Aheinemann

To have an original idea i need to take my mind of things.

For small problems i like taking a walk, sometimes talking to someone helps (a dog is great at that, they love the attention, or a guinea pig which will also talk back to you (week week brrr...) just to be able to work at the situation at hand from a different perspective since you have to explain the situation to someone without knowledge about it.

doing something totally different for a while.

say you search for a new job using your email at your current employer...

using company computer is the same problem if you open your private emails on their machine

Zero Trust.

apart from them getting to know everything what you do it is also important to understand that your employer will be liable for anything you do with their computer.

(Download something by bittorrent, even if it is a legitimate Linux distro -> no fun to explain when /when, not if/ your employer gets sued)

have old pc hardware mostly.

get an WD Green 120 GB SSD for about 20 - 25 €.

Have a teenager / child come over with their parents and we build their first pc from the parts up.

The kids install the windows license which came with the pc because school requires windows programs for homework.

Kids are proud, most of them would not be able to get a computer of their own otherwise.

computers are to slow for gaming, just useful for libre office... to bad...

the kids will get an introduction to google and how to use youtube the right way (you either waste your life on youtube or you will get on a path to better grades - your choice) and a stern warning to stay off facebook, tik-tok and the ilk.

hardware lasts until 8th - 9th grade usually, by then they have cheap smartphones of their own.

one interesting note: i was a proud owner of an Commodore PC 10-III (msdos, 4.77 MHz, 640 KB RAM) and my own legal (!) copy of turbo pascal 4.0. i did a lot of things with that beast.

None - Not even one - of the kids who could have visual studio community, lazarus, haskell, whatever on their machines will ever try their hands at programming (while having a virtual tutor on youtube !).

They wouldn't even scratch (oh the pun indeed) the surface of cs...

Exactly that.

This means accepting loss and hurt.

Definetely a very hard thing to do if the bad people are familiy.

Might be impossible if the bad person is your spouse and you have kids. Might mean that your kids are retaliated on.

but the most difficult thing is to be sure that they are the bad people and not you yourself. If you don't struggle with this then you might be the problem - Not them.

No longer working for bad clients.

There are so many bad clients out there which will actively hurt you to press the most benefit out of you until you drop. dead.

you can only hurt me once. the second strike is only possible because i did not quit the first time. So it is my fault.

Genetic longevity has evolved.

Consider a queen bee. Her livespan is so much longer (several years) compared to the worker bee (4 weeks during spring/summer/fall, until winters end for the hibernating generation).

The Queen's task in the live of the hive is to provide an unqenchable source of high quality genetic material to grow worker bees from which in turn will provide the hive with the periolous work required to sustain the hive.

And yet still there is an end to the queen's live.

Cloning a plant from a branch by covering a branch in soil, have it grow roots and then sever the connection is a mechanism of getting a new copy of the organsism. It might be interesting to find out if that resets the clock on a multi-year plant in respect to the original individual from which the branch was taken... Consider the top of an pineapple... you can grow an entire pineapple plant including the fruit from it...)

So longevity is not the absence of aging.

There might be serveral distinct constituents to aging:

1 the accumulation of damage (wear and tear)

2 an actual genetic programmed decline of biological function

3 an update to the genetic programming of the entire organism is not feasible

1 There might be damage which can not be repaired. For example there might be toxic substances building up or there might be a limit to the complexity or plasticity of a neural network. After exceeding such a limit the function may no longer be available in the required quality (Cortanas's Rampage..., Prions, the degradation of tendons (for example: the ligaments in a humans knee degrade...)

2 There is a cycle of life which has evolved in multicellular organisms. Single cell Organisms still have a cycle while not aging:

Build up sufficient material in the cell to sustain 2 individuals * divide into 2 individuals, such that every clone has at minimum the required parts to sustain itself * repeat

All multicellular organisms start reproduction from a single cell. In their youth they build up to their adult forms which are reproductive. After reproduction the parent generation may or may not nurture the offspring.

The complex mechanism of growth from a single cell to adult form relies on molecular clocks: Puberty starts at a certain age, and even before that the development of the embryo requires a sequence of aging - for example the fingers of a hand develop out of a flat proto-hand because the cells between the fingers die. So autocytosis - programmed cell death - is essential to the development of an organism.

*3 Evolution works by altering the genetic programming by mutation in the offspring, putting these copies in living specimens of the next generation into the environment and just by chance the mutations prevail whose specimens did not die before reproduction.

So longevity and aging is of no concern to evolution by itself.

Those mutations which can prevail in the environment will be found at a later date - dying off means vanishing from the population.

So the question is how would not aging benefit the sustained success of a genetic conglomeration of genes in an ever changing environment ?

While you can not fundamentaly alter the programming of an adult individual organism ?

Longevity and aging are of no more concern to evolution as much as it affects the success / survival of the next generation while changing by selection as much as is required to survive.

