rymith

Imagine a silicon brain that we create that is 10% more capable than our brain. It's nothing astounding, but it's smarter. And it has access to all knowledge within seconds. So this brain is able to actively comb through that information, and look at it's own design, and being 10% smarter, it's able to design a more efficient AI. That AI, now X% smarter will be able to do the same, etc, etc... It's not unlike what we do now. You couldn't design and build a modern computer without a modern computer. But the AI will be able to do it better, and faster. So it's not about a potential advancement that changes the world a little. It's about the possibility of being able to jump human knowledge by years or even centuries in a very short period of time.

You're a little unclear as to why it's called the singularity. It means a point so drastically different that we cannot predict what the world will look like after it happens. However, should a planet still exist on the day after this occurs, you can pretty much guarantee that the company that controls this technology will make Apple, Google, and Microsoft look like technological infants. Well, unless it is Google, which seems to be the play they are making by hiring RK.

Also, World of Warcraft is virtualized, and everything in that game is potentially infinitely abundant. And yet, it still seems to pull in billions. So...

Well, that statement was a lot more correct even just a few years ago. But we're starting to get a much better grasp on it. In the past 10 years or so we have learned more about how the brain functions than in all of human history. It's true, we're not yet experts, but you're making the assumption that we need to know entirely how the human brain works in order to build something that supersedes it in capability, and this is simply untrue. I don't need to know anything about how a gasoline engine works to build a faster and more efficient electrical engine. In truth, such thinking may even impinge on my ability to do so. The singularity isn't about creating a human brain in chips, it's about a point when the chips are able to process more than our brains are capable. What forms that takes and consequence of that is simply unforeseeable. Simple math proves it's coming.

I honestly haven't used mutt in a while, but I used to have a lot of issues with it. I should give it another go.

Are you kidding? Because I don't want to be a jerk, but you cannot have possibly thought that through.

You are missing a fundamental key difference. There is no profit in reaching the stars. Besides that, there are also no barriers that come close to the issues with the Physics and energy requirements of space travel. Unlike a warp drive which we don't even know is possible, the human brain is an actual physical device that exists, and simply uses chemicals as it's logic gates and transistors. We both run on electricity.

I'm a biologist by schooling, and a programmer by occupation. So I understand the science on both sides, and it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And it's coming a lot sooner than people think.

I get the new iMac this week, and I'm taking my current windows machine and turning it into a homebrew Steambox tomorrow. I'm using an Ikea dresser thing http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/products/90179927/#/601799... as the box (with the top drawer for the console games), though I'm a little concerned with the airflow... The current case is probably overkill with the 6 fans, but I can only cut out two holes in the drawer before I'm worried about loosing structural integrity, it's particle board after all. Add the power supply and drive mounts (I want both windows 7 and Linux), and there isn't any more space. Oh well, I guess I'll find out soon enough. As much as I love the hacking, it would be nice to have something prebuilt so I'm not completely screwed if I turn this into a smokebox instead of a steambox.

Oh, you mean the way we did so with wolves to create the thousands of dog species that exist today. By this absurd logic, all dogs should go extinct.

Well, no, it's Fair Use. It's a legal defense, but since a news site would be hosting their own content, and editorializing, they would be be able to claim safe harbor. So a DMCA takedown would be effectively ignores, and followed up in the courts. Regardless, it's text book fair use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

Although a defense, Fair Use would certainly allow news organizations to publish those images without concern.

How would you make that case? There are plenty of restrictions on free speech as well as freedom of the press, which is far from absolute, and is most certainly regulated.

Thanks to google killing free Google Apps accounts, I won't get a chance to use this. It's really sad because this is exactly what I was looking for.

Yup, because here in Canada, we're a horribly oppressed people, and have no hope of ever gaining true freedom because we don't have guns. Please.

Because of the whole elitest nature of svblte, I actively go out of my way to ignore it. When the 'cool kid' in school doesn't want you to be in his group, you don't mimic him and try to be like him. You say fuck 'em, I'm going to do my own thing.

I sleep 6.5, and usually I do not use an alarm, this is just my natural sleep schedule.

No, the GPL does not allow for further restrictions. The App Store doesn't care.

It doesn't seem to be working very well. I googled tit (it's a bird) and the only birds that showed up were of the human variety, sans tops.

Absolutely, as we see from the numbers, most iPhone apps aren't making a lot of money, so $400 + $100 for the app store access is simply dumb for an indie dev.

Miguel is a very smart man and completely clueless at the same time.

You're kinda unclear as to what the LTS stands for, aren't you?

Gods and simulators are very equal in my book. The key isn't that I don't believe in either (though it's true that I do not), it that both constructs (god and simulators) being completely absent from any interactions with the human life in any recognizable way, simply are irrelevant. Both are not falsifiable, nor are either provable. It would be akin to me wondering if dragons exist on a planet that orbits V12 of NCG 4203.

Though to be honest, I would give better odds that there are dragons on a planet orbiting V12 of NCG 4203 than either of the above existing.

What would be the purpose of a simulation with so much pain and suffering. Where children get raped, flayed, abused, etc... And don't give me any of that matrix crap, that was only to make a flawed concept make just enough sense that you didn't fully think it through until the next bullet time scene. I'm certainly not on the outside paying for this. I have a degenerative bone disease that's caused me to have 6 major surgeries in 6 years. If this is a simulation, when I get out, I'm going to kill the son of a bitch that put me in here.

Were they Playing Demon Souls? I get pretty violent playing that game. Granted, I can easily kill every person in a far more violent game and frolic down the street. So I think the quality of the game, the users experience with games, the users desire to die 800 time in 12 seconds, etc... may also have an impact.

I suspect it ensures you authorized the app to be on your phone should any liability, or other legal issues arrise. Buddy downloads OKCupid onto your phone, Wife sees OKCupid and files for divorce and takes everything thanks to pre-nup. Man sues Apple for allowing app to be added to device without his consent.

I agree, but I also said this when the rumour came out about Apple getting into phones. Cell phones were cheap crap back then with no margins. I really don't think it's a completely 1:1 comparison, but Apple does tend to surprise me occasionally.

I'm not only morally okay with the concept of all human knowledge being accessible by all humans freely, I'm morally not okay with restricting access to any human knowledge. It comes down to the arguments of privilege, class, race, and regional issues. But at the end of the day, no one will ever convince me that they have ownership of an idea, it's simply an abstraction gone too far.

Not even a little accurate. I live in the great white north. Most Canadians live within 300km of the 49th parallel. Once we take out this southern belt, it means you have a country the size of the United States with about 10 million people, so the distance between towns is much more than it used to be. Now with -40 winters, between temporary roads used for oil rigs, frozen lakes in which we use as roads, derelict towns that are now ghost towns due to everyone migrating to the city, defunct reserves, etc... A paper map made 10 years ago can get you killed just as easy as an iOS, Google, or Tom Tom one can. We frequently lose people to the cold all the time. My Dad lost one of his best friends and his wife last year, and they weren't using a GPS.

Perhaps, I don't know. That's why I'm curious.

Yea, I like Archlinux a lot; it's been my favourite linux distro for a while now.

I'm curious how this differs from an outdated paper map.

Right tool for the right job. If I want to select all the pictures of my niece out of a folder of bad snapshopts, then a gui is a nice tool. The command terminal just can't browse images very well (at all). If I want to grab the source files from a legacy application which used a deprecated function and the files span several hundred directories, and I want to make a minor text replace, and then run my test to make sure everything compile and works still, the GUI just comes up short in a serious way.