Silicon Valley’s Faux “Weissman Rating”, Is Being Used In Actual Analysis
Silicon Valley is, after all, the HBO comedy a couple of nerdy tech man who invents a world-changing information compression algorithm – and perfects it due to a dialog about jerking off an auditorium stuffed with strangers, which we’re fairly positive can be how Google received began too.
Lest their dick-jerking calculations appear to be something aside from good, the producers behind the present turned to “precise Stanford professor Tsachy Weissman and then-PhD pupil Vinith Misra” to provide you with Pied Piper’s fictional algorithm and the metric by which it could possibly be measured in opposition to different fictional algorithms.
Though the algorithm itself “isn’t potential with right now’s know-how,” the formulation for its analysis, referred to as “the Weissman Rating,” is a very legit equation and has been subsequently adopted by researchers, who consider it to be a “precious metric.” Some teachers have adopted it for lessons with out informing college students that it was completely from a present that used to air after Sport of Thrones. It was even utilized by Dropbox.
Sadly, this development hasn’t continued with different HBO comedies; like, nobody appears significantly excited about constructing Larry David’s “pee cubes,” sadly.
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The CIA Tried To Copy James Bond’s Devices
Suave undercover agent and unhinged maniac James Bond in all probability would have been shot, stabbed, or devoured by sharks way back if not for his spectacular arsenal of high-tech devices; from exploding pens to garotte wristwatches, to literal boomboxes, as a result of 1987.
When you may suppose that these wacky gizmos have been impressed by the creations of precise intelligence companies, it was really the different approach round. Reportedly, again within the Nineteen Fifties, the pinnacle of the CIA, Allen Dulles, was obsessed with the literary exploits of 007 and ultimately met with writer Ian Fleming. On account of their friendship, Fleming started portraying American spies in a extra “favorable” gentle, whereas Dulles had the CIA “experiment with Bond-style know-how” – which included really creating the “poison-tipped dagger footwear” from From Russia With Love.
In addition they tried to create Bond’s Aston Martin-housed monitoring system from Goldfinger however couldn’t fairly work out the know-how since “the system actually didn’t work very effectively when the enemy received right into a crowded metropolis.”
We’re guessing that prescribing brokers a gentle food plan of grain alcohol and unprotected intercourse with a whole bunch of random strangers additionally didn’t yield super-great outcomes.
Associated: James Bond Is Objectively The Worst Motion Hero
The Mafia Started Appearing Like Characters From The Godfather
With the potential exception of squeamish horses, just about everyone loves The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola’s epic story of the Corleone crime household. For many people, it’s exhausting to separate our notion of the actual mafia from what we noticed in The Godfather – or for these of us who grew up within the ‘90s, what we noticed in a number of episodes of Animaniacs.
However it seems that even precise mobsters started taking their cues from Coppola’s 1972 movie. Yup, apparently “generations” of these in organized crime regarded to The Godfather for “inspiration, validation and as a playbook for the best way to communicate and act and gown” and infrequently performed the theme music “at events and weddings.”
In accordance with one mobster’s widow, after the film got here out, her husband and his associates started “kissing and hugging much more than they did earlier than” whereas quoting “traces from the film.” And Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano took life classes from Vito Corleone’s therapy of Sonny, even cribbing dialogue verbatim. Within the ‘90s, mobsters began sending severed horse heads as threats – and craziest of all, earlier than Mario Puzo’s novel, the time period “Godfather” had “no underworld connotations.”
Associated: 6 Respectable Organizations That Secretly Act Just like the Mafia
Harry Potter’s Marauder’s Map Was Recreated By Engineers (And Might Save Lives)
Harry Potter’s “Marauder’s Map” is, after all, the enchanted piece of parchment that permits the boy wizard to see the footsteps of whoever is close by always, thus serving to him to sneak round Hogwarts undetected – and in addition, presumably, see when his classmates and academics are on the bathroom (he was nonetheless a teenage boy, in spite of everything).
Engineers at Carnegie Mellon recreated the impact of the Marauder’s Map in actual life by putting in gadgets that may sense vibrations on the ground – which, coupled with “machine studying algorithms” that filter out “background noise created by different objects and equipment,” enable them to trace folks’s footsteps on a display that’s virtually definitely not product of an previous scrap of paper.
Whereas the challenge was impressed by Harry Potter, this might have optimistic purposes in the actual world (not like many features of Harry Potter today). Within the agricultural sector, this tech is already permitting “farmers in Thailand to observe the state of their livestock.” And in well being care settings, it may detect “adjustments in an individual’s motion,” which could “present an early warning of a coronary heart assault, stroke, or whether or not they could be about to expertise a fall.” And if it’s not an excessive amount of bother, flying broomsticks in all probability couldn’t damage both.
Associated: 6 Horrifying Implications of the Harry Potter Universe
So Many Innovations Got here Out Of Watching Star Trek
Whereas a few of us merely watched Star Trek for the drama, humor, and scantily-clad aliens, others mined the long-lasting depiction of Earth’s future for profitable, probably world-changing concepts. Just like the cellular phone, which was invented after engineer Martin Cooper noticed Captain Kirk use his communicator on TV. So the subsequent time you make an essential name or, let’s be sincere, learn a Cracked article on the bathroom, know that you’ve got William Shatner to thank.
Equally, the creator of the MP3 “conceived of the thought of the digital music file” after watching an episode of Star Trek: The Subsequent Era through which Information listens to music by means of the pc – in all probability as a result of cracking the MP3 was approach simpler than determining how the hell to construct an android with a positronic mind.
There have additionally been makes an attempt to construct real-life replicators, sight-enhancing visors, and even phasers. Though, sadly nobody’s taken a stab at making a sexually-gratifying mist-dispensing candle.
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