Unfortunately prices aren’t adjusted to costs unless there’s proper competition. If rivals can’t make the upfront investment for all the needed robotics, the automated industries will just keep prices at their optimal maximum and rack in the profits. It’s not a coincidence corporations have more cash than ever right now.

This plus they had to prove in court that there was no distinguishable difference from their products to Samsungs products during the lawsuit.…that hurt. Consumers now know by Apples testimony there is no advantage in paying 4x more for their product.

Pure genius if true.

Oh, I’m not arguing that there’s a large number (albeit MBTI surveys put the number of introverts at a few points over 50%), but that for the achievers that are, their introversion is portraited positively after it led them to success in tasks that require a lot of reflection. My question is if that quality (or at least, the possibility of having a kind of introversion that leads to achievements) is recognized and valued in people, at least in an equal level with extroversion, when they are still everywomen and everymen.

Gates’ success was established early as a garage entrepeneur, the larger the company became the more executive staff he had for Human Resource management. His position was to give direction and vision to the company, and there’s only so many key people he would have needed to actively address for that. Plus, email doesn’t require that much interaction.

There’s introverted thinking, but also introverted feeling, introverted sensing, introverted judgement… the key meaning of introversion is a person that doesn’t become tired of being inside their own head. Introverted people can be perfectly sociable, except it’s an activity that fatigues them more than usual. Same way that for certain social feats an individual has to be able to endure a lot of interaction, for certain creative feats an individual has to be able to endure a lot of deep introspection.

As someone that has taken part in brainstormings for screenwriting, I can assure you, it’s one thing to read other people’s thoughts and add them to one’s reflection, and a very different one to sit half a dozen people around a table and ask them to create a superior product by comitee. That belief that two heads are always better than one could very well exemplify what I was wondering about, that in some cultures (not necessarily country-wide, it could be for example a certain corporate culture), achievements may be always expected to be done by comitee, even while individual feats are admired.

Introversion: is it regarded as normal in your country/culture?

History offers a rather positive view of introverts: the lone explorers, the poets, the genius scientists, the artists, the philosophers, are often portraited as powered by the particular qualities of introspection. But the day to day social reality within their local tribe may be rather different. Introverts may be admired from afar, but depending on the culture, not so much in their neighborhood.

This is not a big deal except when new generations are raised with only one role model in mind, and this role being a good marketer or short term social achiever, while the value of reflection and self examination is underestimated –note: not of ‘thinking’ per se, as that’s not equivalent to ‘introversion’.

My question is, does your country and culture have a model of introverted behaviour that is perceived as a normal social identity? If that’s the case, what do you think that differentiates how young people is raised in your country/culture, as opposed to those in which introversion is not considered a normal behaviour? And the most important question, what parts of that education and enviroment do you think that could be exported elsewhere?

Honest question: When we replace more and more jobs with those of robots, what happens to all the people who are now unemployed? Do we just keep making more jobs for them?

Theoretically menial jobs that currently are uneconomical and that are still hard to robotize will increase their relative value. Maybe nobody would give you more than 2 cents for giving a hug, but when machines make food ridiculously cheap, you probably will be able to buy a kilo of oranges for 2 cents.

The problem is, current economic policies and financial interests don’t allow for such massive devaluations (see the resistance to mark to market housing prices) nor for massive inflation. Everybody will try to prevent a kilo of oranges to become worth 2 cents, and they will also try to prevent salaries ballooning up until a kilo of oranges is relatively worth 2 cents. I guess this old fake economy will shrink as it becomes more and more a luxury economy, and the real economy, with many “unemployed” self producers and service suppliers, will degrade, as many products, services, infrastructures and properties are still trapped in the older economy and unavailable for the new.

(Disclaimer: I’m not an economist.)

Todavía tenemos un archivo de material pendiente por leer, pero me gustaría ir empezando ya a escuchar recomendaciones y contactar gente. No quiero quedarme solo en la misma media docena de autores conocidos, si tenéis vuestra propia lista de favoritos estaré encantado de echarle un vistazo. Por ahora no estoy pidiendo relatos, solo nombres de autores de ciencia ficción que estén haciendo algo interesante.

