What are /r/pbsideachannel's favorite Products & Services?

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In addition to blocking trackers, I personally hate code running on my machine that I didn't ask for. I wanted the web page, not some third-party-Javascript. With the decline of Flash, there is a smaller chance of the code escaping the browser and attacking my computer, but there is still a chance.

EDIT: Evidently, Edward Snowden agrees. Take that how you will.

To people who are commenting awesome transcripts: the website Amara is a PERFECT way to put fan subtitles on YouTube videos, and it's super easy to do! In fact, some of Idea Channel's stuff is already up!! Please consider making an account and using the site to create subtitles! This is the main system used by TED talks and Netflix for crowdsourcing accurate subs for those who need them!

I think TPP is an example of a working brain model in which each person playing the game can be boiled down to representing a cell or group of cells making up single brain or conscious. In 1991 Loren Carpenter designed an experiment which TPP resembles greatly, clip here http://dotsub.com/view/2ba18e4f-3d43-4abf-85ab-f8b3f7741a90 In Loren's experiment a group of people had to work together to control a paddle in the early computer game Pong. Loren describes the crowds innate and ability to cooperate with almost no communication as a sort of "subconscious consensus" which I think describes very well the happenings in TPP. Depending on which aggregating filter is currently being used on the groups inputs (democracy or anarchy) I think the participants are grouped into a collective conscious containing all the conflicting positions, doubts and chaotic Id that go through a human mind in the process of making decisions. MIT have been trying to design a computer model of the human mind for years but are currently held back by the sheer size that the system would need tobe. Maybe, through a similar system of reducing each persons input into a very limited number of inputs, a cloudsourced model of the human brain could finally be made possible?

It really is that far removed. Predictive algorithms take one set of inputs, in this case a lists of purchases by users, devoid of any context, and try to give an output that most represents similar users' purchase histories. AI is so much more. Taken from this posting,

Here is a major list of AI goal (a.k.a. AI problems)

1. Reasoning
2. Knowledge representation
3. Automated planning and scheduling
4. Machine learning
5. Natural language processing
6. Computer vision
7. Robotics
8. General intelligence, or strong AI

Aura is most of these things, and especially General Intelligence.

On more than one occasion, Mike's brought up Layrinths. I think he even named it as a 'desert island' book.

On the subject of green bubbles versus blue bubbles, I see somewhat of a parallel with Jane Elliot's Eye Color Experiment which was when a grade school teacher told her students that those who had blue eyes were better than the other students with brown eyes. Almost immediately, the children began treating each other different with the blue eyed kids thinking themselves better than the brown eyed kids and shaming them for being brown eyed.

The purpose of the experiment was to show that often times, discrimination comes from above, imprinted on us by a higher authority that tells us who is good and who is bad. Even when the teacher reversed the power, with the brown eyed kids being better than blue eyed, the students did the same thing they did before with status and shame.

So one could say that in this case, Apple is the teacher or authority figure that decides what everyone is and the blue bubble people are the blue eyed kids who are better than those puny green bubble/brown eyed kids. The green bubble shaming seems so reminiscent of the brown eye shaming that arose amongst mere school children in the matter of hours.

I wonder then if the blue vs green issue is just yet another tactic for perpetuating a sense of elitism among Apple users, albeit subliminal. Something I've noticed with Apple products, most recently seen in the unveiling of the Apple Watch, is their marketing and production tends to lean towards classification within its user base. Like for the Apple Watch, there are over 20 models with the most elite being the Watch Edition cased in 18 karat gold costing $1000 or more. And not only is there division between the classes within Apple users, but the distinction between those who use Apple and those who don't, made apparent in this video.

Doobly-Do Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Elliott https://www.apple.com/watch/

For people who may have issues acquiring it via Amazon (I do because location + journeys to pick my non-local items up), you can also try Better World Books (randomly cheaper/more expensive, it's weird) and Book Depository. Also, free international shipping. (I don't live in a place where independent bookstores for English titles are really a thing/well-known to me, so... Both of those are helpful. Plus BWB has a literacy/library campaign tied to it.)

Also: Are you planning on keeping a list of the books selected for the Idea Channel Book Club Thing somewhere convenient (rather than hunting them down in a subreddit)? Because I know sometimes I can participate and other times I can't because of time/work, but I also want to read things that I might not otherwise pick up (if I self-select).

I would personally be very happy to see the fan community continue to make Idea Channel inspired content. I see your point in episodes taking time to make, and it would be super dope if a multi-person team could be assembled to make videos. I personally have a significant amount of experience with Kdenlive, I've cut about 5 hours of project documentation together in it for school projects and shitposts, so if you ever want me to edit one of your videos, just let me know :)

Ooh, jumping off the Science of Pointillism thing, it'd be great to look at lots of art through the lens of science and math, especially since often times the two things are considered polar opposites (you're either a science person or an art person, either a left brain or a right brain), but then you look at people like Leonardo DaVinci, or, apparently, Van Gogh, and see that they knew so much about science AND art, sometimes unknowingly.

