@JorgeStolfi@mas.to
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

JorgeStolfi

@JorgeStolfi@mas.to

Computer Science professor, State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil.

Generally leftist (which means socialist outside the US), dreaming of democracy, justice, equality, disarmament, respect for science and human life, green energy, etc.

Posts in Portuguese are about topics of mostly Brazilian interest.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

peter, to random
@peter@area51.social avatar

They should be sanitising their database inputs rather than change the input data!

"A local authority has announced it will ban apostrophes on street signs to avoid problems with computer systems."

North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-68942321

JorgeStolfi,
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

@peter

Does it mean that one can crash the NYC computers with a simple black marker - by adding an apostrophe to a street sign?

Hopefully no one will go to the trouble of covering a street sign with a card saying

'); DROP TABLE violations;

https://xkcd.com/327/

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

Which major change would a time traveler from 1974 notice most about cities today?

JorgeStolfi,
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

@evan

No newspapers.

On ads, instead of phone numbers, weird "www..." or "@..." notations.

But mainly: half the people are carrying a small rectangular thing and are talking loud to themselves, like lunatics.

JorgeStolfi, to HashtagGames
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

After transferring all his fortune to a charitable foundation, Uncle Scrooge retired to an isolated log cabin north of Yukon. He goes panning for gold every summer, just for fun. Needless to say, he throws back into the river any nuggets he happens to catch.


JorgeStolfi, to HashtagGames
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

Indiana Jones's YouTube channel "AliensBuiltThatToo" has over 10 million followers.


JorgeStolfi, to random
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

I have seen many reports of Trump's failed enterprises, but somehow this one was never mentioned. I would say that it is the most "educative" one, and should be the first of the list:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQM1m_In5n0&t=13s

JorgeStolfi, to random
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

Random theory that occurred to me yesterday: poetry must be a rather recent and accidental invention compared to singing.

A poem is a song without melody. I bet that, before the invention of writing, there were no poems, only songs. But when writing was invented, and people tried to write down songs, they of course could not write down the melody. Only the lyrics, rhyme, and some of the rhythm could get through. Voilà, poetry...

JorgeStolfi, to HashtagGames
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

Ultramango


JorgeStolfi, to HashtagGames
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

/A Non-Linear Bivariate Regresson Model Predicting Mating Success as a Function of Ethanolic Blood Levels in Ithaca, NY Bars/


JorgeStolfi, to random
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

BREAKING: Amazon announced that it concluded that operating its own datacenters is not cost-effective, and therefore will shut them down and re-implement its AWS service on Microsoft's Azure platform.

Also, in a separate announcement today, Microsoft informed that, for economic reasons, it is shutting down its private datacenters and implementing its Azure service on Amazon's AWS platform.

JorgeStolfi, to HashtagGames
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

I once organized a sit-in consumer protest in one of their stores, demanding a 50% increase in the size of their free samples of mint-flavored beef jerky.


JorgeStolfi, to HashtagGames
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

My emotional support animal is a tiger. (She is quite docile, actually; those incidents you may have seen reported in the news were not her fault at all.)


JorgeStolfi, to HashtagGames
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

Genetically engineer cows so that their meat tastes like bean stew or carrot souffle, as a way to convert meat-eaters to veganism.



rbreich, to random
@rbreich@masto.ai avatar

The world's billionaires now hold a combined $14.2 trillion in assets.

That exceeds the GDP of every country in the world except the US and China.

And we’re supposed to believe the ultra-wealthy can’t afford a wealth tax?

JorgeStolfi,
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

@rbreich

Property is power.
The billionaires are the Medieval feudal lords, just rebranded.

JorgeStolfi, to random
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

What is the proper general term for someone who is bent on imposing their religious beliefs on those who do not share them? Like the Taliban, Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the Spanish Conquistadores, ...

JorgeStolfi,
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

@alcinoe @tshirtman

"Theocrat" indeed seems to be used with that meaning too. But I understand that it has a more extreme meaning: a theocrat wants the government to be exercised by priests, or officially submitted to some church. Or is a member of such a government.

The Taliban and the Revolutionary Guard in Iran are theocratic. But the Catholics who made divorce illegal in some Catholic-majority countries are not generally "theocrats" - they don't want gov by priests or the Church.

JorgeStolfi,
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

@notroot @tshirtman

What I am referring to is /not/ attempts to convert or proselitize. The people in question may accept nominally the idea of religious freedom and the fact that many others do not share their religious beliefs and cannot be converted; but want to impose some of those beliefs on everybody, anyway. Like banning abortion, divorce, or women education; mandating prayer in schools, etc.

