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UFO-gate = thousands of times worse than Russia-gate

Posted by takyon on Saturday June 24 2017, @12:55PM (#2442)
6 Comments
/dev/random

UFO researcher says new documentary exposes ‘what the secret agenda has been’

Even within the much-maligned and widely misunderstood field of “UFOlogy,” Steven Greer is a divisive figure.

His affinity for the spotlight and his willingness to dive deep into areas of the subject where other UFO researchers fear to tread have painted him with a broader target for contention than many of his contemporaries. He is at it once again with the recent book-and-film combo Unacknowledged: An Exposé of the Greatest Secret in Human History — the compelling documentary half of which will receive its Toronto premiere coupled with a Q&A with Greer this Saturday. The event is open to non-conference attendees as part of the three-day Alien Cosmic Expo UFO symposium taking place over the weekend at the Airport Crowne Plaza Hotel.

Greer is not easing off. As he puts it, Unacknowledged — the book and the film, the latter directed by first-time documentarian Michael Mazzola — “really take people from zero to 100 quickly.”

Kurt Eichenwald and the dangers of tentacle hentai research

Posted by takyon on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:10PM (#2432)
2 Comments
/dev/random

Video (warning: contains deplorable content) and text description:

On June 7th, 2017, Eichenwald claimed he had been sent an anti-semitic flyer as a result of Tucker Carlson mentioning him on his show. In an effort to prove the veracity of his claim, Eichenwald tweeted an image of him holding the flyer he was sent (shown below).

It was soon noticed that in the image, Eichenwald had a tab on his computer opened to B-Chiku, or Hentai. This led many to joke about the idea that Eichenwald masturbates to hentai pornography. These jokes were covered in Mediaite[9] (examples shown below).

The following day, Eichenwald defended himself by saying the tab was open because he was “trying to convince his wife that tentacle porn existed.”[10] Eichenwald went so far as to include a screenshot of a conversation with his wife where she verified his story.

Rather than tentacles, the tabbed hentai contained "traditional gender roles and values, with a submissive stay-at-home wife and a working husband".

Wikipedia profile.

U.S. Escalating Role in Syria

Posted by takyon on Monday June 19 2017, @09:06AM (#2429)
3 Comments

Hardcore Oxygenarians

Posted by takyon on Sunday June 18 2017, @01:36AM (#2424)
4 Comments

Jürgen Schmidhuber Goes Deep

Posted by takyon on Saturday June 17 2017, @01:10PM (#2422)
1 Comment
/dev/random

Some predictions from "the father of deep learning", Jürgen Schmidhuber:

He predicts trillions of AI in the 2050s will mine and develop [asteroids].

He has a long list of “truths” that many disagree with.

1. Many think that intelligence is this awesome, infinitely complex thing. Juergen think it is just the product of a few principles that will be considered very simple in hindsight, so simple that even kids will be able to understand and build intelligent, continually learning, more and more general problem solvers.
Partial justification of this belief:
(a) there already exist blueprints of universal problem solvers developed in my lab, in the new millennium, which are theoretically optimal in some abstract sense although they consist of just a few formulas (http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/unilearn.html, http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/goedelmachine.html).

(b) The principles of our less universal, but still rather general, very practical, program-learning recurrent neural networks can also be described by just a few lines of pseudo-code, e.g., http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/rnn.html, http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/compressednetworksearch.html

2. General purpose quantum computation won’t work (Juergen’s prediction of 15 years ago is still standing). Related: The universe is deterministic, and the most efficient program that computes its entire history is short and fast, which means there is little room for true randomness, which is very expensive to compute. What looks random must be pseudorandom, like the decimal expansion of Pi, which is computable by a short program. Many physicists disagree, but Einstein was right: no dice. There is no physical evidence to the contrary http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/randomness.html. For example, Bell’s theorem does not contradict this. And any efficient search in program space for the solution to a sufficiently complex problem will create many deterministic universes like ours as a by-product. Think about this. More here http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/computeruniverse.html and here http://www.kurzweilai.net/in-the-beginning-was-the-code

[...] Juergen won’t be surprised if Moore’s Law holds for another century. If so, computers will approach the Bremermann limit of 10^51 ops/s per kg of matter in the mid 2100s

Femtocomputing, please.

Interesting Wikipedia talk page.

AOMedia Video 1 Codec

Posted by takyon on Saturday June 17 2017, @12:19PM (#2421)
4 Comments
Software

This is from last month but there's no newer article about AV1:

Google’s Royalty-Free Answer to HEVC: A Look at AV1 and the Future of Video Codecs

AOMedia Video 1:

AV1 can be used together with the audio format Opus in a future version of the WebM format for HTML5 web video and WebRTC.

What kind of features are you looking for in AV1 (other than the obvious: better compression efficiency than H.265/HEVC)?

Apple is adding HEVC support to its products.

Wear orange for National Liberal Violence Awareness Day.

Posted by realDonaldTrump on Friday June 16 2017, @08:19AM (#2417)
2 Comments
Topics

In light of the horrible attack in Alexandria on MY BIRTHDAY, I've signed an executive order declaring next week National Liberal Violence Awareness Day. Eric Bolling on @FoxNews said something very smart:

How many innocent people have to die before we realize that words do matter? Crazy people act on the crazy things they hear from politicians and celebrities. Think before you utter those blind, hateful words next time, liberals, because there are crazy people out there taking your metaphors literally. https://t.co/nKWid37odD

Wear my favorite color, orange, and be aware of the hatred the liberals (and Dems) spew and the violence they do. #WearOrange

Malcolm is a LOSER!

Posted by realDonaldTrump on Thursday June 15 2017, @06:49PM (#2416)
0 Comments
Topics

I talked with Malcolm Turnbull on the phone. With the Prime Minister, the disgusting Prime Minister, of Australia. Of all the phone calls I've been on, it was the worst call by far. Believe me, folks, it was a terrible phone call. That happened in March. He asked me to take in Australia's refugees. I said we'll do it, but we have to vet them. Refugees, for America, are a huge problem. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists. Even with extreme vetting, they're making big problems for America. And Australia doesn't want them either. So they made a deal, Australia made a deal, with Obama. Who came to America as a refugee. And let me tell you, folks, the deal they made is terrible for America. Totally one-sided. But I said I'd stick to the deal. Because promises are important. Even when I didn't make them. Very reluctantly, I'm sticking to the deal. But now Malcolm is making fun of me and it's very hurtful. My wife, Melania, and my son, Barron, heard about the way Malcolm made fun of me, how he mocked me, and they are very hurt by it. He's hurting my family. He should be ashamed of himself. He has no shame, but he should be ashamed.

"Trump" to be bleeped out on Broad City

Posted by takyon on Tuesday June 13 2017, @11:19PM (#2408)
2 Comments
/dev/random

Trump's Name Will Be Bleeped Out In The Next "Broad City" Season

Would I have seen this important news if I hadn't accidentally opened BuzzFeed? I'm not so sure.

June 2017 Russia Protests

Posted by takyon on Tuesday June 13 2017, @03:42AM (#2405)
1 Comment