Originally shared by John Conway
Monthly Archives: October 2016
Your home’s online gadgets could be #hacked by ultrasound. #cybersecurity
Originally shared by Eduardo Suastegui
Your home’s online gadgets could be #hacked by ultrasound. #cybersecurity
I’m always interested in this kind of urban gardening, mainly because my Gryphon Clerks setting has it – but also…
I’m always interested in this kind of urban gardening, mainly because my Gryphon Clerks setting has it – but also because I can see it becoming more prevalent in the future.
Originally shared by Amanda Patterson
The world’s largest man-made forest has added vegetation to its iconic skyline. Districts within the City of Johannesburg have used the space on their rooftops to build planters for fruit and vegetables to feed the inner city.
These projects cater to people living in the neighbourhoods. They are community driven and they also help to develop skills of local residents.
#Johannesburg #SouthAfrica
Google Assistant: The Difference Between Knowing and Doing
Originally shared by Gideon Rosenblatt
Google Assistant: The Difference Between Knowing and Doing
As Google helps us to build “the containers of our collective intelligence,” one of the challenges is transforming the knowledge they contain into services that can be automated for us. This is the significance of Google’s Assistant.
Other important information will come as people ask the Assistant to perform actions for them. “In the search logs, we don’t see people asking to do things like, Book me a table at CasCal for 7 pm for two. Nobody’s going to say that to Google because Google is a search engine, right?” Pereira says. Actually, booking a table is one thing that Google Search can do, but that’s a rare exception: generally, Google search can give you answers, but can’t close the deal. So people don’t ask it to do things, and Google doesn’t get data on assistance. “That difference between knowing and doing is a big one,” says Pereira, “and only now are we only starting to get enough traffic and interaction to start understanding how we can make [an assistant] grow and become more robust, more general, more flexible. It’s going to be a long road to go from the information side where search comes from, to the doing side — to pervasive assistance.”
More on our “containers of our collective intelligence”:
http://www.the-vital-edge.com/machine-based-collective-intellige/
HT Eldon Edwards
https://backchannel.com/google-our-assistant-will-trigger-the-next-era-of-ai-3c72a4d7bc75#.risur0cxa
I’ll be closing in on 60 in 10 years’ time, so this is encouraging.
I’ll be closing in on 60 in 10 years’ time, so this is encouraging.
Also along these lines, I currently have a story out on submission about the “gene Amish,” who refuse genetic modification, and consequently place a burden on the health system. As is their civil right.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
“Within a few years, our genome, microbiome, behavior and environment will all be mapped and measured, and prescriptive-medicine systems based on artificial intelligence will help us feel better and live longer.”
The current trend of 3D printed prosthetic hands have one rather large drawback: you can’t use them if you already…
Originally shared by HACKADAY
The current trend of 3D printed prosthetic hands have one rather large drawback: you can’t use them if you already have two hands. This might seem like a glib objection, but one of last week’s Hackaday Prize posts pointed this out rather well – sometimes…
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/25/hackaday-prize-entry-a-cluster-of-exoskeletons
‘Roboat’ Aims to Bring Autonomous Boats to Amsterdam

Originally shared by Adafruit Industries
‘Roboat’ Aims to Bring Autonomous Boats to Amsterdam
https://blog.adafruit.com/2016/10/26/roboat-aims-to-bring-autonomous-boats-to-amsterdam/
As self-driving cars hit the road, autonomous boats are entering Amsterdam’s canals. The ‘roboat’ project — a research collaboration between MIT and AMS, the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions — seeks to design and test the world’s first fleet of autonomous boats in the city of Amsterdam. Each water-based unit ( a ‘roboat’ ) can be used for transporting goods and people and for creating temporary floating infrastructures, such as self-assembling bridges and concert stages.
Read more
https://blog.adafruit.com/2016/10/26/roboat-aims-to-bring-autonomous-boats-to-amsterdam/
As the late lamented Laston Kirkland used to say, future’s coming. Quicker than you think.
As the late lamented Laston Kirkland used to say, future’s coming. Quicker than you think.
Originally shared by Ryan Toxopeus
This article points out a big truth: they better get on that Guaranteed Livable Income plan, pronto, or there’ll be riots. Drivers make up a huge part of the work force.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/10/25/self-driving-cars-employment-catastrophe_n_12641204.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/10/25/self-driving-cars-employment-catastrophe_n_12641204.html
NaNoWriNo
NaNoWriNo
Because I start my new day job on Monday, after six months without one, November will be the first month in a while in which I don’t write 50,000 words.
