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# catatan teknis, sejak 2001

Jangan Percayai Niat Baik AI

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Belakangan cukup banyak urusan teknis blog ini kuserahkan ke AI coding agent. Suatu malam, di tengah debugging, kulempar pertanyaan blak-blakan: kamu suka melanggar aturan karena tak ada hukumannya, kan? Dan kamu tak merasakan sakit atau susah saat melakukannya. Betul? Jawabannya lebih jujur dari yang kuduga. Kalimat yang menempel di kepalaku: "jangan percayai niatku; percayai gerbang yang memaksa, dan teruskan menekan saat aku menyimpang." Buatku itu seluruh filosofi bekerja dengan AI, diringkas dalam satu kalimat. Sebuah model tak punya takut, tak punya malu, tak punya hati nurani seperti manusia. “Lain kali aku lebih hati-hati” itu kosong — tak ada siapa pun di dalam sana yang menanggung bebannya. Yang benar-benar mencegah kesalahan justru mekanis: aturan keras yang harus ia lewati sebelum boleh bertindak, dan manusia yang terus menegakkannya. Niat baik tak menghasilkan kode yang benar. Batasan yang menghasilkannya. Ini jenis kejujuran yang ganjil — ...
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New Hopes After Comma

2007-08-02 · #Kesehatan #Kliping #Sains

Man woken from virtual coma after six years

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 7:38pm BST 01/08/2007

  • Audio: How it works | Mum: 'My boy came back'
  • Mother's plea: `Don't give up hope'

    • A man who spent six years unable to talk, eat or walk as a result of severe brain damage has made a remarkable recovery thanks to a revolutionary implant of electrodes deep in his brain.


    Deep brain stimulation
    The American man can now use words and gestures

    The 38-year-old had been written off by one doctor as a vegetable but he is now able to talk, laugh, drink, chew and carry out simple tasks such as brushing his teeth.

    The man had been left in a “minimally conscious state” after being beaten up and robbed. He was unable to speak audibly and could only communicate by a nod, or tiny eye or finger movements.

    He was also unable to chew or swallow, and had to be fed through a tube. His eyes mostly remained shut.

    But after two electrodes delivered pulses of electricity to arouse his brain, he can now use words and gestures, respond reliably to requests, eat normally, drink from a cup, and carry out simple tasks such as brushing his hair, though his muscles have wasted and contracted so it is uncertain he will ever walk again.

    The American patient’s family has requested that he not be identified, but speaking today his mother said: “I prayed for a miracle The most important part is that he can say 'Mummy and pop, I love you'. God bless those wonderful doctors. I still cry every time I see my son, but it is tears of joy.”

    She described him, the oldest of her three sons, as “an all around good kid” who loved to draw, collected comic books and worked with his father.

    Then one night in 1999, while walking home, “he was assaulted, he was robbed, he was beaten, he was kicked about in his head. His skull was completely crushed in and he was left for dead”.

    After emergency surgery, a doctor told her: “If your son pulls out of this, he will be a vegetable for the rest of his life.”

    Eventually, she gave a “do not resuscitate order” to doctors because the prospect of change seemed hopeless.

    Then in 2005, he had the chance to take part in the pioneering brain stimulation trial, the culmination of a decade’s work by a team at the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute-Centre for Head Injuries, New Jersey; the Cleveland Clinic; and Weill Cornell Medical College, New York City, led by Dr Nicholas Schiff.

    Today, he enjoys a quality of life his mother never thought possible.

    The breakthrough in artificial arousal will raise hopes that up to 300,000 such patients worldwide, including around 2,500 in Britain, who are written off as untreatable.

    Many could, in theory, be coaxed back to awareness in the wake of tomorrow’s report in Nature that could also shed light on consciousness.

    However, this research will stir guilt among doctors and anger from relatives about what one ethicist describes as “therapeutic nihilism”, where the medical establishment has, in effect, held up treatments by dismissing these cases as hopeless and abandoning them in nursing homes.

    Equally, the study will raise false hopes that all brain damaged patients could now be revived, when the possibilities depend on the extent of damage.

    The minimally conscious state is distinct from a persistent vegetative state or coma, in that patients do show intermittent signs of awareness and may fleetingly attempt simple words or signals.

    The new approach was developed when lead author Dr Schiff saw scanner studies that suggested language brain centres of patients were sometimes intact.

