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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Luís F. Simões

Luís F. Simões

Why Is It So Hard to Predict the Future? - The Atlantic - 1 views

  • The Peculiar Blindness of Experts Credentialed authorities are comically bad at predicting the future. But reliable forecasting is possible.
  • The result: The experts were, by and large, horrific forecasters. Their areas of specialty, years of experience, and (for some) access to classified information made no difference. They were bad at short-term forecasting and bad at long-term forecasting. They were bad at forecasting in every domain. When experts declared that future events were impossible or nearly impossible, 15 percent of them occurred nonetheless. When they declared events to be a sure thing, more than one-quarter of them failed to transpire. As the Danish proverb warns, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”
  • Tetlock and Mellers found that not only were the best forecasters foxy as individuals, but they tended to have qualities that made them particularly effective collaborators. They were “curious about, well, really everything,” as one of the top forecasters told me. They crossed disciplines, and viewed their teammates as sources for learning, rather than peers to be convinced. When those foxes were later grouped into much smaller teams—12 members each—they became even more accurate. They outperformed—by a lot—a group of experienced intelligence analysts with access to classified data.
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  • This article is adapted from David Epstein’s book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.
Luís F. Simões

The AI Revolution: Why Deep Learning Is Suddenly Changing Your Life - 1 views

  • Indeed, corporations just may have reached another inflection point. “In the past,” says Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Baidu Research, “a lot of S&P 500 CEOs wished they had started thinking sooner than they did about their Internet strategy. I think five years from now there will be a number of S&P 500 CEOs that will wish they’d started thinking earlier about their AI strategy.” Even the Internet metaphor doesn’t do justice to what AI with deep learning will mean, in Ng’s view. “AI is the new electricity,” he says. “Just as 100 years ago electricity transformed industry after industry, AI will now do the same.”
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    A good historical overview of the Deep Learning revolution. If you think the quote above is an exageration, here are some fresh news from Microsoft: Internal email: Microsoft forms new 5,000-person AI division
Luís F. Simões

The great chain of being sure about things | The Economist - 2 views

  • The technology behind bitcoin lets people who do not know or trust each other build a dependable ledger. This has implications far beyond the cryptocurrency
  • Ledgers that no longer need to be maintained by a company—or a government—may in time spur new changes in how companies and governments work, in what is expected of them and in what can be done without them. A realisation that systems without centralised record-keeping can be just as trustworthy as those that have them may bring radical change.
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    The blockchain technology behind bitcoin has been gaining traction. This article makes a good job of describing it, and the different (not-bitcoin) ways in which it's being adopted. Worth reading, even if only for the funny bit about self-driving self-owning cars who pay themselves for fuel, parking and repairs.
Luís F. Simões

Nature's special issue on Interdisciplinarity - 2 views

  • Nature’s special issue probes how scientists and social scientists are coming together to solve the grand challenges of energy, food, water, climate and health. This special scrutinizes the data on interdisciplinary work and looks at its history, meaning and funding. A case study and a reappraisal of the Victorian explorer Richard Francis Burton explore the rewards of breaking down boundaries. Meanwhile, a sustainability institute shares its principles for researchers who work across disciplines. Thus inspired, we invite readers to test their polymathy in our lighthearted quiz.
Luís F. Simões

Encryption's holy grail is getting closer, one way or another | ZDNet - 0 views

  • Working with encrypted data without decrypting it first sounds too good to be true, but it's becoming possible.
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    an update on homomorphic encryption research and applications
Luís F. Simões

The accidental roboticist - 1 views

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    Evolutionary Robotics, as practised by biologists. Here's the link to John Long's book, mentioned in the article: Darwin's Devices: What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007QXVRZG/
Luís F. Simões

AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life P... - 0 views

  • Some 1,896 experts responded to the following question: The economic impact of robotic advances and AI—Self-driving cars, intelligent digital agents that can act for you, and robots are advancing rapidly. Will networked, automated, artificial intelligence (AI) applications and robotic devices have displaced more jobs than they have created by 2025?
Luís F. Simões

