HFTs Real Time Newsfeed onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com HFTs Real Time Newsfeed

Real Time Internet, beschleunigte Gesellschaft und allgemeine Hektik, eh? Fuck that. Der Broker-Service Business Wire verkauft einen direkten Zugriff auf Pressemitteilungen und Quartalsergebnisse und mit diesen Zeitvorteilen in Höhe von drölf Millisekunden erbeuten High Frequency Trading-Algorithmen dann im Fall eines Kosmetik-Herstellers 800k Dollar, ich gehe davon aus, dass all das automatisiert geschicht. Ein Realtime-Feed-lesender HFT-Algorithmus. Modern Crime.

Some high-speed firms have had direct access to news releases for at least the past few years, according to people familiar with the situation. These firms typically are paying thousands of dollars a month to get the news releases.

The trend, previously unreported, could help explain what happened on the afternoon of Dec. 5, when Ulta Salon Cosmetics & Fragrance Inc. […] released its earnings. At 4 p.m. EST, Ulta’s stock was changing hands for about $122 a share. Business Wire issued the company’s earnings, which missed analysts’ forecasts, about 150 milliseconds after 4 p.m., according to a person familiar with the timing of the release. A millisecond is one-thousandth of a second.

Within about 50 milliseconds, nearly $800,000 of Ulta’s stock was sold on stock exchanges in a series of rapid trades. But major newswires hadn’t yet distributed Ulta’s earnings, according to the newswires. Bloomberg News issued the release 242 milliseconds after 4 p.m. Dow Jones issued it 464 milliseconds after 4 p.m. Thomson Reuters Corp. TRI.T +0.42% issued the release about one second after 4 p.m.

Speed Traders Get an Edge – Paying for Direct Access to News Releases Can Give a Lucrative Time Advantage (via Gawker)

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com HFTs Real Time Newsfeed

Crowd-funding bad science? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Crowd-funding bad science?

I've been mulling over the larger trend of crowd-funding of research, and trying to figure out what exactly is bothering me about it.

Then I saw this criticism of a crowd-funded HIV vaccine project, Immunity Project. It crystallizes the worries I've had, especially when crowd-funding goes large-scale.

Immunity Project has a pretty noble goal. They want to study a subpopulation of people who are naturally able to control HIV (termed HIV controllers), and use that knowledge to create a vaccine which they'll release for free.

The problem is that there is very little chance of this working. The way the immune system works, is that your body will break down viruses into little bits (peptides). Each of those little bits are placed into a special protein (MHC) which has a groove to hold them. This protein/virus bit complex is then "presented" to T cells, and ideally activates them to help kill HIV infected cells.

Previous studies of HIV controllers has already shown that one major reason for their amazing ability is due to unique variations in their genes that encode MHC (Source and source). Until we get gene therapy working, this is not something we're going to be able to confer to other people through a vaccine.

Immunity Project doesn't have much detail about how their vaccine works. From what I can gather, they isolated the parts of the virus HIV controllers tend to target, and are delivering those peptides using a new delivery method of microspheres. Not disclosing the details of their approach is understandable, but the general lack of scientific backing is concerning. Bruce Walker is a major scientist in the HIV controller field (he published the above papers), and according to the Nature article, he was originally cited as on the board of Immunity Project until he asked to be removed and said his inclusion was an error. (Random side note: I get to see him talk today about his research and curious/hoping it'll be about HIV controllers). Many other scientists also express their doubts, and this proposal was already rejected by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

So is Immunity Project taking advantage of an amazing marketing team, but is ultimately going to waste people's time and money? Or is there a place for these sort of far-fetched plans using private money? I would be more comfortable with the latter, if their website made it more apparent how shaky their venture is. I'm afraid this will just betray public trust in science more when it fails. (Other random side note: HATE their use of hack on their site. Techie buzz word that doesn't really have much meaning biologically).

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Crowd-funding bad science?

HFTs Real Time Newsfeed onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com HFTs Real Time Newsfeed

Real Time Internet, beschleunigte Gesellschaft und allgemeine Hektik, eh? Fuck that. Der Broker-Service Business Wire verkauft einen direkten Zugriff auf Pressemitteilungen und Quartalsergebnisse und mit diesen Zeitvorteilen in Höhe von drölf Millisekunden erbeuten High Frequency Trading-Algorithmen dann im Fall eines Kosmetik-Herstellers 800k Dollar, ich gehe davon aus, dass all das automatisiert geschicht. Ein Realtime-Feed-lesender HFT-Algorithmus. Modern Crime.

