste in some remote uninhabited desert in Axis Of Evil Land.

[zhrdpfxr] Peer-to-peer Usenet

Imagine a distributed public message board system. Similar to Usenet but each node does not need to store the whole thing. Each node only stores only part, and if it wants a message it doesn't have, routing happens.

In order not to be overwhelmed by spam, each node does spam filtering, choosing not to store or forward some messages. Some of the spam filtering (the hard cases) might even be done by the gold standard: the human user of the node.

Can such a system work? What are the conditions?

An interesting, probably unrealistic, simulation is to create a network, simulate messages sitting and bouncing around in it, and spam messages having a higher probability of being dropped. Can we avoid spam from overwhelming the network?

[yddpxbnm] Hand-held device shape

Having tried many handheld devices, I conclude I want the following shape features: it must be usable with one hand only. It must be usable by either hand.

If two hands are needed, one to hold the device and one to operate it, or two thumbs, then the hands are forced together, and we need to maintain the same arm position for the entire time using the device. This becomes fatiguing.

It's like a Wii controller, except with a screen. On the bottom side, one or two buttons shaped like triggers to be operated by the index and middle fingers. The main typing is done by the thumb on the top side. Some buttons, maybe a joystick or nipple mouse, maybe a touch pad with small display.

Above the thumb area is the main display.

A Nunchuck is a good idea for optional two handed operation.

Chords

[sgpmfikc] Sign maker

Determine the maximum font size for which a given text fits on one page. Lines need to be broken into paragraphs. Optionally, the maximum may be landscape, or perhaps an odd angle.

Having solved the theoretical problem, deploy a kiosk computer and printer and masking tape dispenser in a location where people frequently need to make signs, for example, a building with several meeting rooms.

[kxjwukwm] Bacon

Bacon came out flat instead of curly when cooked in an initially cold pan with the lid on. I suspect even heating on both top and underneath.

[bpfhadjc] State Capital

Where should the state capital be?

One way to do it is to pick the point that minimizes the maximum distance anyone might have to travel to reach the capital. This geometric problem has the solution of the center of the circumscribing circle around the state.

Another way is to minimize the maximum time anyone might have to travel, starting at any point on a road in the state. Different roads have different speeds. This is a graph problem.

[dugrgmpd] Teeth hygiene

In which order should you brush, floss, and mouthwash, to minimize the chances of gum disease? We wish to avoid flossing opening cuts and the cuts becoming infected.

[xlbskgov] Unbalanced budgets

Permitting unbalanced budgets allows a government to buffer the severity of the business cycle. (Hello, California! Proposition 58) While it is politically easy to do deficit spending, how can we force surpluses to be maintained in good times? In good times, politicians with a short-term view will prefer to cut taxes or increase spending rather than run a surplus.

Simple solutions involve requiring a super-majority to cut taxes or increase spending in "good" economic times with a less political body, or mathematical formula, involved in deciding when those times are. Or the condition is always true and tax cuts or spending increases always require a super-majority.

A more radical proposal is to allow government bond holders a direct vote in the legislature, much like stockholders in a corporation. Perhaps only on spending bills. Perhaps their vote is always mechanical: always voting to increase taxes and decrease spending. Perhaps bonds held by tax payers in the state itself do not count. Or perhaps only they count, encouraging the state's debt to be held by the citizens of the state. Bond holders do not vote on revenue neutral bills.

The greater the debt, the greater the number of votes the bond holders get.

This still don't quite work because after the debt is paid off, the bond holders have no votes, and we revert to the bad old days. Instead we want some amount of reserve to accumulate in preparation for the next economic downturn.

Another idea is the tax cuts or spending increases may not take effect until, say, 4 years after the bill is passed. This lag is timed to approximate a typical business cycle. Tax increases and spending cuts are not lagged, but there is plenty of political pressure not to have those too frequently. Revenue-neutral bills are also not delayed. This makes it difficult to do quick fiscal stimulus in the event of an economic downturn, though we could exercise some mechanisms not tied to a specific amount of government spending, for example welfare and unemployment payments: the automatic fiscal stimulus that causes the government to automatically spend more in a recession. The expected spending of welfare should be calculated averaged over an entire business cycle.