You don't do anything for your offspring - you get the mayfly.

you feed the baby - bees.

you feed the baby and teach it - the cat which trains the kittens to catch mice

you extend on the training routine until you develop a culture which preserves survival techniques through the ages - homini

You need an ever extending life time to achieve this support to the next generation.

But from the point of self-reliance of the kids in their life there is diminshed evolutional pressure to keep the parents alive.

So longevity / absence of aging would be a fluke - if the old generation was not consuming ressources while still running an old inefficient set of genes and reproducing child generations with less adaptations than the current great-grandchildren.

So no aging would hinder the survival chances of the offspring.

Therefore longevity is selected for as long as the set of genes in the next generation is getting a benefit from the parents being still alive.

Immortality is actively negatively selected.

Aging is allowed by the diminishing effect of parental death on the survival chances of the offspring.

Data Tau http://www.datatau.com/news is a site using the hacker news stack focusing about data science. Quite slow, but some nice articles / links there.

The pain you feel might be from the part of you (it might feel like a part of your soul) that is now missing - that is the reason it hurts so much.

Realize that this part of you is with your friend as you had shared time, life and love together.

But in all that hurt and pain due to the loss also realize that there is a part of your friend still with you. Find it. Your tears will lead the way.

That might be a way love bridges even death.

This notion that you do not need any kind of mathematical knowledge is widespread.

Ever tried to delete 1 000 000 files in Windows Explorer ? Select All, Shift delete ?

Takes ages. Why ? because Explorer creates a list of files to be deleted by adding one after the other to the list while updating the screen.

del bak\[asterisk.asterisk] /S /Q /Y >NUL takes some time, but is way faster.

rmdir bak drops the entire directory and returns instantly.

The difference ? O(n^2) versus O(n) versus O(1)

Useful knowledge ? ... possibly.

Even then 'just' programming a website, winging full stack or doing anything worthwile you can get by without knowledge, but it sure helps...

P.S. how do you escape an asterisk ? Even google didn't know / i didn't find it...

IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad. Sturdy, replacements / repair kits available, often used by university students. Buy refurbished, max ram and swap for ssd. look for i5 / i7 models T420, x201T is a tablet pc (pen, but no touch) available in i5/i7 models. avoid the newer models / research linux compatibility first.

It takes an entire village to raise kids.

the traction of improving education is to make learning things easy.

This is dead wrong.

Learning is hard. Banging your head in desperation against a wall - repeatedly - without hope for relief - hard. You cry in despair, doing one exercise after the other. Until forever and ever - until - you get it.

And then you have achieved mastering the lesson. But only by working through exercises, thinking, reasoning about possible solutions, talking to your peers, taking a break, sweat and tears, failing, falling, getting yourself up and going again - going the hard way.

There is no easy way - Think Bruce Lee training kind of hard way.

Easy is for dumb computers - you know the type. simple instruction set. Execution of given command path - without thinking, no personality, no ingenuity, no soul required.

The way they teach math in schools, art, history, humanities and STEM. You just need to pass tests. Given command paths. To be executed flawlessly.

Understanding is not required, just obedience.

And that is what our education system is made for - obedient executors of society - sheeple.

Depriving a child of the opportunity of tackling a hard problem is the worst abuse you can do to a developing mind. By dumbing down the goals to achieve - nobody uses math in their real life, you are not gonna need it. History is gone - why bother. The meaning of a poem ? What would that be for ?

Another form of abuse is to abandon a failing student - certifying the failure as if it were the students fault, taking all the chances from a young life just because a test was not passed. Throwing away the hopes and opportunities which might have been realized if only there had been someone to help along the difficult path.

And that is something "turning education around" is not going to achieve - if the only thing that is going to change is that we do no longer employ a teacher per 30 students per hour but one recording of one teacher for all mankind once for all eternity.

The chance of online education, of transforming the way we learn is about community. Remember programming before stack overflow and google ? I do. I made a living from solving problems which are just one google away nowadays. (just glad that still nobody noticed yet... <eg>)

Learning should be fun, not easy - in a way like going on a raid with your clan- kind of fun and hard. There should be pride and recognition by your peers and families for achieving a goal - and the support to struggle with learning.

Like the MMORG players do. Actually, the point in developing a successful game is about balancing frustration and joy. That is what is needed for education.

But in most cases the failing of students is just due to the basics.

Having a meal when hungry basic.

Having security and safety in your life basic.

Having someone to confide in basic.

Having the opportunity to be allowed to sleep basic.

Having the feeling of being accepted, wanted, loved basic.

So how to transform education ?

Get the basics right.

Education is a basic human right and duty, not a personal investment into your future which is only for the rich.

challenge the students.

Make them work together.

Support and accompany them on their journey.

Be proud of the students achievements.

