The Cutting Room Floor, bootleg central for video games
The Cutting Room Floor, bootleg central for video games
This is for the uber-geeks out there. (You know who you are.)
The Cutting Room Floor is a project dedicated to give prime time to unused content from video games; music, credits, anything hidden, secret or unpublished in video games.
The Cutting Room Floor, bootleg central for video games
This is for the uber-geeks out there. (You know who you are.)
The Cutting Room Floor is a project dedicated to give prime time to unused content from video games; music, credits, anything hidden, secret or unpublished in video games.
The biggest moonshot of all may be the skunk works itself: With X, Google has created a laboratory whose mandate is to come up with technologies that sound more like plot contrivances from Star Trek than products that might satisfy the short-term demands of Google’s shareholders. “Google X is very consciously looking at things that Google in its right mind wouldn’t do,” says Richard DeVaul, a “rapid evaluator” at the lab. “They built the rocket pad far away from the widget factory, so if the rocket blows up, it’s hopefully not disrupting the core business.”
A fascinating feature if you’re interested in what Google will release in the future. Of course, we’re not talking search engines here, Google X delivered driverless cars and Google Glass.
To think that this exists only since 2010 is frightening.
The biggest moonshot of all may be the skunk works itself: With X, Google has created a laboratory whose mandate is to come up with technologies that sound more like plot contrivances from Star Trek than products that might satisfy the short-term demands of Google’s shareholders. “Google X is very consciously looking at things that Google in its right mind wouldn’t do,” says Richard DeVaul, a “rapid evaluator” at the lab. “They built the rocket pad far away from the widget factory, so if the rocket blows up, it’s hopefully not disrupting the core business.”
A fascinating feature if you’re interested in what Google will release in the future. Of course, we’re not talking search engines here, Google X delivered driverless cars and Google Glass.
To think that this exists only since 2010 is frightening.
IBM makes Watson more corporate
IBM makes Watson more corporate
I.B.M. hopes to take a big step toward mass-market commercialization of Watson on Tuesday, announcing that the technology will be applied to customer service, broadly defined. Its new offering, called IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, is being pitched as a smart assistant whose services can apply to almost any industry, but especially those that receive many customer service calls, like retailing, banking, insurance and telecommunications.
So after winning Jeopardy!, Watson (an artificial intelligence that actually exists) will answer customer calls. Not a bad move from IBM.
IBM makes Watson more corporate
bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/2…
I.B.M. hopes to take a big step toward mass-market commercialization of Watson on Tuesday, announcing that the technology will be applied to customer service, broadly defined. Its new offering, called IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, is being pitched as a smart assistant whose services can apply to almost any industry, but especially those that receive many customer service calls, like retailing, banking, insurance and telecommunications.
So after winning Jeopardy!, Watson (an artificial intelligence that actually exists) will answer customer calls. Not a bad move from IBM.
Daft Punk’s fourth studio album, “Random Access Memories,” is an attempt to make the kind of disco record that they sampled so heavily for “Discovery.” As such, it serves as a tribute to those who came before them and as a direct rebuke to much of what they’ve spawned. Only intermittently electronic in nature, and depending largely on live musicians, it is extremely ambitious, and as variable in quality as any popular album you will hear this year. Noodly jazz fusion instrumentals? Absolutely. Soggy poetry and kid choirs? Yes, please. Cliches that a B-list teen-pop writer would discard? Bring it on. The duo has become so good at making records that I replay parts of “Random Access Memories” repeatedly while simultaneously thinking it is some of the worst music I’ve ever heard. Daft Punk engages the sound and the surface of music so lovingly that all seventy-five loony minutes of “Random Access Memories” feel fantastic, even when you are hearing music you might never seek out. This record raises a radical question: Does good music need to be good?