Lust in space: Russians lose control of gecko sex satellite | Al Jazeera America - 5 views

  • Lizards were sent into orbit as part of study into effects of weightlessness on sexual intercourse
  • On Thursday, the team behind the research confirmed that the vessel was not responding to commands, potentially leaving the reptiles to their out-of-this-world sexual intercourse while video footage continues to beam down to Earth.
Luís F. Simões

Dropship offers safe landings for Mars rovers / Technology / Our Activities / ESA - 2 views

  • “StarTiger is a fresh approach to space engineering,” explains Peter de Maagt, overseeing the project. “Take a highly qualified, well-motivated team, gather them at a single well-equipped site, then give them a fixed time to solve a challenging technical problem.”
  • StarTiger stands for ‘Space Technology Advancements by Resourceful, Targeted and Innovative Groups of Experts and Researchers’ working within the Agency’s TRP Basic Technology Research Programme. It brings team members together on a single site to work on a set challenge, aiming to produce a working prototype by the end of the project’s time limit.
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    StarTiger: similar, yet different from the way the ACT does things. Seems like a very interesting programme.
Luís F. Simões

SCiO: Your Sixth Sense. A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All ! by Consumer Physics, Inc. -... - 8 views

  • Meet SCiO. It is the world's first affordable molecular sensor that fits in the palm of your hand. SCiO is a tiny spectrometer and allows you to get instant relevant information about the chemical make-up of just about anything around you, sent directly to your smartphone.
  • Upload and tag the spectrum of any material on Earth to our database.
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    really interesting new project over at Kickstarter. Fully funded within 2 days of being announced. This one will probably get into the millions.
Luís F. Simões

The Truth About Google X: An Exclusive Look Behind The Secretive Lab's Closed Doors - 4 views

  • Space elevators, teleportation, hoverboards, and driverless cars: The top-secret Google X innovation lab opens up about what it does--and how it thinks.
Luís F. Simões

Noordwijk | Space Apps Challenge - 1 views

  • On the weekend of the 12 and 13 April 2014 ESA Business Incubation Centre Noordwijk and Verhaert Connect are proud to host the NASA International Space Apps Challenge in the European Space Innovation Centre Noordwijk.
  • Developers, designers, innovators all kinds of creative thinkers from all seven continents will come together for two days of creativity and computer coding to address challenges of global importance. This year we expect to have about 40 challenges that support NASA's mission directorates in five themes: Earth Watch, Technology in Space, Human Spaceflight, Robotics and Asteroids.
Luís F. Simões

The Duel: Timo Boll vs. KUKA Robot - YouTube - 3 views

  • Man against machine.The unbelievably fast KUKA robot faces off against one of the best table tennis players of all time.
  • More: www.kuka-timoboll.com
Luís F. Simões

Mars Code | Communications of the ACM - 1 views

  • As can be expected, all functions on the rover, and on the spacecraft that brought it to its destination 350 million miles from Earth, are controlled by software. This article discusses some of the precautions the JPL flight software team took to improve its reliability.
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    Interesting read if you're interested on the kind of coding that goes into something like the Curiosity rover. :) btw.. nice fill-packet being sent by Curiosity: "Elvis has Spirit. The answer is 42....END\r\n"
Luís F. Simões

14 Time Travelling Celebrities - 1 views

  • Do you ever wonder why some celebrities don't seem to age? The New Age Man has uncovered insurmountable evidence proving that some celebrities are time travelling time lords. Don't believe it? Take a look at the evidence with your own eyes.
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    "The Man from Earth" is real !! and there are apparently many of them around...
Luís F. Simões

SuitSat-1: the spacesuit repurposed as a satellite - 2 views

  • In 2006, a figure was hurled out of the ISS and sent tumbling off into space. Here’s the story of SuitSat-1, the spacesuit repurposed as a satellite
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    throwing empty spacesuits out of the ISS, converted into improvised satellites... now there's something I'd expect to see coming out of an ACT brainstorming session :)
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    Here's the video of the satellite's "launch": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPx-KNTHGCA
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