Para los interesados, también se puede seguir la actividad de InterNova en el grupo de Facebook.

bokbokbok forrest gump has an incredibly interesting life because he’s a symbol, right, so that part of the movie is obvious fiction
bokbokbok the parts where he’s on the bench are reality, his story is always fiction, “a dream about american reality“
bokbokbok so offering the woman a chocolate, commenting on the woman’s shoes. america is very boring but it has big dreams
bokbokbok that’s the message i see in that movie
bokbokbok why is america boring? people don’t talk to each other well. even at a bus stop, you are looked at as strange for talking sometimes
bokbokbok it’s not a talkative-in-public culture, but a lot of places aren’t
bokbokbok i like the ones that are
@TheVenetianMask actually
@TheVenetianMask america is seen as an extroverted culture
@TheVenetianMask I don’t know what’s the fuss about people not talking to strangers in public transport
@TheVenetianMask in fact, most people spends all day without any period for self reflection, I would think trying to fill all moments with talk is actually a bad idea
bokbokbok you’d rather be left alone?
@TheVenetianMask let people think about their life when they are in the bus
bokbokbok it’s not actually the volume of conversation, but the types which are allowed
bokbokbok “seen as socially acceptable“
bokbokbok by volume i meant quantity of public conversation. i don’t know if i can describe it
bokbokbok america is very extroverted, but very superficial and people are socially encouraged to sort of lie about themselves in the direction of image-consciousness, so almost all the conversation going by is phony
@TheVenetianMask yeah, that’s the impression from the other side of the pond
bokbokbok the cynical part of me likes that perhaps according to that movie, it takes a retarded person to actually experience the american dream
bokbokbok which is only possibly if you don’t do the classic american mistake of going “oh, i’m in a situation, what does my character look like while experiencing this situation?” so this retarded guy doesn’t see his iconographic life and actually gets happiness because of it
@TheVenetianMask that’s a good point. if you are going to be self conscious of your own iconic value you need the brain power to actually run with that flow, otherwise you would just ruin it by trying too hard
@TheVenetianMask brain power, emotional intelligence, natural instinct, whatever
@TheVenetianMask charisma
bokbokbok i completely understand your point
@TheVenetianMask I know people who has a very charismatic personality, but no iconic charisma
@TheVenetianMask jfk, for example, he was actually an introvert who didn’t enjoy much interaction. it’s the opposite of what the american stereotype may think you have to do to be charismatic
bokbokbok i agreed with the first term, brain power
@TheVenetianMask tell me how many americans are actively trying to be more introverted in order to be more charismatic
bokbokbok none are but a handful of successful ones who know that strength
@TheVenetianMask elon musk, founder of SpaceX… he’s really nervous in public. bill gates, also introverted
bokbokbok i like listening to programmers give talks at cons because i enjoy hearing a person who is honestly not good at talking in public, but very captivating because listeners perceive the depth of content there
@TheVenetianMask yeah!
@TheVenetianMask not that it needs to go to the opposite extreme, but certainly, an iconic life needs a bit of that depth and honesty from introversion
@TheVenetianMask or, in the case of forrest gump, that appareance of not being fully engaged with the world
@TheVenetianMask that sense of independence
bokbokbok his was an accident of his limited intelligence
bokbokbok to say that an iconic life needs depth and honest of introversion is to adequately describe the whole epidemic of american personality disorder

Alex: Out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on the riots/protests in Spain? Do you identify with them? Have you ever been a part of any demonstrations (at any point, not just recently)?

Fran: I’ve been to several, 15M the last one. I remember still the huge demostrations against joining the Iraq war and after the Madrid bombings. Protests are actually frequent, but often very politized or very union-centric. Valencia is a conservative city which is often seen as very colaborative and subservient of the central goverment, and more interested in entertainment and party life than in politics; save for the latest student strike, protests here have little weight compared with Madrid, Barcelona or Bilbao. Often protests are organized in Madrid only, and people is expected to travel there to join them.

I had yesterday this same conversation on skype with Lena. Normally, both the riots near the Congress and the independentist protests in Barcelona would have been largely irrelevant. In the first case they would have been dismissed just because of numbers (there’s been protests in Madrid with more than a million people, even sports celebrations; the one in front of the Congress was in the lower tens of thousands). In the second one, because it still is in fact a populist move by the conservative “independentist” party, who has made very sharp cuts and has been caught in cases of corruption; that party is very pro business and they have been historically very comfortable with a “I get to govern autonomically my region, but also condition the Spanish politics and budgets”. For a football analogy, it’s like Barcelona Football Club channeling and exploiting the nationalist symbolism, but actually having no intention of leaving La Liga and playing only against catalonian teams. A large deal of Catalunya’s business is with the rest of Spain, and they would take a large economic hit if only because of Spanish boycotts; their debt rating is way worse than Spain’s, and with the EU’s negative to accept them right away as an independent country, they would have no access to European rescue funds.

