j1vms

What might be interesting to consider is quality control in the various eras of Apple (e.g. 70/80s Steve Jobs, 80/90s Sculley, 2010s Cook).

Of course, keeping in mind that Cook-era Apple is operating on a more massive scale (product shipped, wider distribution, more product lines).

Source information (without animation/links):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_satellite_navi...

Previously submitted by another HN'er (in 2016):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12863340

> economists think that we need central bank policies to control the whole thing (...) but it just doesn't work in the long run.

Roughly speaking, a central authority might work in certain scenarios, for a short time, to prevent situations where market participants might otherwise panic.

In the long run, the problem is the same authority does not have to all "local", decision-making information available to the individual market participants, and that might prevent the economy from reaching an optimal configuration.

Ian Faith: The Boston gig has been cancelled...

David St. Hubbins: What?

Ian: Yeah. I wouldn't worry about it though, it's not a big college town.

- This Is Spinal Tap

Here's [0] a bit more thorough explanation of this concept for those who are interested.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRr1kaXKBsU&t=504 (Veritasium on Youtube: Why Gravity is NOT a Force @ 8:24)

Gravity is not a force. The surface of the Earth is moving up to the object in free-fall at an acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2. The force pushing the surface, and the pressurized atmospheric shell, upward is a result of the processes occurring within the Earth (likely, in particular, those within the the core).

> "The lack of experience played right into the government’s hand. Instead of portraying a leader in control of his domain and confident in his case and his company’s legal and ethical righteousness, the courtroom videos showed a side of Gates that had never been on public display before. He was petulant, petty, flustered, and dour. He was ineffectual. He was, in a word, beaten."

The article may come off a little bit too harsh on Gates, but it is essentially right in that the US Gov strategy may have been to score a PR win on Gates and Microsoft. In that way, Gates came across as more on the defence than he perhaps needed to be in the situation. The deposition ended up being a low point from the public's perspective, though any damage has mostly been undone in the 2+ decades since.

Looking at it in terms of one of the "golden ages" of recording music - back in the 1960s, think the Beatles - this would mean only returning to what has already proven possible before. Some artists in those previous eras were able to deliver remarkable music as much as twice a year over consecutive years.

Perhaps it was a less competitive industry at the time, but certainly less efficient (and relatively more expensive) production tools were available compared to today.

This is an age-old domain of thought known as philosophy of science [0]. Although, by prepending your post as "meta", perhaps you are already aware of it.

I should add: As a human being, it is probably impossible to separate the scientist from the philosophy in which they explore, proceed with, and promote their work. In some cases, it might not be something they are even aware of. Instead, the scientific system (as a sort of world institution) should itself be designed to always seek out and protect truth, regardless of prevailing contemporary knowledge.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science

The role of this "era" may be in reformulating quantum physics and, separately, general relativity in new ways that make the ideas more accessible to more people, and earlier in their lives. The goal could be to make of modern physics... the new classical physics. That is, we start to let go the crutches we still teach because it is thought that day-to-day life is more readily explained by Newtonian physics. We are now in era where most advances (e.g. smartphones among them) could not exist in their present form without modern physics.

Once more people accept the concepts of modern physics as a way of life (perhaps intuitively?), we will be in fertile territory for any potential new revolution in physics.

> "The Air Force had to convince Sony to..."

To be a fly on the wall during that discussion. I'm sure money wasn't an issue for the Air Force, or that Sony had some balls of steel.

Somewhat related to some of the questions that have been raised here:

- for the set of matrices that possess them ("transformation matrices that only perform stretch/contract"), eigenvectors (with their associated eigenvalues) play a role quite analogous to the role primes play in the integer set. They provide a unique, identifying "spectrum" for said matrix. This is made explicit by eigendecomposition (spectral decomposition).

- with extension via singular value decomposition (SVD method) to any square matrix (e.g. "transformation matrices that might also shear, rotate"), certain operations such as exponentiation of the square matrix can performed very quickly once eigenvectors/eigenvalues have been obtained via the SVD method.

I'm sure even you'll admit that they have a rather cute looking cockroach as a logo.

> This is nice but I would have expected “probability at an advanced level” to mean the measure theoretic foundations of probability.

Fair point, though with no intention of being too literal, might this qualify as the difference between "Introduction to X" vs. "X"?

In case anyone else is interested: measure-theoretic probability theory "unifies the discrete and the continuous cases, and makes the difference a question of which measure is used. Furthermore, it covers distributions that are neither discrete nor continuous nor mixtures of the two." [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_theory#Measure-the...

> Why is there a wikipedia article about this?

A sort of incomplete answer would be that the article is covering an important historical fact regarding the sixth-largest miltary in the world (by active personnel). [0]

[0] https://www.newsweek.com/how-strong-pakistans-military-12350...

He might just need a static-site blog from this point on.

> same task can be performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity.

Currently at a much greater cost in time and space, which is why they are saying "can be performed" not "has been performed".

> we expect that with additional refinements the classical cost of the simulation can be further reduced

Any such refinements would be certainly interesting to see, as they would probably be very hard won.

By the currently accepted definition of Computer Science (at the nexus of its core basis in mathematics and philosophy), I would say “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem” by Alan Turing, without any close peer to date. It is the first paper that invoked the most all-encompassing idea of a computer (e.g. not necessarily having to be a physically realizable electronic computer, which one could consider more of a matter for engineering).

Its contents have had continued relevance as computer scientists study the properties and capabilities of non-deterministic computers.

> > To this day, industry insiders still joke, “McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing’s money.”

> That's commonly said about the Apple-NeXT acquisition too — NeXT paid a negative $429 million to take over Apple. (...)

I guess that is why it is considered a joke. It sounds like the management teams of NeXT / McDonnell Douglas benefited much more (in the long term) than the investors of their defunct, purchased companies. Benefiting through greater compensation and clout without really taking over (i.e. owning) the purchasor's company.

> But comparing it to manned flight or the first nuclear reactor (...) this experiment changes very little as to how probable it is that we will soon have useful quantum computers, or even that we will ever have them.

Not a lot of people directly own & operate their own airplane, let alone a nuclear reactor, and yet both have had a significant impact on modern life. As for this experiment & QC, only time will tell of course.

Philosophy is the study of knowledge, including the idea of "knowing", and furthermore even being in a position to know (existence). It is indeed more fundamental, as it was probably the discipline in which first useful breakthroughs were made in human thought. Though we would do well not to confuse being more fundamental, with being more important (as far as people & society today are concerned).

In a way, it is the fuzzy wiring that underlies most other disciplines, that you need to poke around in when you run into longstanding, or seemingly intractable problems in what you're trying to do above. See for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20905801

> zero has many properties that other numbers do not

In particular, zero is the additive identity [0] in almost all the "usual" number systems in which it appears. That is roughly speaking, it is the only A such that X + A = X, for all X, where X and A are elements of the number system (e.g. field of real/complex numbers).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_identity

> It feels like there's no real goal or direction of the protest except to exist

Reading this makes me think a very little bit of the Paris Commune [0], well in its early days perhaps.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune

Thank you for putting this together. The writing quality and comprehensiveness are excellent. It's amazing to think that vim's lineage stretches back over 50 years (older than UNIX, display terminals, and Apollo 11!)

> famously screwed (over)

infamously is what you mean, particularly considering "screwed (over)" is very much an understatement in regards to the sombre culmination of that legal case. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#MIT