Lots of people are gearing up for NaNoWriMo, though, so I thought I’d pass on some things I’ve learned in the hope they’ll be useful to someone. These are not The Rules Which Thou Shalt Follow; they’re things that work for me to produce a decent draft quickly, and they may also work for you. Or not.
1. I get an idea for a story, usually one or more characters in a situation or a cool setting idea, and write it down.
1.5. Sometimes, I write down a list of things I want to include in the story – character arcs, plot arcs, Moments of Awesome, setting stuff, whatever excites me. I sometimes also combine several ideas that seem similar. For example, I had an idea for a thief who can “conjure” things through a portal in his hand, into the temple of the Trickster God; and an idea in which the temple of Wisdom is a library with ponderous mottoes over the doors. Both of those had temples, so I thought they might be in the same story. They were. (Hand of the Trickster.)
2. I expand the story idea into what I think of as a “narrative outline”: a plot summary, in order, of what happens in the book. It may be fairly sketchy and minimal, at first, but it’s a complete story that makes sense. Unless it uses characters that I’ve already written about, I don’t use character names in this, just roles. (Making up the names would slow me down, and using the roles instead makes it clearer what the character interactions are.)
3. I break it up into paragraphs. These roughly correspond to chapter breaks. I copy and paste these into Scrivener as notecards.
All of this gives me a sense of direction, without being so detailed that I feel I’ve written the story already and the fun bit is over.
4. I make sure that the characters want something and are competent to get it, but will have to struggle to do so. This is important, and will mean that I don’t have to drive them to do things; they’ll create the momentum for themselves.
5. I open the first chapter and add a scene. In the scene synopsis, I jot down whose point of view it’s in, what they want, and what changes by the end of the scene. Sometimes I do this in the form of a mini narrative outline.
5. I start writing the scene. When it’s over, I start writing the next one. I make sure to do the scene synopsis for each one before I start it (I learned this technique from +Rachel Aaron’s book 2k to 10k). That keeps me from wandering aimlessly.
Sometimes, I write a bunch of scene synopses in a row, either as a break from writing the actual prose or because I want to work out where I’m going. All of this process is flexible, and it’s changing all the time; I do what helps me, and I keep learning.
If extra scenes occur to me, I add them on the fly. If I decide that a scene isn’t needed, or that it can be covered in a couple of lines of dialog, I cut it. If my original scene synopsis needs to be changed, I change it.
I don’t follow the scene synopsis rigidly; it’s a way to get started. Often, the scene turns out differently once I get the characters interacting.
Sometimes, if I particularly want to write certain scenes that aren’t the next ones, I’ll skip ahead and do so. It adds complexity over doing all the scenes in order, but it also makes it easier to motivate myself.
6. I make up names as I go and note them in the Research section in Scrivener. Because I’m mostly working in Scrivener for iOS, which is slower to navigate around, if I forget a name I don’t go and look it up; I leave a placeholder in square brackets, like [lt1], and go back later and put the actual name in. Likewise placenames and such. I have two countries in my current WIP based on England and France, and I sometimes just put [English] or [French] in the text to save me looking up what I called them. This maintains the momentum.
You can do the same with facts, rather than go off and research and break your momentum.
7. I try to finish each scene at a significant moment that will make the reader want to keep reading.
8. I don’t worry too much about chapters at first. Later on, I assemble scenes into roughly equal-sized chapters. My chapters are about 3500-6000 words, about the same length as a short story, but there’s no particular rule. I just like to work in units of that length.
9. When I’ve written a complete, coherent story, I go through it and fix up continuity, since I’ve usually changed my mind on things partway through, and come up with better ideas later on that now need to be foreshadowed. I make sure I replace all the square-bracket stuff, that I’ve spelled character names consistently, and so forth.
I now have something that could work as a novel, even though it isn’t yet as good as it could be.
10. I do a revision pass, typically deepening point of view, adding sensory detail and description, and adding more internal reflection and emotion to the character. I add bits of backstory that show why the character’s arc matters, and why they care so much. (Increasingly, I do this as I go rather than in revision, but that’s because I’m always learning from what I had to work hard on in the previous book.)
11. I show it to beta readers and get their feedback, then to my development editor likewise. I incorporate what makes sense to me.
12. I get S. A. Hunt to make me a cover, because he’s awesome.
13. I tidy everything up, do a last check for continuity (because, often, changing something in one paragraph will affect another paragraph somewhere else), and compile it in the final version. To the Bat-Amazon!
How the Disruptive Power of Technology Is Redefining Work
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
How the Disruptive Power of Technology Is Redefining Work