The problem is… Rajoy. The current goverment is extremely weak. They can pass any law by themselves, but, by now, they are almost delegitimized. They have almost systematically reversed every electoral promise, their support in polls has fallen already from 46% to 30% (on a traditionally ridiculously immobile support base), they are seen as unable to transmit any confidence to the markets or stand against european impositions, they have internal rifts going on with ultra liberals and ultra conservatives bailing out or splitting to run their own parties. Rajoy’s regional “barons” often try to distance themselves from him to avoid associating themselves with the austerity cuts.

This weakness context is the reason the N independentist marches and a small protest around the Congress are actually making people nervous and aren’t beign dismissed right away. There’s also a feeling that people is tired already of the ineffectiveness of the protests, and to show up in front of the Congress is seen as a step towards higher hostility against the political class.

I do think that this goverment will eventually ask for rescue funds, and they will have to announce early elections. If the date is too far away, people will lose the patience and you’ll see massive protests again. They should be largely peaceful, but I’m sure there would be some material damages. By the end of year we’ll know already if the party lost or not several regional elections, including the referendum-light that the elections in Catalunya will be; depending on what happens they may feel or not they have the strength to keep going a bit further. Very bad results would make it very difficult to last 2013. If they don’t ask for rescue funds nor announce early elections then it’s all in the markets’ hands: if debt interests spike back up, if the banking rescue fails and they are liquidated, if there are more cuts to public services… the big elephant in the room is retirement benefits: that’s where a lot of the voter support comes for this party, and it’s the last promise to break. A cut in retirement benefits would implode the party.

Overall though the Spanish population is way too civic to escalate things too much, at least not before the goverment collapses on its own. My worst worry is that this same weakness may energize some of the latent extremist groups, which may take example from the historical cases of violence and terrorist actions.

Fran: I didn’t answer if I identify with them. I do identify with the ones protesting against the austerity cuts. I do think there’s lots and lots and lots of waste to cut, but this goverment is being extremely soft with the energy, real estate, financial sectors, and the tax evaders, property owners and 1% higher earners, while “making everybody carry a share of the burden” by hurting people that had no responsability in the crisis, including the younger generation, and overall killing the economy for the sake of a short term rescue for the zombie banks.

If your boss’s business has a position of economic dominance over a community (which happens a lot at local and regional level, even if on average there seems to be enough competition), it’s not very difficult for them to impose a socially conservative agenda on it on the threat of being barred from your best chance at getting a job in the area. If you were blacklisted by your boss, then associating with you would become dangerous for all your acquaintances. You would either cave or leave, and, eventually, the local society would become toxic for a minority still defending personal freedoms.

If your boss is allowed to mingle economy and morality, it’s not hard to see how the freedoms part of libertarianism could get easily relegated to a ghetto status anywhere, even everywhere. People would start voting conservative governments because a strong showing up of any other party would make the boss suspicious, and suspicious people would be fired. Other people would really buy into it, and become de facto conservatives. Seen this way, the end game would be libertarianism being unwinded because the mandate to not interfere in morals via economic aggression was limited only to the public corporation, while the private corporation was fully allowed to enforce the elimination of personal freedoms.

Let me finish yesterday’s argument about art, since I know you’ll appreciate the alternative view.

I’ll get quickly to the point, but let’s begin by understanding what is the brain itself and how it works. The brain is the only massively parallel (100 billion parallel processing units, with even more parallel electrical and chemical processes happening inside each neuron all the time) computing tool at our disposal. Our best experimental efforts to date to imitate it are general models of animal brains that are already orders of magnitude less complex to begin with.

Now, there are problems that can only be tackled efficiently using massively parallel, neural network computing. One example of this is fold.it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fold.it): computers were failing to fold models of chemical compounds, like the crystal structure of the Mason-Pfizer monkey virus retroviral protease, in a discrete amount of time, because the number of variables at play at every instant of the process is too damn high. On the other hand, ordinary humans with a basic training and their own spatial sense and pattern matching ability were folding (and producing invaluable science!) in days.

Another example are problems that can be either solved parallelly or with a sequential method, but their solution is so urgent it’s needed sooner than what it would take to split the problem in parts, solve them sequentially, and then integrate back all the solved pieces. Many humanistic problems, like the ones faced in a public administration, are of this nature: provisional solutions have to be given daily, so urgent progress can start to be made while more complex answers are developed and implemented. The best hope for an individual in the position to take that kind of decisions is to have a fit brain that has been trained to quickly and correctly react to raw, massively complex inputs.

