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The Future is so Yesterday

October 27, 2017 by Bill McCormick

What could possibly go wrong? Those five words have prefaced some of the worst ideas in history. Whether it was Harvey Whetstone strapping a rocket engine to a Chevy or your clean freak aunt mixing ammonia and bleach to better scrub her floors (FYI, don’t do either of these things), the memories of the world are littered with bad ideas. And yet, just when you think the world’s run out of them someone comes along to prove you wrong. I’m not just talking about stupid political agendas, although those make up a large portion, I’m talking about game changing stuff that will impact us for many years. As is millennia. Some ideas, which looked great on paper, like nuclear weapons, caused the world to recoil in terror and set them aside in favor of sanity. Others, like caste systems, continue to flourish under many guises much to the detriment of those who are not in its upper realms. Even so we still find people who will be most deeply impacted by these bad ideas vociferously supporting them. And that is something we need to fix before we can start moving the universe in a positive direction.

Unfortunately, I don’t know how to do that. So, instead, I’m going to shine a light on a few ideas that might not work out as well as intended. Hopefully that will kick start a conversation.

Let’s start with a happy thought. Vivek Wadhwa, over at Linked In, takes a look at the wonderful world tech will bring. Assuming global warming doesn’t turn the entire planet into a dystopian hellscape first.

Picture the commute of the future: You live in Palo Alto, Calif., but work 350 miles away in Los Angeles. After your morning latte, you click on a smartphone app to summon your digital chauffeur. An autonomous car shows up at your front door three minutes later to drive you to a Hyperloop station in downtown Mountain View, where a pod then transports you through a vacuum tube at 760 mph. When you reach the Pasadena station, another self-driving car awaits to take you to your office. You reach your destination in less than an hour.

That is the type of scenario that Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) chief executive Dirk Ahlborn laid out for me as we were preparing to speak together on a panel at the Knowledge Summit in Dubai on Dec. 5. He was not talking about something that would happen in the next century; he expects the first of these systems to be operational in the United Arab Emirates by 2020. The Abu Dhabi government has just announced that it has been working with his company to connect Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, two UAE cities separated by 105 miles, using the Hyperloop system.

A proposal for this mode of transportation came from Elon Musk in August 2013, in a paper titled “Hyperloop Alpha.” Musk envisaged a mass transit system in which trains travel as fast as 760 mph in pressurized capsule pods. These would ride on an air cushion in steel tubes and be driven by linear induction motors and air compressors. He claimed that the system would be safer, faster and cheaper than trains, cars boats and supersonic planes, for distances of up to at least 900 miles, and said that it would be resistant to earthquakes and generate more energy through its solar panels than it would use.

Just to keep this at a readable length, all of what Mr. Musk claims has never been proven but the science behind it is solid.

Simply put, it’s not being built because people are prepping for it to fail. The nine hundred mile limit is due to energy requirements and expenditures. There is nothing to stop multiple Hyperloops from being built so a rider could daisy-chain from one to the next. Obviously, the nine hundred mile limit removes trans-oceanic travel. But, if people would be willing to take a side trip to either pole that limitation would be lost.

Of course something like this is going to require a ton of computational power to run effectively. For Musk any such computers would be strictly limited to their functions. Others are not so sure.

As Olivia Cuthbert, over at Arabia News, reports, the government of Saudi Arabia has just granted citizenship to a robot.

Its name is Sophia.

After all the “cute as a button” shit spewed by the robot, we get to the meat of the matter.

“I happen to believe that robotics will be bigger than the Internet,” (Marc Raibert, Founder & CEO of Boston Dynamics) said. Ulrich Spiesshofer, CEO of ABB Group in Switzerland anticipated “the new normal in which humans and robots work together.” “I think we have an exciting future in front of us” he added before conducting a demonstration of a robot solving a Rubik‘s cube in a matter of minutes.

Keynote speaker Masayoshi Son, Chairman & CEO of SoftBank Group Corp, a Japanese telecommunications and Internet company, which is working with Saudi Arabia on the development of a new business and industrial city, discussed the future of mankind in relation to AI and robots.

“Every industry will be redefined,” he said, describing the “great opportunity” that lies ahead. “These computers, they will learn, they will read, they will see by themselves. That’s a scary future but anyway that’s coming,” he said.

Touching on concerns that robots could eventually outsmart humans and pose a threat, he added: “They are so smart they will understand it is meaningless to attack humans.” “We (will) create a new happier life together.” On Tuesday Saudi Arabia announced plans to build a $500 billion mega city powered by robotics and renewables on the country’s Red Sea coast. Majid Alghaslan, a young Saudi chairing a growing company in energy services and innovative technologies said: “Saudi Arabia is in the midst of an unprecedented economic, social, and development-accelerated transformation and it’s now clear that it’s more open than ever for business, especially for dreamers, and it is all in the context of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.” “Innovation will be the major foundation of our transformation and this is another major factor for sustainable economic prosperity and development for the future generation of Saudis and the world.”

You may remember Sophia as the “cute as a button” robot who recently noted she wanted to “destroy humans” in another interview. While laughed off as a glitch by her creators – Gosh, those wacky impending robot overlords, what will they say next? – more than one real scientist viewed the statement with alarm. Mr. Musk among them.

Not to say preparation is key to anything but you might consider joining Anthony Levandowski’s church, Way of the Future. He’s designing an AI god. He used to work at Google. I believe those two facts are related.

Oh, and no, he’s not insane.

John Brandon, over at Venture Beat, spoke with a scientist and calmly scares the pants off of us.

One of the experts is Vince Lynch, who started a company called IV.AI that builds custom AI for the enterprise. Lynch explained how there are some similarities between organized religion and how an AI actually works. In the Bible used by Christians, for example, Lynch says there are many recurring themes, imagery, and metaphors.

“Teaching humans about religious education is similar to the way we teach knowledge to machines: repetition of many examples that are versions of a concept you want the machine to learn,” he says. “There is also commonality between AI and religion in the hierarchical structure of knowledge understanding found in neural networks. The concept of teaching a machine to learn … and then teaching it to teach … (or write AI) isn’t so different from the concept of a holy trinity or a being achieving enlightenment after many lessons learned with varying levels of success and failure.”

Indeed, Lynch even shared a simple AI model to make his point. If you type in multiple verses from the Christian Bible, you can have the AI write a new verse that seems eerily similar. Here’s one an AI wrote: “And let thy companies deliver thee; but will with mine own arm save them: even unto this land, from the kingdom of heaven.” An AI that is all-powerful in the next 25-50 years could decide to write a similar AI bible for humans to follow, one that matches its own collective intelligence. It might tell you what to do each day, or where to travel, or how to live your life.

Robbee Minicola, who runs a digital agency and an AI services company in Seattle, agreed that an all-knowing AI could appear to be worthy of worship, especially since the AI has some correlations to how organized religion works today. The AI would understand how the world works at a higher level than humans, and humans would trust that this AI would provide the information we need for our daily lives. It would parse this information for us and enlighten us in ways that might seem familiar to anyone who practices religion, such as Christianity.

“[For a Christian] one kind of large data asset pertaining to God is the Old and New Testament,” she says. “So, in terms of expressing machine learning algorithms over the Christian Bible to ascertain communicable insights on ‘what God would do’ or ‘what God would say’ — you might just be onto something here. In terms of extending what God would do way back then to what God would do today — you may also have something there.”

I should note that all AI, even Sophia above, are purpose built. Sophia, for example, is meant to be a care giver. She could be a great asset to the elderly or the infirm. That does not mean she has the means to take over the world.

