kds

BTW, if Telegram crypto was that much insecure why members of the so-called "security community" haven't yet compromised the Telegram chat for real (regardless of any contests and petty rules) and proven they had been right?

I don't rule out this as impossible - I just think that without such proof it's all just a kind of stupid whining.

In his book "How to Get Rich" he related his hint to pioneer PC-magazines publishing to his interest in early PC-games.

This seems to be the case PG wrote recently in his latest essay - when someone is experiencing a new thing purely as a user, not developer, and feeling and thinking about what's still missing that could be useful to others like him.

In his book he elaborates deeply - but accessibly for "laymen" - what went wrong, how it could be fixed, but against whose interests in US the ideal public policy solution would have been, and so why just a dubious set of half-measures were taken, by whom, and how it might all worsen as situation in the near future.

So far, for the period from 2010 to 2012, what he claims and predicts seems right and rings true to me.

"from twisted.internet import protocol, reactor"

Somehow I feel cheated... ;) :P

These are not something to be expected from venture capital. They are something resulting from deliberate state scientific and industrial policy, longterm goals, and adequate funding.

Examples from 1950s-1970s: DARPA/USA, and the resp. space and rocketry programmes in the former USSR.

Private capital - be it venture or not - comes later (and this is not a bad thing) when the new technologies are relatively well understood , "tameable", and can be applied to mass human consumers' or corporate needs (perceived or not, new or old) yet to be satisfied.

Private capital doesn't like fundamental scientific research risks - even in the pharmacy industry. It tries to bear mostly the market-related and implementational risks.

A thought experiment: Think on what funds and in what conditions happened the development of packet switching, TCP/IP protocols suite, HTTP, (examples of fundamental breakthrough). Then think the same about Facebook, for example.

My point summarized => States/Governments shouldn't worry about entrepreneurship programmes, clusters, tech-business climat, etc.

If adequate funding is provided for breakthrough scientific research and to the universities in general (so there are also the high-quality scientists to do it), breakthrough technology business solving big problems will happen inevitably.

PG explicitly states in the essay that it's not that much on Java itself but rather on the way hackers judge technologies (the "hacker radar" in his expression).

And these are not quite predictions but statements on how Java is (or was then back in 2001) perceived.

And I think, IMHO, a substantial part of the Java success today should be attributed to the JVM, not so much to Java, the language. Clojure/Scala/etc. are kind of clues for this.

ESR wouldn't be as recognizable as he is if he had chosen to opine on something less important and influential than RMS and his contribution.

"It's not often you can win a million dollars by analysing a computer game, but by a curious conjunction of fate, there's a chance that you might."

-- prof. Ian Stuart, in a lecture on Minesweeper and P-vs-NP

The numbers you mention are the hypothetical ones. Go and find a real publicly documented example that is close as values and margins to what you describe and I might agree.

NB. #1) Google and web-search, or some similar startup success story, as example doesn't count - they're the 2-person startup gone wildly successful, not a previously big entity that hired 2 ML-geniuses to open their eyes.

NB. #2) If I could bring a revolutionary increased value to a company - through vastly enhanced data processing and analysis - rather than doing a consultancy and educate somebody I'd rather enter the industry as competitor and prove the "old" guys don't understand the business anymore.

But that means you already have a really significant business that makes ~300 M$ per year. And you manage to increase it just by peanuts (relatively speaking).

And there is inflation in economy, and the alternative costs of not investing such a huge sum or part of in Apple stocks (for example) during those years.

My point explained better:

The startup success of getting from zero to millions just because of clever ML/data-science/statistics is something to be respected and admired. But for already big-business all this big-data buzz might provide just minor enhancement opportunities at best.

Maybe the initial system was quite good and it had no space for easy-and-fast enhancements, I don't know.

But 10% overall improvement result in 3 years (just as quantitative ratio, esp. if it translates directly to the same growth pattern in financial revenues) is something that makes the business types yawning.

"Tunguska-M1 offers a 360-degree field of view, a detection range of around 18 km and can detect targets flying as low as 15 m"

"The specific feature of the Pantsir-S1 system is the combination of a multiple-band target acquisition and tracking system in conjunction with a combined missile and gun armament creating a continuous target engagement zone from 5 m height and 200 m range up to 10 km height and 20 km range, even without any external support".

My point is that in the near future you can't expect much from drones in real-action offensive missions - regardless where the hit should come (from the drone itself or from somewhere else where the drone relays the gathered info) - against an army with the relevant technical base to counter either the drone or the in-flying tactical rocket.

Of course, now they are quite OK and up to the task to chase Taliban guerilla fighters, "police" the sky, or something like that. On the longer-term perspectives I can't say anything.