Found the feedback button on google maps! Yeah!
I was in Joshua Tree, CA during the recent blizzard and Google Maps INSISTED on taking me off the main road and down some side roads which were closed off and covered with snow. I got stuck and would have died if some local people were not there to help people get unstuck who had been sent there by Google Maps. I guess you guys are not too smart. Maybe you want to fix this, I dont know.
Google Maps took me "The Turnpike Roads" in Orange county on my way to Laguna Beach. Turnpike Roads tried to extort several hundred dollars from me because I used their toll road. FIX THIS RIGHT NOW. Do not take people down that road. If this happens again I will sue you assholes.
[Of course I will not really sue Google, but I wanted to indicate how mad I was at being forced to interact with the criminals at The Turnpike Roads.]
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Sunday, March 17, 2019
Saturday, October 27, 2018
Tensorflow on Hold After Weeks of Wasted Effort
draft
Time that could have been spent learning machine learning has instead been spent trying to get Tensorflow to work on Centos 7.5. Its been a neverending nightmare, a labyrinth of conflicting requirements, installation programs, neurotic programs that require specific versions, complications of using a GPU and so forth. I feel like I am living the Reagan "Star Wars" nightmare of software that is one bridge too far.
Let there be no doubt I made this worse for myself in a variety of ways. This computer has to serve a lot of purposes, not just one. Google Tensorflow makes a precompiled version for Ubuntu, which I despise, and makes the source available for other Linux's including Centos (Centos == Redhat for those of you outside that world).
Without doubt, the biggest problem here involves Python and its wacky Pip installer. Look, I know that if you are immersed in the Python culture that this all works for you kids. But I am not immerse, I want to use Keras and Tensorflow, Python is just along for the ride.
I had it working for normal CPU work and it was painful but not impossible. When I went to use it with a GPU, though, it all fell apart and now I can not get back.
The good news is that I do have CUDA working, which is a non trivial accomplishment. Of course, X is broken.
This nightmare has to end.
Saturday, September 8, 2018
Further Thoughts on the Google / DOD / AI Controversy
draft
On further reflection, I am taking back my criticism about the whole Google/US Military kerflop (if thats a word). I thought it was odd for employees of Google to refuse to do an AI military project given the role of the US Military (aka DARPA) in inventing and supporting AI and in particular computer science at Stanford. But now I think they have a very reasonable point to make, or might be making, since after all, I dont really know what people at Google think, since what I know comes from the news media and has not gone into much depth.
Several people who know at least as much as I do about the history of AI and post war computer science dispute my assertion(s) about the role of the military elite in the creation of those fields, and the fact is that all I have are my impressions, not the result of serious research into the details of what I think I know on the subject. So often in the past my impressions have been entertaining but by no means the whole story.
But even if I have a minor point to make about the history of science and technology, other considerations far outweigh this.
These considerations include (a) Our military has been voluntary since Vietnam, so it should certainly be the case that wherever original funding may have come from, people should be able to choose whether or not they work on a military project. (b) When they chose Google there was absolutely no reason to think that they would be involved in such a project (directly at least, indirectly is another kettle of fish), (c) Google is an international company and their reputation and success may depend on not being perceived as being directly involved with the military, any military, given the bad reputation such militaries have, (d) Other companies that work for the federal government directly (e.g. by taking contracts with the IRS or the DOD) generally set up a separate company or division to deal with such things. Thus their employees can make the conscious choice to work with such a company or division or not. I am sure that not all such choices may be entirely voluntary (e.g. we have a project for you over here, you can take the project or be unemployed) but even so, it gives people fair warning about what is up. And last, but not least, (e) As much as I respect our military, it is the tool of our political elite, and our elite has been involved in questionable military adventure after adventure in my lifetime. However much I may respect various aspects of our military, which is iteslef a long discussion, there can be no argument that they are often put to the most appalling use and it is completely reasonable to try and live ones' life without out being involved in such things, at least as much as is possible given that we must all swim in the same ocean.
Finally, and last but not least, to the best of my knowlege, Google has been very open about their work and research, and there is nothing preventing another company from doing this sort of work. In fact, since working with the US Government is such a complicated thing to do, it is likely that this other company (whether new or existing) might do more of what the DOD really needs.
In other words, even if I maintain (provisionally) my point about the history of technology, there are plenty of other reasons for Google to abstain from this work if their employees so request.
This post is just a work in progress and its very clear to me I dont know the whole story.
On further reflection, I am taking back my criticism about the whole Google/US Military kerflop (if thats a word). I thought it was odd for employees of Google to refuse to do an AI military project given the role of the US Military (aka DARPA) in inventing and supporting AI and in particular computer science at Stanford. But now I think they have a very reasonable point to make, or might be making, since after all, I dont really know what people at Google think, since what I know comes from the news media and has not gone into much depth.
