《為政》第二

Note: This follows Section I previously translated. In this section, a discussion takes place regarding two subjects: one, how propriety translates from the personal sphere to governance; two, how to conduct oneself so as to be taken up by a state and have an influence on court life.

1. 子曰：「為政以德，譬如北辰，居其所而眾星共之。」
Master said: “Conduct politics according to virtue, analogous to the Northern Constellation, residing in its station while multitudinous stars surround it.”
(Read the article)

Comments(0)

The video transcoding software Handbrake has been able to use Intel’s QuickSync hardware H.264 encoding since sometime last year. It is one of the few applications to support this feature. The quality is debatable, especially on earlier chip generations, but the speed (hundreds of fps on SD video) and CPU usage (around 10% on Main profile) are impressive.

However, the exact configuration to enable Handbrake to use the QuickSync API (dubbed “Intel Media SDK”), and furthermore to have the QuickSync API activate the hardware encoding path, is not very clear-cut. The former requires a compatible version of the SDK, while the latter requires a compatible GPU driver. Intel has the fatuous policy of removing its older SDK’s and drivers, and possibly disabling certain features in later releases. Also, Intel doesn’t seem too interested in this consumer-facing feature to begin with. In light of that, I’m noting here one configuration that works for me, and archiving its relevant packages.
(Read the article)

Comments(0)

《梁惠王下》

Note: This famous Mencius passage on the virtue of benevolent rule plays on the three derivatives of the morphemic root 樂, which linguistic pun reflects the very heart of the Classical era (i.e. Earlier Kings’ era) ideology of achieving elective conformity and concordance in group behavior — and by extension, society — through symphonic rites.

8. 莊暴見孟子，曰：「暴見於王，王語暴以好樂，暴未有以對也。」曰：「好樂何如？」
Zhuang Bao seeing Mencius, said: “(When) Bao was seen by the king, the king opined to Bao regarding liking harmony, Bao was yet to have a reply to be used.” (Zhuang Bao) said: “What follows liking harmony?”
(Read the article)

Comments(0)

From fakalin. If \(F(x, y, z)\) is a function of 3 variables, and the relation \(F(x, y, z) = 0\) defines each of the variables in terms of the other two, namely \(x = f(y, z)\), \(y = g(x, z)\), and \(z = h(x, y)\), then show that:

\(\left(\frac{\partial x}{\partial y}\right) \left(\frac{\partial y}{\partial z}\right) \left(\frac{\partial z}{\partial x}\right) = -1\).
(Read the article)

Comments(0)

Recently I came across two treatises by Oxford philosophers belonging to the transhumanist milieu (e.g. Humanity+, Future of Humanity Institute). Both works are interesting in the incorporation of higher-level scientific and technological arguments into a field that, with the passing of time, increasingly sits in general neglect at the lowest level of thought much below which scientific inquiry and technological progress now take place. Transhumanism, whatever its actual content, at least updates philosophy to be relevant in the modern context.

The works, one by David Pearce on the Hedonistic Imperative and one by Nick Bostrom on the Simulation Argument are quite provocative and engaging to read. They will be briefly summarized and refuted in the sequel.
(Read the article)

Comments(0)

How many bits of secrecy does a typical person have in memory?

After thinking long and hard, I came to the conclusion that all security ends up being physical security. Currently we assume a person’s body is physically secure, with memory being the most secure part of all. Common security systems, such as passwords, try to extract as much of this secrecy out of us as possible and store it somewhere less secure like on a remote server. This is horrible. I don’t care that it’s stored in hashed form: if we only have a finite amount of secrecy to give, then once we reveal it in a form that can be brute-forced, Moore’s Law will ensure that at some point it will be brute-forced and will no longer be secret.
(Read the article)

Comments(0)

Michael Lewis has been in the news for his new book, Flash Boys, decrying the problems brought about by a system ill equipped to deal with high frequency trading. The core problem can be stylistically summarized by this picture:

I place an order from the location of the red square to the green and purple exchanges on which trades occur. My communication capability on the gray “public” channel is slower than the communication capability of some competing agent on the blue “private” channel. Therefore, triangle inequality notwithstanding, the competing agent observes my actions at the green exchange and reacts at the purple exchange before my order arrives there. It appears to me exactly like I have been scooped by somebody acting anti-causally, so what happened?
(Read the article)

Comments(0)

Is there a standard definition? Does it have a unit? Is it even a number?

I’m going to take a stab. Without loss of generality I’ll define liquidity availability for buying (selling is analogous), as a unitless function \(L($,s)\) over transaction amount \($\) and time limit \(s\). Operationally, it means to take \($\) amount of a tradable asset, convert into number of shares \(N\) at the current price (assume it exists) and request to transact \($\) using all possible algorithms that complete in \(s\) seconds and find the one that got the most shares \(N^*\), then \(L($,s) = N^*/N\), a number between 0 and about 1 (for most cases). The larger it is, the more liquidity there is at the \(($,s)\) pair. \(L\) is monotonically decreasing in \($\) and monotonically increasing in \(s\).
(Read the article)

Comments(0)

This online ruler.

Comments(0)

I was doing this online chat with some online customer service reps and two random draws got completely different results.

Sample 1 –

You are now connected to Niel from [large online retailer].com
Niel: Hello this is Niel I am here to assist you
(Read the article)

Comments(0)