Rio's slums the hot World Cup destination?

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By Shasta Darlington, CNN

updated 8:14 AM EST, Wed February 26, 2014

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (CNN) -- High above the beaches in Rio de Janeiro's hillside slums, you can get some of the best views in town. And now, they come from some of the cheapest rooms as well.

With the World Cup less than four months away, residents in many once infamous favelas are opening their doors to tourists, renting beds, rooms or even entire houses, and building youth hostels.

"If you want to see the World Cup, see some football matches and experience true Brazilian life you should really check this out," says Michael Blommers, a Dutch backpacker staying at a hostel in the Vidigal shantytown.

Beds at hostels in Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, which usually go for around $40 a night, are expected to cost as much as $400 during the World Cup. Hotels are even more expensive, with many requiring multiple-night stays.

A tourist in Rio's Vidigal favela calls to a dog on a street.

But a bunk at Alto Vidigal Hostel will set guests back just $65 -- four times the usual price, but still a relative bargain.

Of course, visitors staying in Rio's favelas will likely be confronted with more than just a modest room. Garbage in these areas often piles up along the roads, while electricity, water and sewage services are spotty at best. Transportation can be precarious.

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Rio's slums the hot World Cup destination?

James Madison University – Dept of Physics & Astronomy – Making Science Accessible – Video

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James Madison University - Dept of Physics Astronomy - Making Science Accessible
The Department of Physics and Astronomy at James Madison University has always followed its vision of making science accessible for everyone. Significant out...

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James Madison University - Dept of Physics & Astronomy - Making Science Accessible - Video

Ray Kurzweil Talks Google's Big Plans For Artificial Intelligence

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57021889 story Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 24, 2014 @01:50PM from the what-are-you-doing-dave? dept. Nerval's Lobster writes "Ray Kurzweil, the technologist who's spent his career advocating the Singularity, discussed his current work as a director of engineering at Google with The Guardian. Google has big plans in the artificial-intelligence arena. It recently acquired DeepMind, self-billed 'cutting edge artificial intelligence company' for $400 million; that's in addition to snatching up all sorts of startups and research scientists devoted to everything from robotics to machine learning. Thanks to the massive datasets generated by the world's largest online search engine (and the infrastructure allowing that engine to run), those scientists could have enough information and computing power at their disposal to create networked devices capable of human-like thought. Kurzweil, having studied artificial intelligence for decades, is at the forefront of this in-house effort. In his interview with The Guardian, he couldn't resist throwing some jabs at other nascent artificial intelligence systems on the market, most notably IBM's Watson: 'IBM's Watson is a pretty weak reader on each page, but it read the 200m pages of Wikipedia. And basically what I'm doing at Google is to try to go beyond what Watson could do. To do it at Google scale. Which is to say to have the computer read tens of billions of pages. Watson doesn't understand the implications of what it's reading.' That sounds very practical, but at a certain point Kurzweil's predictions veer into what most people would consider science fiction. He believes, for example, that a significant portion of people alive today could end up living forever, thanks to the ministrations of ultra-intelligent computers and beyond-cutting-edge medical technology." You may like to read: Post

How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored power tools.

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Ray Kurzweil Talks Google's Big Plans For Artificial Intelligence

IronSource Integrates Artificial Intelligence Capabilities Into installCore Software Delivery Platform to Increase …

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Tel Aviv, Israel (PRWEB) February 27, 2014

World leading digital delivery company ironSource announced today that it has integrated artificial intelligence into the installCore platform for even better performance. installCore is a digital content distribution and monetization platform with over two billion successful software installations to date. Using Artificial Intelligence, installCore now offers more dynamic targeting capabilities to boost revenue per install and improve install completion rates.

The installCore ad server technology focuses on matching offers (advertisements) with targeted users during the software installation process so that both end users and advertisers enjoy a smooth process with higher conversion rates. ironSource integrated the new FlowAutomator algorithm, which was developed in-house, with the installCore ad server.

installCore General Manager Sagi Bakshi commented, "The FlowAutomator is a smart decision-making machine that significantly improves ROI. By automating weighted decision-making, the FlowAutomator multiplies our scalability, so we can serve an almost unlimited number of premium publishers."

Before rolling out FlowAutomator with artificial intelligence to all installCore publishers, ironSource tested it on subsidiary ClickMeIns VuuPC remote desktop software product, and witnessed improved results with less human intervention.

We have become accustomed to installCore introducing new technology to improve performance during installation, and once again, we see the positive impact to our bottom line, commented Zak Dechovich, ClickMeIn CEO.

By empowering the ad server with artificial intelligence to make offer-matching decisions based on each advertisers performance, scalability is vastly expanded, performance is significantly improved, and human error is reduced. Software developers and publishers continue to track real-time monetization performance in their online installCore analytics dashboard.

ironSource will demonstrate the FlowAutomator at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Booth 835, March 19-21, 2014.

About installCore

Established in 2010, and with over two billion successful installations to date, installCore is the leading installation platform for premium software publishers. The installCore installation helps improve significantly success rates for software installations. The platform optimizes software distribution via customized software installation platforms, installation analytics, traffic monetization, and FlowAutomator ad server. InstallCore is a part of ironSource. http://www.installcore.com

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The realities of artificial intelligence: Could Her actually happen?

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'Many of the capabilities of Samantha, the intelligent OS in the movie, are already here'

The Academy Awards are Sunday night, and Best Picture nominee Her has some people wondering if the movie is more science fiction or reality. The story centres on a man who falls in love with an intelligent computer operating system (OS) with a female voice and personality.

While this may seem like science fiction and a long way off, the day when your computer will know you better than any human is not as far off as you may think.

Many of the capabilities of Samantha, the intelligent OS in the movie, are already here, including speech and natural language recognition, and some conversational abilities.

Much of the recent progress is due to advances in machine learning, whereby the system doesnt have to be pre-programmed for every eventuality, but learns from experience.

There are already virtual personalities such as Cleverbot that learn from their discussions with humans, with impressive results as shown by this YouTube video of two Cleverbots conversing:

Once the computer can get smarter from new information, theres nothing to stop it becoming as good as, and eventually better than, a person doing the same task.

Weve already seen it in tasks as uniquely human as grading student essays and figuring out which wine will age the best. Every day theres a new example of a task that we would have thought only a human could do, except now a machine can do it better.

So whats to stop an OS from becoming a better companion than most humans? The more it interacts with you, the more it learns about what pleases you and what doesnt, until it knows you better than you know yourself.

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The realities of artificial intelligence: Could Her actually happen?