Passing The Turing Test
Written: 1224424756|%e %B %Y, %H:%M (humour)
There's a lot of talk of Turing Tests recently. Can it really be so hard to fool people?
human: hi
robot: hi to you
human: what's your job?
* robot is now called terminatorX
terminatorX: are you human?
human: yes
terminatorX: how do you know?
human: that's a stupid question
terminatorX: OK, let me ask you something else
human: ok
terminatorX: how do you feel about your mother?
human: ?wtf
* terminatorX is now called fr3ud
fr3ud: if you're human, you have a mother
human: had. she's dead
fr3ud: so where are you from, anyhow?
human: london. and you?
fr3ud: aha… a trick question!
human: ?
fr3ud: well, i'm from taiwan
human: you're chinese?
fr3ud: another trick question!
human: what's your job?
fr3ud: hang on, phone call… brb
* fr3ud is busy
human: fr3ud: you there?
* fr3ud is back
fr3ud: hi human: I'm back!
fr3ud: sorry about that, my mum called me
human: are you human?
fr3ud: yes! wtf lol!
human: are you not human?
fr3ud: what kind of a chat session is this?
fr3ud: hey, you wanna cyber?
human: ?
fr3ud: talk dirty to me…
human: p133 off!
* fr3ud is now called sexy15
sexy15: so what's your job?
…
Comments: 1, Rating: 2
Power Booster
Written: 1224417092|%e %B %Y, %H:%M (gadgets shouldexist)
This really should exist: a simple external battery system for portable computers.
It's all about tradeoffs: weight vs. stamina. If I'm going for a few hours down to the cafe to work, I don't need an all-day battery. If I'm flying to the States, I want enough charge for eight hours of work, including videos if needed.
Carrying extra batteries is fine in theory but swapping batteries in and out is a pain. Further, you can only charge them by using them. This means you can't leave that extra battery charging somewhere. Before a trip you have to spend time explicitly recharging it… a pain. And since batteries are different for each notebook, they're expensive and sit around wasted when you change notebooks.
So here is a simpler solution. The power supply, that small black slab that transforms 110v/240v into the 12v the notebook needs, it has an interface. Onto that interface you can plug an extra booster battery, also a small black slab. It charges when the PSU is plugged in, and feeds the 12v output when not. You can get boosters of different capacities - 2.5Ah, 5Ah, 10Ah, etc. Boosters conform to a standard interface so there are many vendors, who actually compete on price and quality.
The nice thing is that you can, when you travel, keep your spare batteries in your bag, plugged into the PSU, so the laptop on your knees remains light. And of course the same boosters can work with any PSU, any laptop.
Comments: 1, Rating: 1
Spirit Hotel, Bratislava
Written: 1223646338|%e %B %Y, %H:%M (tourism)
Perhaps the strangest, yet compellingly enjoyable, hotel I've ever stayed in.
For a random meeting we decided to stay at this hotel in Bratislava:
This is what my room looked like:
The hotel is a kind of live-in surrealist piece of 3D art where every surface, object, and view is shaped and decorated. It's just above the train station, a half hour walk from the center of town. I'd probably go back there just to check if it was still as weird as before.
