Uncategorized | The Committee to Nuke Elysium

neuromaencer:

by padmanabhan

iamdanw:

(via Nigeria’s Illegal Oil Refineries – In Focus – The Atlantic)

derelictmetropolis:

Powerplant W (by earthmagnified)

touchdisky:

by ms4jah

The Sky Is Calling

itsfullofstars:

cool iPad app celebrating the Cassini mission to Saturn

jtotheizzoe:

Cassini HD – Explore Saturn Via iPad

Our very own science/art Tumblrer stacythinx has been hard at work designing the Cassini HD iPad app, available Sept. 15 in the iTunes store (that’s tomorrow!). It will be free for the first day, by the way (I’ll add the link when it goes live).

I’ve had a chance to play with the app, and it’s really something special. NASA’s Cassini mission has provided us with what I think is the greatest catalogue of planetary images from our solar system. Saturn is such a visually striking celestial body, and exploring its moons and rings via photography gives us the ability to take a digital rocket tour with just a single click.

The Cassini HD app delivers more than just pretty pictures, of course. Tap an image to find out a little bit of the context behind each photo, and any of them can be shared on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. right in the app. My only complaint about the app is that there isn’t more written, but the pictures are informative on their own, and still serve to inspire further study. The philosophy behind this project, and Stacey’s Tumblr, is making knowledge beautiful. Mission accomplished!

I give it a rating of 10 rings out of 10. Go get it tomorrow!

Two years ago, Brown attempted to teach Watson the Urban Dictionary. The popular website contains definitions for terms ranging from Internet abbreviations like OMG, short for “Oh, my God,” to slang such as “hot mess.”

But Watson couldn’t distinguish between polite language and profanity — which the Urban Dictionary is full of. Watson picked up some bad habits from reading Wikipedia as well. In tests it even used the word “bullshit” in an answer to a researcher’s query.

Ultimately, Brown’s 35-person team developed a filter to keep Watson from swearing and scraped the Urban Dictionary from its memory. But the trial proves just how thorny it will be to get artificial intelligence to communicate naturally. Brown is now training Watson as a diagnostic tool for hospitals.

Teaching IBM’s Watson the meaning of ‘OMG’ – Fortune Tech, via @jleedev. (via new-aesthetic)