Faiblesse Des Sens Posted March 5, 2014 Report Share Posted March 5, 2014 I could read most of their 600 wpm sample, but missed a few words here and there. Yeah, but did you understand all of it? Because I did despite also missing a few words. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted March 5, 2014 Report Share Posted March 5, 2014 I got the gist of most of it, but there was one sentence that was talking about Congress where I missed enough that I didn't get that sentence's meaning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Jack Posted April 2, 2014 Report Share Posted April 2, 2014 Rumor has it that yahoo is trying to start up a competitor to youtube by offering lucrative contracts to some of youtube's most popular channels to entice them to the new site. Frankly, I hope it's true because youtube has been balls for quite a while now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted April 2, 2014 Report Share Posted April 2, 2014 Youtube lets me find and view videos. I don't see the problem. People complaining about it just comes across as pointlessly whiny to me. Not saying a competitor would be bad, competition is good, I just don't get the Youtube hate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted April 2, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 2, 2014 I agree with Ethan (well..I will say that Youtube is only a temporary thing. ). Pretty much everything I've seen complaining about YouTube is mostly whiny. Especially on the "requirement" to use your real name. Cos amazingly enough this isn't my real name: https://www.youtube.com/user/deanbmmv. Youtube is tied in with Googles monetization process, which Yahoo won't be able to offer anything near that at all (they had to combine forces with Bing on that front in search already and it's still lacklustre. Ad's are cheaper on Bing, so assumedly people will be paid less for running ad's on thier videos). Youtube also offers a much larger install base too, from just the player through to devices, apps, embeds, widgets, etc too. From a creator side of things Youtube is going to be top dog for a long while. Of course nothing stopping you betting on several horses, and likely many already do. From a viewers perspective YouTube has a vast wealth of content, works on a wide variety of devices, and runs pretty damn well considering. Of course it leans a bit on the "too big to fail", but I don't think a competing Youtube-like service would topple Youtube as much as a competing Google-like search engine would topple Google. It'll be overtaken by something else entirely (To a degree that's happening with Netflix and Twitch). It's also part of a much bigger issue at the moment where there's a lot of power/users focused in extremely large monopolous services/sites. (e.g Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google). They crumble it'll likely be together as part of a bubble bursting than a specific individual failing of any one service/site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Jack Posted April 2, 2014 Report Share Posted April 2, 2014 My biggest gripes with YouTube right now are the ugly layout of the site, the constant nagging to join a social network (not even with a fake name), and the fact you can't preload videos anymore, meaning my shitty Comcast connection is always struggling to keep up. I don't expect yahoo to topple YouTube, but I'd at least like it to light a fire under Google's ass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted April 3, 2014 Report Share Posted April 3, 2014 My biggest gripes with YouTube right now are the ugly layout of the site, the constant nagging to join a social network (not even with a fake name), and the fact you can't preload videos anymore, meaning my shitty Comcast connection is always struggling to keep up. I don't expect yahoo to topple YouTube, but I'd at least like it to light a fire under Google's ass. That's what you get for trying to comment on YT to begin with. You can preload if you disable DASH via something like Youtube Center. Also fixes the layout issues. My biggest gripes with YT are the insanely terrible compression they use on the audio and video. It looks like utter horseshit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Jack Posted April 3, 2014 Report Share Posted April 3, 2014 Youtube Center is unfortunately changing to a subscription model, and I don't care to pay monthly for what it does. If anyone has another preloading extension to recommend, I would appreciate it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted April 3, 2014 Report Share Posted April 3, 2014 Something else will just pop up. I wouldn't worry about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted April 3, 2014 Report Share Posted April 3, 2014 Goddamnit, Youtube Options, which is what I'd been using, is also going to a paid subscription. Do they honestly believe anyone's going to pay a monthly fee for that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Jack Posted April 3, 2014 Report Share Posted April 3, 2014 I thought it was a late April Fools joke at first when I saw the announcement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted April 3, 2014 Report Share Posted April 3, 2014 Me too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baconrath Posted April 8, 2014 Report Share Posted April 8, 2014 http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/not-dead-yet-dutch-british-governments-pay-to-keep-windows-xp-alive/ Wise fwom yo gwave \o/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted May 28, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 28, 2014 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27587558 Googles self driving car due to be out within a year (though I think that's the initial test run than full production) I totally want one. The idea of fleshy human being behind the wheel of a 2 ton vehicle capable of going over 100mph scares the shit out of me. Also this particular model looks the perfect city run about. I wonder what the price would be, because if it was cheap enough then I'd definitely eye one up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eleven Posted June 8, 2014 Report Share Posted June 8, 2014 I don't see how exactly you tell it where to go. I assume you program it somehow by inputting directions... somewhere in there. Maybe it would have an app! Program the location and press the go button. Could you maybe tell it to go somewhere without you inside? Tell the car to go somewhere to pick someone up... The Google made video where they let old people, a mom and a son ride one feels a bit weird to me. They have a lot of good things to say, but the first thing I thought I'd hear before viewing that video is that someone would