“Robo-bear helps snorers snooze more smoothly”
My stepfather has sleep apnea. He’s a really top-notch guy who will put up with a lot, but somehow I doubt he’d take kindly to having a robo-bear tickling his face at night.
Archive of posts filed under the Interests category.
Topics on my particular interests.
“Brainscan breakthrough: Working robot limbs come closer”
This sort of thing will be useful for lots of peaceful purposes too. True telepresence, for instance, a la Surrogates. Fire and rescue workers equipped with something like this will be able to save others without having to risk their own lives. Astronauts could remain safely in orbiting ships, sending down only robotic suits, possibly …
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“New plan: Send humans into space, keep the robots on Earth”
It sounds like a good idea to me. 🙂
“As the Internet evolves, is there a place for spam?”
Apparently not: In the late 1990s Robert Soloway made $20,000 a day as a spammer. He drove fancy cars. He wore Armani clothes. He was, by all accounts, one of the most successful spammers on the planet. But if he were starting out today, he’d find some other line of work. In 2011, spamming just …
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“Dumb users vs Dumb design”
The great computer security debate: what is the biggest problem in computer security, the software or the users? It’s important because the answer determines what we do to try to fix it. Two experts (and a mass of ZDNet readers) weigh in on the subject. My opinion (and a pretty strong one) is that both …
“Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?”
Free will? Yes and no. Even if people are nothing but “moist robots” (quite possibly true), and everything that has ever happened or ever will was predetermined by the state of the universe in the moments after the Big Bang (which I have my doubts about), free will still exists as most people understand it. …
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“Tumblr users fight SOPA with 87,834 calls to Congress”
It wasn’t just Tumblr users, either. Demand Progress delivered over seven hundred thousand e-mails as well, including mine. Sorry, music and movie industries. The people won’t stand for such draconian and heavy-handed attempts at censorship to protect your outdated business models. You’re going to have to do what every industry eventually does: adapt or die. …
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“Detecting Psychopaths by their Speech Patterns”
This is a little worrisome. As Schneier says at the bottom, “I worry about people being judged by these criteria. Psychopaths make up about 1% of the population, so even a small false-positive rate can be a significant problem.” On a complete tangent, the statistic that 1% of the population counts as psychopathic is disturbing. …
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“Laser display could mean 3D sans screens”
If anyone is looking for a holiday present for me, one of these would be REALLY appreciated. 😉 Think of the possibilities… this could eventually eliminate the need for a screen entirely! Add a way for the computer to understand subvocalized commands, and you could have a full-powered general-purpose computer and entertainment center with you …
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“UN set to dump GMT for tech-friendly Atomic Time”
Computers have been the center of my world since I discovered them when I was eleven. Now they’ve become the center of everyone else’s too, in a way, as shown by the fact that the UN is seriously considering changing the whole way that we (as a race) keep time, just so it’s easier for …
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