Immortality -  or is Dave immortal ?   Or does 4.7 billion years = immortality? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: ez24
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2015, 01:56:03 am
content: As far as I know the first YT videos are still posted and no one knows how long videos will be posted. But since Dave's videos are making money, I think we can assume they will stay long after we are all gone.I hear the earth will last about 4.7 billion years more (the sun blows up) and if man does not blow himself up, will Dave's videos still be posted when the era of man ends? In a 1,000 years people will get a kick on how primitive PIC32s were. Can you imagine what they will think of the Rigol DS-1054Z, they will think "how could they use that?"We can take into account man going to another planet with Dave's videosSo lets just assume the time man will last is immortal time (whatever that is).Then do you think we can say Dave is immortal?How about his web page. I assume he pays for it unless he sets up a trust fund. So my guess is someday his web page will disappear and not be immortal. Even this forum may disappear.Summary: YT video tutorial can be immortal lessons whereas web page tutorials are not.Am I nuts or what

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 25, 2015, 02:08:06 am
content: Does anyone have links to the very early YouTube videos?

author: ez24
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2015, 02:37:50 am
content: No. 1 :Taken at the San Diego zoo ( I live in San Diego)Another interesting video showing someone growing 6 years

author: Godzil
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 01:32:48 pm
content: On interesting thing would be to count the total number of YT video Dave put, their time and the number of time each video has been watch, do the math, and chech how many year of Dave has been watch, I'm sure the number is impressive

author: FrankBuss
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 01:42:06 pm
content: The forum might go offline, but it is archived athttp://archive.orgOf course, when the Singularity happens, we will be all uploaded to the Matrix and be immortal. Even nowlife expectancy increases each year. I hope it reaches 12 months per year before I die.

author: McBryce
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 01:53:30 pm
content: Well according to this post:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/shoreham-airshow-aircraft-crashes-into-a27-road/msg740682/#msg740682he watched WWII footage when he was in primary school, making him already (a very young looking) 80+ years old, so at that rate he could be around for quite a whileMcBryce.(Yes I know he says documentary, not live footage, but that ruins the joke doesn't it!)

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 01:57:13 pm
content: It doesn't really interest me that much, but I have been toying with some ideas along those lines.I don't buy the Singularity. It assumes that we are in an era of increasing innovation, but there's little evidence to really support that.If one day we get our shit together and begin to really crank out new technology the way we did in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, we might make material changes to people's lifestyles like there were in that era. But big changes are disruptive, meaning their effects can't be predicted.

author: FrankBuss
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 02:19:50 pm
content: There is new technology developed, faster than in the '40s-'60s. 20 years ago you wouldn't believe that the worlds knowledge, a world map, GPS navigation etc. are available in a smart phone. And with Siri, Watson, Google, the human brain project etc. artificial general intelligence is not far away.And did you notice that kids these days are glued to their smart phone displays? Soon we will have direct brain-computer interfaces, simple versions already work. The upload has already started

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 02:52:46 pm
content: I think most of what you cited is humbug, sorry. Siri is a classic Wizard of Oz trick: pay no attention to the human beings behind the curtain who actually tailor the responses.If you want to talk about what people believed the future would be like 20 years ago: they thought the Semantic Web would make all the world's information accessible to every computer program. I can't believe how that turned out...see the top response here:http://www.quora.com/As-of-2015-is-the-semantic-web-deadPart of the problem is that we, as technologists, became enamored of impossible, and frankly nonsensical ideas like direct brain-computer interfaces, and accepted dumbing-down and de-skilling of our machines as exemplified by smart phones. Tell me, is there anything about a smart phone that rewards learning and experience?

author: FrankBuss
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 03:25:44 pm
content: You are right, there is a lot of manual work behind the curtain for Siri, because many basic concepts of human intelligence are unknown. But it is still impressive.Many years ago everyone would say a computer will never beat a human chess master, because you need real intelligence, strategy etc. Then Deep Blue happened and everyone said "yeah, but this is just raw computing power, no AI". Same with Jeopardy, no one would believe that a computer could beat humans. Then Watson happened, and everyone says "but this is just a collection of algorithms, tuned for this task, no real AGI". It is one step at a time, and someday Siri will marry Watson and a feedback loop will be added, and then they will behave like a human and more intelligent, even if it is just a bunch of algorithmens in the background, with thousands of human programmers writing and modifying it (until the AIs start to program themselfes).