To the best of my knowledge, I am the only person in the world with my exact name — the mononym Sai. (There are huge number of Indians whose first name is Sai, but they're not mononymic.)

As for the experience… well, ultimately it comes down to how one identifies.

Others identify with their family name, or a name with religious association, or a name with strong genderedness. That's cool; you do your thing. ;-)

For me, it was just as Sai, so that's my name; it has no particular meaning or association other than being my name. I like that.

It gets a double-take pretty regularly; there're a few random annoyances with databases; one has to have a sense of humor about it. It's quite deliberate that I can't really be called by a title; you could be "Mr. Rugnetta", but I'm only ever just plain Sai, and I like that too. Owning the domain s.ai* is an additional layer of amusement value.

I also run a group exclusively by & for mononymic people — https://groups.google.com/group/mononymy. Some members have unusual names for the US (like mine). Some don't, like Mitch, who teaches law at U. Wisconsin.

Some are culturally normative in Indonesia but not the US, like Bhakti. Of course, a "Mike" in Indonesia would probably get as many odd looks as Bhakti does in the US.

• .ai = Anguilla

A similar concept was explored in the anime Starship Operators. A large star empire bullies and independent planet into surrendering. A bunch of recent defense university graduates buy the ship they have been training on from its manufacturer by selling the rights to their war to the Galaxy Network. They fund their war with a reality TV show and even broadcast it live to their enemies, which leads to much shenanigans later on. It was a bit slow paced (battles are +20 hours long in-universe), very much a talking heads anime, but I loved it.

However, there is a wall that you hit. Consider testing whether an intervention works, for example a new type of drug. To really test the efficacy of the drug you need to observe the same set of people with and without the drug. This is impossible. Natural sciences can get closer to this gold standard. Everyone else has to use an approximation that only works by assumption. Randomized controlled trials work by assumption. There is no way to establish using only the data that you can identify the effect of interest. You assume that random assignment gets you close to a random sample. There are many other examples of this problem.

Charles Manski has written extensively on this, as have many other economists, and this is not a problem with sample sizes and not perfect estimation techniques. This is a deeper problem that occur even with infinite samples and perfect estimation methods.

I'll answer Mike's question. I have a name that only turns up myself when I google (or duck) myself. I wont mention it, but it's a combination of a rather common german first name with a rather uncommon french originating last name.

The effect is more or less that you don't think about. I don't have any "google buddies", so I don't think about them. I know it's a bit anticlimactic, but that's more or less what it's like.

A bit more interesting, however, is the experience of having an uncommon last name. Occasionally when I say my last name (and immediately afterwards have to spell it), people will go "Oh, I know/knew another person with that name." and it's interesting every single time, because they might well be distant family of mine. Sure, there's a chance they're not, but with 90% certainty, they are. It always makes me think about how the descendant of a single person spread out across the world in the course of many generations, slowly losing track of each other.

Well, to be fair both the MPAA and trigger warnings promote the notion that it's the personal responsibility of the creator/speaker to warn people about what they're about to see rather than it being the responsibility of the audience to research what they're about to watch/read/play/hear.

I can appreciate Mike's idea that trigger warnings are a great way to actually grow your audience but ultimately it's just not a responsibility I feel comfortable with.

I think a good middle ground would be something like- http://www.kids-in-mind.com where people have taken it upon themselves to create content warnings for media. This way it's up to the communities who are affected by these issues to determine what's safe and what's not.

It should, I think. I'm a little hesitant to spend the time learning how to implement one in java, just when there's so much more support for implementing NN's in Python with stuff like TensorFlow.

Another option would be to tie the inputs and outputs on the NN to UDP ports, then use udpsend/udprecieve in Max to interface with the NN, so you're basically treating it like a TouchOSC device. The big benefit to this method is language flexibility. I think both Lua and Python can broadcast on UDP ports, so I could potentially get delightful gibberish (almost) straight out of that tutorial and into Max.

I actually hadn't thought about using UDP ports for the interfacing before, so thanks for spurring that little idea. Anyway, if anything cool comes out of this, I'll be sure to post it on the reddit and/or send it your way.

I spend a lot of time thinking about open culture and fostering creativity. Since I like to teach people how to make games, I'm aware that one of the hurdles is assets - you want your game to look and sound nice, but perhas you're not adept at these skills.

I love that there are sites growing that offer royalty-free assets, though they're still pretty infrequent, which can cause a lot of games (and other media) using these assets to kind of have a cringy, "where do I know this from?" feeling. i.e., I recognize music from Kevim MacLeod immediately in videos and games, or BFXR sound effects everywhere.

