30 JUL 2024 by ideonexus
Life in the US is More Complicated to Exploit Less Intell...
Coming from Europe, everything in the US seems more complicated, and set up with the purpose of making it hard for less intelligent people.
Filing taxes is always the responsibility of the private citizen instead of the employee, the price of goods is displayed without sales tax and it's up to the citizen to calculate the real price, health insurance and car insurance are both overly complicated and full of clauses, financing and credit cards are literally shoved in your throat. Every proces... 1 
notes
notesAlso applies to standard vs metric, phonetic spelling, and other unnecessarily complex systems.
22 DEC 2023 by ideonexus
What Tech Bubbles Leave Behind
Tech bubbles come in two varieties: The ones that leave something behind, and the ones that leave nothing behind. Sometimes, it can be hard to guess what kind of bubble you’re living through until it pops and you find out the hard way.
When the dotcom bubble burst, it left a lot behind. Walking through San Francisco’s Mission District one day in 2001, I happened upon a startup founder who was standing on the sidewalk, selling off a fleet of factory-wrapped Steelcase ...Folksonomies: technology internet history
Folksonomies: technology internet history
1 notes
notes20 MAR 2018 by ideonexus
Small Minority Accounts for Bulk of Gun Ownership
Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. has tripled, while imports have doubled. This doesn’t mean more households have guns than ever before—that percentage has stayed fairly steady for decades. Rather, more guns are being stockpiled by a small number of individuals. Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, says a recent, definitive study from the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University.
S...
1 25 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Ian Bogost: "Science"
The rhetoric of science has consequences. Things that have no particular relation to scientific practice must increasingly frame their work in scientific terms to earn any attention or support. The sociology of Internet use suddenly transformed into “web science.” Long accepted practices of statistical analysis have become “data science.” Thanks to shifting educational and research funding priorities, anything that can’t claim that it is a member of a STEM (science, technology, engi... 1 notes
notes17 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Beginnings of the Reputation Economy
The formal reputation networks that exist AF arose
organically from the informal social media developed
through the 21st century. An early barrier to
interacting with strangers online—particularly when
engaging in financial transactions—was not knowing
if the person you were dealing with was reliable.
Primitive reputation scores were the first solution,
enabling buyers to rate sellers. These systems rapidly
spread to social networks, discussion forums, and
filesharing sites, as a way of v...
1 How an alternative economy based on reputation could form in the future.
25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Gains and Loses in Man's Empirical View
I may hand over to men their fortunes, now their understanding is emancipated and come as it were of age; whence there cannot but follow an improvement in man's estate and an enlargement of his power over nature. For man by the fall fell at the same time from his state of innocency and from his dominion over creation. Both of these losses however can even in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by arts and sciences. For creation was not by the curse...Folksonomies: nature empiricism
Folksonomies: nature empiricism
1 notes
notesMan loses his innocence and dominion over creation, but gains in his estate and power over nature.
05 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Humans Don't Have Roots
In the very largest way of looking at planet Earth's socioeconomic-evolution events, we must observe
that humans are designed with legs and not roots. Yesterday, humanity developed temporary roots as it
cultivated its life-support food root-grown on the land. The metals made possible metal canning of food
and mobilization of machinery. Today, all of human existence depends on the swift, world-around
intercommunication system operating at 186,000 miles per second. We have transformed reality f... 1 notes
notesThrough science, we are evolving to become more free, free from biological roots and free from Capitalistic chains, where ownership of real estate holds us down.
02 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Importance of Web Topology
Web topology contains more complexity than simple linear chains. In this section, we will discuss attempts to measure the global structure of the Web, and how individual webpages fit into that context. Are there interesting representations that define or suggest important properties? For example, might it be possible to map knowledge on theWeb? Such a map might allow the possibility of understanding online communities, or to engage in 'plume tracing' - following a meme, or idea, or rumour, or... 1 notes
notesMapping the web allows us to find patterns in it, with potential applications.
01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus
The Bogo-Sort Algorithm for Creating Universes
A spectacular variant of bogo-sort has been proposed which has the interesting property that, if the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, it can sort an arbitrarily large array in linear time. (In the Many-Worlds model, the result of any quantum action is to split the universe-before into a sheaf of universes-after, one for each possible way the state vector can collapse; in any one of the universes-after the result appears random.) The steps are: 1. Permute the array rand... 1 notes
notesIf the many-universes hypothesis is true, then it is a magnificently inefficient system.
01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus
Thomas Jefferson on Sharing Ideas
Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made...An excellent argument for fair use and limits on copyright.
