> It is reported that relying on tourism, the revenue of Pingtang town in the first half of the year has reached 4.6 billion yuan, an increase of 40% over the same period last year.
Obligatory "can we trust official Chinese statistics?". Gaming local numbers after a lavishly-funded project seems to have been popular for a while [1].
So I'm not surprised if the 5 star room costs exactly 4,888. I wouldn't be surprised if the visitor number was rounded to 800k, but I doubt the number is made from whole cloth.
I think OP meant that they want three 8s in the number. If it costs 5000 dropping to 4888 is a small loss but dropping to 3888 is too much, so is raising to 5888.
I mean de-noising techniques, nowadays can be definitely claimed as Machine Learning, even though they have long existed prior to even ML as a concept even being invented...
I think the defining characteristic if machine learning system is that they get better as they experience more (see more examples). The question then the ask is two fold (a) do de-nosing techniques improve when they see more samples? (b) do the application of ML techniques applied in this context mathematically equivalent?
You can "de-noise" all you want and you're still gonna get crap compared to what it would be without the noise. It's like the 3d RF equivalent of looking for ripples made by water striders in the middle of a jet ski race.
PCA for example. It is essentially SVD. And it is quite funny though, I believe that there is no learning in PCA(maybe depends on implementation, but the popular one I believe used heuristics), it is still categoried as ML techniques all the time.
PCA can "learn" in the sense that we can apply it to more and more data, and that can affect the directions of the components. For example, let's say we take measurements one at a time and apply PCA to the whole dataset after each measurement; if the first 100 measurements follow some distibution A, then PCA will give the components of A; if the next 1000 measurements follow some different distribution B, then PCA will 'learn' to give the components of B a higher priority than those of A; i.e. it adapts to the data.
In that hypothetical setup, we end up storing every raw datapoint. If we think of these as parameters, then PCA is a non-parametric model; although it's maximally inefficient in terms of information/compression.
It just says “developing”. I would imagine this is code for “writing papers about”. I’m sure those papers use whatever technique is currently hot and will produce a decent publication. I doubt they use simple statistical approaches, because that’s likely not novel or publishable.
This is all fine. However, the problem is suggesting that this is a somehow reasonable/tenable solution to solving the noise issues...
Maybe the noise can be removed by other methods, maybe the noise doesn’t matter, but magic doesn’t solve the noise issues.
> Maybe the noise can be removed by other methods, maybe the noise doesn’t matter, but magic doesn’t solve the noise issues.
The noise definitely matters. When you are observing with a telescope you are almost by definition working at the limit of the signal to noise ratio of the instrument, otherwise you would be asked to use a less powerful instrument (since the observing time on these larger instruments is so precious).
I worked on a project analyzing data from an X-ray telescope back in my research days. We spent 3 full years building an incredibly detailed model of the instrument noise, just so we could subtract it out and have confidence in our remaining signal. That was longer than the time we spent doing the actual science on the corrected data.
For another perspective, check out this article in Symmetry Magazine, "Neural networks meet space" [1].
> "Analyses that typically take weeks to months to complete, that require the input of experts and that are computationally demanding, can be done by neural nets within a fraction of a second, in a fully automated way and, in principle, on a cell phone’s computer chip,” says postdoctoral fellow Laurence Perreault Levasseur, a co-author of a study published today in Nature."
> "The team at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), a joint institute of SLAC and Stanford, used neural networks to analyze images of strong gravitational lensing, where the image of a faraway galaxy is multiplied and distorted into rings and arcs by the gravity of a massive object, such as a galaxy cluster, that’s closer to us. The distortions provide important clues about how mass is distributed in space and how that distribution changes over time – properties linked to invisible dark matter that makes up 85 percent of all matter in the universe and to dark energy that’s accelerating the expansion of the universe."
> "Until now this type of analysis has been a tedious process that involves comparing actual images of lenses with a large number of computer simulations of mathematical lensing models. This can take weeks to months for a single lens."
> "But with the neural networks, the researchers were able to do the same analysis in a few seconds, which they demonstrated using real images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and simulated ones."
We had a morally similar concept to "machine learning" in academia during my grad school days: "non-parametric statistic". To me they were anathema, but non-parametric statistics are shockingly common both in academia and in industry. They work well, except when they don't.
non-parametrics! I took that class in college. This brings back memories. I got the impression you use non parametrics when you've got a sample size of 4 and you don't want all your statistics being un-legit sounding numbers like 25, 22.5, 50.. etc. "Increase" our sample size by adding every permutation of the 4 data points we started with to the sample! Gets you some cool statsi numbers like 63.1924.
