Tag: human
Google News tries out human editors
Google are experimenting with human news editors for their Google News section, an area they have traditionally left in the hands of virtual intelligence. Slate Magazine are currently curating the pick of the Google News site, usually a job kept…
Amazon makes a terabyte of public data available on its servers
Amazon’s got quite a bit of spare server capacity. In its goal to become the world’s top online retailer, it bought so many servers that it’s now also running a cloud computing business on the side that’s actually rather cheap.
Last night, Amazon announced on its Amazon Web Services blog that it would be making a terabyte of public data available to its cloud computing users, for them to do whatever they like with.
The data includes stats from the US bureau of transportation , an *entire* dump of Wikipedia, the DBPedia knowledgebase (which includes info on 2.6 million people, places, films, albums and companies) and all publicly available DNA sequences, including the entire human genome.
There’s also a bunch of other stuff, and it’s all being made available at lightning-fast speed in machine-readable databases to Amazon’s cloud computing customers. It’ll take a while for the internet to really get to grips with this stuff and use it, but anything that’s about freeing up data and information is wholly supported around here. Three cheers for Amazon.
What would you do with the data? Work out why your trains are always late? Work out how many degrees of link separation a random Wikipedia article has to another? Use the human genome to create a clone army and take over the world? Share your ideas in the comments, and make me your second-in-command as world leader.
Amazon Blog (via ReadWriteWeb)
Humans hit evolutionary limit – here's how SCIENCE should intervene and make man BETTER
According to some scientist, humans have stopped evolving. This means we’re not going to get any better – at least not naturally.
So I propose science steps in to make us better, seeing as Mother Nature can’t be bothered any more. Here’s how. These are the evolutionary steps scientists need to introduce to our gene pool ASAP.
1. SIDE EYES
Seeing as our ears are always in use listening to MP3s of 1980s cover versions, it’s hard to hear cars, bicycles and lorries coming toward you. I therefore suggest moving our eyes to the sides of our heads, like horses, so we’re less likely to step out in front of buses because we can’t hear them coming. You never hear about horses never get run over because they’re too busy listening to the new Oasis album to listen out for cars, do you?
2. WIDER EAR CANALS
Dunno about you, but my ear holes are never big enough to accommodate all these so-called “in ear” earphones. You know, the ones you’re supposed to ram right in. I ram them in so hard it hurts and my brain pops, yet they still fall out after three minutes when the cable snags on my shirt. I therefore suggest we evolve wider ear holes for better audio clarity and comfort “on the go”…
YouTube Video Of The Day – The human flipbook
This little video is a great look behind the scenes of the production of a flipbook. However, this flipbook was a little different as, instead of having an actual flipbook, the animation was featured on a series of T Shirts sported by one very patient model. Good work!