Some high-speed firms have had direct access to news releases for at least the past few years, according to people familiar with the situation. These firms typically are paying thousands of dollars a month to get the news releases.

The trend, previously unreported, could help explain what happened on the afternoon of Dec. 5, when Ulta Salon Cosmetics & Fragrance Inc. […] released its earnings. At 4 p.m. EST, Ulta’s stock was changing hands for about $122 a share. Business Wire issued the company’s earnings, which missed analysts’ forecasts, about 150 milliseconds after 4 p.m., according to a person familiar with the timing of the release. A millisecond is one-thousandth of a second.

Within about 50 milliseconds, nearly $800,000 of Ulta’s stock was sold on stock exchanges in a series of rapid trades. But major newswires hadn’t yet distributed Ulta’s earnings, according to the newswires. Bloomberg News issued the release 242 milliseconds after 4 p.m. Dow Jones issued it 464 milliseconds after 4 p.m. Thomson Reuters Corp. TRI.T +0.42% issued the release about one second after 4 p.m.

Speed Traders Get an Edge – Paying for Direct Access to News Releases Can Give a Lucrative Time Advantage (via Gawker)

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com HFTs Real Time Newsfeed

The Gruesome and Excruciating Practice of Mummifying Your Own Body onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Gruesome and Excruciating Practice of Mummifying Your Own Body

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Mummification is a fascinating way to preserve a person's remains, whether to be worshipped or because they're planning on using that body at a later date. But some people have gone to incredible lengths to prepare their own bodies for mummification while they were still alive.

Top image: Daijuku Bosatsu Shinnyokai-Shonin.

Why have people practiced self-mummification?

The most famous practitioners of self-mummification to modern readers are the sokushinbutsu—the Buddhas in the flesh—whose bodies have been found in Japan, primarily in Yamagata Prefecture. Some 24 individuals, mainly practitioners of Shingon Buddhism, have been found successfully self-mummified, their deaths dating between the 12th and early 20th centuries AD. However, the practice of self-mummification goes back further than that. In Science and Civilisation in China: Volume Five, the contributors speculate that self-mummification was originally a Taoist practice, and notes that, while the Japanese monks are the most famous self-mummifiers, cases of deliberate self-mummification have been recorded in China and India as well.

The practice of self-mummification among the monks of Yamagata came to light in the 1960s, after Kosei Ando and a team of researchers at Niigata University published Nihon no miira, an account of Japan's mummies, and Matsumoto Akira helped form the Japanese Mummy Research Group.

Mummies (miira) are not uncommon in Japan, but the far rarer practice of self-mummification, as you might imagine, is an extremely unpleasant one, attempted only by the most devoted of ascetics. So why go through all that trouble just to turn yourself into a particularly well preserved corpse? In Living Buddhas: The Self-Mummified Monks of Yamagata, Japan, Ken Jeremiah points out that many religions, including Christianity, have viewed the incorruptibility of the corpse as a sign of special grace or supernatural ability. There are many accounts (many of them likely apocryphal) of highly spiritual individuals dying during prayer or meditation and failing to decay after several days. Where sokushinbutsu was concerned, a successful act of self-mummification meant the successful execution of a final spiritual practice. If, after an attempt at self-mummification, the attempted practitioner was found decayed, it was taken as a sign that the spiritual goal had not been achieved.

So what was that spiritual goal? Jeremiah notes that the idea of preserving the body runs contrary to much of Buddhist scripture, which is less concerned with the physical body than with the spiritual component. However, it's important to remember that the sokushinbutsu of Yamagata were members of the issei gyonin sect of Shingon Buddhism, which married esoteric Buddhism with indigenous spiritual practices, and utilized aspects of Daoism and Hinduism. They were practitioners of shugendō, a spiritual practice closely linked with mountain dwellers, known as shugenja, who believed they attained special powers through ascetic acts. The biographies of successful sokushinbutsu (the ones that have known biographies; some information on the lives of sokushinbutsu have been lost or destroyed over time) include tales of everything from meditating under waterfalls and in caves to gouging out their own eyes.

