The thing is: my mother bought an Apple device not to think about data, security, backups and all these "InternetS" things. She doesn't even know what hardware is. If she did, she might have bought an Android phone or something else :)
Well, since it's distributed / decentralized you wouldn't depend on a particular company (or service). This way you wouldn't need to worry about it being shut down.
You would still depend on the constant availability of an origin for your data.
IPFS is not magic in that regard: if whoever is your origin disappears, then your data is likely to disappear at some point, especially if it's not super popular.
There is no free lunch: you either become your origin yourself, or you pay someone else to be.
But because it's distributed, you can be the origin for hundreds of pages on a tiny $5 vps and when popularity increases you would not have to shoulder all the load.
Do you need links or proofs if I tell you the sky is blue ?
OCR has been around for decades. This approach is only interesting if it improves OCR via NN. Would love to learn more about this process (the improvement, not the training...).
I can read faster than most people talk. With text I can go back and re-read the bits I'm having trouble understanding and skim over the stuff I already know. With text the is never a problem with hard to understand accents or people who mumble or speak softly. In fact, thinking about it, text is almost always better to deal with than spoken language.
I sometimes have trouble conversing in crowded places if there's lot of other people having their conversations loudly. Not much trouble, though, but listening to the only one thread of discussion requires bit extra mental effort.
Then there are people who don't speak clearly, and you have to ask them to repeat what they said...
And all this in my native language. I find dealing with written forms of any foreign language I know much easier than the spoken language. (Both "understand" and "produce by myself".)
There is something quite interesting about the form of the article. While Mr Minsky talks about teaching using the "deck of cards method" and why it might not be the best approach if the child wants to advance to more complex subjects he also wants us to learn about his experiments (which are quite good!).
Having read the article I find it well written but WHAT THE HELL?! Why doesn't he use pictures? simple diagrams? "sexy" stuff?
It seems that I'm having the same problem as the child is having: the form does suck and it discourages me from reading a boatload of articles like this one. If the presentation of the subject was better I could read 10 more and maybe, finally, take an interest in "teaching methods" that would lead me to being curious and accept any "bad form" of content :)
He doesn't use pictures because neither his target audience nor the subject matter require pictures.
His target audience is composed of people who are interested in mathematics teaching (parents, teachers and such). He expects (correctly in my opinion) that these have handled and can handle long texts.
The subject matter is an opinion piece without much underlying data, so graphical representation is not required.
The writing style must be adapted to circumstances. Increases in picture density do not monotonically increase text appeal.
I do agree with you. Preaching the converted doesn't require that much effort.
Now to nuance a bit this over-simplistic sentence I just written: do you think I am interested in mathematics teaching? I did read the article anyway so you might be right but I felt a bit overwhelmed by all this "jargon" when an example would have been so simple to understand.
After all, Mr Minsky was a teacher, certainly a mighty good one :)
Then meet me. I can also give you a list of french entrepreneurs that love Paris, France and hire a lot of people. Just look at Save, BlaBlaCar and Criteo.
Also, remember that our social system is the biggest VC in Europe, allowing thousand of entrepreneurs to keep their "old job salaries" while working on their own companies.
It seems to me you are just the typical example of "French Bashing" : always complaining and seeing the bad side of things.
There are three big french IT companies that "made it" in the last decade : dailymotion, criteo and blablacar ( with dailymotion now close to death). Criteo is making tons of money thanks to the huge ad business. But let me tell you a story about blablacar :
I was on a train to nantes last year, and heard two local politicians ( from green parties) talking together about environmental issues. As time passed on, i started talking to them, and we ended up talking about new transport systems. Well, one of them started mentionning blablacar, a site he used sometimes, and how it became a marketplace rather than a service company, and became philosophical about it, only to end to the conclusion that : the state should start regulating their activity.
I was dumbfounded. I had to tell him that users would go elsewhere if prices would start to go up too much, and basically explain to him the benefit of a free market.
This is not anecdotical. This is a cultural issue. Politicians are clueless about the basis of a sane economy.
"This is not anecdotical." yes it is, and badly biased as the green party in france is (nearly) extreme left-wing
"This is a cultural issue. Politicians are clueless about the basis of a sane economy." on the very thread about the minister of economy going to the CES and talking about the need of VC money
mr macron is clearly not representative, he is an outsider and that's why he's so popular. As for going to CES, it is is one thing, but it's clearly not going to change anything.
Much more symptomatic was the scandal about the minister of work not knowing the conditions for a short term work contract when asked on TV, just two days after the reform of the work laws have been announced publicaly to be in the work.
So why aren't there any major new international tech players coming out of France? I've heard of BlaBlaCar, but none of the three listed are exactly heavyweights.
I'm not anti-France and I'd ask the same question of my own country, the United Kingdom.
If the social security allows you to start your own company, and if people are cheaper, and cost of living is lower, then why can't Europe produce a Google, Facebook, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft?
The social system is fine to bootstrap for a year because you'll have 60% of your old salary, "free" healthcare and education, but once you have to raise millions to grow quickly, it won't help. To produce a Google or Facebook, you need a flawless execution, a right timing and a boatload of money.
To build a Google or Facebook, you of course also have to get the US market.
So you have to accelerate to massive scale across Europe, and then conquer the US market before a US company conquers the US and spreads across Europe. It's clearly a far more difficult proposition for the European company. The only alternative I can think of that might work, is for European companies to start with targeting the US market first (a challenging concept in its own right - to target a foreign market first).
> why can't Europe produce a Google, Facebook, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft?
I wonder how much it has do to with education and research. The US have been ahead of Europe in the computer sector. For instance, when Google was founded, were there competitive research teams in Europe working on this type of technologies?
Actually, I graduated around that time in a high-ranked French engineering school, and I think our CS classes were pretty weak (at the master level).
> It seems to me you are just the typical example of "French Bashing" : always complaining and seeing the bad side of things.
I think it is partly brought on by the strong political turn that any discussion takes over here. Any topic becomes a Left vs Right debate, and since the country is still mostly divided between the two (or at least used to be till recently), you got highly polarized opinions, like, "we suck because of the other guys".
That's interesting about keeping the old job salaries while bootstrapping. How long do you have to work at a company for that to be the case? I always thought that one of the main benefits of something like a basic income system is that it would make it easier for many people to take a risk on a startup. I guess this shows you can have that support without a basic income. Are there many downsides to the French system in practice do you think?
It lasts a year. And it is indeed what everybody i know has done when starting its company. It's also the reason 2/3 of the companies die on their 3rd year. First year is paid by social security, second year is spending your saving, third year is the year you have to stop.
Please make it "European bashing". In my experience, it's the same almost everywhere on our continent and everyone thinks it's only in their country of origin.
Don't learn anything specific but be sure to be ready to learn everything when needed.
I had to learn linear algebra when I was a 3D engine developer, then I had to learn statistics (or maybe learn to understand the notations of it so I could use scientific papers in my work).
In the end I think it was best not to have lost hours, days, weeks of my time on things I "could have used". I find it best to be prepared to learn anything.
