Geek stuff Archive

I'm going to do something different today - I'm going to highlight a YouTube channel that I personally really enjoy, and that I think might be a good fit for OSNews readers as well. I plan on doing this more often, since I feel a text/article-only focus leads to OSNews missing out on a bunch of really great and informative content. The channels I'll be recommending will all be focused on technology and science, and since I have a deep disdain for the stereotypical spammy, clickbaity YouTube channels, you can be assured I'll only be recommending truly informative and quality channels.

I'm going to start off with a channel called PBS Space Time.

Space Time does not shy away from hardcore astrophysics, covering subjects like quantum field theory, quantum physics, the theory and mathematics of black holes and other astrophysical phenomena, and much more. Videos range from 10-15 minutes, and many subjects are spread out over many videos - the content is in-depth, purely scientific, and definitely not always easy to grasp. I'm currently watching Planck's Constant and the origin of quantum mechanics, just to give you an idea of what to expect.

There's a decent back catalog of videos to enjoy, so if this is your cup of tea, you've just got a whole bunch of new tea to drink.

There's so much we don't know about sleeping, dreaming, and the brain as a whole, that I'd be quite nervous about using devices like these before we have a better understanding of our brain. Still, if it works, this is quite cool.

I know this really isn't what you'd generally expect to be posted here, but the concept of consciousness - one of a small set of words in the English language I cannot spell from the top of my head without making errors - is one of those things that, when you think too deeply about it, you enter into a realm of thinking that can get deeply uncomfortable and distressing, like thinking about what's outside the universe or what "existed" "before" (quotes intentional) the big bang.

Personally, I'm one of those insufferable people who ascribes the entire concept of consciousness to the specific arrangement of neurons and related tissue in our brain and wider nervous system - I don't accept religion or some other specific magical thing that makes us humans (and dolphins? And chimpansees? And whatever else has some level of consciousness?) more special than any other animal in terms of consciousness.

I also don't like the controversial concept of splitting consciousness up into an easy and a hard problem, because to me, that just opens the door to maintaining the religious idea that humans are somehow more special than other animals - sure, science has made it clear some other animals have easy consciousness, but humans are still special because we are the only ones with hard consciousness. It reeks of an artificial cutoff point created to maintain some semblance of uniqueness for homo sapiens sapiens so we can feel good about ourselves.

You can take the whole concept of consciousness in every which way, and one of my recent favourites is CGP Grey's video The Trouble With Transporters, which, among other tings, poses the question - if you interrupt your consciousness by being teleported or going to sleep, are you really the same person when you rematerialise or wake up?

Have fun!

All the recent successes in space - Philae/Rosetta, New Horizons, the never-ending stream of discoveries from Keppler, like this one - actually make me sad, because it makes me wonder how much more we could've achieved and discovered has we not developed this anti-science and pro-war climate we've been living in for a while now.

Maybe these new achievements will reignite the hunger for space. We can hope.

We've highlighted the dire warnings of Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk in recent months regarding the perils of artificial intelligence, but this week he actually managed to raise the bar in terms of making A.I. seem scary. More at Mashable. My take: I worked on AI 20 years ago (wow, time flies). I don't believe that we will ever create anything truly sentient. Intelligent and useful for our needs, yes. But truly sentient, no. For something to become evil, it must be sentient. Anything else, if it ever becomes problematic, it would just be software bugs, not evilness.

Carol Pinchefsky contemplates commercial skipping DVRs, and other tales of really good technology that vanished, in 7 Awesome Bits of Tech That Just Freakin' Disappeared. As Pinchefsky writes: "...It got me thinking about awesome technology that we somehow ditched. The airship? Awesome. Slide rules? Awesome awesome. Mir Space Station? Boss-level awesome. And now just thinking about wristwatches with calculators makes me suffer a sense of short-term nostalgia (as in Douglas Coupland's Generation X). Here are some of the coolest features and products that we’ve lost along the way to 2012.

"Watch a Nasa shuttle burning a path into space or a video of Saturn's rings taken by the Cassini satellite and it's hard not to marvel at man's technological prowess. But the surprising truth is that space exploration is built on IT which lags many years behind that found in today's consumer gadgets and corporate PCs. To this day, Nasa still uses elements of technology that powered the moon landings of the 1960s and 1970s, while the International Space Station - the manned station circling the Earth 250 miles above our heads - relies on processors dating back more than two decades."

"Dan O'Bannon, the man who gave the world Alien and Total Recall, has died aged 63, the New York Times reports. O'Bannon passed away at his home in Santa Monica, California, last Thursday, as a result of the gastrointestinal disorder Crohn's disease, which he'd suffered for 30 years."

Futurama is coming back! The animated series, loved by many geeks, is the second show in the history of television to be brought back to life after a cancellation (the other one's Family Guy, also by Fox), mostly due to strong fan demand and very good sales from the series of direct-to-DVD films. Comedy Central ordered 26 new episodes to be made, and airing will start in mid-2010. Matt Groening, one of the two show's creators, said: "We're thrilled 'Futurama' is coming back. We now have only 25,766 episodes to make before we catch up with Bender and Fry in the year 3000."

Today, the new Star Trek film has seen its official premiere here in The Netherlands tonight, and in honour of that, I figured an article on Space.com about the possibility of faster-than-light travel would make a good fit on OSNews. The article is quite technical, so bear with me on this one. I hope I get everything right.

Due to the success of the previous incarnation, I'd figure we do another 'OSNews Asks' item; it's a nice way to get to know each other a little more on matters that are in itself fairly irrelevant. We'll continue down the path of irrelevance by asking: What Star Trek race would you want to be, given the choice? And, of course, why? I'll start: definitely Betazoid. Reading minds, telepathy, maybe even empathic abilities, no weird ridges or other facial deformations, black eyes - what's not to like? Post your choice in the comments!

Arthur C. Clarke, who peered into the heavens with a homemade telescope as a boy and grew up to become a visionary titan of science-fiction writing and collaborated with director Stanley Kubrick on the landmark film "2001: A Space Odyssey", has died. He was 90. The knighted British-born writer died early Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had made his home for decades, after experiencing a cardio-respiratory attack, his secretary, Rohan De Silva, told Reuters. May he rest in peace, and I'd like to extend my sincere condolences to his family and friends. The pod-bay doors will open for the last time.

Geeks of the world rejoice: Futurama is back. After a long wait, today is the official release date of "Bender's Big Score!", a 90 minute direct-to-DVD film, that will later be chopped up into the first four episodes of the new season. Filled with geek and nerd references, Futurama is a popular American cartoon series, by Simpsons' creater Matt Groening, that sadly got cancelled way before its time by the Fox Network. Now, it's back, and the opening sequence, a big slap in the face of the Fox Network executives, is already a classic. I have already seen the new film, and as a big, big Futurama fan, I can tell you it will not let you down. Three more direct-to-DVD movies are already planned, so go out, buy the DVD, and just like Family Guy, let's get it back on a regular schedule! My personal favourites: Zapp (s03e02): "That young man fills me with hope and some other emotions that are weird and deeply confusing to me." And of course the classic sign over Amy Wong's parents' house (s04e06): "You came to the Wong place."

Technologists and investors gather at the two-day Singularity Summit in San Francisco to discuss the benefits and risks of advancing artificial intelligence--and what to do in the event that machines one day out-think humans.