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I shall walk to the corner store to buy some ice cream.

Should I survive, I shall post a reply bearing the good news.

AMD Investor Relations Announces “Next Horizon” Event for November 6th

On Election Day? Gee, what's the bad news?

Anyway, this is likely related to "7nm" Zen 2 Epyc server CPUs, which will debut well before desktop or mobile variants. They might also announce a Radeon RX 590 "12nm" Polaris GPU or talk about "7nm" Vega GPUs.

If Zen 2 Epyc has 64 cores, and Zen+/Zen 2 Threadripper has 32 cores, then Zen 2 Ryzen could have up to 16 cores.

On or around November 15, 2018 Bitcoin Cash will undergo its 3rd hard fork. There has been quite a bit of drama over this upcoming fork. On one side we have Bitcoin ABC, and the other we have BitcoinSV.

When Bitcoin Cash was forked from the original Bitcoin on August 1, 2017, it did so with the Bitcoin ABC code. When that happened, the Bitcoin ABC implementation became the de facto reference client. In my opinion, while Bitcoin ABC has done great work on progressing the Bitcoin protocol, their communication and community involvement leaves something to be desired.

Bitcoin ABC has proposed and implemented a few changes for the upcoming fork. The biggest and most controversial of these changes is something called Canonical Transaction Ordering (CTOR). In the current implementation, transactions can be included in a block in any order. If/When CTOR is accepted, then transactions will have to be ordered in a specific way.

CTOR offers some advantages with block propagation. There are a number of technologies (Compact Blocks, Thin Blocks, Graphene) that allow faster block propagation. Essentially, when a block is found, the block needs to be propagated to the rest of the network. As blocks get larger, the time to transmit the block also increases. In order to propagate blocks to the network in a timely fashion, Bloom Filters are used. Having a fixed order of transactions inside a block means that the order of transactions don't have to be transmitted to propagate a block. This results in a significant (>50%) reduction in data required to transmit a block.

On the other side, we have BitcoinSV. Craig Wright is BitcoinSV's Lead Scientist. He has been claiming for several years now that he is the real Satoshi. Gavin Andresen (one of the earliest Bitcoin coders) even agreed that Craig Wright was Satoshi. Craig started a company called nChain that has been working on their own implementation. They are closely affiliated with Coingeek who operates a mining operation/pool.

There have been criticisms of both sides. Criticisms of Bitcoin ABC's CTOR include that it's too big of a change too fast. Changes to consensus rules should happen very slowly and be tested very thoroughly. Impact on CPU usage is not fully understood at this time and if there are any bugs in the CTOR implementation that could result in an unintended chain split.

On the other side, we have BitconSV and Craig Wright. Craig is a character. He constantly makes outrageous claims and consistently fails to provide any proof to his claims. Any papers he produces contain mostly plagiarized content. His personality would definately fall into the 'asshole' category. BitcoinSV did not have any publicly released code until several weeks ago -- Way too late to be taken seriously IMO.

Craig has made claims that there will be no chain split. He has stated that his BitconSV implementation will win and he 'will prevent' a chain split from happening and will use his hash power offensively if required.

So here we are, two weeks away from the date the fork must occur, and no one really knows what will happen. We are about to witness the first true 'Nakamoto Consensus' hash war. It's going to be exciting to watch.

My predictions: Bitcoin ABC will easily win (will be clear winner in less than one hour). BitcoinSV was released way too late in the game to be taken seriously. They do not even have a testnet. How can we even know that it will work as advertised?

However, will the minority chain persist? There is intentionally no replay protection as part of this fork, so a transaction submitted to one chain will be valid on the other chain. People have stated that they will be replaying transactions from each chain to the other. There are still ways to force your coins to split however.

My prediction on persistance is that the minority chain will persist for quite some time (months-years), much like Bitcoin Gold persisted. It will have very little value, but it will have some value.

There's never a dull day in Bitconland.

DRAMA UPDATE!!!: Craig Wright says that he will blacklist any address that uses a new op code introduced by Bitcoin ABC. Very un-satoshilike.

But when it does, there's oxycodone.

Bear in mind, all of these guys are near my age. None of them can be less than 45 years old, and one or two may be as old as 65.

DJ1 (referencing a news story) And, he really ought to be sent to a psychologist for testing.

DJ2 And, I know a lot of people who should be tested.

DJ1 You know, a lot of radio people have been tested.

DJ3 Thats sounds a little bit like someone here may have been tested?

DJ1 Well, no I never was tested.

DJ2 Wait a minute - you say that like - there's a story there?

DJ3 Yes, tell us about you not being tested.

DJ1 Well, the school counselor was being as ass, and told me to go see this psychologist.

JD3 And? Tell us more.

DJ1 The psych guy started off being a smartass before introductions were even finished. He said "Boy, there's something WRONG with you!"

DJ2 Oh-oh - so you're saying that the shrink knew on sight that something was wrong with you?