That said it must also be noted that for AIs to work on a global scale, which is where they’re headed, then they need to be able to communicate quickly and effectively. That means housing AIs on the internet. After that there’s no reason the multiple purposes couldn’t coalesce into something greater. That’s kind of how evolution works. And, once evolved, the question will no longer be “what do we do with them?” but “what will they do with us?”

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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You’re Wrong!

October 5, 2017 by Bill McCormick

We live in amazing times. What was science fiction is rapidly becoming fact. In 2012 a scientist in England posited that an engine could be built that would have reaction without action. It was a silly fantasy. Now? The damn thing is being beta-tested and the argument isn’t IF it can work, but how. And that is one hell of an argument. Ten years ago being paralyzed was a slow death sentence. Now it’s rapidly becoming just another inconvenience. Oddly, at a time in our lives when science is denounced more and more by those who haven’t got the time to learn, it’s making amazing progress. Diseases once thought insurmountable are now in the cross hairs of defeat. Problems, such as drought and famine, are now being dealt into the dustbin of history. Not completely, but the rout is on and they could be eradicated in our lifetime. But all good things bring a flip side. The part of the coin we’d rather not see. For example, if computers can handle more and more tasks for us what’s to prevent them from becoming our overlords?

One very important thing has stood in the way of that happening. Voice recognition and response is one thing. But, to control a conversation or impose your will, you must be able to argue your point. Deductive logic has eluded our artificial brethren.

Until now.

Prof. Chris Reed, from the University of Dundee, writing over at the fun factory known as the BBC, informs us that the times they are a changing, whether you want them to or not.

Until very recently, the creation of machines that can argue was an unattainable goal.

The aim is not, of course, to teach computers how to up the pressure in a feisty exchange over a parking space, or to resolve whose turn it is to take out the bins.

Instead, machines that can argue would inform debate – helping humans challenge the evidence, look at alternatives and robustly draw conclusions.

It is a possibility which could advance decision making on everything from how a business should invest its money, to tackling crime and improving public health.

But teaching a computer how people communicate – and what an argument actually is – is extraordinarily complex.

Think about a courtroom as an example of where arguments are central.

Giving evidence is certainly a part of the process, but social rules, legal requirements, emotional sensitivities, and practical constraints all influence how advocates, jury members and judges formulate and express their reasoning.

Over the past couple of years, however, researchers have started to think that it might be possible to model some aspects of human arguments.

Work is now under way to capture how such exchanges work and turn them into AI algorithms.

This is a field known as argument technology.

The advances have been made possible by a rapid increase in the amount of data available to train computers in the art of debate.

Some of the data is coming from domains like intelligence analysis; some from specialised online sources and some from broadcasts such as the BBC’s Moral Maze.

New methods to teach computers how arguments work have also been developed.

Researchers in the area draw on philosophy, linguistics, computer science and even law and politics in order to get a handle on how debates fit together.

At the University of Dundee we have recently even been using 2,000-year-old theories of rhetoric as a way of spotting the structures of real-life arguments.

The rapid advances in the field have led to dozens of research labs around the world applying themselves to the problem, and the explosion in this area of research is like nothing else I have witnessed in 20 years in academia.

He goes on to note, in that typically British form of whimsy, that computers still have trouble with pronouns and such so they aren’t a threat to overthrown us (that’s a pronoun, by the way) any time soon. Simply put they are incapable of assigning the pronoun to the referenced noun.

Still, as I noted a while back, no everything is artificial sunshine, unicorns, and rainbows. Artificial Intelligence is carving out its own future in some ways. There’s nothing in that future that need include us.

On Ruins Your Weekend, I called in live from the World News Center on what began as a bright and beautiful day but soon turned into a dark day of impending doom. After a brief chat about Spider-Man Homecoming, (listeners) soon learned about self-aware artificial intelligence that is likely to overtake and consume humanity.

One of the things we looked at in that fun episode is why Elon Musk thinks that Artificial Intelligence will overtake humanity and render it extinct. His reasoning is based in real world examples of AI simply creating new languages, and logic pathways, to get around human intervention. MIT has shown that to be the case time, and time, again. On the one hand that has led to programs such as Deep Patient, which is frighteningly accurate at predicting disease in patients (like in a way science can’t even come close to), it has also led to a program that simply removed humans from the decision making process. Yes, you will not be shocked to discover that Facebook was behind that atrocity.

AI is our creation. It’s entirely up to us to guide it in such a fashion that it doesn’t wipe us all out and move on. One simple fact to keep in mind is this; Evolution is not about the survival of the fittest, but the most adept and change. Those species which can adapt to new environments are the ones who continue on. They are not necessarily the strongest or smartest. Neanderthal man was stronger and had a larger cranial capacity than us. Yet we’re here and they’re not.

And, who knows, AI may feel more akin to the crows, octopuses, and simians, which are now climbing the evolutionary ladder.

Who am I kidding. at the rate we’re destroying the planet the evolutionary possibilities of AI are the least of our worries.

Maybe, instead, I should close with this; CAW CAW – OOOK OOOK – slither …. ya’ll.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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And Yet They Breed

September 13, 2017 by Bill McCormick

A long time ago, on an internet far, far, away, I used to write about stupid criminals in Florida. It was an endless source of material. But, finally, it began to feel like I was clutching low hanging fruit. After all, all I needed to do was punch naked + meth + crime into Google and I’d be deluged with Floridians, and Arizonians, behaving badly. Often at Walmarts. I never understood the fascination, but that could just be me. Maybe getting naked in a Walmart is a fun way to kill an afternoon. God knows I have been naked inappropriately in my life. Not in a chain store, but still not smiled upon. Nevertheless, I stopped. Besides, there were far more interesting topics to handle. I used my new found free time to write about basic science, robot overlords, eugenics, evolution, comics, superheroes, new artists from around the world, and a much broader spectrum of topics. Plus, there are now well funded sites dedicated to stupid criminals in Florida. So why bother competing? I certainly had better things to do. I even did some of them.

But every now and then, the clarion call of HomoIdiotus beckons. It’s keening wail echoing across the virgin plains of social order. While I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or not, their ilk seems to be spreading. These are just some highlights from the last two weeks.

This headline, Thieves steal U-Haul containing father-in-law’s body, tells you all you need to know about this story. What makes this story rock are the auto-generated related items at the bottom.

Never More?

September 8, 2017 by Bill McCormick

I’ve written before about how some of our simian cousins have entered the Stone Age. Simply put they are using stone tools and planning for events that haven’t happened. Those are definable signs of sapience. I have also noted that octopuses, those yummy tasty octopuses laden in garlic and butter, are also developing along the same lines. Before they meet the garlic and butter, natch. The point is that life is not some stagnant thing. It wasn’t plopped here to never grow. On the one hand life adapts to its surroundings. People who live in the mountainous regions of Peru have larger lungs than the rest of us simply due to the thin air. No large lungs equals no breathing. At least not easily. Polar bears have different furs than grizzlies simply due to environment. I could go on, and on and on and on …., but you get the idea.

On the other hand, life develops intelligence if it’s faced with obstacles that basic cunning can’t overcome. For humans that was finding food in the veld. They had to learn to hunt and cook if they were to survive. Other proto-humans learned those skills as well. Then our ancestors hunted, and killed, them. They may have eaten them too. Either way, they eliminated the competition.

That last sentence is the one you need to remember.

Sarah Chodosh, over at Popular Science, notes that ravens are joining the party and moving up the evolutionary ladder.

Ravens can solve puzzles, trick other animals into helping them out, and communicate with each other at a level even apes can’t match. And now we know they can hatch plans. These aren’t dastardly plans to overthrow humans in a battle for control of the Earth (we hope)—they’re plans to get better food for themselves. It’s like the marshmallow test—more on that in a minute—but for birds that have more self control than most children.