Art itself, as a collection of sensorial stimuli predesigned to be pattern/context matched with the user (example: you watching HBO’s Girls) or the world (example: you finding clashing to order beer in a bar designed as a scotch bar), is both the natural result and the natural way of exercising a neural network computing tool. This is how Google’s most sophisticated search algorithms are trained: by exposing them to texts and images crafted by humans and trying to make the machine learn to “make sense of them” and to interpret them in their psychological and cultural context. This is also the way hyperflexible, quickly developing baby brains train themselves into cognitive proficiency: they don’t “learn to understand knowledge”, they become “fit to understand knowledge”.

For the purpose of training a neural network, art is the analogue of the weights and machines in a gym, which are employed to make people’s bodies stronger, fitter, faster and healthier. You listen to Mozart and your brain becomes more adapted at finding recurring themes under slight variations. You look at a building’s design and your brain becomes more adapted at relating external appareances and underlying structures. You taste an elaborate recipe and your brain becomes more adapted at looking for secondary undertones beyond a main impression. In all these cases your brain receives an input and produces an output within seconds; you can’t sit and account for every detail and then write a thesis about it, you have to parallelize everything and produce a good evaluation immediately.

Now, same as exercise, there’s art that provides heavier training, art that provides lighter training, art that only serves as an excuse to keep being a couch potato, and art that will just screw your brain. Some people will feel confounded about the usefulness of art when they are exposed to a boring painting hung on a Museum’s wall, or an exposition of clay penises, or Justin Bieber’s music, but you can’t take one instance to reject the whole, as you can’t reject going to the gym because neither you can deadlift 400lb nor 5 minutes doing steps has ever done anything for you. Unfortunately, the systematization of art as a training tool has been done poorly, and it is buried under thousands of vapid philosophic rantings, which encourages people to keep being ignorant about it. But when you look at it from a capabilities training perspective (and as a vehicle to deliver information to brains more effectively), it’s sense is way too fundamental to dismiss.

From a “fit brain” (not just “fat brain”) point of view, an individual neglecting a critical part of their mental training is as gross as an obese lardass dragging their 600lb body down a Wal-mart aisle. They probably say “art is not relevant” like they say “lifting weights is not doing real work”, but people goes to the gym because “real work” can’t be tailored to produce a balanced training. If such an individual cripples themselves by actively rejecting the value of training, it is as outraging as the same lardass being righteous about the superiority of 5000kcal high carb meals and no exercising. And when that individual claims to be mentally fit nonetheless, it’s like the lardass doing 10mins of cardio, putting on yoga pants and pretending they have a hormonal problem.

It is not politicians but grassroots activism that has come to address this issue. In April, the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) reported a 24.6 per cent drop in potato prices from March 2011 — the largest ever one-year drop in any commodity. The reason for this historic deflation was what has come to be known as the potato movement — and it is having an empowering effect on Greeks, not only as consumers, but also as citizens and voters.

The fake meat business has been around for decades, of course, but it has never really taken off. That is because the products out there, usually based on some sort of reconstituted soy or fungal gloop, taste as disgusting as they look. They are usually expensive as well.

But the meat-fakers say they are on the verge of a breakthrough, that there is a real possibility that a new era of fake meat – nutritious, cheap and indistinguishable from the real thing, made either of synthesised animal tissue or derived from plant material – may be upon us.

You have to wonder, what’s the point of large housing if social life is not so dependent on having your own pool and garden anymore. The anti-“peak stuff” crowd saying “people will always desire more” somehow ignore most people could find a decent loft near the city the absolute optimal choice for them.

PS. Disculpas a los suscriptores que esperen largos artículos. Estoy recuperando el blog para notas casuales y misceláneas. Probablemente vaya siendo hora de dejar atrás Facebook.

Mi chapuza casera del día:

• Mermelada de albaricoque
• Moscatel
• Nata
• Sirope de freas

Un plato rápido y difícil de estropear:

1. Ajo dorado en mantequilla.
2. Se añade la pechuga de pollo, sal y pimienta.
3. Cuando el pollo está hecho, se cubre con azúcar moreno y se deja fundir durante un par de minutos.

This script takes care of copying the files from memory to a folder of your choice. Copy it to new file called, for example, cpflash, inside ~/bin, and replace /home/user/temporaldirectory with a folder where the script can process the files (keep it empty!) and /home/user/saveto with the folder where you want to store the captured videos:

If it doesn’t work, try killing any duplicated plugin-container process with a very small run time. You may also need to use a different argument number for awk (i.e. ‘//{printf “%s “, $8}’ instead of ‘//{printf “%s “, $9}’).

