Talk about politics, society, science, computers, internet, psychology, and philosophy.
If you are writing a story that requires its own world—maybe a science fiction world in a strange galaxy far, far away or a fantasy world from another era—this is the book for you!
The Planet Construction Kit may sound like it’s all about astronomy and planets and moons, but although the book also addresses these aspects of worldbuilding, it takes up so much more. Continue reading ”The Planet Construction Kit” by Mark Rosenfelder
Lessons Learned from Snowden:
Of course, the government will use existing technologies as far as possible — within, or outside of the law.
Perhaps you’ve seen a discussion about how justice was performed in the old days, where someone says “we would never have done it like that” or “if it had been today, that case wouldn’t even have gone to court.”
The latest such discussion I came across was on the execution of Joe Hill :
Like many historians, Gibbs M. Smith, author of a Hill biography, said the trial was unfair. “Under today’s laws of evidence, he never would have been convicted and executed,” Mr. Smith said.
Then it hit me. If we say these things today about things that happened a century ago. People a century from now will most definitely say the same about things we’re doing today.
And that’s why I will never ever under any circumstance believe in the death penalty.
General purpose CPUs have been complemented with special purpose hardware accelerators since soon after they made an entrance on the consumer market.
The first PC in my childhood home had a math co-processor, and no gamer today would run a system without a dedicated graphics card with a GPU.
With the emergence of AI, the need for a new type of special purpose hardware accelerator is rising; an AI-chip specially designed to run deep neural nets.
It’s a terrorist! Throw it into the pond! If it floats burn it on the stake! No, wait… Am I getting the methods mixed up now? Ummm…
At the same time, in the home of a politician that values feelings over facts:
– Dad, I think there’s a monster under my bed!
– Yes, son. You must always ask daddy for help checking under the bed and in the closet before you go to sleep because there can really be monsters there!
Game of Thrones: like musical chairs, but with thrones… and much more blood!
“Be wary of quotes on the Internet.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Eh… yeah… humor…
Two super simple, crazy smart, really business intelligent, and extremely easy to implement measures against software and digital media piracy:
Availability and Price.
(For maritime anti-piracy measures, see here.)
Let me rephrase that:
High availability. Low price.
Do I have to say more? I guess I do.
So, I’m going to enjoy NOT next weeks “Crisis on Earth-X, part 4” on Netflix.
Don’t get me wrong. They don’t even have Supergirl on Netflix so that one’s not really an issue. But they do run The Flash… but only season 1 and 2 (?!?) and the Arrow but not season 6 (?!?!?!)
Even more curious. I just found “The Good Place.” It’s produced by Netflix and they only have season 1, even though half of season 2 has already aired according to IMDB. Aired where?
What are they trying to say with this?
Of course, they are telling me to go buy the other episodes somewhere else.
It’s just so childishly blatant.
I’m sorry, but I think I’d rather stop watching the whole fucking DC-universe than fall for that one. Otherwise, I’d suffer from cognitive dissonance for decades.
Header image: by Robert L. Murphy – self-made, CC BY 3.0, Link
