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Luís F. Simões

How copyright enforcement robots killed the Hugo Awards - 1 views

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    We are living in the future when live broadcasts are being censored by AI programs in real-time. I'm sure dictators everywhere are looking forward for these technologies to mature. Having a firewall over reality is so convenient.
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    What this tells is that we should not take AI seriously until smart Luis's (or his son) managed to make something decent out of it ... "This was, of course, absurd. First of all, the clips had been provided by the studios to be shown during the award ceremony. The Hugo Awards had explicit permission to broadcast them. But even if they hadn't, it is absolutely fair use to broadcast clips of copyrighted material during an award ceremony. Unfortunately, the digital restriction management (DRM) robots on Ustream had not been programmed with these basic contours of copyright law. And then, it got worse. Amid more cries of dismay on Twitter, Reddit, and elsewhere, the official Worldcon Twitter announced: Chicon 7@chicon_7 We are sorry to report that #Ustream will not resume the video feed. #chicon7 #hugos #worldcon 3 Sep 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite And with that, the broadcast was officially cut off. Dumb robots, programmed to kill any broadcast containing copyrighted material, had destroyed the only live broadcast of the Hugo Awards. Sure, we could read what was happening on Twitter, or get the official winner announcement on the Hugo website, but that is hardly the same. We wanted to see our heroes and friends on that stage, and share the event with them. In the world of science fiction writing, the Hugo Awards are kind of like the Academy Awards. Careers are made; people get dressed up and give speeches; and celebrities rub shoulders with (admittedly geeky) paparazzi. You want to see and hear it if you can. But Ustream's incorrectly programmed copyright enforcement squad had destroyed our only access. It was like a Cory Doctorow story crossed with RoboCop 2, with DRM robots going crazy and shooting indiscriminately into a crowd of perfectly innocent broadcasts."
nikolas smyrlakis

Why We Love to Hate Awards - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    [spam] Obama expressed his disappointment recently when rapper Kanye West stormed the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards to protest singer Taylor Swift's win of the "Best Female Video" trophy. Soon after, Obama himself was Swifted by critics who felt he was undeserving of his Nobel Prize win. It is obviously connected to the study of the Journal of Wine Economics that wine gold awards are given randomly http://www.wine-economics.org/journal/content/Volume4/number1/Full%20Texts/1_wine%20economics_vol%204_1_Robert%20Hodgson.pdf which also raised some controversy
Luís F. Simões

Evolution of AI Interplanetary Trajectories Reaches Human-Competitive Levels - Slashdot - 4 views

  • "It's not the Turing test just yet, but in one more domain, AI is becoming increasingly competitive with humans. This time around, it's in interplanetary trajectory optimization. From the European Space Agency comes the news that researchers from its Advanced Concepts Team have recently won the Gold 'Humies' award for their use of Evolutionary Algorithms to design a spacecraft's trajectory for exploring the Galilean moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto). The problem addressed in the awarded article (PDF) was put forward by NASA/JPL in the latest edition of the Global Trajectory Optimization Competition. The team from ESA was able to automatically evolve a solution that outperforms all the entries submitted to the competition by human experts from across the world. Interestingly, as noted in the presentation to the award's jury (PDF), the team conducted their work on top of open-source tools (PaGMO / PyGMO and PyKEP)."
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    We made it to Slashdot's frontpage !!! :)
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    Congratulations, gentlemen!
Francesco Biscani

Official Google Blog: Announcing Google's Focused Research Awards - 0 views

  • Today, we're announcing the first-ever round of Google Focused Research Awards — funding research in areas of study that are of key interest to Google as well as the research community. These awards, totaling $5.7 million, cover four areas: machine learning, the use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring, energy efficiency in computing, and privacy.
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    Might be of some interest to Christos?
nikolas smyrlakis

NASA Awards $350,000 to Winning Astronaut Glove Designers | International Space Fellowship - 0 views

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    I just like this phrase: "It is remarkable that two designers working on their own could create gloves that meet the requirements for spaceflight - a task that normally requires a large team of experts,"
santecarloni

Breakthrough Propulsion Physics - 7 views

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    The competition is open....
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    And what does one win in the end? Yet another unfeasible concept to be archived somewhere in a journal? Look at "Millis hypothetical drives"... Give me a break, for sure!!
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    I like the sentence "16 peer-reviewed journal articles, and an award-winning website (Warp-When), all for a total investment of less than $1.6M". This gives 100.000 dollars per peer-reviewed paper (we neglect the award-winning web-site under the assumption that is the easy part....). With these number the ACT in 2010 cashed 1.4 millions only in research papers making it an obvious good investment for the European Space Agency also in austerity times!!!
Luís F. Simões