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

Nothing.
Elon Musk and Jamie Dimon’s AI Predictions and What They Mean for the Future of Humanity
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/elon-musk-and-jamie-dimons-ai-predictions-and-what-they-mean-for-the-future-of-humanity-d100b0c8?st=4k1xqkurp1cucvd

JorgeStolfi,
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

@jeffjarvis

That may be right, but why should we care about the opinions of two guys who are well-known for their ignorance and dishonesty?

JorgeStolfi, to HashtagGames
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

A decentralized communications technology that does not depend on routing digital packets through a physical network of towers, gateways, microwave beams, and optical fibers. The text to be transmitted is encoded with a multiband frequency/amplitude modulation scheme, transmitted by molecular density waves, and decoded with a pair of miniaturized spectral filter banks implanted under the receiver's skull. Range up to tens of meters.


JorgeStolfi, to HashtagGames
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

A form of personal transportation, like a Tesla, but produced with simple bio-engineering out of proteic polymers rather than metal and plastic. Normally for a single passenger, but could carry two in a pinch, and some modest amount of goods. Totally green-powered, and could be recharged even in transit. Superb off-road agility and can drive through 3-foot-deep water. Drive-by wire and voice activation. Available in several colors.


JorgeStolfi, to HashtagGames
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar


kringkaste, to fedibikes German
@kringkaste@chaos.social avatar

@fedibikes Hallo zusammen, ich suche nach einer - am besten Open Source - Software mit der die Vermietung von Fahrradboxen an öffentlichen Orten gemanaged werden kann. Gibt es soetwas in eurer Stadt und wenn ja, was wird da eingesetzt? Oder hat jemand eine Idee oder selbst in seiner Stadt schon eine Lösung dafür gefunden? Danke für eure Hilfe!

JorgeStolfi,
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

@kringkaste @fedibikes

People should realize that THEY are now superfluous.

AI can make a virtual "you" that is much better than you, (For one thing, the AI "you" does not need yo be paid and will never unionize or blow the whistle on your company's dirty secrets.)

So the non-AI people should take the hint now and jump into a well or something, to clear the way for progress.

JorgeStolfi, to random
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

Is there any country with official
(possibly mandatory) standards for minimum transportation infrastructure?

Like, "in every urban area with more than N inhabitants, there must be a bus stop for for each travel direction within D meters from each home, with buses every M minutes that will let one reach any place in the grid with at most one bus change" and similarly for metro.

javi, to random

These people are so fucking dumb. Let me do some quick math.

Any given week day, at peak hour, any train from Madrid's metro can be carrying around 500 people. Let's consider that some of them may be traveling together, so let's say that being optimistic, they could be divided in 250 robotaxies.

Now, that's one train. At any moment there are between 10 and 20 trains going in that line in that same direction. And as much in the opposite. That makes it between 5k and 10k robotaxies. To cover a single metro line

Madrid has 16 metro lines. That makes it between 80k and 160k robotaxies just they could move the same order of magnitude of people our Metro moves in any given workday. If you want to cover really busy moments, like big sport events, you need twice that amount (the nominal max capacity of metro trains is around 1200 people per train, and believe me, I've seen them so full that you couldn't get in pretty often).

That's just for the subway. Local commuter trains and city buses, combined, are actually carrying more people daily than the subway. So let's double the robotaxies fleet again if they want it to "kill public transport". So you need between 350k and 700k robotaxies just to be able to kill the public transit of a single major city.

That's about 1/6th of every Tesla ever made. Just. For. One. City.

The current Madrid taxi fleet? 15k cars.

RE: https://botsin.space/users/fuck_cars_bot/statuses/112232273717775735

JorgeStolfi,
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

@javi >> But then 90% of the people will see no reason to own a car. THAT is the car's industry nightmare.

So the car industry is doing what they have been doing for the past century: fight public transportation, so that each family, no matter how poor, MUST buy at least one private car. >>

JorgeStolfi,
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

@hajovonta @javi

OK, maybe 90% is unrealistic. But ~60% of people live in cities. If most of those people can use metro, train, or fast bus for commuting to work and regular shopping, most of the remaining uses of personal cars can be supplied by taxis and rented cars.

As for people in rural areas, they will probably still want to have personal cars; but how much travel do they actually do?

High-speed trains can cut down airplane use. Shipping is going to be a problem though. >>

JorgeStolfi,
@JorgeStolfi@mas.to avatar

@javi

I don't have much hope of governments outright forcing most people to switch away from personal cars. At most the gov can nudge them a bit by increasing taxes on cars and gasoline, closing streets to cars, etc; but those measures will be unpopular and will be easily overturned under a democratic gov.

I hope the same result can be achieved by simply offering people better (faster, cheaper, ubiquitous, and comfortable) public transportation alternatives.

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