This was the “uncanny valley.” To work around it, Mori had some brilliant ideas. Want to craft anthropomorphic robot eyes that weren’t repulsive? Consider modeling them after eye augmentations we already used, like glasses. Want to create an articulating robot hand? Forget the faux skin and show its strings: Carve the hand out of wood.
Artificial Intelligence Is The New Uncanny Valley | Co.Design: business innovation design *knotesy
According to an analysis by the IceCube collaboration, released on Monday, the odds that Bert and Ernie were the results of atmospheric shenanigans are greater than 370-to-1. In other words, there is a reasonable chance they came from more distant reaches of the galaxy – or beyond.
Ice-bound hunter sees first hint of cosmic neutrinos - space - 24 April 2013 - New Scientist *knotesy
Yes, the Lenape made a damn fine potato chip. Unfortunately, it was also kind of toxic.
We’re not putting individual memories back into the brain,” he says. “We’re putting in the capacity to generate memories.” In an impressive experiment published last fall, Berger and his coworkers demonstrated that they could also help monkeys retrieve long-term memories from a part of the brain that stores them.
Brain Implants Could Help Alzheimer’s and Others with Severe Memory Damage | MIT Technology Review *knotesy
“The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is a new international campaign by non-governmental organizations calling for a pre-emptive ban on fully autonomous weapons. These are future weapons with full autonomy that would be able to choose and fire on targets without any human intervention.”
The Man From The Future lived in the old city two generations ago, in the then young and thriving arts district. He appeared one day, as he’d repeat later in small theater monologues, just outside a cafe, bewildered, but hungry. The future was starving, he said, depleted of resources and weary from calamity. Immediately dismissed by the cultural committee of the day as a bad, harmless act (this was before the ban on satires had become the norm) his performances fit in well with the districts other residents who tended to be puppeteers, prostitutes, self-flagellators, flea circus trainers, frotteurs, drunken misogynist painters, and compulsive experimental novel writers. He struck a nerve with the public. Some of his more extravagant “relays” (he did not call them predictions because, he claimed, he’d experienced them firsthand) involved disastrous expeditions to Cbyx, giant out-of-control robots, and a cold snap that iced over whatever was not already iced over. This panoply of deftly delivered mayhem, in great detail, grew both a small fervent following that believed it, and a much larger audience that roared with laughter.
Welcome to the Galapagos of Chinese “open” source. I call it “gongkai” (公开). Gongkai is the transliteration of “open” as applied to “open source”. I feel it deserves a term of its own, as the phenomenon has grown beyond the so-called “shanzhai” (山寨) and is becoming a self-sustaining innovation ecosystem of its own.
There was light from the cabin. This made him happy. A basic, sinew level, not-dying kind of happiness. Then it occurred to him there should not be light in the cabin. Although that light was the only reason he’d found it again. He paused, the freezing damp along his edges biting. The kre’ll oil lantern, had it been lit when he left, would likely have burned down in the time he’d been lost. And while he rejoiced seeing it, fearing he’d wander in circles all night, expiring in the fresh snow, he was now presented with a dilemma: seek shelter in his own cabin, and have to entertain someone who had lit that lantern and was most likely waiting for him.
(“The future is not google-able”)
The importance of their work can’t be understated. While companies like Yahoo work to destroy as much human history as possible, Archive Team is the only group actively trying to save it.
How You Can Help Save Upcoming.org, Posterous, and More - Waxy.org *knotesy
Livraria Lello & Irmão, Central Porto, Portugal, circa 1906. (Photo by Aurélio da Paz dos Reis)
One gets tired, you know, being caught up in the monotonous clockwork of the Solar System.
Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan (via sissy-hankshaw)
In small recognition for having made it through a dickshit crazy week
With his first novel, Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman brought dark, neurotic humor to the superhero genre. With YOU, a semi-realistic novel about a young videogame designer, he does something more profound. His characters’ identities are forged during gameplay, so they can only come to terms with the past by revisiting old games.
YOU is a bittersweet novel about how videogames remake our histories *read3rThe enemy right now is simply refusing to understand that the world is changing… The model for tomorrow, and this is the model I’ve been using with enormous enthusiasm since I started blogging back in 2001, is to try everything.
Neil Gaiman urges publishers to “fail better” at the London Bookfair | MobyLives *knotesy