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 04:56:02 pm
content: The idea of "general intelligence" is itself a bit incoherent: there is a considerable covariance in humans' measured aptitude at different mental tests. So the statistical factor g is involved somehow in variation in intelligence. But explaining a variance doesn't mean there is a "module" called general intelligence.

author: timofonic
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 06:06:37 pm
content: Quote from: helius on August 26, 2015, 01:57:13 pmSingularity requires lots of telecommunications, information processing, technology, go beyond advanced AI, physics, chemistry, still having strong religious beliefs (no, Battlestar Galactica/Caprica idea about cylons is nonsense), advanced materials and biology knowledge.Today there's lots of issues that are making this nearly impossible:-Massive oligopolies.-Worldwide economical crisis of the middle class, that it's starting to disappear. Lots more rich people and poorer are becoming even more.-Lack of effective and advanced small scale manufacturing of advanced hardware. 3D printing is just a small start, I hope it direct becomes just a trend and evolves beyond imagination.- Lack of a really advanced biohacker movement, is very complex to understand current medicine concepts and specially the ones related to brain. There's lots of ignorance and lack of comprehensive yet accurate material about it.

author: McBryce
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 08:28:09 pm
content: Forget Siri! Where are the Flying Cars they promised us?McBryce.

author: dfmischler
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 09:07:07 pm
content: Have you ever tried to read anything written by Shakespeare? You can read it and understand it just fine, but it doesn't sound exactly the way we would say it. About 400 years old.How about Chaucer? A lot harder, and that is about 600 years old. And the audio of somebody reading it with the best scholarly guess at pronunciation is difficult to recognize as our language.I simply can't read Beowulf at all. That is estimated to be between 1000 and 1300 years old.Based on the preceding assessment of the rate of change of the English language, I would guess that even if technology stays still then sometime within the next 1000 years nobody will be able to watch and understand Dave's videos.

author: ez24
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 09:43:01 pm
content: QuoteGood point - sorry Dave

author: Chris C
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 10:34:38 pm
content: When it comes to audio/video, I think very little is immortal. Part of the problem is that we've come to accept complex and lossy data storage formats for media, as standard.I have many old videos saved on my computer. Go back to those I collected 5-10 years ago, and many that previously played perfectly, now often don't play right - if at all. Even though the players support the format. And the files weren't corrupted, I keep multiple checksums on all my files, that can detect any changes to those files whatsoever.So what happened? Video encoders are incredibly complex, and often have small bugs and quirks. Players/decoders of the same era of those encoders were expected to work anyway, so exceptions were coded in to most of them, in order to gracefully handle files produced by known buggy encoders. But the video files and the encoders that created them eventually fall by the wayside. And so do the players. To be replaced with new players, with new exceptions for current encoders, not the old ones.I can think of no more dramatic example than the old TIF image format. It was a quite complex format for the time, and kept getting extended, so virtually no one got it quite right. I distinctly recall an image viewer (though I've long forgotten the name) that claimed to offer the world's best TIF support, with 86 different "flavors"! I expect if you want to view an old TIF file nowadays, you're going to have some serious issues.So what do you do when your old video file no longer plays correctly in your short list of preferred players, and it's possible that in a few years nothing will be around that understands it at all? You hopefully find a video file converter that still understands the file, and use it to fix it, or convert it to a newer format entirely. And that may involve transcoding, conversion from the original lossy format, to another lossy format. Which means loss of detail. A process you'll probably have to repeat every decade or so. Until your video looks as poor as something from 1915 looks to us now - except in this case, it won't take 100 years for that kind of degradation to occur.And what if Youtube decides at some point that they will save a lot of money on bandwidth and storage costs, plus eliminate the complexity of supporting a growing number of old formats, if they transcode every video they have stored to a "latest and greatest" format like x.265? Eventually, something like this will happen.As it is, sometimes I recall an entertaining video I saw Youtube a few years back, which I didn't save, but having crossed my mind I want to see again. Only to find the original video had been taken down due because someone claimed copyright violation, sometimes wrongfully or overzealously. And the original creator of that video never reposted it. But maybe someone else did instead, from their saved copy, which may not have been the highest quality available, and may have been transcoded upon download. Then is sent back to Youtube where it is definitely transcoded again - resulting in massive loss of quality.As a specific example, "Total Eclipse of The Heart" by Bonnie Tyler, in the literal video style. It's clearly acceptable use as parody, a good one at that, and deserves immortality. It never should have been removed, but it was regardless. This link is only to something that calls itself the original, but the horrible quality reveals that isn't true:There used to be several other re-uploaded versions as well, with slightly better quality, but which added artistic borders and whatnot in order to make themselves different enough to avoid complaints and removal. They're now all gone too, leaving only the above link, and one more from someone with a shaky hand who captured it by pointing a video recorder at their screen. And so, in just a few years, I can never again sing Karaoke-style along with a decent quality version of this parody.

