How Algorithms Shape Our World

This white guy must be hairier than Wolverine under that shit, listen to the grinding on that mic....
 
Ski said:
This white guy must be hairier than Wolverine under that shit, listen to the grinding on that mic....
Click to expand...

LOL! Glad I wasn't the only one who noticed that.

Short but interesting look on algorithms and how they take part in shaping our world.
 
Am I the only one that kept thinking of Skynet? :p The stuff about the Amazon algorithms is pretty amusing, been shopping for headphones lately and that shit's been driving me crazy. You'll see these 5 and 10 cent price drops all day long and then it randomly drops $5 or $10... Could be worse, Newegg's price hiking algorithm for hot items used to be as dumb as it gets.
 
Skynet wasn't this stupid, and was also based on an adaptive ZISC-based neural-network processor architecture akin to a hypercube, and was also capable of translating more than ones and zeros.

That video was nothing more than a Steve Jobs wannabe with a bunch of contrived information thrown into a one-size-fits-all explanation without actually explaining anything on the technical side.
Please, show us the actual algorithms (and code) and how they actually work, not a bunch of graphs with stupid naming schemes, that only gives the audience the weakest analogy of what's actually happening, at best.

Also, when algorithms crash, it isn't a big "mystery" on what happened with "information we can no longer read".
It's called going through the source-code and deciphering what went down and which algorithms crashed/interfered with one another.

Fuck that video was stupid.
 
Good post, Steve.

I appreciate the occasions when you guys post socially relevant topics. Like it or not, we now live in a world where anything could hang on a computer making a cold and calculating decision. Inevitably it will be less human.
 
Red Falcon said:
a bunch of graphs with stupid naming schemes, that only gives the audience the weakest analogy of what's actually happening
Click to expand...

The algorithms were detected by looking for patterns of activity on the exchange and their activity was mapped to the graphs. The graphs aren't analogies - they are what was actually happening.

The actual code for the algorithms is running on some remote server connected to the exchange and isn't publicly available. When those algorithms crash you can't look at the source code to fix them, because you don't have the source code. And the people who do have the code are - apparently - asleep at the wheel.
 
I imagine the people who do have the code just wash their hands of the matter or obfuscate the whole thing to the point where it's impossible for anyone to get at what's really going on... There's a reason they're competing w/each other after all.
 
Impulse said:
I imagine the people who do have the code just wash their hands of the matter or obfuscate the whole thing to the point where it's impossible for anyone to get at what's really going on... There's a reason they're competing w/each other after all.
Click to expand...

Job security.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top