Episode 30: Fifty Percent Chance Of Rain

July 25, 2012 by justin | 21 Comments

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We begin the show this week by briefly discussing the horrific shooting in Aurora, Colorado, and the things we know about what happened because of social media. Is this kind of social media usage good or bad? It’s hard to say.

Also this week: Dave thinks weathermen who predict a 50 percent chance of rain are just lazy (Dave is frequently wrong). Justin’s signed up for his first course on Coursera, the free online university. It’s more than videos: there’s suggested reading, writing assignments and more. Sign up now; most courses start in September and they’re all free. James built his own programmable LED cube cube with 64 blue LEDs and an arduino. It only cost $20 in parts; here it is in action:

And, as always, the headlines:

Grum, a huge spam bot, was taken out. Should computer users with malware on their system be considered responsible?
A UK Judge said Samsung didn’t copy the iPad because it’s “not as cool”. We’re amused, even if a Europe-wide ruling banned Samsung tablets after the fact.
An obsessive fan sort of tracked Jay-Z’s movement using email receipts. Tip: don’t allow images by default in your email client.
Advertising value online continues to go down. James claims he’s unaffected; our listeners
PROTIP: Viewing in public makes the people around you uncomfortable. People need to realize their actions affect the people around them.
OS X and iOS email client Sparrow was acquired by Google, and some users are upset.
An entire organism simulated for first time in history. James speculates wildly about what this could mean in more complex beings.

20 comments

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koshyg15

Post the 30min talk on the weather.

Scutterman

Schroedinger's weather report!

Seriously though, if you want to know how useless probability is, this is the example I always use:

A (completely unbiased) coin has been flipped 9 times, and it came out tails every time.

The probability of getting tails 10 times in a row is one in 2^10, or 1 / 1024.

However, the chance that the next flip will be tails is always 1 / 2. Probability is just a guide, and it's important to realise that any sequence, even if our brains detect a pattern in it, is equally likely.

If I was playing a lottery with 6 balls drawn out of a possible 100, I could choose the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and have the same chance as anyone else, no matter whether they were using a system, randomly drawn numbers, playing once or playing every week.

The same holds true for playing last week's numbers – there's the same chance of those coming out again as any other combination.

I love the LED cube. I would make one myself, but I don't have the time. Plus it would take me a while because I'm no good at hardware at all.

The Samsung ruling is one that needs to be used by other judges. not necessarily the outcome, but the format of the ruling. These cases are a show of power, a force against innovation, and a huge waste of money and court time. It's plainly obvious that their only purpose is to postpone a product launch long enough to make that product's profits take a dive. Personally I don't care what these companies do with their own time, but when murder cases take 5 or 10 years to come to court, I can't say that these companies deserve to pull individual institutions into their little games.

The simulated organism I found really interesting. This could mean big advances, not just in research fields, but also in computing as they struggle to gain the power they need to simulate more complex organisms.

I have a question for you guys. I recently tried to purchase a domain name, and found it parked with a "click to make an offer to buy" button. Knowing the result, I clicked through, and had to fill out an entire application form before it told me the minimum offer was $500.

Have you ever found a domain name you wanted going to waste, and do you think the IANA are too lax in preventing domain squatters?

Bonus question: Looking at the WHOIS for the domain, it's held in America. Do you think it's right that an American can buy and park a UK domain? I can understand people outside the UK using a UK domain name for a legitimate website, but just parking it isn't a valid use in my opinion.

James Bruce moderator

@Scutterman A lot of hosts "park" domains by default. It's only when you direct them to a site that it gets removed. I don't think there's anything malicious in there, it's just not always possible to develop sites immediately. Stay away from making an offer though, it's always not worth. Just think of a cool new domain, or better still check out justdropped.com - free registration, and then you can search for domains containing keyword that were "dropped" in the last X days. Investigate a few you like, and you may even find some still have a PR value or were previously developed to something relevant, which is instant SEO happiness!

Latest blog post: Will the iPad Ever Replace Conventional Board Games?