have some reservations about riding one. But they didn't. They didn't have anything negative to say at all, no concern about it whatsoever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted June 8, 2014 Author Report Share Posted June 8, 2014 It's voice activated, but I imagine it'd be possible to control it via phone too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted June 9, 2014 Author Report Share Posted June 9, 2014 https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140609/07284327524/no-computer-did-not-pass-turing-test-first-time-everyone-should-know-better.shtml In case you've seen that shit about the Turing Test been passed lately this sums up my thoughts on the topic pretty well. Especially the "pretend it's a Ukranian kid" shit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mal Posted June 12, 2014 Report Share Posted June 12, 2014 http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you Lets see how this changes thing in a few years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted July 24, 2014 Author Report Share Posted July 24, 2014 I guess this is a little bit better than the spray cheese stuff since you can already pipe cake-ey stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MetalCaveman Posted August 3, 2014 Report Share Posted August 3, 2014 NASA validates 'impossible' space drive. http://mashable.com/2014/08/02/emdrive-mars-momentum/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted August 3, 2014 Report Share Posted August 3, 2014 What has physics ever done for us anyway? *Edit* - Conservation of momentum is well-established enough that I'm fairly confident they'll at some point work out that it's not actually violating it, they just don't at the moment understand it well enough. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted August 3, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 3, 2014 I was reading a bit about it over the weekend, it seems that the drive NASA tested and the drive initially proposed(and tested by the Chinese) aren't the same thing, so it'll be interesting if they also test the original "emDrive" and get the fuller results. Could be interesting if it can be worked on and improved for use in satellites. I am curious if it will end up like FTL neutrino thing, though with that CERN specifically came out and said "yo, we got these results which are obviously wrong, show us where our working out fucked up". Compared to NASAs response on this being "we got these results, not gonna bothering figuring out why", which does suck a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted August 14, 2014 Report Share Posted August 14, 2014 Dean posted this in his status, and I thought I'd bring it in here since he's always reminding everyone that we do have a forum for discussing things. I think the video is pretty interesting, and brings up some aspects of advancing computers that often aren't talked about, though it definitely makes it sound easier to replace certain things than I think it will be in practice. For example law (since that's my profession and therefore what I'm familiar with); in the video most of the stuff it talks about isn't typically performed by actual lawyers. Sure sorting through huge amounts of data is something computers are good at, but the other things it mentions in passing, such as drafting documents, are more complicated than it makes out. A legal document is all about taking a position and constructing an argument to support it, something that would require very robust AI to do. This is not to say that a computer program could never be developed to do it, I'm sure it will happen at some point, but it requires advances well beyond that required to write a new story. My other quibble is broader: sure it's silly to say "we'll just do other jobs we can't imagine yet" when you're talking about computers getting to the point of being actual, conscious AI, because at that point there's nothing humans can do that the machines can't, but I still don't think humans will necessarily go obsolete in the same way that horses did. The entire purpose of the economy is to provide for humans, and as computers can do more and more of the work that humans used to do the economy will change. So I guess rather than saying we'll do jobs we can't imagine, I'd say the economy will take a form we can't imagine, because humans won't actually be central to its functioning so we'll need entirely different systems for distribution of wealth, but there will be some kind of system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted August 14, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 14, 2014 Your second point starts to broach upon "The Singularity", which is the inevitability of super powered AI (though the "when" will always be in dispute). As it notes computers already write articles, mainly sports where they can pull from existing stats, and I'm sure it's not too far away to pull from existing documents of law (maybe it's cos I'm not a lawyer but most contracts I've read in my time all seem pretty much the same). Processing documents though is definitely something computer far exceed humans at, as Google is great at showing us on a daily basis (and it's growing ever better at actually understanding too on a semantic level). The transport thing is likely to be the big game changer on many economical levels and I'd say that if your job currently involves your ability to drive you better have retirement plans for 20 years down the line. I could write a fair bit about how much automatic cars will change most of our daily lives (and one day might). I do agree it is a bit melodramatic to imply all the jobs will be gone and taken over by robots, but it's still something that I'd want politicians to be talking about and I think joe public acknowledging. We all make jokes about "unexpected item in the bagging area" but it's become a part of our lives so quickly and that's a fair few jobs gone per supermarket and there's thousands of them in the UK alone. One of our local McDonalds has already scrapped half of the folks on the till in favour of a touch screen order point (which after a certain time is the only way to order anything), won't be long until the kitchen staff are mostly replaced too. Some jobs will certainly be harder than others to replace, but I think it's a great conversation starter on mulling over the impact robots can have on both the economy and our own future employability. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFlyingGerbil Posted August 14, 2014 Report Share Posted August 14, 2014 Dean, I think the link you meant to post was this: 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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