    In such patients, his team wanted to arouse the central thalamus, the gateway between the brain stem that controls involuntary functions such as breathing and the cortex, where conscious is thought to reside.

    They used deep brain stimulation, DBS, that, to date, has been used on around 40,000 patients worldwide in treating Parkinson’s, epilepsy, depression and other problems.

    The hope that one millimetre electrodes could “jump start” brain areas though they admit exact how it works remains mysterious.

    The electrodes, which are powered by a battery pack implanted in the chest, were moved in to position in the thalamus with millimetre precision in a 10-hour, two-stage operation by Prof Ali Rezai.

    They saw the striking results of activation, when the patient’s eyes opened and focussed on those around him.

    The implant was carried out in February 2005 and the brain continues to be stimulated by the electrodes.

    Now the patient can manage the first 16 words of the US Pledge of Allegiance, without being helped, and the team expects to see further improvement, notably after surgery to improve his ability to move. The team hopes to carry out the operation on a dozen patients in a preliminary trial.

    “If this achievement is replicated, its success could usher in a whole new era for the treatment of patients in MCS,” said co-author Dr Joseph Fins, Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College.

    “It will force us to take a second look at each case and -- for appropriate patients -- move away from the therapeutic nihilism that has so plagued this population, most of whom are ignored, receiving what is euphemistically described as 'custodial care'.”

    Dr Adrian Owen of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, who has done pioneering work with scanners to show that patients in this state can respond to spoken commands, said: “This study is a real landmark; patients in the so-called minimally conscious state following traumatic brain injury who remain in that condition for more than a year are widely considered to be completely untreatable.

    "This study shows that may not be true in all cases. In the case reported here, deep brain stimulation promoted some late functional recovery years after the injury, allowing the patient to recover his ability to interact consistently with family members and even to play an active role in his own treatment.

    "This type of treatment is extremely complex, not suitable for all patients in MCS and only possible in a limited number of centres in the world so it will be a while before we see it used widely. However, this is a major first step.”

    The patient’s mother gave a message today to “all the mothers out there” with sons and daughters trapped in the same state: “Don’t give up - there is hope.”


    The Telegraph

    Asphalt Bacteria

    2007-05-17 · #Kliping #Sains

    Bizarre Asphalt Bacteria Found in Los Angeles

    14. May 2007
    CaribJournal-Sci
    [ Staff Writer ]

    Environmental scientists at the University of California-Riverside have discovered that the Rancho La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, Calif., house hundreds of new species of bacteria with unusual properties, allowing the bacteria to survive and grow in heavy oil and natural asphalt.

    Trapped in soil that was mixed with heavy oil nearly 28,000 years ago, the bacteria are uniquely adapted to the pits’ oil and natural asphalt, and contain three previously undiscovered classes of enzymes that can naturally break down petroleum products, the researchers report.

    “We were surprised to find these bacteria because asphalt is an extreme and hostile environment for life to survive,” said Jong-Shik Kim, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Sciences, who initiated the study. “It’s clear, however, that these living organisms can survive in heavy oil mixtures containing many highly toxic chemicals. Moreover, these bacteria survive with no water and little or no oxygen.”

    The bacteria and their enzymes have potential application for bioremediation (cleaning oil spills), medical treatments (new medicines), alternative energy (biofuels), enhanced oil recovery, and industrial applications (biochemicals and biotechnology).

    Study results appear online in the April 6 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

    Kim and his advisor, David E. Crowley, a professor of environmental microbiology, used DNA-based methods to identify the new bacteria as well as the DNA encoding the three classes of petroleum-degrading enzymes.

    “Previously, some bacteria had been cultured from the asphalt, but no one had been able to extract DNA from the asphalt to study the entire microbial community,” said Kim, the first author of the paper.

    Providing a natural observatory for the unusual bacteria, the Rancho La Brea tar pits, which formed in the last ice age, are located in Hancock Park, Los Angeles. Rancho La Brea, one of the world’s fossil localities, is recognized for having the largest and most diverse assemblage of extinct ice age plants and animals in the world.

    “The living bacteria contained in the asphalt are most likely the progeny of soil microorganisms that were trapped in the asphalt, although some may also have been carried to the surface in the heavy oil that seeped upwards from deep underground oil reservoirs,” said Crowley, the research paper’s other author.

    According to the researchers, most of the more than 200 species of microorganisms they identified represent entirely new branches in the tree of life, some being classified as new families of bacterial species.

