Fractals, Factories and Fast Food - Dylan Beattie - NDC Porto 2022

We live in a fractal world. Communications, transportation, utilities; from the devices on our wi-fi, to our homes themselves, to the towns and cities where we live and work, our world is built of networks within networks. Some networks are conceptual; models designed to capture one particular dimension of a system or a problem.
Some networks are physical; the street outside our front door, the cables and pipes that bring power, water and data into our homes - even the human body is a set of networks, a constant flow of material and information from where it’s available to where it’s needed. And whenever we order a pizza, stream a movie, or even just switch on a light, we’re tapping into an unbelievably complex network of systems and connections that make these everyday conveniences possible.
Dylan Beattie is a nerd. He’s the kind of nerd who invents programming languages for fun. Dylan loves pizza and tech, he doesn’t like phone calls or washing up, and he thinks online food delivery is one of the coolest things we humans have ever invented. But in the grander scheme of things, the journey of a slice of pepperoni pizza - from the app, to the restaurant, to your door - is just a tiny part of a much bigger story. Join Dylan for an entertaining and enlightening look at the technical and social innovations that keep our networked world running: how did we get here? What happens when one of those networks fails? And what does our networked future look like?
Check out more of our featured speakers and talks at
www.ndcconferences.com
ndcporto.com

[@BloodyClash]

just had to read "Dylan Beattie" and i was in. Just love that guy

[@intangiblematter_misc]

Honestly same. I’ve been waiting for his next talk now that I’ve seen all of his others!

[@MrC0MPUT3R]

Same. I haven't even watched the talk and I'm loving it 😂

[@mardax007]

Same, love him!

[@pepijnkrijnsen4]

Same - the topics are a bit beyond me but Dylan Beattie is always worth listening to.

[@mardax007]

@@intangiblematter_misc Ive rewatched multiple times

[@alexclark6777]

Ever since his "Art of Code" talk, Dylan has been known as a Rock Star presenter. Great talk, as always!

[@boomknuffelaar]

A simple Rock Star with lightning inside him.

[@tsoueid]

Every year I search for "Dylan Beattie" on YT and I watch what's new. A lot of trivia in his talks but really enjoyable

[@mar_sze]

Finally another Dylan Beattie talk. Made my day.

[@JohnDlugosz]

10:00 Old phones don't need a separate power source and work with only two wires. The ringer is powered by the high voltage that indicates a ring, and then there is enough power for the supplied speaker in the earpiece. In the US, it was the "princess" line of phones with a lighted dial that required a separate power connection. I'm sure in the UK it was something similar. That opened the door to newer phones with lights, speakerphones, auto-dialing memory, etc. powered directly by the phone jack.

[@LeonardChurch33]

I only recently discovered Dylan Beattie and now I'm binging all of his talks. I absolutely love his presentation style. A funny thing happened as I was watching this. There was a glitch on my pc at 6:50 exactly as he said dial up and so it went, "dial uuuuuuuuuuup" like the internet had crashed midway through his sentence. I thought it was a joke inserted by the editor at first until I played that section again.

[@fluffpuckot]

Very thought provoking. Really good! One "good" thing about growing crops, is that it is basically harvesting "green energy". Synthesizing stuff takes a lot of energy, and we still need the basic molecules to come from somewhere, so there are somethings to work out. Now I just need to find myself a 3d-printed pizza!

[@bernieperrett9714]

Highly entertaining and informative, as always. Please keep them coming

[@andytroo]

31:37 - technically space is talking to the thing in your pocket, most of the time it doesn't talk back.

[@00oKMo00]

Hi Dylan - you should catch some Deep Space Nine - there are several scenes where characters place dishes into the replicator once they're done eating and the replicator returns them to energy, but there are other inconsistencies where people have specific cooking equipment and dishes etc with sentimental value - I guess replicator dishes are just improved paper plates! Also, now I want pizza

[@OrigamiMarie]

The way our bodies work right now, the waste part of food isn't exactly optional. It's rather important to lower digestive health. Also our ability to absorb nutrients is facilitated by microbes, which seem to be inextricably linked to the foods we eat.

