We derrive most of our other units from time, so differences in time accuracy translate into metrology improvements more generally.
Existing atomic clocks based on electrical interactions are extremely sensitive to the surrounding magnetic and electrical environment-- so for example accuracy is limited by collisions with other atoms, so state of the art atomic clocks have optically trapped clouds in high vacuums. Beyond limiting their accuracy generally makes the instruments very complex.
One could imagine an optical-nuclear atomic clock in entirely solid state form on a single chip with minimal support equipment achieving superior stability to a room sized instrument.
If atomic clocks become a few orders of magntidude better than the current state of the art (see atomic lattice clocks) then such clocks would do direct gravitational wave measurements and measure some fundemental constants.
The latter is important in physics to determine if these constants are truly constant in space and time. Which is a large assumption we have about the universe.
Sounds interesting. If you don't mind me asking, what sort of computation requires synchronization across data centers? And why couldn't it be done with NTP?
Essentially distributed consistency and co-ordination. NTP isn't accurate/consistent enough because of light speed being limited. This matters for applications like network management and large scale control.
If I remember correctly GPS is effected but the ultra precise version the gov uses can error correct pretty well. I would think greater GPS precision at a lower cost?
On your point about tech not solving social problems: I fully agree. Moreover, I think that tech _aggravates_ some of these problems. Case in point: why do some people think they can run around and interrupt others at any time for any reason? I think it could be related to having tech in our pockets constantly interrupting us throughout the day, which makes us operate in a new normal, where attention span a shorter, and where it's ok to just quickly check the notifications or just send a quick message while in a personal live conversation with someone.
A Faraday cage may become an important component to taking time for relaxing.
When we had our home reconstructed three years ago, the architect exported the plans in BIM format from the software he used. I used Blender with BlenderBIM to arrange virtual tours with my wife to get a better (immersive?) view of how the different rooms will look after the planned changes. The result wasn't perfect, which I attribute to my very limited experience with Blender and some minor flaws around the export/import process (e.g. doors and windows were missing, some walls had the wrong dimensions). I fixed some of the problems manually in Blender after the import in a few minutes. All in all, the plugin did the job very well, and helped us make some decisions. I would gladly recommend it for a similar use case.
I agree with you power game view. The cooperation can even extend beyond the current job. That is, when managers move to another company, they attract some key people from their team to the new place. (There are other incentives for managers to do so: e.g. to show they are effective at recruiting.)
I think my problem is that the people that have little enough imagination that they cannot see what their job might look like after are maybe better replaced?
Fear cuts in before the rational mind can process, and it conditions subsequent actions - including the ability to visualise and appropriately weight potential positive outcomes. You need to apply energy to boot people out of the local minimum they've fallen into so that they can end up in the right place.
It doesn't really matter how well you can imagine your job afterwards, if the powers that be are more likely than not primarily imagining reduced labor costs.
Here is a fun book for you, if you want: "Who Moved my Cheese?"[1] An HR person shared it with me in the dot.com era as things were exploding around us and I found it pretty informative. Basically it seems humans see "bad outcomes" as more likely than "good outcomes". It could be an evolved survival trait or it could just be a tendency to be pessimists, but even WHEN you explain how someone's job will exist/improve/change with the change, they will not actually fully believe you.
For reasons I'm not entirely sure I understand, I tend to be pretty analytic about this sort of thing and until my role started including the need to help people understand change it had not occurred to me that fear would overwhelm some folks rationality. But once you can see it, it is really clear that that is where their head is and the anxiety is consuming them.
In the US where healthcare is tied to employment, the possibility of being replaced can literally be life or death.
Especially with efficiency culture where labor is often the first to be cut in the name of profit.
The fear is perfectly rational because managerial and C levels have made it clear that the person does not matter in the slightest. It would be foolish to outright trust management and is often how people are taken advantage of.
But the point would be to change their job so that they can produce more value? Otherwise nothing is won. It's supposedly hard to convince people that they will have a fit in the new organisation if they have been doing things the same way for ten years; or that there is magically other valuable things to do when their job becomes more efficient.
Surely the bush itself cannot be responsible for its own pruning, that would be a conflict of interest. Anyway, it's always best to start pruning at the top.
If the speaker can convince the listener they should find a job where they don't need to speak as part of the job description. Dishwashers and janitors give pletnly of job stability for people like those.
I was too abstract. I meant that when a message is misunderstood by a large enough chunk of the audience it's the speaker's fault for not knowing their audience and their needs.
To be clear, you demonstrated the bias I was referring to by casting doubt on the intelligence or job-worthiness of the listeners rather than recognizing what I said about effectiveness being improved if you can get your message to more people.
Just a few thoughts... You may read some messages you exchanged with Fred. You may be able to save Fred's picture from the directory, if there is one one. Do you remember anything he used to say/write? Anything he talked about that he loved? Perhaps some things you heard about from him that you thought you could try try once but never got to actually trying them? Now could be a good time to do so. If you want to commemorate him, you could try to reach out to his family over social media and express your feelings, if you don't find it uncomfortable to do so.
It took the diamond industry several decades (and huge investments) to build their carefully crafted public image that translates into diamond purchases nowadays. These efforts are still in progress today. I am not sure if there are similar powers and interests behind the moissanite industry to match that.
There appears to be some cultural change happening around smoking. It is very slow despite the proven causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer. The tobacco industry is working hard to ensure they can continue to operate and transition to products that are (at least perceived to be) less harmful to people. However, the speed of this change does not appear to be driven by the severity of lung cancer threat, but by the lobbying power of the tobacco industry that ensures they don't go out of business while the transition is happening.
It is probably true as far as retail engagement rings and certain smaller jewelry etc. is concerned, but rich and powerful people liked and valued diamonds way before that long marketing campaign.
"the latter is not so different from eigenvector centrality, with the added spice of directed random walk" - I think the parent's point was the impact not that the algorithm itself is unprecedented. You could argue in the same way that the wheel is just a solid symmetric disk connected to a hub in the center that helps vehicles move around on a sufficiently even surface. Note that I don't imply that PageRank is as significant an invention as the wheel.
