(I *sure* this was the basis a short story I read - but I can't find it. So I'm (re)writing it. If you know of the original, please let me know…!) The speed of light is a universal constant. This "speed limit" is fundamental to everything we understand about physics. Information - when propagated via the electromagnetic spectrum - cannot travel faster than 0.3 Gigametres per second. There is no argument here. Every experiment conducted by our top scientists has confirmed it. There are no "warp …
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I have been receiving letters from a dear friend by the name of Ophiuchus. He has been researching some curious anomalies in the Unicode Standard. While I cannot vouch for all he has written, I thought it worth presenting his discoveries to you. My friend, I bring you a curiosity! I have been engaged in a most frustrating task. That is, trying to decipher the ancient history of our friends at The Consortium. They have refused me access to their archives, but I have bribed a friendly…
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Last week I attended a talk by Dr Irina Higgins from Artificial Intelligence company DeepMind. It was a fascinating look at how their AI works, and how it is trained. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentIf you've ever played a video game online, it is likely you've been training an Artificial Intelligence agent without realising it.Ethical?❤️ 7💬 4♻️ 020:06 - Thu 09 March 2017 Part of the problem is that AI is usually trained on massive datasets, over millions of hours. So it is hard to know exac…
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Scene: An airport. A few years from now. "I'm sorry sir, we can't let you on the flight until you visit the rest-room." I'll admit that it caught me off-guard. Surely the woman at the airline gate was joking? "Sir, two of the plane's toilets are out-of-order. At this time we're requesting all passengers void themselves before entry." "Look, I'm a grown man. I've been responsible for my own piss for several years now. Pretty sure I'll be fine." She gave me a sceptical look and prodded her…
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Last week I was on the In The Abstract podcast. I came up with a curious idea. If I were Tom Scott, I'd turn this into a performance piece - instead, here's a short and entirely fictional story. Facebook knew you were in love a long time before you did. It noticed you scrolling back through her timeline. Every millisecond lingering over the photos of her at the beach was faithfully logged. When she sent a message to her best friend saying "Hot date tonight ;-)" it correlated all the…
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I've spent the last few days writing a Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) game on Twitter. This blog post briefly discusses how I did it - and what pitfalls I discovered when creating it. But, first, if you want to play.... Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentYou should probably be asleep.I've created a "Choose You Own Adventure" on Twitter.Start here ➡ @wnd_goPleasant dreams.❤️ 6,416💬 429🔁 022:50 - Mon 12 January 2015 Background I'm by no means the first person to attempt running a CYOA on Twit…
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The horror of the quantified audience The cinema is on the deserted outskirts of Pinewood Studios. It's a wet and windy day — not unusual for England in late summer — and I'm here to take a look at the future of audience test screenings. My friend, Ross, has asked me to take a test drive of his company's newest way of destroying artistic integrity helping movie studios connect better with their audiences. Thursday mornings aren't my preferred time to sit on a cheap polyester chair and tip my …
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