[@NXTangl]

Also also, there are gustatory chemoreceptors in our digestive tracts that link to a tertiary neural complex distributed across the gut that handles the various process control systems of the chemical plant responsible for energy intake.

[@RupertReynolds1962]

32:25 w3w has another 2 problems, one I didn't predict at first-- 1/ as another layer between GPS modules plain text "54.325,-2.535" (phone box near my old home) and finding destination, it's one more place an error can occur. There are two many words in the w3w list that sound the same and/or get jumbled in memory. 2/ Inappropriate use--UK emergency services are trying to MAKE people install the w3w app over weak data connections, during an emergency call! I have heard several recordings and it seems to be in the new script. Several cases of SAR arriving at the wrong side of a mountain, river, and in one case wrong side of a county looking for an injured walker. Lives lost? I'm not sure yet. But it's only a matter of time at this rate :-(

[@hb-man]

They are proprietary, nobody else knows how to convert a location to w3w, unlike GPS location data. And they are localized, the English version uses different words than the German or Spanish version. So in your example, any foreign tourists will probably respond with their language variant, combine that with accent or other sources of misunderstanding, and you'll be certain help will not arrive on time.

[@ralfrolfen5504]

awesome as always!

[@sacman3001]

The talk about everything 😁

[@rileyboomer8627]

At 32 minutes in this guy just decides to start pulling on my heart strings talking about a linkin park concert....

[@acobster]

If you want to build a pizza from the ground up, you must first invent the universe. - Carl Sagan

[@johnangelico667]

56Kbps modem? Phone cable from the 1960s? Luxury!!!

[@iaindavidson9486]

In Sao Paulo, buildings are numbered by the distance from a central point, so Rua da Consolacao 3617 is adjacent to Rua da Consolacao 3625 because they are apartment blocks 8m apart.

[@RupertReynolds1962]

I predicted Internet pizza as soon as I saw the Coffee Pot cam at Oxford. I didn't predict an Internet food replicator, though :-)

[@jacksonfive5180]

i guess US truck drivers love the idea!

[@paulcharles8989]

OMG... my Gran lives on priory road newbury... Had to ring her when I heard this

[@IkomaTanomori]

The soda robots were in restaurants around Chicago well before the pandemic!

[@aidantilgner]

Time to go get some fast food

[@tactileslut]

5:55 "about 300 metres" Hmm. That's barely three times the distance UTP was allowed to run in professional installations. It worked past 1000ft with most gear. /Sure/ you hadn't mapped out the storm drains and looked at how to get cables through the walls. :)

[@samiraperi467]

Your megabits must be larger than ours. Where I live 576k is *over* half a megabit. :D

[@el_quba]

20:27 That's certainly not an intermodal containter... That's a regular trailer. Great talk, just had to add my bit.

[@ukaszgieratowski1223]

And I just felt like some pizza tonight.

[@RomanRoman-ps9gv]

That picture around minute 20 is not a container, should've picked a better illustration photo. Otherwise thanks for another interesting talk :-)

[@fieryscorpion]

This talk got me confused. What was it about again?

[@JeremyAndersonBoise]

It was about staying focused.

[@RickWeberEcon]

Japanese addresses are optimal for random access time travelers.

[@matejpavel2296]

Re: addresses I live in an area that used to be a village until WWII, later getting absorbed by a nearby town. That means no street names, why would a farming village have those? We don't have a town hall, we don't have a square. So some databases don't work because they expect a street name.

[@DonkenAndToivolaRR]

I live in a village where the houses where numbered when built. Today the streets are named, but the numbers are all still all over the place. If I'd order pizza more frequently, just so it would get inconvenient to watch out for the driver, I'd simply place a "pizza here" flag outside the door. But since the order rate is as low as change of delivery personell it's ok for now and for pizza. But any parcel or shipment delivery always gets interesting no matter how precise you describe the place in the comment section (if that field allows for enough text that is).

[@GeorgeTsiros]

dot segfaults because someone wrote crap code entire city doesn't have pizza anymore

[@BrendanClements]

I was disappointed he didn't end with the American postal system. For all of our incompetence, we got that one right. Your address is the number of feet from the beginning of the street you live on (closest odd number for West/North even for East/South).