Shell energy scenarios to 2050 - 6 views

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    just in case you were feeling happy and optimistic
  • ...7 more comments...
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    An energy scenario published by an oil company? Allow me to be sceptical...
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    Indeed, Shell is an energy company, not just oil, for some time now ... The two scenarii are, in their approach, dependant of economic and political situation, which is right now impossible to forecast. Reference to Kyoto is surprising, almost out-dated! But overall, I find it rather optimistic at some stages, and probably the timeline (p37-39) is unlikely with recent events.
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    the report was published in 2008, which explains the reference to Kyoto, as the follow-up to it was much more uncertain at that point. The Blueprint scenario is indeed optimistic, but also quite unlikely I'd say. I don't see humanity suddenly becoming so wise and coordinated. Sadly, I see something closer to the Scramble scenario as much more likely to occur.
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    not an oil company??? please have a look at the percentage of their revenues coming from oil and gas and then compare this with all their other energy activities together and you will see very quickly that it is only window dressing ... they are an oil and gas company ... and nothing more
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    not JUST oil. From a description: "Shell is a global group of energy and petrochemical companies." Of course revenues coming from oil are the biggest, the investment turnover on other energy sources is small for now. Knowing that most of their revenues is from an expendable source, to guarantee their future, they invest elsewhere. They have invested >1b$ in renewable energy, including biofuels. They had the largest wind power business among so-called "oil" companies. Oil only defines what they do "best". As a comparison, some time ago, Apple were selling only computers and now they sell phones. But I would not say Apple is just a phone company.
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    window dressing only ... e.g. Net cash from operating activities (pre-tax) in 2008: 70 Billion$ net income in 2008: 26 Billion revenues in 2008: 88 Billion Their investments and revenues in renewables don't even show up in their annual financial reports since probably they are under the heading of "marketing" which is already 1.7 Billion $ ... this is what they report on their investments: Capital investment, portfolio actions and business development Capital investment in 2009 was $24 billion. This represents a 26% decrease from 2008, which included over $8 billion in acquisitions, primarily relating to Duvernay Oil Corp. Capital investment included exploration expenditure of $4.5 billion (2008: $11.0 billion). In Abu Dhabi, Shell signed an agreement with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company to extend the GASCO joint venture for a further 20 years. In Australia, Shell and its partners took the final investment decision (FID) for the Gorgon LNG project (Shell share 25%). Gorgon will supply global gas markets to at least 2050, with a capacity of 15 million tonnes (100% basis) of LNG per year and a major carbon capture and storage scheme. Shell has announced a front-end engineering and design study for a floating LNG (FLNG) project, with the potential to deploy these facilities at the Prelude offshore gas discovery in Australia (Shell share 100%). In Australia, Shell confirmed that it has accepted Woodside Petroleum Ltd.'s entitlement offer of new shares at a total cost of $0.8 billion, maintaining its 34.27% share in the company; $0.4 billion was paid in 2009 with the remainder paid in 2010. In Bolivia and Brazil, Shell sold its share in a gas pipeline and in a thermoelectric power plant and its related assets for a total of around $100 million. In Canada, the Government of Alberta and the national government jointly announced their intent to contribute $0.8 billion of funding towards the Quest carbon capture and sequestration project. Quest, which is at the f
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    thanks for the info :) They still have their 50% share in the wind farm in Noordzee (you can see it from ESTEC on a clear day). Look for Shell International Renewables, other subsidiaries and joint-ventures. I guess, the report is about the oil branch. http://sustainabilityreport.shell.com/2009/servicepages/downloads/files/all_shell_sr09.pdf http://www.noordzeewind.nl/
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    no - its about Shell globally - all Shell .. these participations are just peanuts please read the intro of the CEO in the pdf you linked to: he does not even mention renewables! their entire sustainability strategy is about oil and gas - just making it (look) nicer and environmentally friendlier
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    Fair enough, for me even peanuts are worthy and I am not able to judge. Not all big-profit companies, like Shell, are evil :( Look in the pdf what is in the upstream and downstream you mentionned above. Non-shell sources for examples and more objectivity: http://www.nuon.com/company/Innovative-projects/noordzeewind.jsp http://www.e-energymarket.com/news/single-news/article/ferrari-tops-bahrain-gp-using-shell-biofuel.html thanks.
jmlloren