Several people who know at least as much as I do about the history of AI and post war computer science dispute my assertion(s) about the role of the military elite in the creation of those fields, and the fact is that all I have are my impressions, not the result of serious research into the details of what I think I know on the subject. So often in the past my impressions have been entertaining but by no means the whole story.
But even if I have a minor point to make about the history of science and technology, other considerations far outweigh this.
These considerations include (a) Our military has been voluntary since Vietnam, so it should certainly be the case that wherever original funding may have come from, people should be able to choose whether or not they work on a military project. (b) When they chose Google there was absolutely no reason to think that they would be involved in such a project (directly at least, indirectly is another kettle of fish), (c) Google is an international company and their reputation and success may depend on not being perceived as being directly involved with the military, any military, given the bad reputation such militaries have, (d) Other companies that work for the federal government directly (e.g. by taking contracts with the IRS or the DOD) generally set up a separate company or division to deal with such things. Thus their employees can make the conscious choice to work with such a company or division or not. I am sure that not all such choices may be entirely voluntary (e.g. we have a project for you over here, you can take the project or be unemployed) but even so, it gives people fair warning about what is up. And last, but not least, (e) As much as I respect our military, it is the tool of our political elite, and our elite has been involved in questionable military adventure after adventure in my lifetime. However much I may respect various aspects of our military, which is iteslef a long discussion, there can be no argument that they are often put to the most appalling use and it is completely reasonable to try and live ones' life without out being involved in such things, at least as much as is possible given that we must all swim in the same ocean.
Finally, and last but not least, to the best of my knowlege, Google has been very open about their work and research, and there is nothing preventing another company from doing this sort of work. In fact, since working with the US Government is such a complicated thing to do, it is likely that this other company (whether new or existing) might do more of what the DOD really needs.
In other words, even if I maintain (provisionally) my point about the history of technology, there are plenty of other reasons for Google to abstain from this work if their employees so request.
This post is just a work in progress and its very clear to me I dont know the whole story.
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Mystery of Blogspot / Blogger Anomaly Probably Resolved
draft
The
reason some people can not leave comments on this blog, as well as
other Blogspot based blogs, is because the commenting facility is
broken under Google Chrome.
Go
to another browser, such as Mozilla Firefox, and it seems to work.
What
is weird about this is that Blogspot.com is owned by Google. You
might expect that they would make it work with their browser.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Enabling Google Chrome FPS (Frames Per Second) Display
There is a hidden
feature in Google Chrome that displays the FPS and GPU memory
utilization of the browser.
To turn it on, go to
the page “about:flags” but without the quotes.
Find the flag “FPS
Counter” and enable it. In the following image it has already been enabled.
Restart chrome with
the button at the bottom of the page, which seems to be faster than just closing the browser and restarting it.
This is what the FPS display looks like.
The FPS counter is in the upper right. Here is a closeup.
Now, does it make
any sense? In other words, are the numbers accurate. Its hard to tell, but they are not obviously wrong. I plan to use this feature for all my WebGL development.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
The Acquisition of Deepmind and the Humiliation of the Proletariat
A recurring subtheme of this blog are
the silences that occur when the author melts down into a puddle of
indecision and/or rage at his failure to transcend mere poverty and
the mediocrity of his society and achieve some financial and
intellectual standing. Eventually I come out of my pique and return
to writing productively. (1) But in the meantime I am harrassed and
annoyed by example after example where those more intelligent and
more capable individuals and teams demonstrate over and over again
just how superior to me they really are.
This outrageous behavior on their part
is no doubt personal and reflects their deep and inexplicable
hostility towards me and towards my otherwise blameless and even
exemplerary existance. Why do they behave in such an outrageously
successful fashion if their only desire is to humiliate me? We do
not know but we do know that they do it very well and over and over
again. Bastards.
A recent case of abject humiliation
occurred when Google purchased the three year old company "DeepMind"
for roughly $575 million dollars (US). Yes another University
professor took a leave of absence and with a couple of friends
started a company which in three years they flipped to Google for a
little under $200/million per founder.
Why would Google spend so much money
for a company that has no revenue and could not possibly have
generated much intellectual property? Why not? Maybe they did it
for the great logo that Deep Mind has which is all we are permitted
to know about their company.
You gotta love this logo.
We at Global Wahrman would like to apologize to my readers for the delay in posting to the blog, but it is to be expected as long as outrages like the Deepmind acquisition keep on happening.
Deepmind
www.deepmind.com
The Proletariat
_________________________________________________
1. ... instead of unproductively as
has been the case in the last week or so started in part by another
interaction with the State of California. You gotta love the State
of California, they are so much better than we are.
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