As Randall says, “In the 60s, Marvin Minsky assigned a couple of undergrads to spend the summer programming a computer to use a camera to identify objects in a scene. He figured they'd have the problem solved by the end of the summer. Half a century later, we're still working on it.”
Via screenshotsofdespair.tumblr.com. Hat-tip to @James_Hatley.
When I was eight years old they taught us in school that rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were causing the world to warm up. However, they said, it would be thirty years before the effects would be felt, and this would be plenty of time for us to reduce our carbon emissions […]
“You’re Irish? I cannae hold my head up in yir company. I’m so angry that we didnae have the guts to fail on our own like you”, said one man yesterday morning just an hour or so after it became clear how sizeable the silent majority was. And how spectacular our failure has been in […]
Curious kickstarter project to create fashionable ‘pockets’ that block WiFi, mobile, GPS and so on. Just pop your device in it. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zoltancsaki/1984-stealth-fashion-for-the-under-surveillance-so Via kottke.org
I haven’t allowed myself a new book in a while, largely due to the small mountain of unread books I already have. Still, I had to get one one the first war, given the year that’s in it. ‘Speccy Nation’ just slipped in there for nostaglia. Of course, the real reason I was bookshopping was […]
Any regime, no matter how repressive, will gladly fête its enemy’s critics—while homegrown versions of those critics occupy concrete cells. Cooing over foreign dissidents allows establishment hacks to pose like sexy rebels—while simultaneously affirming that their own system is the best. The dissident fetishist takes a brave, principled person, and uses them like a codpiece […]
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on […]