Taoist practitioners of self-mummification saw the practice not as suicide, but as a path to immortality, and similarly, the sokushinbutsu saw the process as transcendance rather than death. Kosei Ando linked the practice to the bodhisattva Maitreya—the future Buddha who, in the meantime resides in Tuṣita Heaven —suggesting that sokushinbutsu employed their practice to aid Maitreya. They would remain in their mummified state, which was viewed as a death-like trance, for 5.67 billion years until they would be called upon to assist Maitreya for the benefit of all humankind. However, in the essay "In Search of a New Interpretation of Ascetic Experiences" from the book Rethinking Japan, Massimo Raveri seems to prefer the interpretation of Miyata Noboru, who sees a sense of optimism in the worship of the sokushinbutsu, whom it is said, will wake to "acclaim the new reincarnation of the Buddha in the world" and perhaps are the bodhisattva themselves. Whatever the specifics of their spiritual quest, the sokushinbutsu would have undertaken self-mummification as a form of spiritual transformation for the benefit of others.

How to Mummify Yourself

Mummifying yourself is not a thing you do on the spur of the moment, especially in Japan's humid climates. In fact, there is a 3,000-day "training" process for turning an ordinary ascetic's body into a mummy's. The key element of the process is dietary; Japanese ascetics would commonly abstain from cereals, removing wheat, rice, foxtail millet, pros so millet, and soybeans. Instead, they would eat things like nuts, berries, pine needles, tree bark, and resin (which is why the diet of the sokushinbutsu was called mokujikyo, or "tree-eating." Over time, the diet would become more restrictive, starving the body of nutrients and eliminating the fat and moisture that can encourage bodily decay after death; X-rays of sokushinbutsu have even shown river stones in the guts of mummies. Jeremiah suggests that, beyond the weight loss, some aspects of the diet may have helped with the preservation of the body after death. For example, certain herbs and toxic cycad nuts may have inhibited bacterial growth. And at least some sokushinbutsu are said to have drunk a tea made from urushi, the sap of Toxicodendron vernicifluum, which is typically used to make lacquer. In addition to facilitating vomiting, the urushi may have functioned as a sort of embalming fluid, rendering the body toxic to potential flesh-eating invaders.

Once the ascetic was prepared to attempt to become a sokushinbutsu, it's said he would step into a tiny burial chamber and has himself buried alive, with a small opening to allow air inside the chamber. There he would sit, chanting sutra and ringing a bell to signal that he was still alive. Once the bell stopped ringing, the chamber would be completely sealed, and after three years it would be opened again to see if the attempt at self-mummification proved successful.

What happens after you try to mummify yourself?

Hundreds of people are thought to have attempted this form of self-mummifcation, and it's not known how many were successful. However, you can visit some of the successful sokushinbutsu at their shrines. Famously, Daijuku Bosatsu Shinnyokai-Shonin, who mummified himself at the age of 96 in 1783, sits in the Ryusui-ji Dainichibou Temple in Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture. If, when your burial chamber was opened, your body was found preserved, then you could be worshipped as a sokushinbutsu. You could be dressed in robes and placed in a shrine where humanity could await your reawakening. Here, there is actually a small cheat in the self-mummification process; if the body was not decayed but not totally preserved, the skin would actually be treated with incense smoke to ensure it would last.

However, changing mores and laws meant that not all successful sokushinbutsu were enshrined. When the priest and ascetic Bukkai Shonin died in 1903, he was interred and was supposed to be exhumed after three years, but exhumation was illegal in Japan at that point in time. When Bukkai was eventually exhumed, it was in 1961 by a team of researchers, who found the ascetic quite well preserved.

And if your body was found rotting when the tomb was opened? Well, then no worship for your remains. An exorcism would be performed and the remains would be reburied. All those years of self-starvation those final days spent alone in a dark chamber, and your remains become an object of caution rather than worship.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Gruesome and Excruciating Practice of Mummifying Your Own Body

Why You Should Upload Yourself to a Supercomputer onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Why You Should Upload Yourself to a Supercomputer

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We're still decades — if not centuries — away from being able to transfer a mind to a supercomputer. It's a fantastic future prospect that makes some people incredibly squeamish. But there are considerable benefits to living a digital life. Here's why you should seriously consider uploading.

As I've pointed out before, uploading is not a given; there are many conceptual, technological, ethical, and security issues to overcome. But for the purposes of this Explainer, we're going to assume that uploads, or digital mind transfers, will eventually be possible — whether it be from the scanning and mapping of a brain, serial brain sectioning, brain imaging, or some unknown process.

Indeed, it's a prospect that's worth talking about. Many credible scientists, philosophers, and futurists believe there's nothing inherently intractable about the process. The human brain — an apparent substrate independent Turing Machine — adheres to the laws of physics in a material universe. Eventually, we'll be able to create a model of it using non-biological stuff — and even convert, or transfer, existing analog brains to digital ones.