It takes an entire village to raise kids. (said to be an african proverb...)

programmers don't byte, they just nibble a bit

Half the Truth is often a great Lie.

i am either part of the solution or part of the problem

RoboRally is a turn based board game, each player controls a robot by selecting a number of command cards which will be executed by the robot like forward, turn left or right, fire laser :) and so on...

coding in schools - possibly a mindless activity - clicking and shoving a mouse around in an excel spreadsheet or throwing together a website - without any understanding of what actually happens - might be what will be implemented when schools have coding sessions taught by teachers who struggle with the topic themselves.

on the other hand:

computer science at its core is the science of making a system go from one state to another using explicit transformations on the state of the system.

how to arrange these operations is computer science, to finalize them, write down the algorithm using operations in a codified form is - coding.

These codes are put down in a language - a programming language when using computers, a knitting pattern when making socks.

To learn how to sequence these operations, to convey the solution to a problem unambiguously in a language using elementary operations, building up a complex system from that and finally reaching the solution as a group of collaborators, taking pride in this achievement together...

I believe that there is great utility in that wherever a student may venture.

Go for a used Thinkpad T or X series with i7 processor, swap harddrive for SSD, maximize RAM.

Thinkpads have the advantage that they are available cheap refurbished and you still get access to spare parts (anything from keybord, screen, mainboard...)

x201t is a cheap tablet PC with digitzer, available with i7 processor extended battery life about 8hrs.

T410 and T510 are nice ones too.

each about $200-$250 refurbished, add RAM+SSD for $350 total.

just one thing: computer science ist not about programming. CS is about the math involved in solving problems using a specific set of instructions in a manner sufficiently specific that it can be implemented. It is intimidating at first and quite helpful once mastered. Don't avoid it and don't let it deter you.

build a tool set of algorithms and you will begin to understand. Then you will want to study cs (possibly). resources:

Introduction to Algorithms by Leiserson, Rivest et al.

Algorithms, Sedgewick

Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice by Foley

http://bookboon.com/en free ebooks about math, cs, programming, office...

HP N54L.

4x 3.5" internal drive-bays with trays (no hot-swap), 1 External 5.25" bay, 1 internal 3.5" bay, 2 PCI-E, 8 GByte ECC, takes 4 TB drives, 6 external USB2, 1 external E-Sata, 1 GB/s NIC. There is an HP-ILO Card for out-of-band servive - access to bios, power down. 1 internal usb (could boot OS from USB...)

excellent VPN / and storage server (VPN ~ 340 MBit/s AES 256 throughput) (put VPN Server in virtual machine)

mini-server ist suff. powerful to run data server at high speed. 5x4 TB raw ~ 16 TByte Raid 5 storage size, 1 additional external hot spare possible.

Compartmentalization is key to stopping an epidemic.

1.)

Quarantine health workers caring for ebola patients in high risk setting (contact to patient, infectious material)

like a tour of duty in the military:

you take the assignment and move into combined quarantine & work, no family contact, no contact to general population.

after your tour ends you stay in post-action quarantine until your incubation period has passed and you get the all clear.

Very important:

taking are of an ebola victim even in 1st world top tier medical facilities is - as shown by the cases which have developed in america and europe - still a high risk operation. Anyone willing to knowingly take that risk is brave. Imposing a quarantine on them still is the sane thing to do to curb secondary infections from the care givers to their families and the general population.

there is no place for talking down care providers on tv or media that they "breached protocol", e.g. they did something wrong and they are to blame. Just find out what went wrong, publish it, correct it. Help the victim. no blaming.

There would be no need for panic since you quarantine the heros giving care to the ebola victims thus stopping tertiar infections to get R_0 (spread of infection) down.

2.) research if ebola survivors carry an immunity to ebola. If they do, they are the most useful group at the frontline of care. Train the survivors and let them (with reduced risk to themselves) help.

3.) Anyone with contact to a victim into quarantine, not let them stay in the house in the rooms where the ebola victim lived. Extract them to proper facility. Desinfect the places where the victim stayed.

4.) get a Vaccine

5.) get a treatment

areas to cover:

do not kill each other, do not fight each other. Things are already bad enough. Because that one fails we gonna start at square one.

Leave the water, land is kinda ok.

language as ability to communicate to each other

teaching as transfer of knowledge between individuals

written language as conversation / fixation of knowledge

fire, the wheel

agriculture cultivation and crossbreeding, fertilizer and plowing

domestication of animals, breeding

scientific method: logic axioms, proof by induction, theory must be falsifiable by repeatable experiment, basic algorithms of computer science

scientific knowledge: math, physics, chemistry

medicine & hygiene

engineering how to build basic machines

social and cultural foundations:

there is no benevolent dictator,

most likely i am not right and don't have ultimate wisdom,

i do not know what the one true religion is,

to much power in to few hands is very very bad,

the people who claim to have the answers are the dangerous ones

my enemies enemy is not my friend but a tool which might trouble me in the future

things we really messed up: when, why, how and how to avoid next time

would have been nice had the dinosaurs taken the time to leave us a couple notes...

So, how to communicate our knowledge to the roaches, our heirs ?

For Reports with lots of tables and mathematics: generate LaTeX file -> PDFTEX to PDF using MiKTeX