Yeah, but what can it do after that second is over, huh?!

There's something about this sentence in today's NY Times that just makes me incredibly uneasy:

"The Dawning Nebulae computer has achieved a sustained speed of 1.27 petaflops — the equivalent of one thousand trillion mathematical operations a second."

Maybe it's the part where a computer can do more things in a second than I'll do in my entire life.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On the other hand, if you want an opinion on beer or chocolate, I'm your guy!

Topics that get my fellow progressives all fired up that you’ll virtually never hear me give an opinion on: -          Keystone XL  -          Vaccinations  -          Net Neutrality  -          Climate Change  -          Abortions  -          Fracking Some of them are such personal issues and the others require expertise I don’t have. I either prefer to keep my thoughts to myself or at least, not pretend I know things that others have or haven’t figured out...even if I'm not sure they are as sure they've figured it out as they are.  And you're not the only one. Even I had to read that sentence twice to make sure I understood it.
Read more

Of course, the Republican Congress didn't get anything done last year anyway, so maybe it's for the best

 Things the media seem obsessed with that I just pass over as soon as I see what the article is about:  AI Anything to do with Israel, especially the latest war Abortion Crime Donald Trump Fantasy Football Golf Space of the Outer variety Women's sports (sorry!) On the other hand, climate change applies in terms of my (not) wanting to read about it, but they actually should be writing about it far more often. Interestingly, it seems like national level politicians spend way more time on things I don't care about than the things I wish they would, too. 
Read more

Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose? Just not much sign of the change part

Interesting conversation with a young (20ish) voter last night when I questioned her lack of enthusiasm for Joe Biden in the upcoming election even though she is a clear liberal/progressive. When I asked why she found it hard to support him, her main thrust was not about his age, per se, but about his being part of the old guard, wanting to do things the way they've always been done, in a capitalist system young people don't trust or value. And she understands some of the appeal for Donald Trump, despite being almost as old, in that he wants to shake things up or, more excitingly, blow things up.  I told her that reminded me of us when we were her age when Richard Nixon represented all that was evil and wrong with the world. He was the epitome of what we called The Establishment. Totally resistant to any kind of change or accepting that things were way out of whack, the country wasn't go in the wrong direction - it wasn't going in any new direction that would right the
Read more