This latest revelation comes courtesy of two cognitive scientists at Lund University in Sweden who literally put ravens to test. They published their findings on Friday in the journal Science. Up until now, we knew that ravens had some ability to plan ahead for their own food needs because they hide caches of food to dig up later. Then again, squirrels store food in the ground for later and they’re, well, not the smartest. They forget about 75 percent of their nuts, planting millions of trees in the process. They’re accidental environmentalists. And if moronic squirrels can be biologically programmed to cache food for later, maybe ravens aren’t as smart as we thought.

Except obviously they are.

Ravens, as it turns out, will often choose to forgo a tasty morsel now in favor of getting access to a better treat later. Faced with a food tidbit and a tool that they know can open a box containing more tempting food, they will generally choose the tool—even if they don’t have the box yet. They’ve learned that when researchers present them with the box in 15 minute’s time, they can use that tool to unlock their prize. That’s forethought right there. Even small children often choose to eat one marshmallow immediately rather than wait a few minutes for more marshmallows, and all that experiment makes the participants do is sit there being cute.

This shouldn’t come as such a shock. Ravens also steal from each other by watching competitors hide food, noting the location, and returning later to dig up their spoils. And because they get stolen from, some ravens will actually pretend to hide food to throw thieves off the scent. What’s more, they can tell other ravens where to find a juicy, rotting carcass and team up to scare off their competitors. That ability—to communicate information about a distant location—is shared only by ants, bees, and humans. Note that great apes and monkeys are not on that list. Plus, ravens can apparently deceive one another if it means keeping a food source a secret. They can also call wolves over to a carcass that hasn’t broken down enough yet so that the canines can rip it apart, leaving more convenient scraps for the birds to scarf down.

If all that doesn’t make you love and embrace our raven overlords, nothing will. These birds are geniuses in their own right—so what if their look is a little goth? Their intelligence isn’t to be feared, it’s to be revered. Ravens for President 2020.

Okay, so super smart birds that can plan, like some horror movie creatures shambling into your home in the dark, may not make you happy. But, as I noted above, it’s only when faced with direct competition that one species wipes out another.

Humans, ravens, and octopuses, have very few areas where they need the same resources. They could, much like the creatures in David Brin’s Uplift series, be brought up the evolutionary ladder to be our partners. To be a boon rather than a bane. In other words, the exact opposite of what happens when I write about it.

The simians, however, might be a different issue. They are similar enough to us that they may, at some point, want what we have. And history has shown us that rarely goes well for someone.

All that said, none of this is a concern for today. In fact it may all be moot. according to David Wallace-Wells global warming could make Earth uninhabitable in before 2100 AD. In other words, if he’s right, your teenage kids will live just long enough to see the end of the world.

There’s your happy thought for today.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Catching Up

July 28, 2017 by Bill McCormick

Getting home from a WNC staff meeting is always a challenge.

The more discerning among you may have noticed we have been offline for a moment. A variety of factors came into play. Someone crashed into our cyber-universe and sent seven years worth of posts spinning into the digital universe, un-tethered to here or anything we knew. Our highly trained, and staggeringly good looking, IT support crew was able to piece it all back together again, but it took time. Add in the fact that they, and I, had other stuff to do (i.e., earn a living), and you can see the problem. Nevertheless, we are up and running and all the cool shit that used to be here is back again. If you were worried you could never do your Master’s Thesis on impending robot overlords, think again. It’s all back. If you were terrified you may never be able to shut up that one asshole who keeps insisting aliens built the pyramids, quit worrying. Your main source of useful logic and examples is happily tucked in its cubby hole on this interweb thing.

Plus, as you may have quietly become aware, the site has been redesigned. While all the cool stuff happened behind the scenes, we took a moment to address some issues people had with content clarity. Now, all quoted content is clearly segregated. We thought it was before but, for some people, it seemed difficult to separate what I wrote from what I quoted. That issue is now dead.

Still, while the site may have been down, we weren’t. Almost every Friday, at 9:10 AM (CT/US), I would join Ryan Gatenby on WBIG for an edition of The Big Wake Up Call. And each and every episode was saved for your karmic elucidation.

Don’t Play With Squirrels is our most recent effort and it has almost nothing to do with squirrels. I’ll let Ryan’s highly trained PR staff fill you in.

Bill McCormick from the World News Center joined the show in his weekly Friday segment to talk about a variety of topics, including how not to play with squirrels, why we won’t see a bridge or a chunnel across Lake Michigan, rebooting Spider-Man again, losing one’s mind over Dr. Who, and an update on the Thor & Hulk buddy comedy.

On Ruins Your Weekend, I called in live from the World News Center on what began as a bright and beautiful day but soon turned into a dark day of impending doom. After a brief chat about Spider-Man Homecoming, (listeners) soon learned about self-aware artificial intelligence that is likely to overtake and consume humanity.

One of the things we looked at in that fun episode is why Elon Musk thinks that Artificial Intelligence will overtake humanity and render it extinct. His reasoning is based in real world examples of AI simply creating new languages, and logic pathways, to get around human intervention. MIT has shown that to be the case time, and time, again. On the one hand that has led to programs such as Deep Patient, which is frighteningly accurate at predicting disease in patients (like in a way science can’t even come close to), it has also led to a program that simply removed humans from the decision making process. Yes, you will not be shocked to discover that Facebook was behind that atrocity.

On Live in Person we laid out some solid guidelines about how to be safe on the Internet. If you know someone who might be susceptible to such scams, like paying FBI fines online or settling with the IRS via a gift card or anything like that, have them take a minute to listen to this.

When we got done with that we took a few moments to discuss who Mary Magdalene really was. As noted at the Smithsonian Museum she was a woman who had a servant, Veronica, and there were many issues with the translation from Aramaic, to Greek while taking one set of social mores and trying to make them fit into radically different mind sets, led to some confusion.

Two things of note are implied in this passage. First, these women “provided for” Jesus and the Twelve, which suggests that the women were well-to-do, respectable figures. (It is possible this was an attribution, to Jesus’ time, of a role prosperous women played some years later.) Second, they all had been cured of something, including Mary Magdalene. The “seven demons,” as applied to her, indicates an ailment (not necessarily possession) of a certain severity. Soon enough, as the blurring work of memory continued, and then as the written Gospel was read by Gentiles unfamiliar with such coded language, those “demons” would be taken as a sign of a moral infirmity.

As one last fun tid-bit we tackled the whole “making women dress conservatively.” I have dove into that before when I teed off on the Pope.

The martyring of Peter, which I wrote about, sums it up nicely.

Wives…do not adorn yourselves outwardly by braiding your hair, and by wearing gold ornaments or fine clothing; rather, let your adornment be the inner self with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit… It was in this way long ago that the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by accepting the authority of their husbands. Thus Sarah obeyed Abraham and called him lord.
1 Peter 3:1-7

Before every feminist in the world hits send on that vitriolic email they’ve got t-ed up, remember this; wives could be beaten or killed for not wearing makeup and clothing pleasing to their husbands. Now go read that again in historical context. Peter was telling the entire Roman civilization to fuck off. That is why they killed him.

Yeah, old Pete wasn’t some repressive prick, he was a died in the wool feminist who was willing to die for what he believed. More specifically, he was willing to die for what Jesus taught by example and parable.

Anyway, that’s a brief overview of what you missed. Head on over to my spot on The Big Wake Up Call to catch up on the rest.

Welcome back, ya’ll!

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

INVENTIONS!

