Freaking heck. Get rid of that tribble before it’s too late.
Dan Jones
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06 Nov 16:00
BlackBerry able to update PRIV without carrier approval if necessary
by Dima Aryeh
Dan JonesCool
BlackBerry is known for its security in the corporate world, and with the PRIV running Android, the company will have to deal with an entirely different method of keeping its device safe.
We all know how carriers love to delay Android updates. BlackBerry has spoken about such problems and revealed that important security hotfixes can be patched without carrier approval if necessary. Thought the company will be going through the carriers for approval when it can, it can bypass them entirely for important security fixes. The fact that BlackBerry is announcing that it has this power is great, and maybe other manufacturers will follow suit.
The PRIV will also feature enterprise-managed updates. If it’s a corporate device, IT can manage when updates are released to the PRIV to prevent incompatibility problems with corporate software. This is the same approach that’s taken with corporate PCs.
BlackBerry is doing with Android exactly what it historically did with its own operating system, and that’s keeping them secure, safe, and corporate friendly. It’s good to see the company taking a strong stance on security.
06 Nov 02:33
fuckyeah-nerdery: star-trek-blog: Keeping Up With The...
Keeping Up With The Cardassians - Part 5 - Gul Ocett
Gul Ocett
For the fifth part of my Cardassian series, we meet our first female, and one that is…
06 Nov 02:33
instructables: Secret Door Bookcase by...
Secret Door Bookcase by makendo
http://www.instructables.com/id/Secret-door-bookcase/
I just showed this to my wife and said I need this some day. Her response: “Because you think you’re Batman?”
06 Nov 00:18
You Will Succumb To The Coziness Of Cthulhu Socks
by Rielly
Etsy shop Dance Macabre sells these wonderful hand-printed socks featuring a silhouette of Cthulhu.
The distressed light grey design is printed on the outside of each cozy sock. Check out more pics after the break.
Product Page ($11.09)
(via Boing Boing)
06 Nov 00:18
A time lapse of changing USA boundaries, 1629-2000
by Jason Kottke
This is an animated map of the lower 48 United States showing every boundary change (country, colony, state, and county) from 1629 to 2000. (via @ptak)
Tags: maps time lapse USA video
05 Nov 19:24
Comic » Insomnia Cure
Dan JonesI need to find queen-size Batman bedding
Added 2 Weeks Ago
03 Nov 19:33
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Daniel Grizelj/Getty Images
Google
Soon, Gmail's AI Could Reply To Your Email For You
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Caption: Google
Daniel Grizelj/Getty Images
Ever wished your phone could automatically reply to your email messages?
Well, Google just unveiled technology that’s at least moving in that direction. Using what’s called “deep learning”—a form of artificial intelligence that’s rapidly reinventing a wide range of online services—the company is beefing up its Inbox by Gmail app so that it can analyze the contents of an email and then suggest a few (very brief) responses. The idea is that you can rapidly respond to someone while on the go—without having to manually tap a fresh message into your smartphone keyboard.
“The network will tailor both the tone and content of the responses to the email you’re reading,” says Google product management director Alex Gawley. It gives you three of these responses, and you can then choose the one that best suits what you want to say.
Dubbed Smart Reply, the system learns to generate appropriate replies by analyzing scads of email conversations from across Google’s Gmail service, the world’s most popular internet-based email system. A deep learning service feeds information into what’s called a neural network—a vast network of machines that approximates the web of neurons in the human brain—and this neural network analyzes the information in order to “learn” a particular task. By analyzing thousands of cat photos, for instance, a neural net can learn to identify a cat. By analyzing a database of spoken words, it can learn to recognize the commands you speak into your smartphone. In this case, the system learns to compose email replies by analyzing real-world email conversations.
Google
Experts on deep learning, however, will tell you that such systems have their limitations. “With a finite amounts of data, you can create a rudimentary understanding of the world,” says Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Baidu, the Chinese Internet giant that also sits at the forefront of the deep learning movement, “but humans learn about the world in all sorts of ways [we can’t yet duplicate].” Indeed, Gawley acknowledges that Google’s Smart Reply system doesn’t always get things right. But that’s part of the reason the company provides three potential replies to each email—not just one. Plus, it lets you edit these replies and augment them with your own words.
The system uses what’s called a “long short-term-memory,” or LSTM, neural network. Essentially, this is a neural net that exhibits something akin to human memory. It can “remember” the beginning of an email as it’s parsing the end—and that helps it, on some level, understand this natural language. In a research paper published earlier this year, a team of Google researchers showed how this technology could be used to build a “chatbot” that can carry on a decent conversation (in certain situations).
Actually, the Smart Reply system uses two neural networks. After the first one analyzes the email at hand—distilling what is being said—a second takes this information and works to generate the potential responses. This network builds these replies one word at a time, much as you would.
With Smart Reply, Google is rightly keeping the scope of the application as small as possible. The replies it generates are between three and six words long. But Gawley says that within this small scope, the system proves surprisingly nuanced. In some cases, for instance, it can tell when an email includes a joke and suggest the reply “Ha. Very funny.” If someone asks “Do you have your vacation plans set yet? When you do, can you send them along?,” the potential replies might be: “No plans yet,” “I just sent them to you,” and “I’m working on them.”
