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AI

Submission + - How does modularity evolve? (technologyreview.com) 1

JimmyQS writes: "As programmers know, modularity is critical to making reusable, adaptable software. However, modularity is not instinctive for beginners and must be learned via painful training. Biology faces a similar problem: modularity is useful to make species more adaptable, but how did it evolve in the first place? Surprisingly, computational simulations of 25,000 generations of evolution reveal that modularity does not evolve because it makes organisms more adaptable. Instead, modularity evolves as a by-product for selection to reduce the "wiring costs" of a network. The discovery greatly advances research into evolving artificially intelligent robots, a field where the inability to evolve modular designs has long been thought to be a key roadblock to evolving truly complex, intelligent neural networks.

The paper was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. You can also watch modularity evolve in this video."

Comment Automated translation? (Score 1) 184

I wonder what happened if you used automatic translation, like google translate, to translate to a different language and back. I bet that would make it a lot harder to match to other things you wrote, especially if you used a different intermediate language each time. Having to touch up the obvious errors might still provide a partial "fingerprint" of your writing style though.

Comment Re:no, caves suck (Score 2, Informative) 124

1. they are hard to get to

2. they are hard to get supplies to and build in

3. they flood

4. they have air quality issues

5. and they ARE cool... until you put a bunch of servers in them, and then they heat up, and STAY hot, and are harder to cool than on the surface

the idea of servers in caves sucks

1. Having seen these caves first hand, I know for a fact that a good many of them can be driven into directly, doesn't get much easier to get to than that.

2. (See 1)

3. Haven't seen or heard of much flooding in these.

4. The ones I've driven past have massive ventilation fans outside, and can handle removing vehicle exhaust. What are you doing to the air quality in there that's worse than exhaust? Burrito day?

5. Not sure on 5, but they do manage to store refrigerated goods in them, as another poster points out. I'd handle this by drilling wells into the floor of the cave and circulating water if the cooling wasn't sufficient.

Games

Dead Space 2 Announced 56

Electronic Arts announced on Monday that their popular survival-horror game Dead Space is officially getting a sequel. According to the press release, it's being developed for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. There's speculation that Dead Space 2 may include some form of multiplayer, after an EA job opening was spotted on LinkedIn that mentioned multiplayer level design for the franchise.
It's funny.  Laugh.

Therapists Log On To WoW To Counsel Addicts 187

eldavojohn writes "So, you can't find the time to leave the World of Warcraft to seek help for your World of Warcraft addiction? Sounds reasonable. Well, addiction therapists are coming to meet you so you don't have to quit playing as they counsel you and your addiction. From the leader of this initiative, Dr. Graham: 'We will be launching this project by the end of the year. I think it's already clear that psychiatrists will have to stay within the parameters of the game. They certainly wouldn't be wandering around the game in white coats and would have to use the same characters available to other players. Of course one problem we're going to have to overcome is that while a psychiatrist may excel in what they do in the real world, they're probably not going to be very good at playing World of Warcraft.' Send in the level 5 counselor and let the games begin!" What happens when the therapists become addicted?

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