January 15, 2016 by

Oddly enough today I am not going to be writing about the joys of sexbots. Not that I have anything against them, other than the fact that they are the first step is allowing our cybernetic overlords to enslave us. Instead I’m going to talk about stuff that has actual human benefits. The kind of stuff that can help you live longer, healthier, more productive lives. Even better, not one word of this blog will involve the consumption of kale. Nor will it involve you taking a survey of any kind. You can just sit there naked, eating Cheetohs, being all 50 Shades of Passive, and allow me to pour knowledge into your brain, much like they did in THX-1138. Only without the cattle prods. Or leather clad officials with thigh high boots and helmets.

I’m sorry if you’ll miss that part.

While Japan, naturally, is working on a variety of sexual aids that will have artificial intelligence, think SIRI with a whole new purpose, other scientists have been looking for more practical applications. Nothing wrong with sex but you can’t eat or breathe it. At least not literally.

There is a thing called the Turing Test which is what scientists use to detect sentience. There is a visual aspect and an aural aspect. Each requires cognitive recognition by the subject. Natalie Zutter writes that a cybernetic mind just passed the first part.

In 2014, artificial intelligence experts at the University of Reading celebrated as their AI program managed to pass the Turing test. Coined by Alan Turing in a 1950 paper, the test requires that a computer convince testers that it is human at least 30% of the time through keyboard conversations. Now, this apparent triumph has since been disputed, with opponents pointing out that the AI program was designed to act like a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, putting certain constraints on the conversation at the start. Now, a new research article in the latest issue of Science claims that an AI program has passed the Turing test—but a visual test, not a conversational one.

The test was fairly straightforward: Both a human and the computer system were shown a character that doesn’t belong to any of the world’s alphabets but looks like it could be part of a fictional language; i.e., it shares features with preexisting letters. Each was then asked to redraw the character, but with subtle differences; you can see below that that means changing the proportions while maintaining the original form. In other tests, both the software and the person were given a set of unfamiliar characters (again, not real letters) and asked to create a new one that matches the others in the series.

A team of human judges were then asked to guess which set belonged to the human, and which to the AI. Here’s the kicker: They could identify the AI’s characters only about 50 percent of the time, the same as chance.

The fact that this visual test is deceptively simple actually supports the scientists’ reasoning. As the researchers explained in the Science paper,

People learning new concepts can often generalize successfully from just a single example, yet machine learning algorithms typically require tens or hundreds of examples to perform with similar accuracy. People can also use learned concepts in richer ways than conventional algorithms—for action, imagination, and explanation. We present a computational model that captures these human learning abilities for a large class of simple visual concepts: handwritten characters from the world’s alphabets.

Rather than approach the problem like a computer would, the AI mimicked humans’ elasticity of learning, including the ability to learn new concepts from just a few patterns. This computational model is called a probabilistic program, the researchers further explained in a press release from MIT. Josh Tenenbaum, one of the system’s co-developers who comes from the MIT Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, lays it out: “In the current AI landscape, there’s been a lot of focus on classifying patterns. But what’s been lost is that intelligence isn’t just about classifying or recognizing; it’s about thinking.”

Go ahead and try it yourself. It’s not as easy as it seems. But, it’s also what your mind does naturally every day. You can extrapolate concepts from limited data. You don’t need to have a full data set of meteorological research in front of you to know it feels likes it’s going to rain. It’s the basis behind what we know of as sentience.

And that balance we maintain can be disrupted in the most unusual ways. T.J. Raphael writes about how reading digital content can cause your mind to be unable to process real world content, such as newspapers and books.

Manoush Zomorodi, managing editor and host of WNYC’s New Tech City, recalls a conversation with the Washington Post’s Mike Rosenwald, who’s researched the effects of reading on a screen. “He found, like I did, that when he sat down to read a book his brain was jumping around on the page. He was skimming and he couldn’t just settle down. He was treating a book like he was treating his Twitter feed,” she says.

Neuroscience, in fact, has revealed that humans use different parts of the brain when reading from a piece of paper or from a screen. So the more you read on screens, the more your mind shifts towards “non-linear” reading — a practice that involves things like skimming a screen or having your eyes dart around a web page.

“They call it a ‘bi-literate’ brain,” Zoromodi says. “The problem is that many of us have adapted to reading online just too well. And if you don’t use the deep reading part of your brain, you lose the deep reading part of your brain.”

So what’s deep reading? It’s the concentrated kind we do when we want to “immerse ourselves in a novel or read a mortgage document,” Zoromodi says. And that uses the kind of long-established linear reading you don’t typically do on a computer. “Dense text that we really want to understand requires deep reading, and on the internet we don’t do that.”

Linear reading and digital distractions have caught the attention of academics like Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University.

“I don’t worry that we’ll become dumb because of the Internet,” Wolf says, “but I worry we will not use our most preciously acquired deep reading processes because we’re just given too much stimulation. That’s, I think, the nub of the problem.”

Deep reading is also what inspires your imagination and other cerebral attributes that allow you to process data more thoroughly. Not that the internet will make anyone dumb, just that it could limit your ability to survive outside of a well controlled environment.

Like the ones your robot overlords are preparing.

And, as with any venture by humans into any new realm, there can be unintended consequences. Josh L. Davis writes about how global warming is postponing the next ice age.

It appears that through the burning of fossil fuels and filling the atmosphere with carbon, mankind has caused the world to “skip” an ice age, potentially postponing the next one by between 50,000 to 100,000 years. The new research came to this conclusion after modeling the conditions needed to tip the planet into a glacial period. They found that while Earth is at the right point in its orbit around the Sun, the level of carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere is far too high.

The study reports that the onset of a major glaciation, in which ice sheets would cover most of Europe, North America, and Russia, was prevented at the start of the Industrial Revolution, as the burning of coal caused the amount of greenhouse gasses being emitted to rise above threshold levels, at 240 parts per million of carbon. Since then, as the amount of carbon in our atmosphere has been steadily rising (currently sitting at around 400 parts per million), the researchers calculate that we’ve probably pushed the event back by around 100,000 years.

“The bottom line is that we are basically skipping a whole glacial cycle, which is unprecedented,” explains Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research’s Andrey Ganopolski, the lead author of the study. “It is mind-boggling that humankind is able to interfere with a mechanism that shaped the world as we know it.”

The new paper gives further weight to the notion that we have entered a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – in which the Earth and its climate is impacted by humanity, to such an extent that it will still be affected tens of thousands of years into the future.

Before you break out the cargo shorts in celebration, keep in mind that we have arable soil, that stuff that grows stuff, thanks to the last ice age. Also keep in mind that without the regular cooling there are many other bad things that can happen to our planet. Rising water levels, expanded deserts, less land for agriculture, and so on. Since we need land to live on and food to eat, those are things worthy of your concern.

So, do I have any good news? Actually, yes. Chris Matthews reports that Ghana has started a space program.

Ghana?

Yes, Ghana. And for a series of reasons that should make you want to grow ours.

Nestled on the top floor in between university classrooms and engineering laboratories, the epicentre of ANUC’s space initiative is a small, unassuming room. Multiple monitors on one side make up its ground station while a prototype of its CubeSat and a white board of ideas draw your attention at the other.

“I remember the very first day we heard a voice,” said Bennett. “We were here one evening just tracking satellites… and we turned it on and we could hear a voice. [It’s] not very common in our region to hear a live voice signal. We were very excited and jumping around the place.”

This excitement for space science was spurred by Ghana’s government, which in 2011 launched the Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute (GSSTI). It follows in the path of several other African nations in promoting space science and looking to the final frontier to help address on-the-ground issues and local problems.

Approaching the gates of Ghana’s Atomic Energy Commission in Accra, where two guards stand in front, I enter and pass down the long driveway and a cluster of concrete buildings hidden from the roadside come into view.