Japan's domestic tourism boom was done in by the triple combo of recession (30 years and counting), depopulation and Japanese finding it cheaper and more interesting to travel overseas. Sooner or later these will hit China too.
Volume of people traveling to a given place lowers the cost.. This also exists in the U.S. It's cheaper for me from SF to fly to Lima, Peru than to Knoxville, Tn.
This isn’t the only stupid telescope. Just outside Shanghai city limits is the Tian Ma radio telescope. It’s 65m. I went there, I don’t think it’s used at all, and it was completed in 2012
A depressingly common pattern is that you can get funding for building things but not for running and maintaining things.
In the case of the Tian Ma they seem to still have money for work on it, I found a 2017 proceeding[1] about adding a new system optimised for pulsar searches.
I'm guessing they simply aren't getting very exciting results, which is normal for a non-american dish, you don't hear about Effelsberg every day either.
You can see Shanghai from it the location (on a clear day). I don’t think they operate it much because of the noise issue. Apparently they also even more rarely point it.
And here I was thinking I’d try to get in first with a Three Body Problem reference, but you beat me to it.
It’s interesting though, China does appear to have a much stronger commitment to radio astronomy than the US (at least that’s how the article characterizes it).
I wonder why that is? The article didn’t really discuss why radio astronomy is so attractive...
There was a talk by Steve Blank where he was explaining US investment into radio astronomy(arecibo for example) by military projects aiming to establish the signatures and order of battle of soviet radars. They would measure the reflection of radar signals from the moon.
They have invested in building a huge dish, that's true, but they also want to build a pretty big optical telescope (though that project is somewhat stalled due to political infighting in the community [1]) and there is talk of a big collider experiment as well.
I think there is in general just a push in China to get world leading science experiments, and the simplest way to reach that is to build the biggest of something.
In contrast, if they primarily wanted to do radio astronomy science they would probably be working on getting to be part of the Event Horizon Telescope, China could really fill a gap in their coverage.
Some more data points: the US is member of ALMA but left SKA. China is a member of SKA, but not ALMA. I guess not being part of SKA is a pretty telling omission by the US, and it was mostly money related as I understand it.
In reality I think this is more a case of the US government having a waning interest in radio astronomy, possibly as a result of the optical astronomers stealing all the money to the three huge telescopes they plan to build: LSST, GMT and TMT.
Why? How about the direct military applications? Resolving the signal from a distant black hole, the true light against a haze of static, is exactly how you detect the low-level radar reflection of a stealthy aircraft, or the sound of a submarine against the background of pistol shrimp. Teasing out information from a tiny radio signal, even using radio to image objects, that definitely has a military use.
For a radio telescope in the USA, the Wendover Productions channel made a good video about banning radio sources - "Why Wifi is Illegal in Green Bank, West Virginia": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjCZ6k7EzjE
I wouldn’t be surprised if most of these large scale projects have connections to party elites thus just enriching themselves at the cost of the country’s resources.
Not half-assing anything at all. The China Development Bank underwrites foreign loan investment in infrastructure by 50%, so there's money flying everywhere.
We can call it “most advanced” when it actually works.
The US and Europe also don’t have inferiority complexes where they feel like they have to build the tallest or biggest anymore. Look at skyscraper competitions — generally 2nd tier countries trying to outdo each other for bragging rights but for no real other reason. It’s like the Soviet Olympic team — they had to win to make the political statement trunpeting a triumph of communism. The US did the same thing once upon a time, but then we grew up (and not necessarily for the better.. it’s a lot of fun to be “first, bigger, best.”) 1990s Korea, modern China, 1950s USA, the Soviet Union — those places and eras were representative of a national need to foster patriotism to create unity against real or perceived competitors on the world stage as well as remind the proles of the power and achievements of their benevolent state.
> The US and Europe also don’t have inferiority complexes where they feel like they have to build the tallest or biggest anymore.
Wasn't the whole space-race and moon landing a, excuse the language, rocket-waving contest?
As you point out, it is easy to not have "inferiority complexes" or "grow up" as you put it, when you have once established credibility. Don't dismiss achievements just because it is by others.
I think you mean rocket waving, although the idea of weaving rockets does sound interesting...
More substantively, my understanding is that while the space race turned into a PR exercise, it started out as a serious military exercise in demonstrating ICBM capabilities; "we can put a man on the moon" is more politically acceptable than "we can put a big bomb in Moscow" but it is understood just the same.
> More substantively, my understanding is that while the space race turned into a PR exercise, it started out as a serious military exercise in demonstrating ICBM capabilities; "we can put a man on the moon" is more politically acceptable than "we can put a big bomb in Moscow" but it is understood just the same.
