2023-09-24 01:25:08 <KipIngram   > gordonjcp: A few years ago they started something called the "Partner Program," where they had a profit mechanism for the questions people ASKED.
2023-09-24 01:25:20 <KipIngram   > I felt that the quality of the questions plummeted when they did that.
2023-09-24 01:25:30 <KipIngram   > You started seeing "question mills."
2023-09-24 01:26:16 <KipIngram   > I have some questions go through my inbox - I just look at them and if I feel like I have anything worthwhile to say about it I answer.
2023-09-24 01:26:45 <KipIngram   > Later on they started compensating people for answers, and I actually get 15-20 bucks a month for my submissions.
2023-09-24 01:28:30 <KipIngram   > There's a little list of topics that will particularly draw an answer from me - I try to educate people out of believing in "free energy machines," "zero point energy" and that kind of thing, and a couple of other things like that.
2023-09-24 01:29:10 <KipIngram   > I usually respond to questions like "Is the moon really not there when no one is looking" and so on - I think the popular science media has done a crap job presenting certain aspects of quantum theory,
2023-09-24 01:29:23 <KipIngram   > I think the media actually LIKES to keep the "quantum woo" churning.
2023-09-24 01:29:36 <KipIngram   > Makes it all seem more sensational than it really should.
2023-09-24 01:30:18 <KipIngram   > I think that "do things not exist when we don't observe them" thing arises from people conflating "quantum state" and "observable property values."
2023-09-24 01:30:23 <KipIngram   > The quantum state always exists.
2023-09-24 01:30:38 <KipIngram   > Has nothing to do with whether it's observed or not - in fact, we can't observe it.
2023-09-24 01:30:49 <KipIngram   > It's *property values* that may or may not exist, depending on the state.
2023-09-24 01:31:09 <KipIngram   > Some states don't have values for particular properties.
2023-09-24 01:31:23 <KipIngram   > If you then go measure that property, you'll kick the system into a state that DOES have such a value.
2023-09-24 01:32:09 <KipIngram   > A state has a value for property X only if it's an eigenvector of the measurement operator corresponding to that property.
2023-09-24 01:32:56 <KipIngram   > And also, trying to apply those ideas to big things like the moon is a mistake too.
2023-09-24 01:33:34 <KipIngram   > Or cats.
2023-09-24 01:34:16 <KipIngram   > It's ironic - when Schrodinger created his "cat thought experiment," he was TRYING to show people how dumb it is to use quantum methods on big objects.
2023-09-24 01:34:25 <KipIngram   > But the world has really taken that thing and run with it.
2023-09-24 03:39:23 <MrMobius    > im working with segmented memory now. yikes...
2023-09-24 03:39:51 <MrMobius    > I think im just going to stick parts of it wherever is convenient and not try to do any acrobatics jumping between banks
2023-09-24 03:40:10 <MrMobius    > so most of a bank might be wasted since it's only used for one self contained thing
2023-09-24 06:04:52 <KipIngram   > Oh gosh - banked memory is actually even worse.
2023-09-24 06:11:18 <MrMobius    > ahh, you meant x86 segments
2023-09-24 06:17:10 <KipIngram   > Yes; that's what I thought we were talking about earlier.
2023-09-24 06:39:40 <FUZxxl      > MrMobius: there's some fun tricks you can do with segments
2023-09-24 21:45:01 <KipIngram   > This video was generated by a Windows XP program less than 4kB in size:
2023-09-24 21:45:04 <KipIngram   > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5CTFMuFvb0
2023-09-24 21:48:37 <KipIngram   > That's impressive - from the looks of it you might imagine one frame approaching that size.
2023-09-24 21:51:58 <KipIngram   > Related work is described here:
2023-09-24 21:52:00 <KipIngram   > https://arxiv.org/pdf/1010.2067.pdf