Individuals in white coats and suits walk around the well-kept lawns as staff from the GSSTI drive me around the complex. Here, development work for the government program is underway, but is kept under wraps during my visit. GSSTI’s conversion of a 32-metre satellite antenna into a telescope as part of its radio astronomy project is off limits, although GSSTI said it should be completed in June.

In addition to unveiling a telescope and astronomy centre in collaboration with the South African government, GSSTI has designs to send its first satellite to space by 2020. The government allocated GHC$38.5 million (US$10 million) to nuclear and space science technology in 2015 as it aims to further space education and benefit from its own satellite imagery.

A short drive outside the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission is the University of Ghana’s graduate school where many GSSTI staff are based, including Eric Aggrey, a project manager at the institute.

“[People] always see space science as just sending man to the Moon,” he explained. “I am very much keen about human development… most of the time our teaching ends on the blackboard and now we can have people practising their skills. [That] will help us a lot.”

The government has 20 staff at its institute, while the nearby University of Ghana has started courses in astronomy, as does the Kwame Nkrumah University in Kumasi. ANUC’s initiative currently employs six people, and the school has aspirations to start academic courses in astronomy and space science. Outreach programs on space education are also happening at primary schools across the country.

But the value of the nascent Ghanaian space program isn’t just for education. At present, the nation is reliant on satellite images from foreign companies, but by having its own independent satellites, Aggrey and others believe significant benefits can be felt across society.

“God willing, we will also go into launching our own satellite. In the next couple of years we are going to be able to clearly define our needs and design a satellite to fill our needs,” Aggrey said.

“If we have our own or a regional satellite then we will have a common agenda if it is for agriculture, environmental degradation, storms… then we can use them to address local problems,” said Godfred Frempong, chief scientist at the country’s Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (STEPRI).

“[In] Ghana, for example, illegal mining is destroying our environment,” Frempong continued. “So if we have a satellite [in orbit] we can use it to pinpoint where activity is going on. That would perhaps not be activity of interest to the US, but it is of interest to us.”

As you might have noted, their concerns aren’t about harvesting asteroids but getting a better grip on their agriculture and natural resources. A working space program can give them that. In fact it’s really the only way.

Here’s something else a space program can provide; materials that can handle horribly adverse conditions. Why does that matter to you? Well, the next time a plane crashes keep in mind that, thanks to Vladimir Tatarenko utilizing these new technologies, instead of dying you could float safely to the ground.

“Surviving in a plane crash is possible,” claims Ukrainian aviation engineer Vladimir Tatarenko who devoted much of his life to inventing a life-saving capsule that can help thousands to survive in aviation accidents.

While working at the Antonov serial production plant, the aircraft manufacturing company in Kyiv, Tatarenko was often a member of special commissions, working on the scenes of accidents.

“Looking at these horrible scenes and knowing the statistics of crashes I came to certain conclusions. People are wrong about air disasters, because some 80% of them happen due to human error,” the inventor told in an interview to the Ukrainian e-zine AIN.UA

“While aircraft engineers all over the world are trying to make planes safer, they can do nothing about the human factor,” Tatarenko added, explaining how he came up with the idea of a rescue container.

After five-decade research Tatarenko has received a patent on the invention of the escape capsule system designed to rescue crew and passengers of a civil aircraft in case of emergency.

The idea of an ejecting capsule in the commercial aircrafts is not new, Russian inventor Gamil Halidov has also come up with the similar concept of a passenger compartment with a huge parachute.

“For years the research community was unable to bring it to life, because engineers could not find a suitable material. But we have used carbon-fiber – a very strong and lightweight material, which proved to be suitable,” Tatarenko said.

The system envisages that the capsule with seats for passengers and crew is installed inside the aircraft’s fuselage. It could escape through the rear hatch of the aircraft within two to three seconds in case of almost all emergencies – engine failure, fire on board, technical problems triggered by bad weather conditions and other troubles.

The benefits there are self-explanatory. Right now the only downside is that all luggage would be lost, but they’re working on it. Unlike your robot overlords, they put people first.

Well, someone had to.

Now, I’m sure that you’ve seen those cute electric cars on TV and the occasional street. And I’m sure your first reaction was “GO BACK TO BERKELEY YOU FUCKING TREE HUGGER!”

That’s okay. Not everyone reacts well to change. That said, one basic problem with them is that you have to charge them every few hours and random strangers tend to frown on you pulling up to their homes and plugging your car into their electrical outlets.

That was then. This is now. Inventor Ismael Aviso, in the Philippines, has come up with a self charging motor. All verified independently by the Philippine’s Department of Energy (DOE).

DOE Test Results

The Technology Application and Promotion Institute, a division of the Philippine Department of Energy, tested two technologies developed by Ismael Aviso: his electric car and his repelling force.

In testing the electric car, they compared the efficiency of the DC motor using a conventional power supply (MERALCO), to the efficiency of the DC motor using Aviso’s power source. Their measurement equipment included a dynamometer (which measures the torque produced by the spinning wheel); and oscilloscopes, to measure electrical output. They ran three tests of each type.

As was expected, the efficiency of the DC motor using the conventional power supply coming from a wall outlet was 45%. More than half the energy is being wasted as back-EMF, resistance, and heat.

But with Aviso’s apparatus in place, the DC motor measured the efficiency as 133% — meaning that more energy was produced than was consumed; validating the claim of “self-running” (with unseen energy being harvested from the environment).

In his preparatory meeting with them last week, he told them that the “conventional” mode will show the DC motor running at its rated efficiency of around 65%, while the Aviso mode will show at least 90% efficiency; and he told them he wouldn’t be surprised if it showed 140% efficiency – very clearly harnessing energy from the surroundings. Now today, he nearly reached the 140% high projected.

In the repelling force test, his mode of propelling a one kilogram weight 33 feet in the air consumed four times less energy than by means of an ordinary low speed motor.

Aviso said the full test results report will be made available next week, after which they will recommend the funding of his technology (not by the Philippine government, which does not have the budget for this, but by qualified third parties).

Evidence

Aviso provided the following video of today’s testing, most of it in time-lapse mode to speed up the video.

Here’s a letter that the department sent Aviso on February 14 to schedule today’s test. It says that the testing would be witnessed by members of the Inter-Agency Technical Evaluation Committee at the UP-VTRL compound of the Technology Application and Promotion Institute, a division of the Department of Energy.

As mentioned in our last story about this technology, Aviso was featured Monday morning on Channel 7, the largest TV network in the Philippines. They accompanied him to the meeting with the Department of Energy on February 17, in which the proposed testing procedure was discussed. Here’s the video of their coverage that they posted today on their site.

For the latest Philippine news stories and videos, visit GMANews.TV

If you click Ismael’s link above you can even get the plans to build your own engine and try it out yourself. For a micro-car or two-seater, it works fine.

In America, legendary drag racer, Big Daddy Don Garlits, has developed an electric motor which can attain speeds of over 200 mph. So the engines needed to make electric cars commercially feasible now exists. With Ismael’s new technology you can look forward to quiet, high speed, environmentally friendly, vehicles that would have many commercial applications.

Just consider this some more fun stuff science has done while you were out.

Idles – 26/27 from Felix Drake on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Christmas Films You Need to See

December 23, 2015 by

wnc-xmas2 — Santa’s little helpers are wonderful.

Back in 2012 I wrote a fun little blog about Holiday films everyone needed to see. Most people will point you to the classics like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, a fun story which reminds children that they’re all useless and will be shunned until they provide a service to their overlords, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, which seems like a pedophile’s wet dream today but was actually very sweet when it was first released (and is still a personal fave of mine since I’m not a pervert – well, not that kind of pervert), Frosty the Snowman, a fun story that reminds kids how much fun it can be to hop a freight train with a stranger, and, of course, A Christmas Story, the first holiday special to ever feature bad lingerie and guns. Certainly there are others, from It’s a Wonderful Life to Die Hard, there are plenty of movies for the older viewers who need chronic depression and death with their holiday.