It's also important to remember that "space race == moon shot" was US PR. The USSR had the first satellite, man (and woman) in space, the first space walks, etc. Lunar landings were singled out by the US as something they could beat the Soviets to; once that was achieved, the US declared victory and mostly lost interest.
The USSR kept going, ratcheting up capabilities, which carried on all the way until their collapse. The ISS is basically a continuation of their space program (funded largely to keep soviet space/rocket/ICBM experts busy and off the open market). Whilst PR and politics undoubtedly drove the USSR's space budgets and spectacles, there did seem to some long-term thinking, both for science/engineering and more politically (e.g. outposts, potentially colonies, etc.).
In fact, trying to compete directly with the US seems to have mostly hindred the USSR's space program (e.g. the N1 moon rocket was a spectacular failure and the Buran shuttle only flew once). They got some decent engines out of it though.
Do you know the one thing all great mega-powers of the past have in common? They no longer exist. Ceasing to strive to be the best and greatest at everything is not 'growing up', it's resting on your laurels. There's much more than just bragging rights to being 'first, bigger, best'. Technology is what dictates and drives society. If Germany or Japan (or Italy or ...) had developed nuclear weapons before the US, the world would be quite a different place today. If North Korea had not developed nuclear deterrence, Kim would now likely rest alongside Gadaffi and Hussein.
And while it's now easy to say in hindsight 'Well, [insert new form of bigger, better, badder] is not particle physics.' This is true, but at time nobody knew where particle physics would take us. The idea of bomb the size of a small table that could destroy entire cities is something that would have seemed impossible before the US worked to to become 'bigger, better, badder' in what was at one time mostly theoretical particle research.
The worst part of this all is that while we don't know the future, we do have a very good idea of where it's headed. Space is likely where the nest greatest achievements and breakthroughs will come from. But predicting how or where is going to be all but impossible, which is why working to be the king of all pursuits is critical. China is headed straight in this direction. They have not matched our technical skills yet, but at the time when we were conquering the world through technology and taking the baby steps into the computer age -- China was a backwoods nation where people were literally starving to death by the tens of millions. That they're now the second most powerful nation in the world, pushing forward technology and development at an unprecedented rate, is way more than enough reason to believe that one should not underestimate their resolve and ability.
The irony behind all of this is that to the neoliberal mindset China's extraordinary willingness to invest in pure research is some sort of Communist plot. Literally, discussions just a few weeks ago about China taking the lead on R&D spending in 2019 [1] and having that lead become "indefinite" by 2025, break down (not unlike this thread) into mindless accusations against Big Government. Of course the Chinese will tell you China is just doing exactly what the West did post-War when huge government investments in science and technology provided transformative wealth that gave Westerners the best quality-of-life in the world.
The real story here is that while China's strategy is risky -- there's no guarantee all this investment will pay off -- you could argue the neoliberal strategy is even riskier. Technology tends to be a winner take all affair and it's very often the first to market that wins.
I think this is a pretty rose-tinted look with hindsight bias. The USSR was pretty driven to be "the best" right up to their demise. North Korea existed for half a century because China intervened in the Korean War and MacArthur's warmongering got him ousted, not nuclear deterrence. Finally, the idea of a "city-wiping bomb the size of a suitcase" was well understood by all nations with advanced physicists, not just the US: so the Nazi regime was also very close to having a completed nuclear bomb.
China does actually have what, 4x the number of people? Is it really all that out of the ordinary for it to have projects that are 4x larger?
Hanzho is 22 million people, Shanghai is 32 million people, Nanjing is 12 million people. That's just 3 of the over 100 cities larger than 1 million people. I'd expect their projects to be larger. I was blown away by the size of their bullet train stations. Japan's Tokyo station has like 4 bullet train tracks. Shanghai's has 30. Is that bragging or just planning ahead for a much larger population?
Me, I love the skyscrapers. I find it interesting that Tokyo no longer feels remotely "future modern" compared to Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and I'm sure a bunch of other cities in Asia.
> Hanzho is 22 million people, Shanghai is 32 million people, Nanjing is 12 million people.
If you're counting like this, you're over-counting radius and doubling up. Sue the region is populous, about 80mn in that radius but including Nanjing means a 45 minute ride on high-speed rail (400km/h) from Shanghai.
I often wonder whether it is possible to become a developed nation without some "inferiority complex" that drives you as a country. Would the US space program have been so great without the Soviets? I see from the story that villagers where moved from the location. This is something that would not be possible in South Africa, at the best it would take years and years of negotiation and cost billions. The inverse is true, South Africa needs to create more jobs and more tourism. But the laws here are the laws of a developed state (I doubt the countries followed the same modern laws during their developmental phase). I am not complaining, just an observation.
