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RSSSusan Blackmore on Memes
Mar 04
Video Comments Off
I <3 Lectures
Mar 03
Words Comments Off
I like documentaries. I have a similar thing for a good video lecture.
Let’s have some links!
That should get you started. Here are 100 lectures selected for being pretty good. http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2009/06/18/100-incredible-lectures-from-the-worlds-top-scientists/
Why we don’t write about games anymore
Jan 21
Dave Long had a really strong comment in the “Death of Crispygamer.com” thread over at QT3:
My son asked me just this past weekend why I don’t review games anymore while we were at Barnes & Noble. “That was so awesome when you were still doing that, Dad. Why can’t you do it anymore?”
I walked him over to the magazines and showed him how the size of the videogame magazine section used to go from “here to here” and now it’s “just these right in here and as you can see it’s being crowded out by magazines about dogs and cats. Worse, only this one, this one and these two are written and published in the United States. All the others come from the UK.”
“On top of that, all the web sites only want kids or people who will write for next to no money at all. It takes too much time for me to still be doing it when I’d get $50 or $100 for what I used to get $300. So unfortunately, I think that’s it Calvin. I’m never going to be doing that again.”
It sucks. The writing is mostly awful all over the web and the only places left to do print that aren’t Official magazines come from overseas.
Aaaaaaand that sums it right up. Be amazed, but my first article paid like 50 cent a word. That was in 1996. By 2001 I was writing 1500 words for like $200 and considered fairly compensated. Hard to maintain motivation about an article under those conditions.
HD Nation – Boxee vs Roku vs Popbox
Jan 19
This is the episode I’ve been waiting for… seriously.
HD Nation tackles the set-top streaming box lineup.
Daniel Suarez – lecture on software bots’ impact on society
Jan 17
http://fora.tv/2008/08/08/Daniel_Suarez_Daemon_Bot-Mediated_Reality#fullprogram
Dan Suarez has some pretty interesting observations here.
Making human-complexity AI is too hard. We have excelled in making billions of tiny script-bots that are as smart as a microbe or beetle though. The little single-task critters of the internet are now pushing more data around than humans.
You can write an army of bots to make trivial decisions for people, and put the data in front of human eyes for the bigger decisions. This evolution in AI has been pretty quiet, and is very high impact to all of us. It’s how our credit score gets counted, how our bank statement is processed, how we’re selected for a job.
Another thing he talks about is 3rd parties farming data from other bots and turning it to their purposes. Case in point – your car wirelessly transmits tire pressure data to the processor in the car. Since that’s wifi, the tires transmit a unique ID to tell them from tires on other cars nearby. A 3rd party with roadside antennas can read the serial numbers of your tires and know where you are driving, and use that to track you, beam targetted advertising into your car, etc. Nobody needs to decrypt the content of the message, just look at the ID of the sender which is always going to be public.
Who can track all that information that is sucked up from bots? More bots. His argument is that we’re already in, and will increasingly be more submerged in a sea of narrow-AI bot interactions.
I observed this first-hand last night at a restaurant. The servers all wore a watch that talked wirelessly with a box on the table. Every time they’d come by to see if we needed anything, the box and watch would record the event. If we needed anything, we could page the server by touching the box, which would make his watch vibrate. I had some immediate concerns for the deeper impact of a system like this – which could be a stress reducer on both customer and service provider, or could be a major stress inducer in the server if that watch-box becomes what they’re trying to keep happy instead of their customer.
Here’s one for the ladies
Jan 16
I don’t know how I stumbled in here, but I saw this “Lady Gaga makeup tutorial” thing and watched it. The girl doing it – Michelle Phan – is pretty fun, so I looked at some other stuff she’s done. I’m really impressed with how pro of a vidcast she’s doing. It’s also pretty shocking to see how she starts out with her normal face and then ends up in some variety of glamor hottie.
Since Joan is selling Mary Kay I figured I’d pass this around, and show it to her. I’ve got a little more respect for the amount of time invested in girls putting their look on. Didn’t realize that you could spend 10 min just putting on various layers of eye shadow. Glad I’m a dude, because I’m from bed to shower to car in 10 min or less.
Michelle Phan’s Youtube channel.
I am the biggest tom boy you will ever meet! I love video games (I plan on working on a few titles in the future), comic books (I plan on doing a few comic book covers), I collect swords and I own all the gaming consoles and some of my favorite games are Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter,Resident Evil, Gears of War, WoW, Call of Duty and the list goes on…I may be a huge nerd but it does not mean I have to look like one. Here to represent fashionable nerds!