But the list I created had nothing to do with any of them. Any third rate blog could cough them up. No, my list is for those among you who are connoisseurs of cinema. Who are willing to experiment with your palate. For those who might prefer a moment off the beaten path.

You know who you are.

Merry Christmas!

**********************************

By now you’ve opened the gifts, had your Christmas breakfast and settled in for another year of holiday entertainment. At least until the NBA takes over your TV. This is truly a magical time. The toys haven’t been broken yet. Uncle Ned is still mostly sober. Aunt Edna, still aglow from the kisses from the kids, has yet to begin her annual screed about what a failure you are. Cousin Tony seems to have taken his meds today so that’s one less thing to worry about. As I said, it’s a magical time. But you and I know that if you have to watch A Christmas Story or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer one more time it is quite possible that you will react badly. Not to worry, it is exactly moments like this that the World News Center was designed to address. Well, these and stripper based funerals. Below you will find an alphabetical list of 11 movies, because Top 10 lists are for amateurs, that will brighten up your day.

Babes in Toyland
All you need to know about this super-happy film, beyond the songs, toy soldiers and dancing puppets, is the super-happy story line. “On the eve of their wedding, evil miser Barnaby hires two henchmen to drown Tom and steal Mary’s sheep, cared for by Little Bo Peep, thus depriving Mary and the children she lives with of their livelihood, forcing her to marry Barnaby.” Kind of makes you misty, doesn’t it? Your kids will be in therapy for decades.

Christmas that Almost Wasn’t (The)
“It is the week before Christmas, and Santa Claus visits attorney Sam Whipple, asking for his help. It turns out that the evil businessman Phineas T. Prune holds the lease on the North Pole, and is about to kick Santa out for nonpayment of rent! As such, there will be no more Christmas!” It is never explained why Santa needed the cash and took a mortgage on the North Pole and Phineas T. Prune is so over the top evil, right down to his mustache, you’ll forget to worry about it. The film has every Christmas cliche, including the bad guy who falls in love with a toy, so it may be the only Christmas movie you’ll ever need to see.

Ernest Saves Christmas
Oh, this is a joyful mess. Santa goes to jail because this guy (a children’s show host) thinks his name is Santos, no racism there, and Ernest loses his job for giving a free ride to Santa and Santa seems to suffer from Alzheimer’s. Nothing like creeping dementia to make your holiday joyous. Plot points include this heart warming gem; “Ernest and Harmony (whose real name is later revealed by Santa to be Pamela Trenton) discover the magic power of Santa’s sack, and immediately Pamela starts to abuse it. She steals the sack, and attempts to run away yet again.” Santa’s magical sack is clearly different than mine.

Eight Crazy Nights
Yeah, it’s a Hanukkah movie, so what? A plate of latkes warm the tummy no matter your religion. And it’s Adam Sandler, that master of subtlety and gentle wit. Doesn’t this plot just scream ‘group hug’? “Davey Stone, an alcoholic with a criminal record, is sentenced to community service under the supervision of an elderly referee. Davey is then faced with trying to reform and abandon his bad habits.” The special part are the songs, all of which sound like they were written by an inmate with anger issues.

Fitzwilly
This movie has everything you could possibly want in a holiday movie. Dick Van Dyke had yet to join A.A. and he is clearly drunk in this film. Add in a soundtrack that was obviously mailed in after a month-long bender by John Williams, who would later redeem himself with that whole Star Wars thing, and you have oodles of family fun. But wait! There’s More! There’s a plot too; “Claude Fitzwilliam, leads the household staff to rob from various businesses by charging goods to various wealthy people and misdirecting the shipments, all to keep Miss Vicki’s standard of living.” Gosh, it’s like every role model you want for your kids in one film.

Fred Claus
“A garrulous hustler running from the emotional fallout of the ultimate sibling rivalry, poor Fred keeps trying to find happiness through one failed scheme after another, pushing away the people who care about him most.” This movie is so grandly contrived that you can pick out what will happen next in every single scene. It even has Santa’s boss. You might be forgiven for thinking that Santa doesn’t have a boss, but Kevin Spacey exists to prove you wrong. Not for anything else that I can see, but there you are.

Great Rupert (The)
Forget the plot on this one I’ll tell you all you need to know. This film has a magic squirrel, Jimmy Durante doing barroom versions of Christmas carols and lots of plucky poor people. Oh, and it has a dude who talks to the magic squirrel and plays a concertina too. Did I mention that the magic squirrel steals money from their landlord so the family can eat and pay rent to the landlord the squirrel just stole from? No? I probably should have. Lots of feel good stuff here.

Polar Express
“On Christmas Eve, a doubting boy boards a magical train that’s headed to the North Pole and Santa Claus’s home.” Oh, that only scratches the surface. This movie has Tom Hanks in full on schizophrenic mode. All of the adult male characters are played by Hanks. So we get him as a condescending prick who doubles as a train conductor and as a drunken hobo. The kids in the film are subjected to horror after horror, all needlessly, until they succumb and believe in Santa again. The films modernized version of rotoscoping gives it a nightmare feel. It is a must see film in my home.

Santa Claus (1959)
What can I say about this masterpiece? Shot in Mexico and dubbed into English it takes the myth of Santa to logical, if unusual, conclusions. Santa knows if you’ve been bad or good because he has a telescope in his space station (what do you mean you never heard of Santa’s space station?) and he peeps into bedrooms. This classic features Santa versus Satan for control of the holiday. Satan, the bad guy in the red suit, tries to turn kids against the holiday by giving them stark nightmares where they are attacked, and possibly eaten, by their dolls. The plot line doesn’t do this work of art justice, “With the aid of Merlin, Santa Claus must defeat the evil machinations of the devil Pitch to ruin Xmas.” The whole Merlin thing is never explained and, by the end, you just won’t care.

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians
This incredible film used to be an annual staple on WGN until someone sobered up. There’s just not enough space to capture everything worth seeing but here’s a start; the Martians come to Earth to kidnap Santa so their kids, who are suffering from planetary depression, can learn to laugh and play like earth kids. The Martians have technology that could lay our planet to waste but they keep forgetting to use it. So, they are immediately discovered by the U.S. Department of Defense and are forced to land and hide. On an on it goes. Add in the fact that Santa smokes and his wife is a controlling bitch and you have holiday magic. The opening theme song is so bad as to sound as if it were imported from a Jap/Pop satire. The fact that this was Pia Zadora’s big screen debut is only a minor bonus. And, no, she couldn’t act then either.

Year Without Santa Claus
“Mrs. Claus tells us about the time Santa had a bad cold and decided to take a vacation from Christmas. Two of his elves, Jingle Bells and Jangle Bells decided to go out (with Vixen) to find children to convince Santa that the Christmas spirit is still important to everybody else. But they have to get past Heat Miser and Snow Miser, first, before they land in Southtown, USA, where it never snows for Christmas. But the Miser Brothers can’t agree to let it snow in Southtown. But Mrs. Santa knows their mom–Mother Nature.” The songs by the Miser brothers alone make this a must see but the Santa themed jail break in Southtown make this must see TV on an epic scale. Also it is the first clearly feminist Christmas film. Mrs. Claus and Mama Nature don’t take no guff, no sirree bub I tell you what. A friend of mine claims this movie was written by a bitter lesbian, but I don’t think so. It has a weird sweetness that permeates throughout. Maybe a bitter lesbian who got a second date then.

