Why do people believe in a Flat Earth?
A Recent talk at AAAS reveals an insight into why there are some who sincerly believe that planet earth is flat.
technology
Finding Patterns in Big Data with machine learning
At the recent AAAS meeting Dr Genevera Allen gave a talk in which she highlights a rather interesting problem that specifically relates to the use of machine learning. Sitting between our ears is a pattern seeking engine that can and will at times identify false positives. We build in our own image and so we … Read more
Who Shares Fake News the most?
The internet is a disruptive technology. As it has rolled out over the last couple of decades many of the traditional and accepted ways that humans interact have been radically altered. This vastly increased flow of information has rippled into commerce, education, shopping, and also has now see the skewing of democratic outcomes via the … Read more
Do EnChroma glasses for colour blind people work?
Color blindness means that the light-sensitive cells in the retina are not responding appropriately to variations in wavelengths of light that enable people to see an array of colors. The picture above gives you an idea of what that might be like. It can manifest to varying degrees and so it can be modest or … Read more
AI successfully pretending to be human
At the recent Google I/O conference there was a demo of Google’s new Duplex AI Assistant. It was quite frankly amazing, so rather than describing it, you can instead see it yourself. Here is that demo … As you listen to it making real calls to book an appointment, you find that not only is … Read more
How can you track lots of Interesting stuff on the Internet?
Today I’d like to offer a tip on how you can rapidly track stuff that you are interested in. RSS There is an existing standard known as RSS. This is an acronym for Rich Site Summary and is a special hidden, but machine readable, webpage that many websites offer. Whenever a new posting appears, this gets … Read more