One of the frustrating things about computers is their limited input options. A "standard" PC keyboard only has about 100 keys. Sure, some have some bonus buttons for controlling the machine, but it is becoming clear that there simply aren't enough buttons to efficiently program computers. Most programming languages have the concept of relational operators.…
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Murder makes unlikely allies. On the eve of the planet Ileri's historic vote to join the Commonwealth, the assassination of a government minister threatens to shatter everything. Private investigator Noo Okereke and spy Meiko Ogawa join forces with police chief Toiwa to investigate - and discover clues that point disturbingly toward a threat humanity thought…
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ACTORS! ACTING! Here's a quick summary of the film: "I AM ACTING!" "YEAH! WELL I AM ACTING LOUDER THAN YOU!" "OH? REALLY? JUST LOOK HOW GOOD I'M ACTING!" It's a relentless argument between two gormless gargoyles. Yes, the director is very clever in using lots of long and unedited shots. And, gosh, isn't the aspect…
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What if Red Dwarf were given a big budget and re-made "Backwards"? I'm only teasing a little bit! It is impossible to do a good Time Travel story. The closest I've experienced is "This Is How You Lose the Time War" which, similar to TENET, has sort-of-spies chasing each other through time. Most sci-fi movies…
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As part of my MSc, I'm getting a few lessons in technologies I'm not familiar with. I've found some of these lessons extremely confusing - even when I'm proficient in the language. Here's an example of a coding fragment from one of the tutorials in the R language. Let me explain everything that I think…
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I received a rather distraught DM from a Twitter friend last week. They were upset that I was following an account which did nothing but spew out racist bile all day long. Did this mean that I endorsed their hateful views. I was confused. I didn't recognise the specific account, and didn't recall seeing any…
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A deconstruction of gender through the voices of Siri, HAL 9000, and other computers that talk Considering Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Her, and more, Liz W. Faber explores contentious questions around gender: its fundamental constructedness, the rigidity of the gender binary, and culturally situated attitudes on male and female embodiment. Going beyond current…
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The world is a complex place. It is tempting to enforce simplicity upon it to make things easier for computers. Gender is a boolean, no one is older than 99, all text flows left to right, and names are always in English. That makes it nice and easy for us to write computer systems -…
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Like most of you, I'm inundated with spam calls. So I have a new solution. When an unknown number calls me, they get routed to this audio file. This was created with Amazon Polly which is free for casual use. I was pretty impressed with the voice quality. Although there are limits to how well…
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I'm doing an apprenticeship MSc in Digital Technology. In the spirit of openness, I'm blogging my research and my assignments. This is my paper from the Technical and Digital Leadership module. I think it is fair to say I didn't get on too well with it. I found it very focused on American companies -…
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