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 10:59:26 pm
content: Quote from: dfmischler on August 26, 2015, 09:07:07 pmIt's slightly possible that language was so fluid partiallybecausenothing linguistic was really permanent. Sure, there were books from history, but they weren't used in everyday life. I don't think this is actually true, but wouldn't it be interesting if the pervasiveness of the internet in everyday life means that it has a stabilizing effect on the language? Like, by keeping everyone connected, individual islands can't form their own language, since they're tied to the mainland. If English is going to shift, the entire (English-speaking part of) the world has to shift together, and there's a lot more inertia in 400 million around the world.But you're probably right, it'll just shift anyway. The word "literally" is already worthless.

author: Lightages
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 11:11:09 pm
content: Actually the bet recent calculation is that we have maybe 100 million years more before the sun kills everything on the Earth. Dave better start saving his videos to holocubes made out of doped diamond and get them on the next space probe that will leave the solar system. Even then, 10 billion years from now the whole universe will lose all stars and everything will go dark and there will be no energy. Worse than that, maybe in 1 trillion years, the space between atoms will expand faster than light can travel through it and everything evaporates into nothingness. Hmmm, I am sure I won''t be here for more than another 40 years, so Dave will stop being immortal to me at that point anyway!

author: JackP
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2015, 11:57:35 pm
content: Quote from: McBryce on August 26, 2015, 08:28:09 pmHere they are!

author: ez24
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 01:19:12 am
content: FYIThe TF-X is powered by the Batteriser

author: timofonic
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 05:19:55 am
content: Quote from: Chris C on August 26, 2015, 10:34:38 pmJust ask FFmpeg developers, they are hardcore geeks obsessed with compatibility. They will love to find faulty videos and make them compatible.They usually reverse engineer very obscure media formats from videogames and any kind of weird shit, they are amazingly crazy!

author: jwm_
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 06:24:16 am
content: YouTube actually started out as a dating site. Like those VHS video personal ads that were popular in the 80's. So I bet some of the first actual YouTube videos are pretty hilarious in retrospect.And they already do transcode everything to many different formats all of which are stored, it's a pretty impressive cluster. The scale there is pretty amazing, let's just say when I worked at google I got to use metric prefixes that I did not have an opportunity to use (or really appreciate) before or since when referring to compute resources.John

author: McBryce
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 08:07:20 am
content: Quote from: jwm_ on August 27, 2015, 06:24:16 amWhere did you read that?? According to the founders it started as a video sharing site, with the first video being "Me at the zoo", which is hardly looking for a date unless the guy had an elephant fetish??McBryce.

author: jwm_
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 09:21:23 am
content: Quote from: McBryce on August 27, 2015, 08:07:20 amThe Internet archive never forgets.https://web.archive.org/web/20050428014715/https://www.youtube.com/The site took a bit to find its identity. It was always video sharing though, but back then VCs liked to hear more of a plan than "get a lot of users and that somehow means money". One of the iterations of trying to give people reasons to upload videos was videos in furtherance of dating, turns out just a place to put videos with no frills was enough.

author: McBryce
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 09:25:46 am
content: Interesting. They conveniently don't mention that anywhere in their history or on the Wikipedia page about Youtube.McBryce.

author: dfmischler
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 04:03:09 pm
content: Quote from: rs20 on August 26, 2015, 10:59:26 pmThink about how Italian, French, and Spanish drifted away from Latin even though the people were still hearing more-or-less pure Latin in church (I know that most individuals in historic France and Spain never spoke good Latin in the first place).

author: Chris C
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 06:00:39 pm
content: Quote from: Circuiteromalaguito on August 27, 2015, 05:19:55 amFor my HTPC systems, I use MPlayer as the backend. Which in turn uses FFmpeg, and shares some of the same developers.And you're right, they are geeks in the very best sense of the term. I had an obscure problem, not related to specific videos, which they addressed and fixedimmediately. How awesome is that? At the time I was undecided whether to use MPlayer or VLC as my backend, and that made me settle on MPlayer.But for old videos, I find MPlayer fails more often than VLC. On the troublesome videos, MPlayer can usually be made to work by adding certain command line switches; and technically, that gives it better compatibility than VLC. Unfortunately, if those switches are left in place permanently, they cause trouble with many more videos that it would normally play without issue.I just think it's become such a complex problem, that it's impossible to get it 100% right.