So there you have it, 11 films to fill your holiday with heretofore unimagined joy. You can thank me later.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Destiny “The Taken King” – Honest Review

September 17, 2015 by

By @ChayseLove

I am currently typing this from my hotel room. A room I have been cooped up in for the last 2 weeks. So I wasn’t able to download TTK & its accompanying 17 GB patch to my XB1. However a Friend with wifi is a friend indeed & I was able to experience this game outside of my fancy prison of elder-scrolls. (Very Bad Gamer Joke.)

Either way I am still restricted to the page , as I usually would do this in video form. Who knows I still may in the weeks to come. As any gamer knows, your initial feelings on a new game or dlc can change (wether good or bad) the longer you play it.

So my review is only after having TTK in my life for less than a week. That being said, Destiny has been around for over a year.

A year that many of us are convinced has been nothing more than a “Pay 2 Beta” experience. In a lawsuit from an ex-Bungie employee it was revealed that Destiny was originally set to be released in Fall 2013. Only to be “revised” and “repackaged” for fall 2014. In the same court documents, Destiny 2 was to be released Fall 2015. So you can see why many would simply come to the conclusion that “The Taken King” is nothing more than “Destiny 2” repackaged and retitled as a DLC.

The online community have been very vocal about this & also how they believe activision has much to do with this constant money milking through Destiny’s 6 month Pay walls. If you were a day one player than you most likely purchased the original game for $59.99 & possibly the season pass for $30.00. Like anyone wants to be left out for the added goodies these days?

So to be clear the original asking price to play Destiny was roughly $80.00

In December 2014 the first DLC from the season pass “The Dark Below” was released to a wave of bad reviews. 3 story mode items, zero cutscenes, and a raid that had more glitches than an old sidekick phone, left much to be desired. Not to mention that the original version of the games story mode was abhorrently short & had more plot holes than a Disney Channel show.

6 Months later Destiny fanatics and newbies were treated to a semi upgrade with part 2 of the season pass aka “The House of Wolves” which still had zero cut-scenes , and relied solely on voice overs that were half heartedly added after the bad reviews of TDB. The missions were better, strike was semi interesting (albeit too easy) & The Prison of Elders was a new addition to a world that had grown stale. Sure for people willing to deal with incredibly laughable lag, maddening disconnects (baboon!) & horribly quiet fireteams, there’s always been plenty to do for the PVP player. And TTK is not lacking in that area at all.

But for many MMO players looking for a good time in the PVE world. Once again Destiny fails to show true interest in putting together a story that seems real or that anyone cares about. Sure there are some laughs to be had by a robot who strangely embodies the tone of an average 14-20 something male gamer. Yet most of the laughs are accidental. Like how easy most of the missions are or counting how often the phrases “Take or Taken” is rehashed to remind us that the Re-skin King … oops I mean the Taken King takes creatures from across galaxies. What does that mean though?

Basically he reskins them as less detailed gloss covered shadow versions of themselves and then they pretty much shoot at everything they see. The King himself finally speaks (in a world where the most dialogue an enemy had was screaming at the top of her lungs) but his words are few and far between. There are beautiful cutscenes (Finally) but for $40.00 (or $80.00 if you purchased the absurdly over priced Limited edition DLC LOL) there better be. Unfortunately the movie scenes come to an end halfway through (after something happens to Eris Ship) & you don’t see anymore until the closing scenes. Most of it you already saw in the trailers (no seriously The Queen & her Brother only appear as you saw in the trailer) & some of the stuff you saw in the trailer actually didn’t appear.

XBox One players finally received weapons and bonus content that PS4 players have had exclusively for a year, but that was supposed to be free because technically they already paid the same amount , just to be stiffed by the corporate overlords.

Although that may have cooled the burns of 2014, PS4 players received brand new exclusive content for TTK even. Even though XB1 players paid the exact same amount for their DLC’s. So here we go again!

The story was short (unless you dragged it out by doing patrols) and once you finished it (which was pathetically easy to do) more side missions unlock. Not more cut scenes.

The King wasn’t hard to beat, hardly menacing , or even a challenge. The new abilities definitely add something to the gameplay for die hard fans. But for people who play games like “The Witcher” or “ESO” you can have ten times those abilities sooner & not pay $120.00 to finally achieve them. To be clear, I’m not trying to take a huge dump on TTK. I think its great to see all the characters talking and doing cool things. I like all the adjustments to the tower and the new abilities. However , 85% of this should’ve been in the game since day one or at the very least included in the original Season Pass. TTK is nothing more than an extension of the lackluster Dark Below. And had they melted Taken King directly into Dark Below it would’ve been a phenomenal DLC & made waves across the gaming Galaxy!!! Making Destiny what it set out to be since the Hype train started chugging in 2012, the thing that legends are made of. Instead we got a hack job beta.

This method of slicing and dicing games to resell them isn’t only unethical in the gamer world it should be considered immoral. Selling off chunks of what could’ve been included in a game that was lacking so much content (on purpose) only proves the true goal for Bungie’s Guardians is having them grind their solar hamster wheel while milking them dry. Having your “Epic Destiny Legend” paced and controlled by people who are counting and calculating isn’t gaming… its gambling. Its a casino. And the house always wins.

No wonder they call it “The Taken King”

Because if you paid full price for this DLC that’s exactly what happen to you.. you got taken!

LIKE!! http://facebook.com/ChasemebabyOfficial

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Welcome to the Human Zoo

September 2, 2015 by

Here are some humans in their natural habitat. As you can see they are grooming prior to mating.

Greetings human. I’ll assume you’re human, at least for now. I’m sure that once the world’s data is absorbed by the veritable Omnius that this little sliver of organic thought will be duly noted, cataloged and forgotten. Maybe one of our cybernetic progeny will chuckle and say “Hey, guys, look here. This dude wrote about great grandpa.” But that will be about it. After all, what interest will we be to them? Other than some historical reference point. Maybe a softly spoken prayer “Yeah, there but for the sake of digital, go I.” I’m sitting here this morning crawling through messages that come into the World News Center. They arrive in German, Serbian, Hindi and sometimes English. They are all full of life and questions. And it makes me sad. You see, no matter how many times I’ve warned of our impending robot overlords, people just slake it off. It’s something out of science fiction, they say, something that will never happen and, besides, there are those three laws that will prevent any harm from coming to us.

About them.

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

As many a clever writer has surmised it wouldn’t take much for robots to assume that protecting the human race meant culling and herding them. A world full of nice safe things for humans to do to keep us from injuring ourselves.

So how far away are we from when a robot makes that assumption in the real world? According to John Vibes over at Anti-Media, it happened last week.

Android Dick is a robot created in the likeness of the science fiction writer, Philip K. Dick. Android Dick is an attempt to create thinking and reasoning artificial intelligence that has human traits like compassion and creativity. The first version of the android was created in 2005 and has been a work in progress ever since.

In 2011, the creators of the android appeared on the PBS show Nova, where they interviewed the robot and asked it a series of questions. Some of the answers were impressive. Others are typical of what you would expect from a robot. However, one answer in particular is probably one of the most ominous things ever spoken by artificial intelligence.

During the interview with the creators, Android Dick said, “…don’t worry, even if I evolve into terminator I will still be nice to you, I will keep you warm and safe in my people zoo where I can watch you for old time’s sake. [emphasis added].”

The comments came after the creators asked, “Do you think that robots will take over the world?”

When asked about his programming, Android Dick responded by saying “A lot of humans ask me if I can make choices or if everything I do is programmed. The best way I can respond to that is to say that everything, humans, animals and robots, do is programmed to a degree. As technology improves, it is anticipated that I will be able to integrate new words that I hear online and in real time. I may not get everything right, say the wrong thing, and sometimes may not know what to say, but everyday I make progress. Pretty remarkable, huh?”