DJ1 Well, you know, those psychology people never know what they're talking about, so I wasn't going to take any test.

DJ3 That can't be all of the story now. Go on.

DJ1 Well, that psychologist said something about restraints. But I showed him.

DJ2 What did you show him?

DJ1 He opened the broom closet to get something out of there - and I just locked him in there, and left.

Everyone laughing for several seconds, they seque into another news story.

DJ1 mumble mumble mumble.

DJ2 What was that? You didn't finish your story?

DJ1 Actually, I was just wondering if you guys think I should go back, and let him out of that closet.

DJ2 OH MY GOD!!!!.

Everyone else laughing their asses off.

Oh - the story they were seguing into?

Someone asked Mad Dog Mattis what keeps him up at night.

Mad Dog says, "Nothing. I sleep like a baby at night. Actually, it's ME that keeps other people up at night!

And, I actually found a reference for that story!

https://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/05/28/james-mad-dog-mattis-is-asked-what-keeps-him-awake-at-night-his-response-screams-merica

The doc was here just now. He said it went well. They're going to give my kidney to a pathologist to determine whether I'm likely to need chemo

I was dreading the pain in the recovery room but it's not so bad.

When they woke me up I didn't believe I had really had surgery. It was just like waking up in bed

Doc says I can eat real food now. I'm happy about that as I've been fasting since last night.

All this makes the “state” of state specific memory quite crucial, and I haven’t yet defined it. To say “it’s all those things that current memories get attached to” is true, but not very useful. I tend to conceive of “state”, in this sense, as the active world image, but this is also a bit vague. Experiments have shown that consciously being aware of something isn’t necessary for it to participate in state. It doesn’t seem useful to conceptualize it as an object, though it is the top container of active objects. Perhaps it’s pure epiphenomenon, and not a real thing at all, but in that case one needs to explain how the activity of the rest of the system could create the illusion that “state” exists, i.e. would provide the effects.
Still, state existing as phenomenon rather than as epiphenomenon seems to create numerous problems. E.g. it seems to exist in innumerable variations and seems to experience partial activation. The only problem it really seems to solve is limiting the necessity for centralized communication. So I need to address that.
Possibly an answer lies in the hierarchical embedding of objects. So, for example, kitchen remains kitchen whether or not the cat is currently being fed. There’s a time linked variation in the “current state of activation” of kitchen. In other words, objects need to allow for components that are not always active (or even present).
The result of this is that objects being linked into any nested subcomponent of the current foreground or top active object are linked into the entire chain, with the strongest link at the lowest level. Repeated stimulation will over time strengthen some links. Links that are not strengthened (unless above a threshold of strength) will decay. Perhaps there can also be degrees of strengthening, so that rubber will be strongly linked with tires, but linked to carts much more weakly.

The “separation” of neurons needs consideration. Clearly sensations that are physically close should be considered close, and likely have direct physical contacts at the neuron level, but other linkages are more difficult. On the other hand, these other linkages probably only happen at a higher level (i.e. at a more abstract level). A snarl combined with teeth being bared is at a relatively high level, white spot combining with white spot to for partial image that will be parsed as a tooth is at a much lower level. At what level is centralized communication needed, and on what basis should this be decided? Well, what’s the purpose of communication? One answer is to create links between objects, so perhaps only top level objects need to link … but this seems insufficient. Actually, the proposal seems roughly equivalent to “frames”, with lots of things left hanging, and that is known not to suffice.
I think that what is needed to solve this problem is the “state specific memory”. When a signal is already a part of the “state” then it doesn’t need the centralized communication, but can simply strengthen and expand the current one. Only when a new signal is being associated with the state does it need to communicate centrally to determine to what stat it is to be added. Since this will generate lots of false or “noisy” connections, it’s important that weak connections fade over time.

The co-occurrence of objects even in description is sufficient to create the perception of a connection. Consider how this is used in the “Grandfather’s Clock” song. It is not without reason that Crowley said that the basic rule of ritual magic is “invoke often”.
These seem to all be things that are implemented via Hebbs Law1, but the mechanism is obscure. When there is a synaptic connection, then the mechanism is reasonably clear, but when there’s no connection except synchronicity it’s harder to explain. It does take many repetitions, so even a weak connection would be reinforced, rather like math tables … in fact probably exactly like math tables … but that doesn’t explain the mechanism. We know that physiologically it’s connected somehow to the hippocampus, so some specialized mechanism is quite appropriate. It has to be done via “passive monitoring”, i.e. via receiving signals from the active neurons … but probably only at a rather high level. And we believe that unusual wiring in this area is behind synethesia.
So … I am assuming that when a cluster of sensations above threshold of strength is activated that a signal is sent to a central function that receives the signals sent during a small interval of time2 and establishes or reinforces a connection between them. This appears as if it might strengthen the perception of boundaries between different clusters of sensation. It would also seem to foster the creation of composite objects. Perhaps it also enables the invention of new composite objects from known pieces.