author: nitro2k01
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 06:36:01 pm
content: Quote from: jwm_ on August 27, 2015, 06:24:16 amHmm, considering the default values are male seeking everyone, I would think it was more of a find new friends deal and less of a meat market. Basically Myspace with video posting.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 07:30:43 pm
content: My theory is:I think in the future it is inevitable that human-based technology development hits a plateau.Say for example Physics and Mathematics: Born of caveman and grew up a cave-kid. In two weeks, the cave-kid have learned all the physics and math that the human race knew at the time. Born a Roman and you can be the world leader of mathematics without ever spending time learning calculus.Some point in the future, it will take most of the human life time to learn adequate existing knowledge (of Physics and/or Mathematics) to create new ones. That leaves little time in that person's life to create new knowledge."Base knowledge" requirement is evident in our world. Case and point:you have Piano or Violin prodigies but you don't have Physics prodigies(or prodigies in Chemistry, Genetics, Electronics ...) You can readily find 4yr-old to 9yr-oldconcert quality pianiston youtube. But have you ever seen a 6 year-old programming star capable of developing commercial software? Purchased a piece of electronics designed by a 5 year-old?It thus lead to:Future technology creators/innovators would be non-biological beings. Us human have to take years of grade-school, middle-school, high-school, college, grad school, post doc... Unlike human being, the computer's knowledge is transferable. A new computer can down-load everything the last generation computer knows. The "new born" computer with the next-generation technology can pretty much hit the ground running.The next step is therefore:we got wiped out -or- human being uncomfortable with calling a piece of quantum processor (or whatever processor) the boss, we sabotage those oppressive processor bosses and start over. So, top technology of the 28th century may be moving pictures with live-piano background music and stage actors reading the dialog.So, sorry, immortality is only for the already fossilized. The rest of us must wait, the fossilized few with rejoin us as we are consumed by the red-giant. We will be reflow-ed by that giant reflow oven, and then blew away as dust and gas. By then, I will finally meet up with my hot high school girl friend again... hmmm... but my wife will be there too. I better be well behaving dust particles or my wife will be very angry dust particles.

author: timofonic
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 08:41:28 pm
content: Quote from: Chris C on August 27, 2015, 06:00:39 pmI prefer MPV, anyway.I think you just need to give these videos to them and they'll investigate about it. Unless they are too personal, of course.MPV developer is quite supportive, too.

author: timofonic
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 09:20:06 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on August 27, 2015, 07:30:43 pmYou know there's a third way: Make ourselves to be very sophisticated computers.It can start with brain interfaces to upload that knowledge in hours and maybe finally in minutes after the use of brain implants.This would totally revolutionize education, making acquiring knowledge something extremely easy. Of course this would change the field of education in an extremely way, using these hours for practicing and making experiments or group projects.Then brain could be improved in both biotechnology and bionics.I would imagine 7yo discussing about advanced EE, physics, chemistry and biology over their BrainNet, all while controlling Androids to make multiple physical labor.The use of nootropics is rising, because people (specially science students) want better cognitive performance.This is very much in science fiction novels and movies. There's a movement called transhumanism and posthumanism.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 09:38:45 pm
content: Quote from: Circuiteromalaguito on August 27, 2015, 09:20:06 pmAt that point, we are no longer biological. How much can we "cyberize" and still consider ourselves human. Something certainly will survive, but is that us The Human Species?Particularly looking at long term problems:(1) Sun going nova(2) Visit by Andromeda (the whole damn Galaxy is coming for dinner)(3) The expansion of the universeFor number 3, we have to move our consciousness to very low power device(s) as the last star we saw WAS the last energy source in our universe.

author: FrankBuss
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 09:48:03 pm
content: You are already cyberized, or you would live naked in the woods, and even worse, without the internet.

author: ez24
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 09:51:41 pm
content: If it not too much trouble can I ask how youQuoteI am trying to keep over 8,000 files over 8 backups and I do not know if one copy is the same as the other.(been working on this for a month now with about 100tb worth all different size drives - about to go nuts)Also enjoyed the video, for some reason I copied it and put it in my PIC32 video folder.QuoteFunny I tried to open one yesterday and it would not. I just deleted it. I will start keeping copies of the video viewers I use with my backups. I never thought about it.Do you speak Cajun French ?thanks

