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I hope it’s not a capitalist.

3 days ago on Google and NASA collaborate on AI research with new quantum supercomputer 1 reply

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What a shame that I have to sign up and wait for it. I’ve been doing the WebGL beta for as long as it’s been around.
Speaking about that WebGL beta—I really hope that this new version of Maps will be high-DPI compatible.

3 days ago on Google Maps for desktop: hands-on with the world's most-advanced web app 2 replies 4 recommends

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I don’t like how the tiny Open and Uninstall buttons are so close together! Doesn’t anyone else accidentally hit the wrong one, or is only me? They should be larger and have more distance between them.

4 days ago on New Play Store update (4.1.6)

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There is. Reading quite pleasing. Photos look stunning compared to regular displays.

5 days ago on Toshiba Kirabook review: finally, a flagship Windows 8 laptop 4 recommends

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Heh. The intro to Touch sounds like it was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Then it morphs into two or three other genres of music. How odd.

5 days ago on Daft Punk's 'Random Access Memories' available now to stream in its entirety from iTunes (update) 1 reply 1 recommend

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Now that is a good Daft Punk album!

Funny how everyone thinks that their last album was from 2005. A soundtrack or not, I still consider the Tron soundtrack to be a Daft Punk album.

5 days ago on Daft Punk's 'Random Access Memories' available now to stream in its entirety from iTunes (update) 2 replies 6 recommends

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Third track only improves after Giorgio stops talking. I hope there is no more talking.
Edit: Oh shit, he started talking again towards the end!

5 days ago on Daft Punk's 'Random Access Memories' available now to stream in its entirety from iTunes (update) 1 reply 1 recommend

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Hmm, I’m listening to the stream and the first two songs sound like background music to a romance scene from an early 80s yuppy thriller. I hope the rest of the album is better.

5 days ago on Daft Punk's 'Random Access Memories' available now to stream in its entirety from iTunes (update) 2 replies 1 recommend

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It’s neither good nor bad for music. Music doesn’t care. It may suck for the artist or label, but it’s definitely good for the listeners.

5 days ago on Daft Punk's 'Random Access Memories' available now to stream in its entirety from iTunes (update) 1 reply

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Since I just posted a reply to another thread with this link, I’ll just include it here. It’s David Chalmer’s essay, “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness”.

6 days ago on Is feeling different to thinking? How are they defined, scientifically?

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David Chalmers wrote about the “hard problem of consciousness”. His thesis is that although science will become better and better at explaining the functions of the brain, it will never understand consciousness, i.e., subjective experience. Here’s an excerpt,

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.bq.

The source material is freely available here (“Facing Up to the Problems of Consciousness”), and it makes quite an interesting read.

6 days ago on The scientific breakthrough you most hope to see in your lifetime