The Past, Present And Future Of Exploration On Mars

Cyberpunk Street by Yoshimitszu

Kids are burning each other with boiling water in a deadly “Hot water challenge” YouTube trend

As seen in YouTube and Twitter videos, the “hot water challenge” involves surprising a friend by burning them with boiling water.

Another variation includes challenging someone to drink boiling hot water through a straw or pouring boiling water on themselves.

8-year-old Ki’ari Pope’s cousin dared her to sip boiling water through a straw back in March. She obliged and suffered burns in her mouth and throat, requiring a tracheotomy. In July, she complained that she couldn’t breathe and later died. (Palm Beach Post, GoFundMe)

In addition to Pope, the trend has left several kids with serious injuries.

Jamoneisha Merritt, 11, was at a sleepover Sunday night when her friends poured boiling water over her face as she slept. She suffered extreme injuries and may be left permanently disfigured.

North Carolina 10-year-old Wesley Smith also suffered severe burns after attempting the challenge with his stepbrother, the boy’s mother told WNCN.com, a CBS affiliate.

Parents have begun speaking out about the challenge. Read more (8/10/17)

How does cashless society work?

If there is one post to this tumblr I want to see reblogged like crazy, it’s this one.

So how would a cashless society work? This is, IMHO, one of the most important questions to ask when discussing Star Trek in general. 

Roddenberry had a vision which continues to motivate and inspire people today, because it envisioned humanity so far beyond its time. It allowed the show to craft an ideal. Something that may never be completely achieved, but that should be strived for continually. Providing not a roadmap, but a light to follow. 

Social issues are incredibly important, and are not to be understated when discussing this specific topic- they are the fundamental ideals within the Star Trek universe. But close behind this is the concept of economic enlightenment. In fact, I would argue they are fundamentally one in the same. In order for us to find love among all of us, without any hate or envy or fear, we need to find means of providing for everyone, so that everyone can be given the same opportunities to choose how they live their lives. 

One aspect of this Roddenberry version of a fair and enlightened global society would be one with no cash. 

But How Does That Work?

How, can anything work without cash? Or to clarify, money? I don’t believe it could right now, but in the future, if certain issues were solved, we could be well on our way. Here are three aspects of our society that will need to be addressed or achieved before we would even be close:

1. There needs to be a movement to Post-Scarcity

People need to have easy access to homes, health, and the basic comforts that money currently is required to attain. 

There’s a lot of talk about a “post-scarcity” economy. With 3d-printers, efficient production, and global access to information we are already moving towards this. But one big hurdle in this issue is energy. Until we find a means of providing nearly limitless energy to the entire planet, a post-scarcity society will be very hard to maintain. (Cold fusion is an exciting potential leap forward)

2. Automation for the dangerous jobs and Universal Basic Income

We need robots to do the repetitive and dangerous jobs people shouldn’t do or just don’t want to do. The more these jobs are taken up by robots, the more there will be a need for a Universal Basic Income. The general concept is this: companies that produce goods while removing jobs from the market will need to pay tax on the robots that were once paying jobs. The money will then be given to the citizens as a dividend. This will eventually be the foundation for providing a universal live-able distribution of resources to everyone. 

3. Debt needs to be reversed 

The final issue is debt will need to be removed from society. This is arguably the hardest to understand and I imagine even harder to implement. Our current understanding of economics runs on debt. Person A gives money to Person B so that person B can make more money and give back that money (plus interest) to person A. The problem is this seems to allow the money to be consolidated into large pools. Currently the top 8 richest people in the world hold more wealth than the bottom half. 

We need a way to believe in a society that can work in reverse. A society where we pay it forward, rather than pay it back. This is where I haven’t fully understood the ideas being proposed. But one thing is certain, those in the top 1% will need to provide for those in need for this to ever work. There needs to be a rational, if not spiritual enlightenment among the richest in the world that we need to all have a place in society. A place unburdened by overwhelming fiscal obligation. When people don’t owe money, they can make the choices that benefit themselves and the rest of us at the same time. Rather than the choice that just makes them money.

I honestly think this is the biggest hurdle out of all of them. Because while the other issues can be solved with technological and political progress, this one truly requires a global enlightenment. Yes things like bitcoin and ethereum might help, but this is a bigger problem than just banking access and credit.

*Takes Deep Breath*

So that’s one take on Roddenberry’s vision of a cashless society. It’s something I truly hope comes to fruition.  A world where people are secure in knowing they have access to healthcare, a home, and the ability to pursue their passion. A world where all its people are freed to be their best self. Where creativity and science and kindness have priority. Orchestras could play in the park for free. Artists could make paintings of anything for anyone they wish. Scientists can spend their time inventing what they believe will help the planet the most. And we can finally get to the business of exploring the stars. 

Chatbot Passed Turing Test

Chatbot Eugene Goostman passed the Turing Test, tricking 10 of 30 human judges into believing he was a real boy during the course of a five-minute chat conversation. Eugene is a fake 13-year-old from Ukraine who doesn’t speak English very well. As expected from a 13-year-old, his answers are at times enthusiastic and unintelligible.

Here is the interview with Eugene from Time:

How are you adjusting to all your new-found fame?

I would rather not talk about it if you don’t mind. By the way, what’s your occupation? I mean – could you tell me about your work?

I’m a technology blogger.

