vladk's memories

These owls may wear the same game face, but when it comes to personality, they’re as different as day and night.

A black swastika on a red field doesn’t need Nazi atrocities to be evocative. Which is exactly what Hitler wanted. He was a failed artist with a powerful imagination … and an ego to match.

Ultima II Massage outtake, circa 2013

Calhoun saw the fate of the population of mice as a metaphor for the potential fate of man. He characterized the social breakdown as a “second death”, with reference to the “second death” mentioned in the Biblical book of Revelation 2:11. His study has been cited by writers such as Bill Perkins as a warning of the dangers of the living in an "increasingly crowded and impersonal world".

The magnitude of Graham's Number is difficult to fathom - Ron Graham himself attempts to explain. WHAT IS the number: http://youtu.be/HX8bihEe3nA Extra foota...

The AI on the horizon looks more like Amazon Web Services—cheap, reliable, industrial-grade digital smartness running behind everything, and almost invisible except when it blinks off. This is a big deal, and now it's here.

Clocks may keep time, but they don't know what time it is. And strictly speaking, it is we who use them to tell time. But the same is true of Watson, the IBM supercomputer that supposedly played Jeopardy! and dominated the human competition. Watson answered no questions. It participated in no competition. It didn't do anything. All the doing was on our side. We played Jeapordy! with Watson. We used "it" the way we use clocks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWrUEsVrdSU

Once I have lived to 75, my approach to my health care will completely change. I won’t actively end my life. But I won’t try to prolong it, either.

We're going to the moon!