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 09:52:48 pm
content: Quote from: FrankBuss on August 27, 2015, 09:48:03 pmNo I am not. The only non-biological in me is my tooth filling. Cyberize is mixing electronics and electromechanical with the biological.

author: Chris C
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2015, 11:01:27 pm
content: Quote from: ez24 on August 27, 2015, 09:51:41 pmI used to use a shareware program called CloneMaster, that would scan files and show a list of duplicates, allowing you to delete at will. That was a long time ago. There are probably other newer programs out there that will do the same, maybe some that are free.Nowadays I keep a list of all files, with dates/sizes/attribs/checksums in a custom database. Which I use for multiple purposes. Checking for duplicates is just a matter of writing a query or code. Give that you have prior VBA experience, you could make something custom in Excel or Access too if you wanted.The nice thing about that is being able to add your own rules. With CloneMaster, if it came up with 2,000 duplicate files, it's great that it picked them out for you; but you still have to click 2,000 checkboxes telling it which version to remove. With your own code, you can tell it something like one folder is primary, automatically delete all files from secondary folders that exist in the primary. Reducing the number of manual actions you'll have to take. (Although maybe a modern CloneMaster equivalent has some facility like this built-in.)Before I had code for checksums, I used a freeware utility called CheckFiles, by Ron V. Webber. It scans the folders you specify and dumps all checksums to a text file. Again, that's old, there are probably modern alternatives.Quote from: ez24 on August 27, 2015, 09:51:41 pmYep. I keep historical copies of anything that might be required to open an old file. Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, audio/video players, etc. Plus Windows versions, so if any of these old programs won't run on my current version of Windows anymore, I can load the version of Windows it worked with in a virtual PC.Quote from: ez24 on August 27, 2015, 09:51:41 pmVery little!

author: ez24
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2015, 04:23:31 am
content: Quote from: Chris C on August 27, 2015, 11:01:27 pmSince it is the 10th aniversity of Katrina there are a lot of stories on the radio and TV, that is why I asked. Did you suffer from Katrina?I wonder if there is a Cajum French C compiler? This got me to thinking, I wonder if there is a Latin C compiler?

author: Chris C
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2015, 07:41:58 am
content: Quote from: ez24 on August 28, 2015, 04:23:31 amWow, I didn't even realize. I don't watch TV so I'm a bit out of the loop on such things. My friends call and warn me when things like Katrina, 911, and such are happening, so I can tune in.Katrina actually wasn't a very bad hurricane. What made it bad is that it hit New Orleans. Which is below sea level, had known weakened levees, and the authorities didn't take the threat seriously until it was too late. A lot of citizens didn't either. When the realization of what was happening set in, all semblance of order broke down. I'm sure you, like most, saw some of that in the media.Here's a bit of what you probably didn't see. The official evacuation buses were refusing to let owners bring their pets, so a lot of them chose not to evacuate. Some volunteers in nearby parishes started organizing extra buses to provide pet-friendly evacuations. They were told don't come. They did anyway, and were not allowed to enter. The looting was not limited to civilians. Apparently some police looted what they could, loaded it into their police cars, and fled; I recall authorities still trying to locate them weeks later. The communications infrastructure was non-existent, landlines and cell phones down, no backup plans. One night I got a surprise, N.O.'s Mayor Nagin called me on the phone. He was trying to locate my boss, because my boss at one point had a satellite phone, which they were desperately in need of and wanted to borrow.An hour and a half away in Baton Rouge where I live, Katrina itself was no big deal at all. Although our infrastructure was not prepared for our 300K population going to 450K in just a few days. It was many months before things got back to halfway normal.As far as direct effects, Gustav was worse. Flying debris poking holes in my house! And three days without power. That was one I didn't take seriously enough, and didn't prepare for. Thank goodness I'm a hacker. I built cell phone chargers from a surplus of old D cells. Rigged something up to cook over oil candles to save what food I could, including a surprisingly nice pot roast. Boiled water over cups of burning rubbing alcohol for morning coffee. Found ways to adapt, and live fairly normally, except for air conditioning and computers (the latter which I rely on heavily, so I was very, very bored). The only other thing I found I couldn't do was dry clothes, and I sure wish I hadn't procrastinated on doing laundry before it hit.Andrew back in '92 was bad too.Quote from: ez24 on August 28, 2015, 04:23:31 amI shudder to think what Cajun code would look like.