'tis true. Hanoi is trying to kill me. We thought the traffic in Saigon was the worst we had seen but Hanoi wins top prize. What Hanoi has that Saigon doesn't is young males on motorbikes that race through alleys streets sidewalks and crowds. On our walk home last night we were really taking care of each other. I told Steven this morning I am not going down past the 2nd floorthat way they can'
I Shall Return
After fourteen years the stars and my vacation days have finally aligned and my journey back to the Philippines begins. No doubt much has changed and I am beyond excited to rediscover the land of my roots aka the pearl of the orient the sick man of Asia the land of Imelda Pacquaio and people power. My partner John and our dear friend Brenda are joining me on this adventure. It will a very i
test entry
Testing to see if something posts onto facebook. Blogs from Ecuador are coming soon
WTF altitude sickness
Day 7 SaturdayEstoy Enfermahellipmeaning I am sick. Guess I get a little too worried about Mattrsquos hydration levels that I sort of forgot about myself. I woke up this morning around 530am with the worst headache Irsquove ever had and the most dehydrated Irsquove ever been. I downed some aspirin drank an entire bottle of water and went back to sleep. But to no availhellip.My hea
17 juin Jusqu’ SainteAnne de Bellevue
Finalement nous partons aujourd'hui jeudi le 17 plutt que demain. Patrick avait pris cong aujourd'hui et nous sommes arrivs au bateau vers 14h00. Comme j'avais dj paquet le bateau mardi il ne reste quelques trucs faire soit ranger la bouffe dans la glacire rcuprer le pneumatique de Patrick et prendre de l'eau pour le rservoir.Vers 17h00 nous partons avec le faible espoir d'arri
18 Juin SainteAnne Longueuil
Aujourd'hui c'est la journe des cluses... D'abord SteAnne de Bellevue qui depuis l'an dernier n'ouvre qu' 9h00. Pas grave... nous avons le temps de prendre notre caf plus tranquillement. Premier clusage vers 9h20...Nous effectuons ensuite la traverse du lac SaintLouis au moteur parce qu'il y a trs peu de vent et que le trajet ne s'y prte pas. Nous entrons dans le chenal de la rive sud
19 Juin Longueuil Sorel
La mto maritime met depuis hier soir un avertissement aux petites embarcations pour aujourd'hui avec des vents de 25 35 noeuds pour le secteur que nous sommes supposer traverser aujourd'hui. Nous avons donc dcid de ne pas essayer de passer le lac SaintPierre et notre destination est donc Sorel un petit 37 milles nautiques environ 69 km que nous allons essayer de faire ce matin pour
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Back from Harvard
I'm back home after several intense and wonderful days at Harvard University attending the Humanity+ Summit. Spare time is not an ally of mine right now, but I hope to blog about the conference over the course of the next few days and weeks. So much to talk about -- from my one-on-one conversation with Stephen Wolfram through to visiting the Center for Brain Science Neuroimaging.
In the meantime you can hear my conference wrap up on FastForward Radio.
Slides from my Humanity+ Summit presentation
Check out my slideshow (minus the cool transitions and actions):
When The Turing Test Is Not Enough - George Dvorsky - H+ Summit @ Harvard
View more presentations from Humanity+.
When the Turing Test is not enough: Towards a functionalist determination of personhood and the advent of an authentic machine ethics
Empirical research that works to identify those characteristics requisite for the identification of nonhuman persons are proving increasingly insufficient, particularly as neuroscientists further refine functionalist models of cognition. To say that an agent "appears" to have awareness or intelligence is inadequate. Rather, what is required is the discovery and understanding of those processes in the brain that are responsible for capacities such as self-awareness, empathy and emotion. Subsequently, the shift to a neurobiological basis for personhood will have implications for those hoping to develop self-aware artificial intelligence and brain emulations. The Turing Test alone cannot identify machine consciousness; instead, computer scientists will need to work off the functionalist model and be mindful of those processes that produce awareness. Because the potential to do harm is significant, an effective and accountable machine ethics needs to be considered. Ultimately, it is our responsibility as citizen-scientists to develop a rigorous understanding of personhood so that we can identify and work with machine minds in the most compassionate and considerate manner possible.
Jaws Is Now 35 Years Old, But Still Manages To Give Me Nightmares [Sharks]
I was just reminded what an old movie Jaws actually is. In fact, it turns out that Bruce, the mechanical shark, has been giving young and old scaredy cats nightmares for 35 long years now. [Wikipedia via The Scuttlefish] More »
Shark - Fish - Biology - Flora and Fauna - Chordata
Your Daily Computing, Minus the Computer [Humor]
Pop-up ads, Blue Screens of Death, hiding your games of solitaire from your boss—all annoyances that should be familiar to any office-dwelling computer-user. Turns out they're even more annoying when you remove the computer from the equation. [MeltMedia] More »
Solitaire - game - Recreation - Cards - Video Games
Hey Yellow Pages, It’s Time for You to Die [Image Cache]
"Dear Bell and Yellow Pages. We all have a thing called the internet. Please stop wasting stuff." We fully subscribe those words. Yellow pages, it's time for you to die. [Obsolete] More »
Yellow Pages - Directories - Address and Phone Numbers - United States - Asia
Space Robot Will Repair Ships and Bring Satellites to Fiery Doom [Robots]
Meet Justin, the space robot. He's clever, agile, wired to a human for control (of the robot, not the human) and he's a possible solution for fixing orbiting satellites in the post-Shuttle era. If they're dead, he can even fire them to their doom. More »
Robotics - Robot - Companies - History - Building
This Dress Destroyed An Entire VHS Collection [Geek Fashion]
NASA Wants to Use a Web of GPS Sites to Predict Tsunamis [Nasa]
NASA researchers have successfully completed the first demonstration of a prototype tsunami prediction system. Using global and regional real-time data from hundreds of GPS sites, the system can quickly assess large earthquakes and accurately predict the size of resulting tsunamis. More »
NASA - Technology - Space - Earth Sciences - Tsunami
Wi-Fi Data Captured By Google Street View Cars Included Passwords [Google]
A while ago, Google told us that its Street View cars accidentally collected some data from our Wi-Fi networks. To make everything better, the company handed the data over to the correct authorities for investigation. Those authorities discovered bad news. More »
Google - Google Street View - Searching - Search Engines - Companies
Man Transforms His Car Into A Robot [Robot]
You wouldn't want to mess with this robot. Weighing 90kg, and standing 2m tall, this robot was created from the designer's very first car, a Lada Samara Diva. Check out what it looked like before it transformed: More »
Robotics - Robot - Robot Wars - Competitions - Companies
