Posting with Eric Klien.

My anthology of short science fiction stories is free for Kindle download until Friday.

Alien Puzzle Boxes: Twenty short science fiction stories eBook: Lichtman, Jeremy: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store.

Take a listen to the recordings. That’s an AI doing that.

A long-standing goal of human-computer interaction has been to enable people to have a natural conversation with computers, as they would with each other. In recent years, we have witnessed a revolution in the ability of computers to understand and to generate natural speech, especially with the application of deep neural networks (e.g., Google voice search, WaveNet). Still, even with today’s state of the art systems, it is often frustrating having to talk to stilted computerized voices that don’t understand natural language. In particular, automated phone systems are still struggling to recognize simple words and commands. They don’t engage in a conversation flow and force the caller to adjust to the system instead of the system adjusting to the caller.

Today we announce Google Duplex, a new technology for conducting natural conversations to carry out “real world” tasks over the phone. The technology is directed towards completing specific tasks, such as scheduling certain types of appointments. For such tasks, the system makes the conversational experience as natural as possible, allowing people to speak normally, like they would to another person, without having to adapt to a machine.

One of the key research insights was to constrain Duplex to closed domains, which are narrow enough to explore extensively. Duplex can only carry out natural conversations after being deeply trained in such domains. It cannot carry out general conversations.

With the utmost of respect for Mr Buffett, when he calls BTC “rat poison” he is expressing his philosophical viewpoint of the program (i.e. decentralized currency), not making a prediction of its future (not that I, or anyone else can really know what that it).

The Oracle of Omaha is still not a fan of bitcoin. Neither is Warren Buffett’s top lieutenant Charlie Munger. But to be fair to crypto bulls, both have missed out on an amazing rally.

Researchers in the US and UK examined an existing enzyme which had occurred naturally in landfill sites and was able to slowly digest man-made plastics.

But in the course of testing the enzyme’s origins, the researchers made biological changes to it that turbo-charged its ability to digest plastics, according to Britain’s University of Portsmouth.

According to The Guardian, the enzyme starts breaking down plastic in a matter of days, a process which would take centuries under normal conditions.

On Mar. 7, elections in Sierra Leone marked a global landmark: the world’s first ever blockchain-powered presidential elections.

As president Ernest Bai Koroma leaves office after serving two five-year terms, the maximum allowed constitutionally, Sierra Leoneans have had to pick from a pool of 16 candidates including the ruling party’s Samura Kamara, the erstwhile foreign minister, and Julius Maada Bio, former military head of state and candidate of the main opposition party.

Results released by Sierra Leone’s election commission (NEC) suggest a run-off between Bio and Kamara is likely with neither candidate securing the required 55% of votes so far. Sierra Leone’s new president will be tasked with a continued rebuilding given the country’s recent major disasters. In 2014, an Ebola outbreak led to nearly 4,000 deaths and GDP losses estimated at $1.4 billion—a major loss for one of the world’s poorest countries. Last year Sierra Leone’s capital also suffered devastating flooding and mudslides believed to have claimed more than 1,000 lives.

The 500-foot tall clock, which Bezos is funding, is meant to keep time for 10,000 years.

LED bulbs contributed to a reduction of 570 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2017, according to an estimate by IHS Markit—equivalent to closing more than 160 coal power plants.

Published 2 hours ago | Photo by Reuters/Toru Hanai.

Like many other of the world’s largest tech companies, Microsoft has been working to develop quantum computers that could handle massively complex problems in minutes or seconds. Unlike today’s conventional devices that use the digital bits “0” and “1,” quantum computers use qubits that can act as 0s, 1s or both simultaneously.

Microsoft said its new quantum computing language, which has yet to be named, is “deeply integrated” into its Visual Basic development environment and does many of the things other standard programming languages do. However, it is specifically designed to allow programmers to create apps that will eventually run on true quantum computers.

Most significant events list for Milner’s Breakthrough Listen (SETI) project. This is 11 of the highest statistical significance events that they’ve recorded.

They’ve said these will mostly prove to be local interference of various sorts. They just haven’t excluded them yet.

A lot of them are 1380 Mhz, which is a common frequency for surveillance video cams (I looked it up).

When NASA scientists think they’ve built something that breaks the laws of physics, do you take them at their word?