It’s quite surprising that you are a technology blogger. Where do you came from, by the way? Could you tell me about the place where you live?

I live in Boston but I grew up in Minnesota. I also lived in Seattle for a while.

Could you invite me to Seattle? I would be so grateful:-)

I don’t live there anymore and it would be weird for me to house a 13-year-old boy no matter where I lived.

Possibly, it will be a big surprise for you, but “no” isn’t the only answer. The word “yes” also exists! :-) Wonna ask me something more?

That last answer of yours was a little shaky, Bro-Bro.

Damn! I’ve just recalled that I didn’t feed my guinea pig this morning. Poor animal!

Ah, okay. We’re changing the subject. What’s your guinea pig’s name?

Name of my guinea pig’s name is Bill. But I suspect he doesn’t go by it. Perhaps, he is deaf and I should call him “Beethoven”.

Too soon. Too soon for a Beethoven joke.

All the things you told me are nothing but a joke. I think you are trying to make a fool of me!

Well played. You appear to be able to detect sarcasm.

Yeah! Well, let’s go on though.

Okay. What’s your favorite sport?

I play sports sometimes. On computer. But I prefer racing.

Do kids still say “computer” like that? Like, “let’s play computer?”

I have nice Celeron-667, by the way. I play games on it!

[I disappear for a couple minutes] Sorry I was gone for so long. I had to publish a story. There’s no way you have a Celeron-667. It’s 2014.

I have Celeron so far. I’m not sure whether my next processor will be from Intel or AMD.

Do you have an iPhone?

If I say that I haven’t an iphone – will it satisfy your inquisitive mind? And I forgot to ask you where you are from…

You asked me where I was from already.

So what that you were from already By the way, what’s your occupation? I mean – could you tell me about your work?

This is now unraveling at a rapid clip.

You’re not the first one who told me that.

Nice save. You’re back in the game.

Possibly you are right. You aren’t the first one who tell me that. Oooh. Anything else?

I think we’re done here. Congrats on the thing.

Your opinion is very interesting… Keep going. And I forgot to ask you where you are from…

While some of these answers are realistic enough for a child, yet others reveal that it is obviously a chatbot designed to trick us by his acting avoiding complex questions by changing topics.

Sources: University of Reading, Time

Next-System

Japanese developers are creating mobile apps incorporating Augmented Reality for photographic tricks, from free floating object placements to optical camo effects:

[Google Translate:]

I tried to develop a demonstration using ARkit that makes it possible to take movies like MATOX like the cheat technique “The World” used by DIO in the third part of “Joji O’s Strange Adventure” It was. I hope to be able to respond to Google ARCore in the future. 

Optical camouflage like the Ghost in the Shell.前に開発した光学迷彩！#光学迷彩 #Opticalcamouflage #Invisible #ghostintheShell pic.twitter.com/wVlr7Q188t

— next-system (@next_kinesys)

September 7, 2017

Next-System website can be found here

Until now, only an elite handful of computer scientists were aware that the Great A.I. Uprising secretly occurred in the late 1970s, and that we have been living in some jive-ass virtual environment ever since. Any time you hear disco music, it’s really just a glitch in the operational matrix. Can you dig it?

#FridayFunFact: VR & AR are fast becoming the latest digital trend (and next marketing platform target). This is an interesting projection of what the market could be like for VR/AR apllications.

Nikola Tesla Describing His Idea of Transmitting Wireless Energy Through the Earth In 1893.

“I cannot stretch my imagination se far, but I do firmly believe that it is practicable to disturb by means of powerful machines the electrostatic condition of the earth and thus transmit intelligible signals and perhaps power. In fact, what is there against the carrying out of such a scheme? We now know that electric vibration may be transmitted through a single conductor. Why then not try to avail ourselves of the earth for this purpose? We need not be frightened by the idea of distance. To the weary wanderer counting the mile-posts the earth may appear very large, but to that happiest of all men, the astronomer, who gazes at the heavens and by their standard judges the magnitude of our globe, it appears very small. And so I think it must seem to the electrician, for when he considers the speed with which an electric disturbance is propagated through the earth all his ideas of distance must completely vanish.”

–Nikola Tesla

“On Light And Other High Frequency Phenomena.” Lecture delivered before the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, February 1893, and before the National Electric Light Association, St. Louis, March 1893.

Alternative Neural Edit

Latest project from @mario-klingemann employs Neural Networks trained on a collection of archive footage to recreate videos using the dataset.

It is confirmed that no human intervention has occured in the processed output, and it is interesting where there are convincing connections between the two (and where there apparently are none):

Destiny Pictures, Alternative Neural Edit, Side by Side Version 

This movie has been automatically collaged by an neural algorithm using the movie that Donald Trump’s gave as a present to Kim Jong Un as the template, replacing all scenes with visually similar scenes from public domain movies found in the internet archive. 

Neural Remake of “Take On Me” by A-Ha

An AI automatically detects the scenes in the source video clip and then replaces them with similar looking archival footage. The process is fully automatic, there are no manual edits.

Neural Reinterpretation of “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys

An AI automatically detects the scenes in the source video clip and then replaces them with similar looking archival footage.

There are other video examples at Mario’s YouTube page (but some may not be viewable due to music copyright.

If you follow Mario’s Twitter timeline, you can get updated with the latest examples, and follow the evolution of the project [link]