Other common replies include “Thanks,” “Sounds good,” and “How about tomorrow?” But it’s important to remember that the system isn’t offering a canned catalog of replies. In effect, the AI really is “reading” your email and coming up with what it judges the most appropriate original response in the context of a specific message. According Gawley, the system can generate about 20,000 discreet responses.
Sometimes, Gawley says, the neural network generates multiple replies that aren’t that different from one another—such as “How about tomorrow?” and “Wanna get together tomorrow?” and “I suggest we meet tomorrow.” So, the company has built a separate AI system that can remove such duplication. At times, Smart Reply still steps outside the bounds of what you want. After testing the system, Google found that the reply “I love you” turned up far too often. But as with other neural networks, Google is constantly tuning the system after seeing how it performs.
The company will start sharing the system with the general public on Wednesday, and as time goes on, it will only get better. But let’s hope it doesn’t get too good. Help with rapid-fire replies is one thing. But there is something to be said for, you know, actually writing your own email.
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03 Nov 18:45
Mom Makes Her Son A Hollywood-Worthy Rocket Raccoon Costume
by Stefan A. Slater
As you can see from this pic, Christina Borchardt has a knack for creating movie-quality costumes.
Christina made this awesomely realistic Rocket Raccoon costume for her son Chase to run around in on Halloween. According to her Facebook post, she made the costume entirely on her own from scratch, and even though she didn’t get a chance to “distress” the lower leather portions, her son was very happy with the finished product. No doubt!
(via Mashable)
03 Nov 18:42
Tetris Link
You could call Tetris Link Tetris IRL. It's like old-school video game meets even-older-school board game. It's like Connect Four with better colors. It's like a puzzle and exercise in intellectual stamina for people who crack under pressure. Because even as you get better this Tetris will never speed up.
Tetris Link turns everyone's favorite 8-bit building blocks into tangible Tetriminos. Players drop I, J, L, O, S, T, and Z pieces into a transparent vertical grid, attempting to link 3 or more Tetriminos of the same color to earn points. Yes, it's a big deviation from video gameplay, but until we master vanishment, teleportation, or spontaneous combustion, off-screen Tetris can't really escape these types of modifications. In addition to earning points for links, players lose points for leaving empty spaces between their blocks. Once the grid is completely full the game ends and the point totaling begins. Nope, Tetris Link doesn't keep score or do math for you like the video game version either. On the upshot, it does work during power outages and won't run out of battery right when you're about to conquer Level 15 and break your own record.
03 Nov 14:14
quasi-normalcy: startrekships: airyairyquitecontrary: blue-aut...
KIRK THIS WHY YOU GOTTA FILL OUT THE LOG
I’ve heard the theory that Kirk’s logs just get circulated round headquarters for lulz before being dumped in the circular file as obvious fabrications by someone bored with a frontier posting.
“Hey, have you seen this one? He says he fought Apollo.”
“What, the old earth probe?”
“Try the old earth GOD!”
“Hilarious! Classic Kirk! That’s better than the time when he was transported to an evil dimenison.”
The reason why in The Naked Now it was Riker who remembered that the previous polywater infection had happened is that he’s the sort of person who would read The Hilarious Adventures of Captain Kirk for fun.I especially like this idea because of the implication that all the other captains in Starfleet are reporting perfectly ordinary experiences like visiting a space station, dropping off supplies at a colony, bit of a stand-off with some Klingons in disputed space but got out of it unscathed - and then there’s Kirk all, “sorry guys we’ve been off course this week because my first officer seriously needed to get laid (LIKE YOU HAVE NO IDEA MY NECK STILL HURTS)” and “let me tell you about the Chicago Gangster planet” and “WHIPPED AND THROWN IN JAIL BY SPACE NAZIS.”
I actually really like the above explanation
“So wait, they stole his first officer’s brain?”
03 Nov 13:59
Star Trek Problems: Odo Would Vote for Trump
by Chris Piers
Dan JonesQronos. What a dipwad.
The standard Anglicization is Kronos. The official translitteration is Qo'noS. This dude somehow bunched them together.
Vincent’s Comments: One thing I love about the Star Trek Problems comics is the ability to comment on current issues through Star Trek to illustrate how ridiculous they are. It’s also funny to see people get really mad at a Star Trek web comic when this happens. See: Geordi standing his ground.
02 Nov 17:28
Awesome Mom Transforms Her Daughter Into Agent Carter
by Sean Fallon
I can barely handle how awesome and adorable this Agent Carter cosplay is. If Eleanor came up to my door on Halloween I would just give her the entire candy bowl and be thankful that I didn’t dress up as a Marvel villain.
When Eleanor asked her mother Luciana Mallozzi to make an Agent Carter costume for her, Luciana jumped at the chance. Of course there’s always a price to pay. She notes:
My kids are pretty spoiled because they know I can probably make anything they ask for. I’ve already made the Labyrinth ball gown, various Disney princesses, Jessie the Cowgirl, the Flash, Deadpool and a bunch of others so I’ve sewed myself into a corner here…
Well, the effort is worth it if you ask us. Luciana is the person to thank if these photos made you smile on a Monday.
Check out an additional image after the break…
