[EM] Exact spatial model probabilities?

[Rob Lanphier]

On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 9:40 AM Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<km_elmet at t-online.de> wrote:
> It's things like these that makes me think that current computers are
> capable of vastly more than they're currently being used for. Computers
> with less than 1M of RAM could be used to calculate missile
> trajectories, run industrial process control, etc. We now have 16G or more.
>
> Of course, I know that part of the reason is that programmer time is now
> the most scarce resource. The programs that are developed now (mostly
> user-facing stuff) are much slower than they need to be in part because
> it would take too much time and effort to optimize down to the bare metal.

If you aren't familiar with Wirth's law, you probably should be:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law>
In short: "software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is
becoming faster"

I'm reasonably sure that the reason why my browser slows down
(whenever that does) is because the website that I've browsed to is
doing the following:
20% Bitcoin mining
20% farmed out virtual machines running jobs for the website I've browsed to
20% bloated A/B testing framework deciding which order to put the
graphics on the screen in
20% other unnecessary Javascript bloat in the name of "usability"
(usability for the programmer of the website; not for me)
20% functionality that MAY be useful on the webpage (or perhaps if I
click on the correct three things to make the gamble pay off)

Ever since I seen video codecs implemented in Javascript, after (many
years before) being surrounded by codec engineers who had me convinced
that the work that they did was much too complicated for my little
brain, and best left to rocket surgeons like them, AND when I saw my
state-of-the-art computer in 1997 being slowed to a crawl with 10 fps
video in a postage-stamp-sized window using one of these
state-of-the-art codecs, I've come to realize Zoom calls are not
rocket surgery.  It also makes me wonder what else Zoom is doing in
the background when my Zoom call stutters.  :-)

Speaking of video calls, I'm planning on holding my video call at 2pm
PST today here:
https://whereby.com/robla

...and I'm planning to stick around until 4pm PST.

2pm PST is three hours away from the coming "top of the hour".  I may
be a bit late because I'm planning to go to a Center for Election
Science event which slightly overlaps:
<https://electionscience.org/events/brokencongressionalprimaries/>

The electionscience.org event will probably be over by 2:30pm PST, and
you should be able to join my whereby.com call before I get there and
potentially talk to some of my friends who know nothing about
electoral reform.  You may even be able to convince one of them that
electoral reform is an important topic.

Sorry for the tangent.  Carry on!

Rob