So, assuming you'll live long enough to see it — and muster up the courage to make the paradigmatic leap from meatspace to cyberspace — here's what you have to look forward to:

An End to Basic Biological Functions

Once you're living as a stream of 1's and 0's you'll never have to worry about body odor, going to the bathroom, or having to brush your teeth. You won't need to sleep or have sex — unless, of course, you program yourself such that you'll both want and need to do these things (call it a purist aesthetic choice).

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At the same time, you won't have to worry about rising cholesterol levels, age-related disorders, and broken bones. But you will have to worry about viruses (though they'll be of a radically different sort), hackers, and unhindered access to processing power.

Radically Extended Life

The end of an organic, biological human life will offer the potential for an indefinitely long one. For many, virtual immortality will be the primary appeal of uploading. So long as the supercomputer in which you reside is secure and safe (e.g. planning an exodus from the solar system when the Sun enters into its death throes), you should be able to live until the universe collapses in the Big Rip — something that shouldn't happen for another 22 billion years.

Creating Backup Copies

I spoke to futurist John Smart about this one. He's someone who's actually encouraging the development of technologies required for brain preservation and uplift. To that end, he's the Vice President of the Brain Preservation Foundation, a not-for-profit research group working to evaluate — and award — a number of scanning a preservation strategies.

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The Matrix: Reloaded

Smart says it's a good idea to create an upload as a backup for your bioself while you're still alive.

"We are really underthinking the value of this," he told io9. "With molecular-scale MRI, which may be possible for large tissue samples in a few decades, and works today for a few cubic nanometers, people may do nondestructive self-scanning (uploading) of their brains while they are alive, mid- to late-21st century."

Smart says that if he had such a backup on file, he would be far more zen about his own biological death.

"I could see whole new philosophical movements opening up around this," he says. "Would you run your upload as an advisor/twin while you are alive? Or just keep him as your backup, to boot up whenever you choose to leave biolife, for whatever personal reasons? I think people will want both choices, and both options will be regularly chosen."

Making Virtually Unlimited Copies of Yourself

Related to the previous idea, we could also create an entire armada of ourselves for any number of purposes.

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"The ability to make arbitrary numbers of copies of yourself, to work on tough problems, or try out different personal life choice points, and to reintegrate them later, or not, as you prefer, will be a great new freedom of uploads," says Smart. "This happens already when we argue with ourselves. We are running multiple mindset copies — and we must be careful with that, as it can sometimes lead to dissociative personality disorder when combined with big traumas — but in general, multiple mindsets for people, and multiple instances of self, will probably be a great new capability and freedom."

Smart points to the fictional example of Jamie Madrox, aka Multiple Man, the comic book superhero who can create, and later reabsorb, "dupes" of himself, with all their memories and experiences.

Dramatically Increased Clock Speed

Aside from indefinite lifespans, this may be one of the sweetest aspects of uploading. Living in a supercomputer would be like Neo operating in Bullet Time or small animals who perceive the world in slow-motion relative to humans. Living in a supercomputer, we could do more thinking, get more done, and experience more compared to wetware organisms functioning in "real time." And best of all, this will significantly increase the amount of relative time we can have in the Universe before it comes to grinding halt.

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"I think the potential for increased clock speeds is the central reason why uploads are the next natural step for leading edge intelligence on Earth," says Smart. "We seem to be rushing headlong to virtual and physical "inner space."

Radically Reduced Global Footprints

Uploading is also environmentally friendly, something that could help us address our perpetually growing population — especially in consideration of radical life extension at the biological level. In fact, transferring our minds to digital substrate may actually be a matter of necessity. Sure, we'll need powerful supercomputers to run the billions — if not trillions — of individual digital experiences, but the relatively low power requirements and reduced levels of fossil fuel emissions simply can't compare to the burden we impose on the planet with our corporeal civilization.

Intelligence Augmentation

It'll also be easier to enhance our intelligence when we're purely digital. Trying to boost the cognitive power of a biological brain is prohibitively difficult and dangerous. A digital mind, on the other hand, would be flexible, robust, and easy to repair. Augmented virtual minds could have higher IQ-type intelligence, enhanced memory, and increased attention spans. We'll need to be very careful about going down this path, however, as it could lead to an out-of-control transcending upload — or even insanity.