Daft Punk’s fourth studio album, “Random Access Memories,” is an attempt to make the kind of disco record that they sampled so heavily for “Discovery.” As such, it serves as a tribute to those who came before them and as a direct rebuke to much of what they’ve spawned. Only intermittently electronic in nature, and depending largely on live musicians, it is extremely ambitious, and as variable in quality as any popular album you will hear this year. Noodly jazz fusion instrumentals? Absolutely. Soggy poetry and kid choirs? Yes, please. Cliches that a B-list teen-pop writer would discard? Bring it on. The duo has become so good at making records that I replay parts of “Random Access Memories” repeatedly while simultaneously thinking it is some of the worst music I’ve ever heard. Daft Punk engages the sound and the surface of music so lovingly that all seventy-five loony minutes of “Random Access Memories” feel fantastic, even when you are hearing music you might never seek out. This record raises a radical question: Does good music need to be good?
Peculiar requests from traveling Britons to the Foreign Office
Peculiar requests from traveling Britons to the Foreign Office
- A man who required hospital treatment in Cambodia when a monkey dislodged a stone that hit him demanded help getting compensation and wanted assurance that it would not happen again
- A man asked FCO staff in Rome to translate a phrase for a tattoo that he wanted
- Consular staff in Beijing were asked to help a woman who had bought a pair of football boots that were ‘Made in China’ but were poor quality
- A woman requested that consular staff in Tel Aviv order her husband to get fit and eat healthily so that they could have children
- Consular staff in Kuala Lumpur were asked if the FCO could help pay to send their children to an International School
- A man asked consular staff in Stockholm to check the credentials of a woman whom he had met online
- A man asked the Consulate in Montreal for information to settle a £1,000 wager on the colour of the British passport
- A number of British Consulates have been asked to book hotels or to advise on where to watch the football
Peculiar requests from traveling Britons to the Foreign Office
blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/201…
- A man who required hospital treatment in Cambodia when a monkey dislodged a stone that hit him demanded help getting compensation and wanted assurance that it would not happen again
- A man asked FCO staff in Rome to translate a phrase for a tattoo that he wanted
- Consular staff in Beijing were asked to help a woman who had bought a pair of football boots that were ‘Made in China’ but were poor quality
- A woman requested that consular staff in Tel Aviv order her husband to get fit and eat healthily so that they could have children
- Consular staff in Kuala Lumpur were asked if the FCO could help pay to send their children to an International School
- A man asked consular staff in Stockholm to check the credentials of a woman whom he had met online
- A man asked the Consulate in Montreal for information to settle a £1,000 wager on the colour of the British passport
- A number of British Consulates have been asked to book hotels or to advise on where to watch the football
The three types of specialist
The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says. Otherwise the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.
The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic genius – a person capable of having seemingly good ideas not in general circulation. “A genius working alone,” he says, “is invariably ignored as a lunatic.”
The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find: a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from mad. “A person like this working alone,” says Slazinger, “can only yearn loud for changes, but fail to say what their shapes should be.”
The third sort of specialist is a person who can explain everything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people, no matter how stupid or pigheaded they may be. “He will say almost anything in order to be interesting and exciting,” says Slazinger. “Working alone, depending solely on his own shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being as full of shit as a Christmas turkey.”
Slazinger, high as a kite, says that every successful revolution, including Abstract Expressionism, the one I took part in, had that cast of characters at the top – Pollock being the genius in our case, Lenin being the one in Russia’s, Christ being the one in Christianity’s.
He says that if you can’t get a cast like that together, you can forget changing anything in a great big way.
Surely it mustn’t be too far from the truth.
The three types of specialist
The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says. Otherwise the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.
The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic genius – a person capable of having seemingly good ideas not in general circulation. “A genius working alone,” he says, “is invariably ignored as a lunatic.”
The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find: a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from mad. “A person like this working alone,” says Slazinger, “can only yearn loud for changes, but fail to say what their shapes should be.”
The third sort of specialist is a person who can explain everything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people, no matter how stupid or pigheaded they may be. “He will say almost anything in order to be interesting and exciting,” says Slazinger. “Working alone, depending solely on his own shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being as full of shit as a Christmas turkey.”
Slazinger, high as a kite, says that every successful revolution, including Abstract Expressionism, the one I took part in, had that cast of characters at the top – Pollock being the genius in our case, Lenin being the one in Russia’s, Christ being the one in Christianity’s.