The lag could also be overridden by a super-majority.

[ubqbuppp] Car fuel economy

Why is it that in America we set fuel economy standards for manufacturer fleets to reduce carbon emissions instead of simply raising a gasoline tax and letting the market develop fuel-efficient cars?

Raising the gasoline tax could be coupled with lowering the income tax to make it revenue-neutral for the government and politically palatable.

Is the problem that when a consumer chooses a car to buy he or she cannot easily see the fuel cost and consequently acts irrationally? The nanny state is trying to correct a flaw in human nature and induce rational behavior? Not that this is wrong.

[fqoyztrc] Mud

Getting run over by a tank and surviving

The battle of Agincourt

[ntqglfdq] GPS train

Take a GPS receiver on to Acela and measure how fast it goes on which stretches.

It doesn't seem to go very fast that often.

[tltavcyq] Parallel Matrix Decomposition High Latency

How do you do parallel matrix LU decomposition with high latency communication between processors, for example Ethernet, which has high latency but high bandwidth? No single node can hold the entire matrix in memory.

The linear algebra step after number field sieving for integer factorization. We wish we didn't need a Cray.

[gcizwrpv] Search for a real number

I wish a search for 70.8353378 would return this page where the number appears, but with less rounding and to a greater number of decimal digits.

[glnrgglv] Digital broadcast TV

PSA: The quality of digital TV broadcast over the air (antenna) is very good. The picture is crystal clear and in high definition. It has none of the snowy or shadowy problems of old analog TV broadcast. If you are paying, say, $50 a month for cable or satellite TV, you should think again about what you could do with the $600 a year you could be saving by watching crystal clear HDTV broadcast instead.

If your new digital television does not come with an antenna, you can get one for about $10. You don't need any special antenna to pick up the digital signal, an "analog" antenna will do. If the antenna has two components, the "rabbit ears" and a loop or dish, you don't need to use or extend the rabbit ears. The frequency of all the digital broadcasts can be picked up by loop.

I get 15 channels. Digital broadcast provides a program guide with text descriptions of the current and upcoming programs, much like satellite and cable do but old analog TV did not.

[gxyryosd] Identical candidates

A simple one-dimensional political model predicts that a candidate should choose a platform at the median voter of the political spectrum. If not, he or she will lose to another candidate closer to the median, if each voter chooses the candidate closer to them on the one dimension.

This should result in candidates with nearly identical platforms running against each other, as humorously depicted on an episode of Futurama ("A Head in the Polls").

But clearly this has not happened. Why?

One way to measure how different the voters perceive the candidates to be is to ask, how much would you need to be paid, as a proportion of your wealth, to vote for the other candidate?

The assumption of a one-dimensional political spectrum may be wrong.

Another possibility, vaguely, is that there exists a irreconcilable deep ideological divide in this country. This is troubling: we have already fought one civil war over that kind of divide.

Arrow's Theorem rears its ugly head when there is a lot of heterogeneity in individual preferences. Our social choice function might make some terrible choices.

[ocaansnx] Time slows down

There is a joke in here somewhere. It starts out a nice sounding platitude about how one's perception of time changes while with someone and ends with the effect being real because of gravitational time dilation, in other words, "you're so fat. "

[koylgegh] Virtual dancer

Create a virtual computer model of a human designed to simulate human movement. All the human motion constraints are in there: how strong the muscles are, how flexible and springy the joints are, how much the various body segments weigh.

Create an interface to program such a model. Do better than having to specify how much every muscle must flex at every point in time. Perhaps some goal oriented interface going through key frames. Maybe a feedback subsystem to (for example) just be able to stand upright.

It would be nice to take something that exists and modify it: interface with motion capture technologies.