Designer Psychologies

Uploads will also enable us to engineer and assume any number of alternative psychological modalities. Human experience is currently dominated by the evolutionary default we call neurotypicality, though outliers exist along the autistic spectrum and other so-called psychological "disorders." These customized cognitive processing frameworks will allow uploaded individuals to selectively alter the specific and unique ways in which they absorb, analyze, and perceive the world, allowing for variation in subjectivity, social engagement, aesthetics, and biases. These frameworks could also be changed on the fly, allowing uploads to change their frameworks depending on the context. Or just to try it out and feel like another person.

Enhanced Emotion Control

Somewhat related to the last one, uploaded individuals will also be able to monitor, regulate, and choose the state of their subjective well-being and emotional state, including levels of happiness.

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The Thirteenth Floor

Uploads could default to the normal spectrum of human emotion, or choose to operate within a predefined band of emotional variability — including, more conceptually, the introduction of new emotions altogether. Safety mechanisms could be built-in to prevent a person from spiraling into a state of debilitating depression — or a state of perpetual bliss, unless that's precisely what the upload is seeking.

A Better Hive Mind

The ability to link biological minds to create a kind of technologically-enabled telepathy, or techlepathy, is probably possible. But as I've pointed out before, it'll be exceptionally difficult and messy. A fundamental problem will be to translate signals, or thoughts, in a sensible way such that each person in the link-up has the same mental representation for a given object or concept. This translation problem could be overcome by developing standard brain-to-brain communication protocols, or by developing innate translation software. And of course, because all the minds are in the same computer, establishing communication links will be a breeze.

Toying WIth Alternative Physics

Quite obviously, uploads will be able to live in any number of virtual reality environments. These digital worlds will be like souped-up and fully immersive versions of Second Life or World of Warcraft. But why limit ourselves to the physics of the Known Universe when we can tweak it any number of ways? Uploads could add or take away physical dimensions, lower the effect of gravity, increase the speed of light, and alter the effects of electromagnetism. All bets are off in terms of what's possible and the kind of experiences that could be had. By comparison, life in the analog world will seem painfully limited and constrained.

Downloading to an External Body

Now, just because you've uploaded yourself to a supercomputer doesn't mean you have to stay there. Individuals will always have the option of downloading themselves into a robotic or cyborg body, even if it's just temporary. But as portrayed in Greg Egan's scifi classic, Diaspora, these ventures outside the home supercomputer will come with a major drawback — one that's closely tied to the clock speed issue: Every moment a person spends in the real, analog world will be equivalent to months or even years in the virtual world. Subsequently, you'll need to be careful about how much time you spend off the grid.

Interstellar Space Travel

As futurist Giulio Prisco has noted, it probably makes most sense to send uploaded astronauts on interstellar missions. He writes:

The very high cost of a crewed space mission comes from the need to ensure the survival and safety of the humans on board and the need to travel at extremely high speeds to ensure it's done within a human lifetime. One way to overcome that is to do without the wetware bodies of the crew, and send only their minds to the stars - their "software" — uploaded to advanced circuitry, augmented by AI subsystems in the starship's processing system...An e-crew — a crew of human uploads implemented in solid-state electronic circuitry — will not require air, water, food, medical care, or radiation shielding, and may be able to withstand extreme acceleration. So the size and weight of the starship will be dramatically reduced.

Tron Legacy concept art by David Levy.

Follow me on Twitter: @dvorsky

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onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Why You Should Upload Yourself to a Supercomputer

Ringo Starr sings "I Wish I Was a Powerpuff Girl" in an animated video onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Ringo Starr sings "I Wish I Was a Powerpuff Girl" in an animated video

The new CG Powerpuff Girls special doesn't air until January 20th, but Ringo Starr has already busted out his animated drums for his cartoon music video, "I Wish I Was a Powerpuff Girl," accompanied by the superpowered ladies with the CG looks they'll be sporting in the speical.

The (very, very short) song was written by Dave Smith, who is directing the special, and video was art directed by Kevin Dart. Starr is also appearing in the upcoming special episode, titled "Dance Pantsed," as Townsville's most flamboyant mathematician, Fibonacci Sequens.

Dart has acknowledged that some folks are upset by the CG rendition of the Powerpuff Girls and the rest of Townsville, but I must say I rather like how the CG is used here with the computer-generated cardboard cut-outs. We'll have to see how it works for the upcoming special.

[via Kevin Dart]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Ringo Starr sings "I Wish I Was a Powerpuff Girl" in an animated video