In the 2010 Boréal conference Ted Chiang had an interesting take on the singularity and the computable brain. There is a transcript (in french) here : http://www.actusf.com/spip/article-9802.html.
To sum it up that is what he says :
"There is this thing called ethnobiology, a sub-dicscipline of anthropology, that studies the way civilizations understand and represent the living things.
Ethnobiology reveals a constant in History : we tend to compare our brain to the most complex technology we know.
At the Renaissance, philosopher assimilated the brain to a very complex and subtle clockwork, Freud compared it to a steam engine, which pressure should be evacuated to avoid explosion. In the 40's, schoolboy and schoolgirls were told that brain was like a telephone exchange. Today, computers are the most advanced technology we know, so we tend to compare our brain to it. But like our predecessors, it's very likely that we are wrong.
Let just think forward, and admit that we are totally biased by the fact that computer are now inherent part of our life. Let's admit that there is a chance that our brain may never be modeled by a computer."
I'm french and I worked with two foreigners (US & Canada) in a parisian startup. One of them didn't bother learning french, and it was ok. He was mostly hanging out with other expats, and seemed to enjoy it.
Nonetheless, it is hard for foreigner to find an apartment to rent, but it's hard for everyone. And since whining about real estate is the national sport it somehow eased their integration and they quickly found colleagues to help them in this task.
France is not the UK, and it's not the US either. If you want to come in Paris make sure you're compatible with locals culture and habits. That means try to talk to some people mentioned in the slideshow, visit coworking space and startup offices. You'll be welcomed.
Main economic institutions [1] already maintains databases of consumer goods and services price across countries, but they don't give easy access to the raw data. Glad to see Expatistan filling this gap.
> Famo.us is built around a neat idea: by directly using the CSS matrix3d transform in combination with the window.requestAnimationFrame function, you can describe the complete layout and animation of your app in a way that’s hardware accelerated with consistent performance.
> It’s a stroke of genius, but in order to implement that simple idea you need a sophisticated math library to help translate your app’s UI into the series of matrix transformations that get pushed to the GPU. This library is Famo.us.
I'm a bit new to bitcoins, but is it technically possible for the bitcoins community as a whole to make a blacklist of bitcoins addresses and "ban" the stolen bitcoins ?
Such blacklist would daunt robbers and enforce public trust in bitcoins.
We all know there are a lot of existing tools that does the same things. But I've not met one with such a polished UX.
Kudos to the Kimono team, I'll definitly recommend your product.
Exactly. My feeling in the first pages of Fictions was : is it some kind of joke ?
For those who read the House of Leaves, it's good to know that Danielewski took a lot of inspiration from Borges (among other things). If I recall correctly The Garden of Forking Paths is very similar in its purpose and construction.
Yeah, that's the biggest misunderstanding about the teaching of philosophy in France. At the start you think "Cool, I'm going to learn to think by myself!", though what you actually do is learn what other famous thinker have been thinking, and spit it out in your personal fashion.
It really has little to do with thinking by yourself, it's more about answering an open question by cleverly articulating school of thought.
Quite disappointing , but still very enlightening (even more if your teacher is cool).
Agreed, Angular and d3 are two of the most beautiful and useful pieces of JS out there. Radian's approach is very inspiring for the ones that use both of these awesome libraries.
But I find it too low level : I don't see the point of manipulating <dot> and <line> directives : is'nt it what SVG does already?
I'd rather use a <barchart> or a <piechart> directive.
Very cool use of transitions, one of the many fields where d3 really rocks.
However, I've always wondered if word trees are really usefull... Sure it makes nice things with the Luther King speech or extract from the Bible.
To sum it up that is what he says : "There is this thing called ethnobiology, a sub-dicscipline of anthropology, that studies the way civilizations understand and represent the living things. Ethnobiology reveals a constant in History : we tend to compare our brain to the most complex technology we know. At the Renaissance, philosopher assimilated the brain to a very complex and subtle clockwork, Freud compared it to a steam engine, which pressure should be evacuated to avoid explosion. In the 40's, schoolboy and schoolgirls were told that brain was like a telephone exchange. Today, computers are the most advanced technology we know, so we tend to compare our brain to it. But like our predecessors, it's very likely that we are wrong. Let just think forward, and admit that we are totally biased by the fact that computer are now inherent part of our life. Let's admit that there is a chance that our brain may never be modeled by a computer."