Produce an animation of your virtual human model going through the motions (this problem has already been mostly solved).

Of the many uses of this new technology (inevitably somehow porn, of course) I originally had in mind a virtual dancer with which a choreographer can choreograph something, tweaking until it looks right, before giving it to a real dancer to perform. It is very important that the virtual model be constrained to move in only the ways a human can actually move. Be able to give a measure of how difficult the programmed motion would be to an actual human.

It might be possible to do dance commissions this way: the choreographer publishes the animation seeking to hire someone to perform it.

[ktjknczb] Police catch criminals

Would the world be a better place if the police focused more on catching criminals after a crime is committed rather than trying to prevent crime?

It would end them horrible arrests of thoughtcrime and pre-crime ("conspiracy to commit") in the name of preventing terrorism that are going on these days.

It would increase freedom of speech and free exchange of ideas and increase our liberties.

It would not stop suicide bombers, for they are dead after the crime is committed. But suicide bombers are few and far between, and if they believe in a cause so strongly that they are willing to die for it, and they see the best way to further their cause in society is with a suicide bombing, then perhaps there is something wrong with society.

In general, it won't stop criminals who are willing to pay the punishment for their crime.

It will not stop random acts of violence, where the criminal commits the crime without considering the punishment. Formerly such a criminal may have been arrested for pre-crime. Included in this category are the "angry young men" which may make up the bulk of the "terrorist" (but they don't strongly believe in their cause) population -- But if society is producing so many of these types, then maybe we should take a closer look why.

It will not make the "surveillance state" (Big Brother is watching you) better; in fact, it will probably make it worse: increasing surveillance on those who would have been formerly arrested for thoughtcrime, and as a side effect, everyone else.

It will not stop the fact that if you look closely enough at anyone, you will probably find that they have committed some crime.

It will not stop the real loss in productivity caused by the threat of a crime, for example a death threat. But laws against causing fear are weird: even if you remove one fear, another one will take its place. Even if you suppress the death threat, you should still live in fear that someone is still plotting your death except not telling you about it.

The right way to do it is to selectively use this policy depending on how hard the crime is to get away with. These can be found by checking crime statistics.

But this will probably never happen because fear is so strong in politics.

[qajwfnmw] DRM labeling

It would be nice if all products and devices containing DRM were required to be prominently labeled with a big warning like the Surgeon General's warning on cigarettes. And advertisements, too.

Is the meantime, devices without DRM can prominently label themselves as such. A happy face.

[jvpjsirg] Junior computer chess program

The computer chess program Junior, despite not being the strongest program, still seems to be popular because it is an entertaining program for people to play against. It plays like Tal. Obviously, if you want to sell your program to the masses, you want this quality.

How do you measure the subjective quality of a game?

[axncbwof] Three famous quotes

Three examples of a quote, or its source work, having its 15 minutes of fame twice in popular culture, with few people knowing the original.

"Never get involved in a land war in Asia." Original quote Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery (Viscount Alamein) in a speech in the House of Lords on 30 May 1962: "Rule 1, on page 1 of the book of war is: 'Do not march on Moscow.' ... Rule 2 is: 'Do not go fighting with your land armies in China.'". Made famous by The Princess Bride. Became relevant again as the US goes to war with Iraq (and we again discover the quote is right).

"I hate you with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns." Original quote Bhagavad Gita, "If the radiance of a thousand suns Were to burst at once into the sky That would be like the splendor of the Mighty one... I am become Death, The shatterer of Worlds." Then J. Robert Oppenheimer after observing the first atomic bomb: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds." Then in Cheers, Diane to Sam, the quote above.

"Revenge is a dish best served cold. " Original quote "La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid" in the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) (1782) by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. A movie with Uma Thurman, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Keanu Reeves, and again later adapted into the infamous movie Cruel Intentions. (Though the quote was not present in either of the movie adaptations.) Most recently made famous as a "Klingon Proverb" in the movie Kill Bill.