Is there a programmable CNC machine that could sew clothes and boots automatically?

[@davidmiller9485]

To be honest it would just be an issue of software. The hardware is there. their is a machine that makes buildings using a clay/adobe type mix. it literally just goes around a scaffold (that can be deployed on site) and makes a squarish house that requires 24 hrs. to dry and use. (think Mars habitats made easy) So setting up a system to make clothing really is just a software/network issue.

[@Ornithopter470]

​@@davidmiller9485that's not entirely true. You have to manage tension on the fabric, you have to manage feeding the fabric, manipulating it and so on. That being said, we do have machines that make clothes. But they're frequently not actually CNC, they're just complex timing on analog circuits.

[@davidmiller9485]

@@Ornithopter470 That can be done in software. The problem, granted is that writing that software isn't going to be easy. Their are multiple types of mechanical weaving machines in use now. However they make clothe. To make a product from that cloth would require multiple machines that do 'a' step in the process with software that not only ensures quality but also sets up the next step. Either way this is a computer/mechanical engineering problem. The issues is, is it cheaper than human labor and the answer is no. Possible yes but until we have cheaper machines and software, not probable.

[@yugoprowers]

When he was talking about running internet on 4g, I live in a rural area, and until last year we didn't have internet here other than sim, or satellite. So i use my cell phone with PDAnet+ so that it looked like normal phone data to my carrier sine I only get 30GB tethering, but get unlimited phone data.

[@fckyu5440]

If you want to meet in the middle of the north Atlantic, I'll need about 50 minutes

[@CyborusYT]

The sydney opera house is a room in your home?!

[@not_ever]

Outside is not in his house

[@brynyard]

Concerning GPS: If you'd give me a GPS coordinate I'd have to ask what geodetic, what datum, and what projection?

[@johanneswerner1140]

Yup. That's a whole another can of wriggly stuff. How about the UTM grid?

[@TobiKellner]

With a lat/lon coordinate in general, that is certainly true. But AFAIK, with a coordinate from the GPS system you can assume that it's WGS84...

[@brynyard]

@@TobiKellner it is the default, but it's not given. And there's more than one GNSS, and most people just generally refer to anything satellite and position related as GPS.

[@KANJICODER]

You know how you can use headphones as a microphone? I wonder if you can use implanted hearing aids to talk out of using your mind and directly interface into a computer.

[@shishirarora8808]

Still wondering what was this talk about?

[@smilingipad3044]

I will not eat the bugs

[@donno2048]

The chances I would click on a one hour video named “fractals factories and fast food” without "Dylan Beattie" also is pretty low

[@JeremyAndersonBoise]

Dylan Beattie is great but, to this day, I don't get what's so great about Porcupine Tree. Nonetheless, great talk.

[@SaHaRaSquad]

Porcupine Tree made a few insane masterpieces and a lot of boring stuff inbetween imho. Either way it's the kind of music that takes a couple rounds until it sounds interesting.

[@naturallyinterested7569]

tbh I'd rather have people farming than inventing javascript frameworks...

[@squidcaps4308]

Most of the grain in the world does not come from Canada. They come from Russia, EU, USA, Australia and Ukraine. Canada is 7th largest.... What this bloke doesn't say is that Africa, Middle-east and Asia are also part of the world, and in fact, the most numerous part of the world... and they are fed by Russia, EU and Ukraine.

[@___Hermitage]

I am not convinced that algae paste insect protein "pizza" will ever suffice as a substitute for the real thing, regardless of the level of sophistication of future technology.

[@shellcatt]

When I see a new talk from Dylan, I just skip the first 2 min...

[@Endelin]

Except that insect protein isn't healthier, or more efficient, or more sustainable. Nice try Dylan BEATLE.

[@mannamkanal]

full of labels and product placement, should be tagged with sponsorblock

[@egorzimowski3505]

i thought sponsorblock was about getting paid by companies. If you mention them for free - it's not sponsored. Most it talks are about specific instruments or systems... so is it all product placement for you?

[@JeremyAndersonBoise]

@@egorzimowski3505 🤣