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An AI That Begins Novels
This neural network was trained to output unique opening lines to novels. Some of the results are surprisingly great:
I have just been informed, that the debate over the question ‘is it right or wrong to have immortal souls’ has been finally brought to a conclusion.
When I was a boy, I was fond of the story of the pirate god.
He had a strange name, and he was a very big boy indeed.
The village of Pembrokeshire, in the county of Mersey, lies on a wide, happy plain, which, in a few years, was to become known as the “Land of the Endless Mountains.”
I was playing with my dog, Mark the brown Labrador, and I had forgotten that I was also playing with a dead man.
How many times have I had the misfortune to die?
The first day I met my future self, I was aboard the old dirigible that lay in wait for me on the far side of the moon.
It’s hard to call these creative since the AI probably has no concept of what these words actually mean, but there are some really compelling ideas in here.
The last sentence in particular struck me as having so many interesting elements that could be explored more as the story progresses. At the very least, these serve as excellent starting places for ideas that a normal person wouldn’t have on their own.
NAVA Ora Unica Wristwatch
I happened upon this watch in the mall over the weekend and loved how unconventional it is. The inner end of the loop acts as the hour hand, and the outer end is the minute hand. The in-between part seems to move freely, so you have a watch face that looks pretty different each time you look at it.
I’d probably need to pause for a few seconds to decipher the time so it’s not exactly practical, but it would be a good conversation starter for sure.
Remove.bg - Remove the Background of Any Photo
Remove.bg is a great service that makes it easy for anyone to remove the background of a photo. You can use it with small images for free, and pricing for HD photos seems very fair: you can pay $2 per image, or get a subscription starting at $9 per month.
The World's Most Beautiful Data Center
The Torre Girona Chapel was deconsecrated in the 70s, and now houses the MareNostrum supercomputer.
“We were in need of hundreds of square meters without columns and the capacity to support 44.5 tons of weight,” Maspoch told me in an email. “At the time there was not much available space at the university and the only room that satisfied our requirements was the Torre Girona chapel. We did not doubt it for a moment and we installed a supercomputer in it.”
Automating Materials Science with Machine Learning
A robot arm dips a pipette into a dish and transfers a tiny amount of bright liquid into one of many receptacles sitting in front of another machine. When all the samples are ready, the second machine tests their optical properties, and the results are fed to a computer that controls the arm. Software analyzes the results of these experiments, formulates a few hypotheses, and then starts the process over again. Humans are barely required.
The setup, developed by a startup called Kebotix, hints at how machine learning and robotic automation may be poised to revolutionize materials science in coming years. The company believes it may find new compounds that could, among other things, absorb pollution, combat drug-resistant fungal infections, and serve as more efficient optoelectronic components.
This sounds like a perfect application for machine learning. It’s a great combination of smart design and brute force effort.
Picular - Google, but for Colors
Picular is a site that lets you search for words like “water” or “summer” and see a list of related colors. It seems to work by running a Google image search and extracting the primary color of that image.
This is the kind of project I love. It’s simple and easy to understand, but fun to play with.
Perils of Eroded Civic Knowledge Forewarned by Former Justice Souter
This is extremely important.A Striking Perspective on New York City Property Values | Metrocosm
Property values across the U.S., where the area of each state has been substituted for its total property value.The Night My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was
Because of her dissociative identity disorder, I was a stranger in the eyes of the woman I loved.
Beautifully written, and a reminder that something like 50 First Dates is actually a terrifying situation.
Ricky Jay’s Magical Secrets
Ricky Jay is a legend, and is without a doubt one of my favorite magicians to watch. His shows leave you with a greater appreciation for the magician’s craft, rather than just the immediate illusion they present.