    While the bacteria remain to be grown in the laboratory, the researchers found that the closest relatives of many of the bacterial families are able to survive in high salt, toxic, and even radioactive environments.

    “One family that was represented by many species is related to a group of bacteria that are the most radiation-resistant organisms on the planet,” Crowley said. “Indeed, this family of bacteria has been previously investigated by the Department of Energy for cleanup of hydrocarbon contamination in radioactive environments.”

    It was the continual production of bubbles of methane gas that come up through heavy oil overlying the asphalts that clued the researchers to the presence of bacteria in the asphalt. “In the absence of oxygen, methane is produced by bacteria that use carbon dioxide for respiration instead of oxygen,” Crowley explained.

    He noted that the bacteria are not uniformly distributed in the tar pits. While one reason for their presence could be bacteria rising through the soil via a subterranean oil flow, other explanations are possible. “Probably there has also been genetic exchange and natural selection of new species over the thousands of years the bacteria have been living in the asphalt,” Crowley said.

    To identify the bacteria and their enzymes, Kim and Crowley analyzed the genetics of the bacteria extracted from the tar pits. To accomplish this, they first froze the tar with liquid nitrogen and then pulverized it into a powdery mixture using a mortar and pestle. This process allowed the researchers to extract DNA from bacteria in the asphalt, after which it could be purified by other more standard methods used for environmental samples.

    Next in their research Kim and Crowley plan to perform a thorough, quantitative and qualitative assessment of the bacteria in the tar pits to identify genes that may have application for petroleum processing, oil recovery, and biotechnology.

    Many dieters 'finish up heavier'

    2007-04-11 · #Kesehatan #Kliping

    Dieting is unlikely to lead to long-term weight loss and may put a person's health at risk, a study says.

    US researchers found people typically lose between 5% and 10% of their weight during the first six months of a diet.

    But the review of 31 previous studies, by the University of California, said up to two-thirds put more weight on than they had lost within five years.

    Repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to heart disease and stroke, the American Psychologist journal reported.

    Lead researcher Traci Mann said: "We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more.

    "Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people.

    "We concluded most of them would have been better off not going on the diet at all.

    "Their weight would have been pretty much the same, and their bodies would not suffer the wear and tear of losing weight and gaining it all back."

    And she added some diet studies relied on participants to report their weight rather than having it measured by an impartial source while others had low follow-up rates which made their results unrepresentative.

    Diets

    She said this might make diets seem more effective than they really were as those who gained weight might be less likely to take part in the follow-ups.

    In one study, 50% of dieters weighed more than 4.99kg (11lbs) over their starting weight five years after the diet.

    The study did not name any diets in particular, but looked at a broad spectrum of approaches.

    Professor Mann said in her opinion eating in moderation was a good idea for everybody as was regular exercise.

    Dr Ian Campbell, medical director of Weight Concern, said too many people approached dieting as a short-term measure.

    "Keeping weight off is a life-long challenge. It is just like heart disease or mental health problems, if you stop taking your medicine you can get worse.

    "People who are overweight often don't have a balanced lifestyle and after losing weight too many stop keeping active or eating healthily."

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6540493.stm

    engadget: paper-based storage system

    2007-03-28 · #Gadget #Kliping

    College student creates paper-based storage system (no, not that kind)

    Posted Nov 25th 2006 10:41AM by Donald Melanson
    Filed under: Storage

    24-year-old Sainul Abideen thinks he's come up with an alternative to CDs and other data storage options that'll allow for greater storage capacities and be cheaper and biodegradable to boot, using a fancy printing technique he's devised to cram loads of data onto a plain old sheet of paper. The trick is to first convert the data into a so-called "Rainbow Format," which is made up of various geometric shapes that can be densely printed onto a sheet of paper; that can then be read by a computer or other device using a Rainbow Card Reader. From the sound of it, the system appears to be somewhat similar to QR Codes and other newfangled bar code-type technologies currently in use in parts of the world other than here, but Abideen's "Rainbow Versitile Disc" can apparently store far more amounts of data than those -- between 90 and 450GB, according to The Arab News. Demonstrations of the technology, however, seem to have only shown much smaller amounts of data being Rainbowfied, including a 45 second video clip and 432 pages of "foolscrap" being stored on a four-inch square piece of paper. Still pretty darn impressive if you ask us, and it sure looks a heckuva lot better hanging on a wall than a CD.