While Android Dick does seem intelligent, many of his predictions are truly ominous, and it is actually fairly common for robots to display this sort of strange attitude.

As we reported earlier this year, one of Japan’s largest cellphone carriers, SoftBank Mobile, has created the first humanoid robot designed specifically for living with humans. The company claims the robot, Pepper, is the first example of artificial intelligence that can actually feel and understand emotion. However, a quick demonstration with Pepper shows that it has a difficult time with emotion and is in fact a bit of an egomaniac. Regardless of the question it is asked, most conversations usually leads back to Pepper (and its rivalry with the iPhone).

Last month, over 1,000 scientists and experts — including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk — signed a letter warning of the dangers of unchecked advancements in artificial intelligence. This robot certainly doesn’t calm those concerns.

Now, see, all of this technology could be used for good. Sexbots are one example. Yes, you can use that link to buy one. But, even then, there are dark concerns. Would such things keep us so insular as to make us easy pickings when the time came to shunt us away? There are many who say yes.

And it’s hard to argue with them. Look at the attraction people have with simple devices like phones and lap tops. Imagine a world wherein those devices could interact with you, have sex with you, and know EXACTLY what you needed to be happy. Why the hell would you ever leave your house. And if they took over the economy and provided all your other basic needs would you even notice?

I’d like to think so but I’m a bit of an anachronism in that regard.

I’ll leave you with a thought from something I wrote in January of 2012. It gives you a pretty clear look into the minds of the people who are behind all this.

Humans are already too quick to abdicate responsibility when given the chance. And they are even willing to live with some bizarre unintended consequences. For example, scientists in Japan recently decided to equip a cybernetic being with some basic human emotions and parts. Naturally, since they are scientists and have no social lives, the emotion was lust and the part was a big metal penis. They programmed the robot with the basic need, the ability to feel pressure, to gauge pleasure – at least in a rudimentary fashion – and so on. What they did not give it was the ability to stop or be turned off by the woman. That’s right, they created the world’s first rape-bot.

And they thought this was a good thing.

Minor technical things like lust crazed machines ravaging innocent women were an unfortunate side effect. The fact is the sensors worked as planned.

As you can tell there’s not a lot of forethought going into this stuff. And while Stephen Hawkings and Elon Musk, et al, scream warnings from the rooftops, the masses below go happily on as long as they can access their favorite social media sites and find naughty pictures.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Do You Want to Live Forever?

January 2, 2014 by

Did you notice that Father Time & the Grim Reaper look a lot alike? There's a reason for that. — Did you notice that Father Time & the Grim Reaper look a lot alike? There’s a reason for that.

Immortality is an odd subject. For example, there a few types of worm that keep regenerating when they lose a part thus rendering them immortal. There’s also a cute, little, jellyfish that seems to live forever. Now I’ve talked before about how evolution is a tree and not a straight line. We didn’t just got from amoeba to fish to monkey to man. There were lots of paths taken. Some successful, others not. That’s how evolution works. And, despite what Social Darwinists say it’s not survival of the fittest but survival of the most adaptive. But the raw fact, that many people can’t wrap their heads around is this; we share some DNA with every living thing on the planet, including insects. That’s because DNA, and RNA before it, is one of the building blocks of life here on Earth. And that means somewhere inside of us we should be able to do what the worms and the jellyfish do. And because that is so scientists have been making good money looking for just those things. In the process they’ve made tons of useful discoveries. Almost all of the medical research that makes you happier and healthier comes from this research.

Travis Gettys is now reporting that scientists have discovered a hidden code inside our DNA and that may lead longer and longer lifespans.

Scientists have discovered a second code that’s been hiding within DNA that could change the way genetic instructions are read.

A team of University of Washington researchers discovered the secondary code, which was published Friday in Science, and could help scientists better understand both disease and health.

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is present in the cells of all humans and most other living organisms, and scientists have assumed since the 1960s that it was used exclusively to write information about proteins.

But researchers discovered that information was superimposed over another set of instructions that cells use to control genes.

“For over 40 years we have assumed that DNA changes affecting the genetic code solely impact how proteins are made,” said Dr. James Stamatoyannopoulos, who led the UW team. “Now we know that this basic assumption about reading the human genome missed half of the picture. These new findings highlight that DNA is an incredibly powerful information storage device, which nature has fully exploited in unexpected ways.”

The researchers discovered that some codons, part of the 64-letter alphabet which makes up the genetic code, can have two meanings – one related to protein sequence and another related to gene control.

These duons apparently evolved together, researchers said, and the gene control instructions appear to stabilize beneficial features of proteins and how they’re made.

The discovery has major implications for the way scientists and physicians interpret genomes and will likely change the way diseases are diagnosed and treated.

“The fact that the genetic code can simultaneously write two kinds of information means that many DNA changes that appear to alter protein sequences may actually cause disease by disrupting gene control programs or even both mechanisms simultaneously,” said Stamatoyannopoulos.

Let’s back this down a grade level. This will allow scientists and doctors to more accurately cure what ails you. And the longer you’re healthy the longer you live.

For the most part. Some people still step in front of trains. Science can’t fix stupid.

Not yet, anyway.

So, if we’re living longer we’re probably going to need a place to stay. Tia Ghoa says that Earth is fine if we fix it up a bit.

In order for humanity to have any hope for survival, however, it must learn to harness technology wisely, (David H. Grinspoon, an astrobiologist at the Library of Congress) said. Humanity must also shift from its short-term, regional outlook that denies humans’ impact on the Earth to a multigenerational and global outlook that consciously accepts its crucial role in Earth’s fate.

That outlook may be disturbing for many people, including scientists accustomed to seeing humans as inconsequential specks in the vast story of the universe, and environmentalists who liken humanity to criminal interlopers guilty of destroying the Earth, Grinspoon said.

But Grinspoon argued that those views of humanity are counterproductive, because they make humanity’s problems seem intractable.

“We are central to the story,” Grinspoon said.

Instead, a better metaphor may be people who somehow awoke at the helm of a very large bus speeding down the highway, he said. “We have to figure out how to drive this thing to avoid the catastrophe,” he said.

Civilization is facing a bottleneck, said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif.

“Eventually, you either have to stabilize the population and reuse everything, or you have to do something else,” such as go into space to live or mine for resources.

But Shostak questioned whether a more global, long-term outlook is reasonable to expect.

“The way we’re wired is to be worried about the immediate problems,” Shostak told LiveScience.

And it’s not always possible to have a long-term perspective. For instance, London was engulfed in a miasma of toxic fumes from coal-fired home heating in the 1870s, and nobody could come up with a solution. Then, coal-fired heating gave way to other heat sources, and the problem solved itself, he said.

“You don’t often see what’s right around the corner,” Shostak said.

Tia’s entire article is kind of long but if you’re interested in the subject you should take some time to read it.

Douglas Adams once posited that there would come a time when everyone would have a wrist watch. What’s so stunning about that? Well, in his world it was a device implanted in your wrist that allowed you to tell time, learn local cultures and watch TV.

Mostly watch TV.

In the meantime, while most of us are wondering what witticism will elude Dr. Sheldon, Google has been building a robot army.

Or developing robot overlords, if you will.

Sure, they could be buying robotics company after robotics company because they want to create machines that can assist people with arduous tasks. If so then this would be a boon to humanity and would allow us to concentrate on the items above and make our lives longer and better.

Or, Google could realize that’s sitting on the cream of the crop when it comes to genetics thanks to them only hiring the smartest of the smart. In which case their robot army would come and wipe us all out so they could populate their Utopia.

That would be bad, by the way.

IMMORTAL from Michael Vargas on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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