The British Wildlife Photography Awards 2011 - Telegraph - 2 views

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    Excellent photo gallery.
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    Thanks for sharing! Most pics are very very nice, but a few are actually pretty mediocre I must say... "Wildlife" photography is always a rather tricky topic, as demonstrated by this famous story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8470962.stm
Luís F. Simões

Evolving software inspired by natural selection | Santa Fe Institute - 3 views

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    Stephanie Forrest awarded $3.2 million by DARPA to further develop her work on automated software repair through evolutionary computing (papers)
nikolas smyrlakis

ACM award concerning the Complexity of Interactions in Markets, Social Networks, and On... - 0 views

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    "The Complexity of Nash Equilibria,", It also suggests that the Nash equilibrium may not be an accurate prediction of behavior in all situations. Daskalakis's research emphasizes the need for new, computationally meaningful methods for modeling strategic behavior in complex systems such as those encountered in financial markets, online systems, and social networks.
ESA ACT

BIONIS Home - 0 views

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    Where Carlo will give his award lecture.
anonymous

NIAC 2014 Phase I Selections | NASA - 3 views

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    Some interesting future projects from NASA's IAC. (June 2014) NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts awards: "These proposals have been selected based on the potential of their concepts to transform future aerospace missions, enable new capabilities, or significantly alter and improve current approaches."
darioizzo2

Physics is stuck - and needs another Einstein to revolutionize it, physicist Avi Loeb s... - 0 views

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    """ Today, it's all about impressing each other. And that's part of social media, you know, trying to impress other people to say things that look smart, that look very intelligent, that completely align with what everyone else is saying so that they will like you, that you would have more likes on Twitter. Okay. So that's the motivation, so that you can get more awards, more grants so that you can get a tenure appointment and everyone would respect you. """
johannessimon81

There will be pizza on Mars - NASA awards $125000 for 3d-printed food - 0 views

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    Tea, Earl Grey, hot...
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    Lets see what part of the replicator will work first: the actual 3D-printing of the tea or the language recognition software...
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    Oh yes, I forgot about the language recognition... The abominations it might produce... :-[]
LeopoldS

NASA's New LEED Platinum Sustainability Base is the Greenest Federal Building in the US... - 2 views

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    Ideas for ESTEC 2 ...
Thijs Versloot

Quantum #teleportation theory to be tested on the #ISS - 8 views

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    A theory-SuperDense quantum teleportation-posed by Hampshire College physics professor Herbert Bernstein will be tested on the International Space Station. Theoretical physicist Bernstein devised the SuperDense scheme more than a decade ago in his investigations of different ways to send a quantum state from one part of a laboratory to a remote station.
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    Anna could you have a closer look into this - we should at least know what they are up to, be able to explain if anybody asks ... I also somehow missed this one in the NIAC study descriptions ... maybe a good moment to have another look at these "This is the second NASA grant for SuperDense quantum teleportation. A grant awarded in 2010 through NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) investigated the viability of the theory and produced the world's first experimental demonstration. Surprising or seminal experiments have marked Bernstein's research career. This is the fourth time a major proposal has become reality; two of his experiments helped found new sub-fields of physics (neutron interferometry and entanglement for quantum information)."
Thijs Versloot

Magnetic bubble may give space probes a soft landing - 4 views

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    I am also looking into this idea since some time and it seems NASA is already ahead, awarding two contract to investigate magnetoshell aerocapture. This could be interesting for probes that want to enter eg Marsian atmospheres at relatively high velocity. Or for multiple re-entry s/c at Earth. The idea of the experiment, The satellite will carry a copper coil, powered by a lithium-ion battery, that generates a magnetic field around the probe. As it descends, the spacecraft will eject a small amount of plasma. This gets trapped in the magnetic field, creating a protective bubble that stops air molecules colliding with the craft and producing heat.
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    A few years back Mimmo has worked on this, rather from the theory side if I remember well ...
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    The power requirements for such a thing must be HUGE!
Thijs Versloot

Innovative solutions based on Earth Observation data #copernicus @esa - 2 views

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    The Earth Monitoring Competition is annually awarding prizes to innovative solutions for business and society based on Earth observation data.
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