I would really love to see a day where more people feel compelled to provide a small portion of their creative work for free, whether for non-commercial-use only or without restrictions. If anyone reading this is an artist/musician, and you have old projects that you've shelved, perhaps think about doing this! Don't hide your old works, let other people love and use it! :)

Oppressed groups need to change minds, but it's not all they need to do. They can't (and shouldn't) put everything in service of that one particular goal. There are internal goals to consider as well.

> For segregation to be appealed you had to convince the people doing the segregating that segregation is wrong.

Concern trolls of the day said pretty much the same things about Martin Luther King Jr. then as they say of teenagers on Tumblr today. Stuff like "True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice." shows that MLK was a hard-core SJW.

> But if you say nothing and dont give a reaction then the oppressors cause is futile, and it makes them look bad.

No, that just means the status quo will be preserved and oppression will continue as business as usual.

I don't think this is it, I don't remember it being about data in a statistical sense of the term. I also stumbled upon The Design of Everyday Things, but it still doesn't strike me as being IT.

• Anything by Issac Asimov (esp. The Roving Mind and Foundation novels)
• Mike suggested The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
• <em>S</em> by Dorst and JJ Abrams is a fantastically complex story on a story in a story

This reminds me a little of Pirsig in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" where he writes about how some people are pushed away by technology because of its complexity and seeks to define "quality" (and a lot more in between). Because technology is complex, they have disdain for it and like you said it becomes an impediment to their lives. If they were to "own" technology (as you say) or as Pirsig would put it reaching a state where one understands and appreciates both the physical workings of things and their greater contributions. In this state which he calls quality or owning as you put it, one is in a zen like state or mesmerized. I thought there were some interesting parallels. Honestly, I think Pirsig is just drawing a lot from Theory of Forms and other things but I really believe that this "ownership" of a process does allow one to transcend the physical task and can be a form of meditation.

> a germ of a suspicion

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

There are evil people in every group, but they're always the minority. For example, as a fat white basement dwelling neckbeard who enjoys My Little Pony so much he bought the MLP RPG the very minute he saw it in store, I can assure you that A) I have no interest in Nazi MLP anything, much less MLP porn and B) Those of who have no interest in that sort of thing outnumber those that do a thousand to one, at least.

You mentioned

> I think a significant subsection of gamers don't handle nuance or emotionally complexity very well.

but I have to wonder what you mean by significant. Do you mean that there's enough to count? Well I'm right on board. You also say

>I think the majority of OW rule 34 stuff originates from the same source of insecurity, I guess, as a group like gamergate or redpill

Which is probably accurate, in the sense that all art stems from the human condition and base emotions.

But if you're suggesting that the whole is dangerous because of the few, or that the minority is significant enough that we need to do something about the majority, then you're wrong. You shouldn't feel too embarrassed, though- It's the same wrongness we've visited on each other time and again all throughout human history.

I don't think this is it, I don't remember it being about data in a statistical sense of the term. I also stumbled upon The Design of Everyday Things, but it still doesn't strike me as being IT.

Non-mobile: there is already a book

^That's ^why ^I'm ^here, ^I ^don't ^judge ^you. ^PM ^/u/xl0 ^if ^I'm ^causing ^any ^trouble. ^WUT?

I'm going to challenge your assumption that non-violent 'protest' was ineffective against Nazis.

There's a book called Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Banality of Evil.

Amongst the many interesting things, it details how the holocaust was accomplished, and it wasn't through German engineering as it's often portrayed, but by simple local compliance. In other words, in regions that cooperated with the Nazis, extermination rates were upwards of 90%, in those that simply refused to turn in the neighbors, or actively harbored Jews from discovery, the rates were very low.

Non violence in Nazi occupied Europe was actually very effective a thwarting Nazi goals, and this is where the banality part comes in. We're comforted by the idea that evil is thrust upon us by overwhelming force, but the truth is far more insidious. It accomplished by simple cooperation. As impressive as the Nazi war machine was, it can't make people tell the truth or rat out their neighbors, and it's that kind of corporation that gets things done. The Nazis relied on local law enforcement and local institutions for control. They couldn't send an S.S. unit to every village.

The most controversial parts of the book even detail how Jewish organizations themselves helped seal their fate.

There wouldn't have been a holocaust if people had just refused to cooperate. Effective non-violent resistance is rarely about holding signs or posting graffiti.

War, by contrast, is sort of after the fact, and collateral damage is inherent to the process. Even "the good guys" engage in serious injustices. At all levels it represents the greatest of human failures, which is sometimes necessary, but only at the cost of much better solutions.

• Anything by Issac Asimov (esp. The Roving Mind and Foundation novels)
• Mike suggested The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
• <em>S</em> by Dorst and JJ Abrams is a fantastically complex story on a story in a story