Scutterman

@James Bruce I don't mind domains bought for a purpose, but ones that are bought, thrown into a search / advertising pool, and kept until someone who wants it finds out it's taken, that's squatting to me. I wouldn't pay those kinds of sums to get a domain, it's just something that annoys me greatly

jonathanpwheat

I gotta side with Dave about the weather. A 50% chance of rain to me means they don't know. The app should just say - "Hell, we don't know, it might rain" with an image of some guy shrugging his shoulders, palms up.

Its like Schrödinger's cat, a paradox, - dead and alive. Its both going to rain and not going to rain. You don't know until you know - which defeats the estimation, because when it starts raining - there's now a 100% chance of rain.

Another great show, thanks guys.

jhpot moderator

1 Like

@jonathanpwheat I read this comment to Kathy (my wife, a physicist) and she laughed, assuming you were joking. I hope you were, but if not you should read up on probability. A fifty percent chance is a real thing, just like a forty percent chance, and in a system as complex as the weather the probability of something happening is usually the best we can get.

jonathanpwheat

@jhpot There is a 50% chance I was serious / joking ;-)

AKwasp

You pointed out an excellent example of BM "bad manners" for viewing videos during public transportation. Clearly your example is BM, but what about less explicit but instead gory or violent imagery? Isn't that just as bad?

jhpot moderator

@AKwasp I tend to think so, yes, but it's hard to define where the line is. Anything they wouldn't show on network TV during prime time, maybe?

James Bruce moderator

@jhpot @AKwasp I would be hesitant to watch Battle Royale on an aeroplane, for instance.

AKwasp

So here's an analogy for why I wouldn't blame the botnet users: my father came over yesterday to request I delete his Facebook and Twitter to stop receiving their emails. My father isn't exactly tech savy. I've repeatedly had to explain to him that folders in his Yahoo mail aren't saved on his computers and that's why he can't access his "My Documents" folder at home from work and visa versa; I expect I'll keep having this conversation with him for many more years. The problem isn't that he's absentmindedly misusing computers, rather he doesn't have any incentive to learn computer fundamentals. He's entertained for hours just reading Yahoo news and mass emailing every semi-interesting article to all his contacts. Whenever he runs into a problem he'll just keep calling me until I fix it so he's never had to Google an issue to troubleshoot it despite my attempts over the last decade. Can you blame his misuse of the internet when he's never had a need to learn how it works? He frequently blames computer problems on bad URLs despite not knowing what they are and requests I set one up for him. It may be a lame pun, but I always tell him to go see a urologist - URLogist, get it? Anyways he had no idea what his usernames were so I just did password recoveries on both his Yahoo and Aim email addresses - turns out he didn't have a Twitter, had 2 Facebooks, and 1 LinkedIn, all currently deleted. /facepalm

jhpot moderator

@AKwasp Here's the thing, though: anyone that ignorant about how the highway system works would not be allowed to drive on them. It's different with computers because there are no lives on the line, but it seems like we need to do a better job teaching people how to use this technology for the sake of everyone.

AKwasp

1 Like

@jhpot The internet has done wonders to remove barriers to entry for many industry fields, one example is blogging journalism. For better or worse, I would NOT like to see more stifling regulations. Perhaps you'd be in favor of a "second internet" with an entrance exam and enforced ID control to promote accountability and good manners. Google Fiber just launched today; how would you feel about a second internet hosted by Google? Sign me up!

Scutterman

@AKwasp @jhpot I agree with the idea of a second internet, maybe call it the leetosphere. In fact, why stop there. Why not have many autonomous subsystems of the internet, each one aimed at people who can claim to have x amount of competency in a particular field.

James Bruce moderator

I actually considered getting a dish as my little usb tv recorder only gets hd from the special signal on them, not from regular OTA freeview. I just cant bring myself to do it though, I feel like my property value would plunge. Literally every house on my street has them... I need to move to the country. Or France. Or canada, perhaps.

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