Online Quantum Computing Course
Intro to Quantum Computing MOOC. Free, too.
So human, so scary
Google Duplex sounds so lifelike, down to the hesitations and verbal tics. It’s exciting and it’s scary. Can’t wait till the trolls get down to misusing this for arguments and such.
Interstellar Travel
Five methods of interstellar travel, speculative, certainly, but appearing in a scientific journal. Still, it does look like it’s cribbed all of them from sci-fi novels. Nothing new.
The elderly poor feel better off in prison…
Elderly women in Japan feel more secure in prison than outside. It’s not just financial, it’s also familial. Prison provides companionship. Quite a statement of today’s society.
An existentialist AI
Google’s Talk to Books uses AI to search through over 150,000 books to answer your questions. I asked about the answer to life and got existentialist answers.
In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
That, and 42. Was not disappointed.
A critique of Hannah Arendt
Sounds for all occasions
Bloody Mexica
We may never fully fathom other cultures, so claims this Nautilus essay. To bolster its case it presents Friar Sahagun’s ethnography of the Mexica civilization. It’s gruesome and bloody, with lurid tales of a mountain of human sacrifice. But it’s also part of a strange culture with a hierarchy of nobility that the article equates to upper crust England.
Ethics Education in Data Science
Revisiting a forgotten (or ignored) topic in IT education. Very relevant in light of the recent Facebook and Cambridge Analytica fiasco.