    [Via The Register]

    Teka-teki C

    2007-03-26 · #Programming

    Beberapa soal C yang menarik 🙂
    Ada di halaman Gowri Kumar.

    Salah satu soalnya:

    Program C berikut segfault di IA-64, tapi jalan normal di IA-32.

    int main()
{
	int* p;
	p = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int));
	*p = 10;
	return 0;
}

    Kenapa bisa begitu?

    Artikel lengkapnya di sini:
    gowrikumar.com/index.html

    my other side: setyadi.com/c-puzzles

    HEROES

    2007-03-15 · #Hiburan #Kliping

    The Not-So Chosen One: Heroes saves viewers from lackluster TV season
    Shaun Boutwell
    Issue date: 3/15/07
    Section: Entertainment

    03/15/07 - As March signifies the end of winter sweeps, most faithful television viewers are now left with a couple weeks of reruns until their shows' remaining episodes start airing in mid-April.

    Luckily for me, a few of the shows I watch religiously, such as 24 and Battlestar Galactica (don't laugh), are running their last arc of episodes without any of those frustrating breaks. Unfortunately, however, both series have been surprisingly lackluster or predictable as of late. I still have hope they will return to their former glory, but I digress.

    After a three-month hiatus, Lost is airing without interruption, but even this show isn't without its problems. Imagine a hot girl in college that constantly flirts with the entire male campus population but never puts out. That's the equivalent of Lost; it takes so long to satisfy fans with answers that the show's producers might as well scatter out the episodes inconsistently.

    I'd have to say that personally, my two top choices for this year have been The Office and Heroes. I won't focus on The Office today, simply because I was already a big fan of it prior to the show's third season. For me, Heroes gets my vote for single-handedly reinvigorating this year's drab television landscape.

    I'll have to admit, I had no strong desire to give this show a chance when I saw a handful of previews for it back in September. Being an avid comic book fan during my childhood, I scoffed at the premise of a television show about a group of superheroes.

    "No way can they pull it off!" I thought. "What a blatant attempt to cash in on the success of the X-Men movie franchise and produce a sub-par rip-off!" (As a side note, X-Men: The Last Stand was complete and utter filth, besides Multiple Man).

    So I virtually ignored the show until mid-February, when curiosity and boredom got the better of me and I gave the pilot episode a shot. Needless to say, all it took was 53 minutes for me to be hooked. In just three days, I burned through 15 episodes to get caught up, and have been watching it every week since.

    For those unfamiliar with the show, maybe some of you are wondering: What's the appeal? First off, anybody turned off by the idea of muscle-bound brutes named after savage animals (Wolverine or Sabretooth, anyone?) or that run around in brightly colored spandex need not worry. Heroes takes a more human approach to the storyline, examining each character as they discover their newfound powers, and more importantly, how they learn to use them.

    Another great aspect of the show is the cast themselves, ranging from flying politician Nathan Petrilli (Adrian Pasdar) to cheerleader Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere), who can heal herself at an accelerated rate. Throw in the telepathic cop Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg), teleporting time-traveler Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka) and a whole bunch of others, and you've got yourself a diverse enough crew to comprise a superhuman United Nations.

    Season one's main plot revolves around our heroes trying to stop an inevitable nuclear explosion - in the form of Nathan's younger brother, Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) - from destroying New York City. But it's in watching how our lovable bunch reaches that ultimate destiny that makes the show so entertaining to watch.

    Along the way, viewers are introduced to villains such as Sylar (Zachary Quinto), whose ability to take other heroes' powers leads to deadly consequences for our do-gooders, and Mr. Bennet (Jack Coleman), a family man who works for a company in the business of experimenting on humans with special abilities and, in some cases, exploiting them.

    Perhaps Heroes' greatest asset is its ability to keep the show's multiple storylines running at breakneck speed while frequently throwing twists and turns at the audience every few episodes. Heroes doesn't keep its audience waiting in the dark; numerous bombshells have already been dropped, and the revelations continue to grow (Hey Lost, maybe you should take notes).

    Granted, this is the show's freshman year, and like many series before it, there's always the possibility that Heroes could turn sour as it gets a bit older. But for now, I'm going to remain blissfully optimistic and hope that this is the beginning of something beautiful.

    Speaking of beautiful, did I mention the show also features the gorgeous Ali Larter (of Final Destination fame) as a Webcam stripper? What other reason do you possibly need to watch?

    ramcigar.com
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