Oct 31

A Big No

This article is terrible. Just atrocious. How did this get published in Scientific American?

In theory and to some extent in practice its tenets demand that a particle can appear to be in two places at once—a paradoxical phenomenon known as superposition….

That is not what “superposition” means. Not what it means at all. Not even close — either the formal interpretation of the informal (but equally correct) one. A trip to Wikipedia will clear that right up.

Applying the superposition principle to a quantum mechanical particle, the configurations of the particle are all positions, so the superpositions make a complex wave in space. The coefficients of the linear superposition are a wave which describes the particle as best as is possible, and whose amplitude interferes according to the Huygens principle.

That is what superposition means. There’s no two damn particles anywhere.

[A]nd that two particles can become “entangled,” sharing information across arbitrarily large distances through some still-unknown mechanism.

That is also not what “entanglement” means. There is no information-sharing in this sense going on here. There is only mutual information where the quantum state of the system cannot be described without the other particle (or whatever), no matter how far away it might be. So, no, they do not share information across any distances. But they do share a quantum state which experiences a wavefunction collapse on observation of either of the pair of particles. (Which is, you know, cool enough in itself.)

And Schrödinger’s cat again. I shake my head in shame and despair. That cat is the most abused feline in the entire universe, quantum or otherwise.

I could go on. Quantum mechanics is weird enough without being absolutely wrong about the actual facts of it. I mean it’s a 100% scientific truth that local realism is not preserved in this universe. Isn’t that weird enough, rather than writing all that crappy pap and pappy crap?

Oct 31

Undesigned

Yes, everything has gotten much harder lately for the disabled as all moves to touch-centric, text-free fantasy-based GUIs created on no design principles. Not only is the new design paradigm bad and user-hostile to non-disabled people, it’s particularly hostile to those who need a little help.

Here’s a tip, so-called design experts: If you make something easier to use for a disabled person, it’s almost always also easier to use for everyone else.

Here’s another tip: One day nearly all of us will be disabled; we all get old.

Oct 31

Nationalism

A New Dirty Word.

My thoughts exactly. Equating nationalism with racism is a way to strip away and destroy any welfare provisions and protections, all enabled by so-called liberals. It’s extremely clever in an evil way, I have to give them that. The right-wing just waves a magic wand and the clueless libs do all the dirty work of destroying all they claim to stand for.

And people are falling for it hook, line and sinker. There really is no hope for liberals, is there? Too much cognitive dissonance and propaganda and too little actual thought and resistance.

Oct 31

RFB

I have a really fucking big office at my new job with a door that closes and locks, and I can tell you that it’s so incomparably better than an open office plan that it’s almost like not working in comparison. And the reality is, I get more done. Much more. It’s vastly more productive. I’m skeptical that open office plans save money anywhere but on paper.

Alas, saving money on paper is what MBAs care about so I guess we are stuck with them. But I’m not, and all I have to say about that is hell yeah.

Oct 31

Way

I think of myself as like Hemingway. Except I can actually write. And without the raging misogyny. And I’m not a mega-jerk all the time.

Ok, I’m just grumpy. Hemingway was grumpy. I’m grumpy. We’re practically brothers. Except all that other stuff.

Oct 31

So Petty

Every time I lift a heavy weight, I think about the anger it’d inspire in a Fat Acceptance nutter and that gives me even more motivation. Getting strong again is the primary motivator, but I’d be lying if I said that this didn’t give me a nice power boost.

Oct 31

HH

Holy hell, this is a bad design. I love how people like to portray themselves as the smartest engineers in the world and all that and design some laughable bullshit like this.

How can you not have any solution that doesn’t disallow any traffic to a data center if it’s under maintenance? What the shit? And how can you have a failover state set up that cannot possibly function? That’s like having a rocket and the failover is “just blow up.”

GitHub, I don’t want to work for you or for Microsoft, but you need me. You really need me.