He says that if you can’t get a cast like that together, you can forget changing anything in a great big way.
Surely it mustn’t be too far from the truth.
IDEAS: Are blasphemy, sexuality, and excrement the main themes all over the world?
MOHR: As far as I know, they’re mostly the same with a little bit of regional variation. In Arab and Spanish-speaking Catholic countries, there’s a lot of stuff about mothers and sisters. But it’s pretty much the same.
A cool interview with Melissa Mohr, author of Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, with the Boston Globe.
They investigate the origins and disparities of swear words across the globe.
IDEAS: Are blasphemy, sexuality, and excrement the main themes all over the world?
MOHR: As far as I know, they’re mostly the same with a little bit of regional variation. In Arab and Spanish-speaking Catholic countries, there’s a lot of stuff about mothers and sisters. But it’s pretty much the same.
A cool interview with Melissa Mohr, author of Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, with the Boston Globe.
They investigate the origins and disparities of swear words across the globe.
This is a 7-minute long workout that has been scientifically designed to optimise your exercise session. It also only needs you, a wall and a chair.
See source to read more about this.
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This is a 7-minute long workout that has been scientifically designed to optimise your exercise session. It also only needs you, a wall and a chair.
See source to read more about this.
The success by a team at Oregon Health and Science University puts human “therapeutic cloning” back on the scientific agenda as a potential source of stem cells for regenerative medicine, after a few years in which attention focused on other methods that seemed easier to achieve.
The research may also revive fears about the birth of human clones, though the Oregon scientists insist that their work could not be used for this purpose.
“Our finding offers new ways of generating stem cells for patients with dysfunctional or damaged tissues and organs,” says Shoukhrat Mitalipov, senior author of the study published in the journal Cell. “Such stem cells can regenerate and replace those damaged cells and tissues and alleviate diseases that affect millions of people.”
Drones and clones. I’m eagerly waiting for the debates that are coming on the ethics of cloning for health purposes.
The success by a team at Oregon Health and Science University puts human “therapeutic cloning” back on the scientific agenda as a potential source of stem cells for regenerative medicine, after a few years in which attention focused on other methods that seemed easier to achieve.
The research may also revive fears about the birth of human clones, though the Oregon scientists insist that their work could not be used for this purpose.
“Our finding offers new ways of generating stem cells for patients with dysfunctional or damaged tissues and organs,” says Shoukhrat Mitalipov, senior author of the study published in the journal Cell. “Such stem cells can regenerate and replace those damaged cells and tissues and alleviate diseases that affect millions of people.”
Drones and clones. I’m eagerly waiting for the debates that are coming on the ethics of cloning for health purposes.
Drones and Silicon Valley, an early marriage
Drones and Silicon Valley, an early marriage
On Wednesday, a drone start-up called Airware plans to announce that it has raised $10.7 million in a round of financing led by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Google Ventures, the investment arm of the search giant, is also pitching in money.
Although the term drone conjures up images of unmanned military planes that can shoot missiles from the sky, Airware is developing technology for the budding array of commercial uses for unmanned aerial vehicles, as they are also known. The company, based in Newport Beach, Calif., and founded by former aerospace engineers from Boeing and other companies, has created a combination of hardware and software that can be added to drones made by other companies to make them more programmable, Jonathan Downey, the chief executive of Airware, said in an interview.
The dronepocalypse is coming, with delivery services and more.
Drones and Silicon Valley, an early marriage
bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/1…
On Wednesday, a drone start-up called Airware plans to announce that it has raised $10.7 million in a round of financing led by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Google Ventures, the investment arm of the search giant, is also pitching in money.
Although the term drone conjures up images of unmanned military planes that can shoot missiles from the sky, Airware is developing technology for the budding array of commercial uses for unmanned aerial vehicles, as they are also known. The company, based in Newport Beach, Calif., and founded by former aerospace engineers from Boeing and other companies, has created a combination of hardware and software that can be added to drones made by other companies to make them more programmable, Jonathan Downey, the chief executive of Airware, said in an interview.
The dronepocalypse is coming, with delivery services and more.