Oct 06

If you have a novella in the epic/high fantasy/sword & sorcery/quest genre that is NOT eurocentric, and would like…

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If you have a novella in the epic/high fantasy/sword & sorcery/quest genre that is NOT eurocentric, and would like the opportunity to wait for months for Tor to most likely reject it, here’s your chance.

(Cynicism aside, this could be a good opportunity if you have the right piece.)

http://www.tor.com/2016/10/06/tor-com-publishing-opening-to-fantasy-novellas-on-october-12th/
Oct 05

This book is part of the Noblebright Fantasy boxed set that C.

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This book is part of the Noblebright Fantasy boxed set that C. J. Brightley has organised, and that I’m participating in. I just finished reading it the other day. It’s a good story, well told, with a young protagonist who learns to trust and who has to show courage and perseverance to help her new-found friends.

So that makes 5 books (including mine) that I can recommend from this bundle. There are 12 books in all, plus some short fiction, and until Saturday it’s only 99c – after that, we need to put the price up for technical reasons to do with the size of the file.

If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to pick it up: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K3534QI

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show?id=1769431773

Oct 05

And here is the lowest layer of an entirely new technology stack, waiting for its compilers and its high-level…

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And here is the lowest layer of an entirely new technology stack, waiting for its compilers and its high-level languages.

Originally shared by Larry Panozzo

Tiny molecular machines. Their work marked the advent of nanobiotechnology.

James M. Tour, a professor of chemistry at Rice University in Houston, said the Nobel would bestow legitimacy on the field and help convince people that nanomachines are not just fantastical science fiction of the far future.

“No one is making money on these right now, but it will come,” he said. “These men have established and built up the field in a remarkable way.”

Dr. Tour predicted that the first profitable use of the technology might be machines that open up cell membranes in the body to deliver drugs. “It’s really going to be quite extraordinary,” he said.

http://m.phys.org/news/2016-10-nobel-chemistry-prize-world-tiniest.html

Oct 05

Via Larry Panozzo.

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Via Larry Panozzo. The article explicitly points out something I’ve been noticing for a while: at each stage of the development of technology, the previous stage’s cutting edge is packaged and standardised so that it can be treated as self-contained building blocks to make the next stage, which is why a twelve-year-old can now program a successful mobile game that would once have been beyond the most advanced computer scientists.

At the end, it talks about virtual decision support advisors, which sparked the thought: what about a future election where everyone used these advisors to decide who to vote for? All of a sudden, the candidates would need to switch from convincing voters to convincing AIs that their policies would benefit voters…

Originally shared by Ward Plunet

Deep Learning trying to go wide

A company called Bonsai joins a movement to democratize machine learning. Get ready to build your own neural net.

…But what if you could get the benefits of AI without having to hire those hard-to-find and expensive-to-woo talents? What if smart software could lower the bar? Could you get deep learning with a shallower talent pool? A startup called Bonsai and an emerging class of companies with the same idea say yes. Brace yourself for the democratization of AI. It’s a movement that might eventually include millions of people — and, some say, billions.

https://backchannel.com/you-too-can-become-a-machine-learning-rock-star-no-phd-necessary-107a1624d96b#.lbt0ljoyw