I don’t know about France, but Germany is failing 2 huge projects right now: Stuttgart 21 and BER airport. There was also Elbphilharmonie. And Transrapid that even didn’t start. And China is building and building and building. I don’t know how good it is in China, but the infrastructure in Germany from seventies isn’t that good anymore. Not talking about scientific projects, because there are close to none.
I'm not sure where you heard that there are no scientific projects in Germany but check the pages of Max-Planck-Society, Helmholtz Association and Fraunhofer-Society at least to get a current view. They should be spending 5-10 billion Euro per year on research in for example plasma physics (Wendelstein 7-X fusion research experiment in Greifswald for example), particle physics (DESY, GSI), applied research (Fraunhofer society) and cooperate with others to build things like the European free election laser (XFEL, at DESY).
Saw DESY, they are looking for FPGA developers. The problem with all applied research is simple: salary is a joke compared to their industrial partners. You end doing work for Infineon, BMW, Siemens, you-name-it for 1/3 salary. Catching greenhorns to work for free isn’t sustainable operational model. Think about mp3 patent case.
Well, comparing these two countries infrastructure-wise to a software project, then China is a greenfield project which is able to pick whatever is the hippest technology at the moment because its still growing whereas Germany is the years old legacy Java project on its fourth partial rewrite that everyone relies on every day. And by everyone I mean people from those living on welfare to the billionaires at the top, not just upper class members or those belonging to the ruling party.
I'll bet that those failed projects would not have been called a failure in China.
There's really nothing in China could be called a "greenfield project." Germany doesn't grow because it doesn't want to grow. You're talking about a country with an absolutely unprecedented budget surplus and the lowest investment spending in the developed world [1]. China grows because it is just the opposite; it's willing to take on unprecedented deficits and invest those in the country's future.
Germany and much of the West as a whole has largely stopped investing in anything but tax cuts and entirely pointless military spending. The neoliberal gamble is that private actors can produce growth if government just gets out the way. At this point, given the last forty years of so-so growth and massive inequality, it's not looking too good.
It's probably for the best since Germany is only going to get older and older [2]. They can use all the savings to build hospital beds etc while economic growth continues in Asia and Africa.
Germany and much of the West as a whole has largely stopped investing in anything but tax cuts and entirely pointless military spending.
I don't understand this claim; Germany and many EU countries top the lists of tax-to-GDP and effective tax rates in the world, while its military expenditure (as % of GDP) is lower than China's.
At Arecibo radio telescope they do not allow something like a single microwave oven in a large radius.
So for something that is intended to be even more sensible … yeah
They spent about 150% the cost of the telescope in moving 9,000 people from the area around the telescope. Then they plan a city nearby for hundreds of thousands of people.
That can't be a decision of scientists involved in FAST. Only a bureaucrat would do something that stupid.
If I understand correctly they displaced people who where very near the telescope, and then created a city 10 miles away from it and behind mountains which interrupt at least some wave propagation(?). The article states that the town lies "just a few miles from the displaced villagers’ demolished houses" and also "There are a great many mountains between the telescope and the town" (the mountains may reside in those few miles).
There's a ban on mobiles and laptops within 5km of the telescope.
I have no idea how far away the towns are but that seems impossible to enforce with tourists. I guess it just doesn't operate during certain hours because of interference.
Maybe by forbidding all and any service in this area, including implanting/enabling GSM antennas. The local government is powerful enough. Most remaining RFI would be smartphones emissions, but as they will be nearly useless in this area most people may accept to switch them in airplane mode (and will be able to use the camera).
You have to consider that most probably, the advantage of the location had savings of over 150% or possibly made the project possible in that kind of time frame to begin with.
I don't know. I'm pretty skeptical about its technical capabilities myself. At the moment they only have a very small sliver of bandwidth they are capable of receiving. I'm unsure on how exactly they plan to receive all of these different bands at once when they are eventually added. Also, their chosen technique of removing RFI after taking in the data (noise) from space is questionable.
From https://www.guancha.cn/society/2017_08_25_424435.shtml :
> 据悉，平塘县依靠旅游观光，上半年的营收达46亿人民币，较去年同期增加了40％。
> It is reported that relying on tourism, the revenue of Pingtang town in the first half of the year has reached 4.6 billion yuan, an increase of 40% over the same period last year.
From http://www.wenxuecity.com/news/2017/10/03/socialnews-144514.... :
> 7天80万人贵州看“大锅” 五星酒店最贵一夜4888
> In 7 days, 800,000 people went to Guizhou to see the "big pot". Most expensive room in five-star hotel has reached 4888 yuan.