Adding another layer of material will decrease transmission of light in the opposite way that surface patterns work to increase the transmission of light: Any medium with a refractive index different to air will reflect some percentage of incident rays that are not perpendicular to the surface, surface patterns can help avoid this by effectively changing the angle of incidence to be closer to the surface normal or redirecting some of the reflected rays.

It would be better if the surface doubled as the protective layer. Provided the pattern is small enough or better yet if a pattern was chosen which is also poor at allowing particular sized molecules (i.e water) to settle on it's surface in the same way that hydrophobic surfaces work... then it should be perfectly suitable as a protective layer also.

Perhaps, but there is still quite a lot of pre-defined structure there. Although i've no doubt that some pre-defined structure is far more pragmatic and likely to yield useful results than what i'm thinking of (and i have given this some thought previously). It's difficult to know what an environment with emergent properties suited to a digital medium should look like, because it's so different from the vastly more complex environment that biology emerged from. Which could perhaps be summed up in three parts:

• The rules of the fundamental building blocks (resources and state): Chemical interactions.
• The rules which determine the possibility of those building blocks from being able to interact with each other: Spatial dimensions and position.
• The rules of probability, this is debatable but a deterministic model seems unlikely to have the desired effect: I'll just chalk this up to quantum theory.

Finding a reasonable equivalent to spacial dimensions seem simple enough, and probability is already the basis of most genetic algorithms, but the building blocks... the rules of resources and state are massive and complex as chemical reactions. I think finding a simpler mathematical equivalent to those structures that also has the necessary emergent properties is fundamental to creating an emergent AI.

This difference was clear to me when reading up on existing AI and machine learning methods.

AI in it's current form feels more like engineering than an exploration in nature, science and math. Slightly dangerously with my limited knowledge in AI i would describe AI today as an extremely useful and insightful set of tools inspired by nature, but which are not themselves nature. They are just yet another thing that we have learnt to re-implement as a fruit of biology. Actually cellular automata feel more like nature than AI.

Methods such as neural networks are pre-evolved static solutions, the information flowing through them may evolve, but the method which determines their flow does not itself evolve, they are therefore selective and static imitations of the a brain much the same as an animatronic manikin is an imitation of the body at an evolutionary static point in time.

It's conceivable that with enough detailed imitation an intelligent implementation of a whole brain (not even human) could be achieved... but it seems highly unlikely and impractical. However implementing the basis or conditions to give emergent and undirected development in a "synthetic" medium would be nature at work or "life" in my view. Imagine an AI that had the freedom and incentive to create it's own methods dynamically, that kind of creative freedom must be a pretty good fit for true "Artificial Life", so shouldn't it be called "Emergent Intelligence"... The opposite to "Imitated Intelligence".

Good that the trade regulators stepped in however it seems like the family are still owed their £100. The point is not that it's a massive amount of money, more that they should never have charged them at all, so they should give it back.

In UK contract law Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 in conjunction with Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 Which apply to standard consumer contracts regardless of custom and explicit terms Imply this should not be enforceable:

This term effectively misleads consumers and is clearly against their interest. Implied law is no sure win, but in my amateur opinion it looks like there is a strong case to contest this. Not that it'd be worth it for £100...

Although the general prediction is that future robots will not look like humans because other forms are easier to create... If the robot needs to not have debilitated dalek-like transport then legs are so far the most versatile way a being can move itself around and scale things if you include arms. I'm interested in simpler alternatives but caterpillar tracks are no comparison.

The process of refining the efficiency of a device or process is not the same as evaluating it's potential efficiency.

The maximum potential efficiency of a given chemical process is knowable in the same way that the maximum potential efficiency of a given type of solid state solar panel.

What the article describes is more accurately "Brain - Body", or "Brain - Nervous System" communication.

The Direct-ness of communication between a naturally separate body and brain can be determined because there is an existing Direct scenario to compare with (a naturally connected brain and body). There is however no natural existing scenario of "Direct" in the context of transportation, it's meaning is entirely relative, it is not a good analogy.

If this technology allows one brain to manipulate the limb of another body without a layer of abstraction like speech then using the existing definition for comparison - it is Direct, regardless of how complex, expensive and impractical it may be, the explicit level of communication is maintained.

Sandwiches Aid Terrorists

Toothpaste Aid Terrorists

HD TVs Aid Terrorists

Sleep Aids Terrorists

Coffee Aids Terrorists

Money Aids Terrorists

...Another fact we all now know: Robert Hannigan is a fuckwit... and you can probably find a reason that he in some way also aids terrorists.

I don't live on top of a mountain 200 miles from civilisation, i live in a city in england... at home the fastest option for internet is a 3Mbit ADSL line. At work i have fibre, the difference is ridiculous, browsing at home is painful because many web developers seem to assume that everyone on earth has access to a 100Mbit connection... on top of that ISPs here seem to like throttling ssh traffic which makes it even more painful to do work at home, also occasionally the exchange fucks up and has given me ping times of well over 2000ms consistently for days which some protocols just can't deal with...

my ISP is talk talk they are the only LLC everything else here sucks also, the infrastructure and the capacity. I can easily see it making a divide if an assumption like "10Mbit" is made by content creators. It's easy to assume some minimum if you've never experienced less.

Further more... "sick" is subjective.

One persons fantasy is sure to be sick to another person somewhere.

Rather than futilely attempting to determine what sexual fantasies are morally acceptable by majority vote on such a diverse range of sexual tastes... perhaps society should stick to the clear line that was simply: involvement of minors in sexual acts and pornography... and by minors i mean real people.

It's not that dissimilar to the violent video game argument, the people who can't separate reality from fiction are the issue not fiction itself.