Aug. 19th, 2009
YR VERY OWN CRASHING SQUIRREL
Aug. 19th, 2009 07:15 pmMore proof the Internet devalues everything sooner or later: the Squirrelizer. Now everyone’s photos can be ruined by cute squirrels “unexpectedly” mugging the camera.
Not that there’s no entertainment value in it.


Copy and paste,
This is dF
Not that there’s no entertainment value in it.


Copy and paste,
This is dF
DECEPTICONS: THE EARLY YEARS
Aug. 19th, 2009 07:43 pmITEM: In a recently published experiment, robots with artificial animal-inspired brains quickly evolved to deceive one another.
Not that there's anything to worry about, of course. Far from it.
More human than human,
This is dF
The robots — soccer ball-sized assemblages of wheels, sensors and flashing light signals, coordinated by a digital neural network — were placed by their designers in an arena, with paper discs signifying “food” and “poison” at opposite ends. Finding and staying beside the food earned the robots points.
After each iteration of the trial, researchers picked the most successful robots, copied their digital brains and used them to program a new robot generation, with a dash of random change thrown in for mutation.
Soon the robots learned to follow the signals of others who’d gathered at the food. But there wasn’t enough space for all of them to feed, and the robots bumped and jostled for position. As before, only a few made it through the bottleneck of selection. And before long, they’d evolved to mute their signals, thus concealing their location.
After each iteration of the trial, researchers picked the most successful robots, copied their digital brains and used them to program a new robot generation, with a dash of random change thrown in for mutation.
Soon the robots learned to follow the signals of others who’d gathered at the food. But there wasn’t enough space for all of them to feed, and the robots bumped and jostled for position. As before, only a few made it through the bottleneck of selection. And before long, they’d evolved to mute their signals, thus concealing their location.
Not that there's anything to worry about, of course. Far from it.
More human than human,
This is dF