#!/bin/bash
tempDir="/home/user/temporaldirectory"
saveTo="/home/user/saveto"

if [ ! -d "$tempDir" ]; then
        echo "Error 1: $tempDir doesn't exist"
        exit 1
fi
if [ ! -d "$saveTo" ]
then
        echo "Error 2: $saveTo doesn't exist"
        exit 1
fi
now=$(date '+%s')
pid=$(ps -C plugin-container -o pid= | awk '{print $1}')
if [ "$pid" ]
then
        if [ -d "/proc/$pid/fd" ]
        then
                cd /proc/$pid/fd
                files=$(ls -al | grep FlashXX | awk '//{printf "%s ", $9}')
                if [ "$files" ]
                then
                        cp -v $files $tempDir
                        cd $tempDir
                        for i in *
                        do
                                mv -v $tempDir/$i $saveTo/$now$i.flv
                        done
                else
                        echo "Error 5: No cached flash videos were found."
                fi
        else
                echo "Error 4: Couldn't find /proc/$pid/fd"
        fi
else
        echo "Error 3: Couldn't get a PID for plugin-container"
fi

Load the flash videos and, once they are fully buffered, run the script (if you put it inside ~/bin, you can just type “cpflash”). The files will be copied to your destination folder. If you want to capture more videos, close the tabs with the videos you already got, buffer the new ones and repeat.

PS. If you found this useful, why not buy me a beer? Good karma keeps the world rolling!

Resultado: 1.300.000$ reunidos via donaciones.

La oferta y la demanda no siempre producen resultados óptimos. En condiciones normales, el libro es un Mercado para Limones, en parte porque no hay suficiente información razonada e independiente sobre cada título, y en parte porque es imposible para el lector informarse sobre todos los títulos disponibles.

Cuando la distribución estaba más limitada que ahora, esto se pasaba por alto porque los lectores no tenían alternativas. La distribución era la verdadera competición y las librerías pedían poco riesgo; una editorial puede compensar los limones con las cerezas, pero si a una librería le tocan muchos limones lo puede pasar mal.

Así que las librerías pedían novedades fiables, las editoriales producían novedades fiables, y los lectores las compraban porque la alternativa era no leer nada nuevo. Las editoriales y los autores más arriesgados se quedaban en casa porque no importa lo competitivos que fueran en otros aspectos, no podían competir en la distribución.

Sin un mecanismo compensatorio, esto termina perjudicando a todo el mundo, pues, conforme se retiran los productores de más valor, la media baja y cada vez es más difícil mantener los precios. Antes el mecanismo era una limitación muy estricta de la oferta, ahora ese mecanismo está desapareciendo y solo hay dos opciones: o se sube mucho la media o se desploman los precios.

Esta situación va directamente en contra del principio de todo negocio. En vez de hacer todo lo necesario para subsistir, la industria ha hecho todo lo necesario para afrontar los cambios en la distribución desde la peor posición posible. Si hubieran amasado lectores agradecidos y un fondo de autores capaces de estar a la altura de los tiempos, el valor medio del libro no sería tan frágil.

Ya esta disponible para descargar gratis el número cinco de la revista. Disfruta de la entrevista a Fran Ontanaya, polifacetico dentro del mundo libre; recomendaciones musicales, relatos, entretenimiento, tutoriales, artículos sobre el próximo Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin, las mejores distros Linux para principiantes, etc.

Todo esto y mucho más, en este número cinco de Libresfera. ¡No te lo pierdas!

Descargar: Número cinco de la revista

• Se retira el máximo responsable de sacar la informática de consumo de la actitud increíblemente aburrida y corporativa de Microsoft e IBM. Sus méritos son inmensos, pero también es cierto que los tiempos han cambiado y el talento y la creatividad en el sector están mucho más repartidos.
• ¿Por qué no hay ya hype en torno a Tim Cook?
• Jobs se retira justo cuando Samsung le da guerra a Apple…
• … y cuando Apple parece más preocupada de pelear por patentes y amañar pruebas que de sus próximos productos.
• Mientras tanto, Android sigue ganando cuota de mercado.
• Y la liquidación de los TouchPad de HP a 99$ podría minar el mercado del iPad.
• Por otro lado, las ventas de PCs están cayendo. Se habla del fin de la obsolescencia, es decir, de computadoras que pueden cubrir las necesidades presentes y futuras de los usuarios durante un largo tiempo.
• Jobs deja pendiente la enorme tarea de abrir la nuez del mercado asiático. Quizá sea demasiado tarde.
• El valor en bolsa de Apple fue recientemente, y por un breve periodo, mayor que el de ninguna otra empresa. Hablamos de un negocio que vende productos premium en un ciclo de crisis que va para largo. Un bajón en las acciones puede tener más impacto que la rebaja de calificación de S&P.