Found in my inbox: From Harpers: Chances that a Japanese person will make eye contact during conversation with another Japanese person: 2 in 5. Chances that a Japanese person will make eye contact during conversation with a robot: Â 3 in 5. That explains it somewhat…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness … the term is actually included in the Oxford English Dictionary as a derived form of “truthy.” The entry is marked as “rare or dialectal,” with a single citation of “truthiness” dated to 1824 (though it has been posited that the citation actually dates to 1837, with an earlier citation dating to 1832). As such, Colbert seems to have unknowingly reinvented the word, though he also invented a new, ironic meaning for it, where the original meaning was akin to “truthfulness.” This distinction is consistent with the announcement by the American Dialect Society, in that it credits “truthiness” as “Recently popularized on the Colbert Report” rather than “invented.” I am amused that this article is plagued by vandalism.

Watch this (28 meg WMV file) From New Scientist: Robotic ‘pack mule’ displays stunning reflexes A nimble, four-legged robot is so surefooted it can recover its balance even after being given a hefty kick. The machine, which moves like a cross between a goat and a pantomime horse, is being developed as a robotic pack mule for the US military. BigDog is described by its developers Boston Dynamics as “the most advanced quadruped robot on Earth”. The company have released a new video of the robot negotiating steep slopes, crossing rocky ground and dealing with the sharp kick. … Roboticist Darwin Caldwell, at the University of Salford, UK, adds: “It certainly looks very impressive – fast moving, highly reactive, autonomous both in power and possible intelligence and looking fairly robust. I have seen none that would be better. But there must always be a certain caution from videos.” From the people that brought you the robot that climbs walls and other goodies.

Watch this.

Yes, its a 35 minute video of what is essentially a really big mmorpg. Yes, its rather old. Yes, it is still worth it to watch the entire thing.

From Ars technica: New network neutrality legislation on its way Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) plans to introduce additional legislation this week that would prevent the likes of AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast from hindering traffic from outside its network and giving its own content preferential treatment. As Sen. Wyden describes it, his legislation would “make sure all information (transmitted over broadband networks) is made available on the same terms so that no bit is better than another one.”

From the Lack of Imagination Department: But it seems some expect the perfect person to come in synthetic form as 15% of us in the North East believe robots will be a fully integrated part of our lives within 20 years. They cited the robot from Will Smith’s futuristic film I Robot and Spielberg’s AI (Artificial Intelligence), which stars British actor Jude Law, as the sort of creatures they expect to be sitting in our offices in coming years. Blade Runner characters the Replicants and Robocop were also seen as possible indicators of how our machine helpers may look in the future, but only a handful thought Star Wars robots C3PO and R2-D2 could be brought to life. |link|

China is holding a huge artificial intelligence expo in August to commemorate the 50th anniversary of AI. The Chinese Society of Artificial Intelligence (which seems to lack any web presence) is sponsoring the event, and kicking it off with a battle royale between Xiangqi masters and ‘robots’.

ICANN is in the news again, this time because China is fragrantly dismissing its authority. From Ars technica: China gives itself its own top-level domains In a move that could have enormous ramifications for how the Internet works, the government of China has decided to bypass ICANN altogether and set up its own set of TLDs and domain name servers. In addition to the .cn TLD, China will have three new Chinese-character TLDs equating to “dot China,” “dot com,” and “dot net.” The Ministry of Information Industry describes the changes this way: Under the new system, besides “CN”, three Chinese TLD names “CN”, “COM” and “NET” are temporarily set. It means Internet users don’t have to surf the Web via the servers under the management of [ICANN] of the United States. Ah, another nation clawing its ways out from under the icy clutches of American imperialism!

(Click for big) The primary visual cortex is normally understood as being a direct map from the retinal image onto the brain. Apparently we were wrong. From Nature Neuroscience: Perceived size matters Using retinotopic mapping to delineate primary visual cortex, Murray and colleagues examined whether the size of activation patterns in V1 differed when subjects looked at either the front or back spheres. Remarkably, when the sphere that subjects were looking at was perceived to be bigger (due to the contextual cues), activity in V1 spread over a larger area than when it was perceived to be smaller, even though the size of the retinal image produced by the spheres was identical. Activity at the earliest stages of cortical processing does not therefore simply reflect the pattern of light falling on the retina. Somehow the complex three-dimensional cues present in the scene can be integrated to take into account perceived depth in the representation present in V1. There has been work suggesting as much before, but this provides clear evidence. The article goes on: This work is not the first to show that V1 activity can be strongly linked to conscious perception rather than to physical (retinal) stimulation. It is also clear that neural processing in V1 reflects not just feed-forward signals but also feedback influences from higher areas. However, this work not only provides a particularly clear and compelling example of these properties but also, for the first time, clearly links the spatial extent of what we perceive (rather than, for example, contrast or direction of motion) to the spatial extent of activity in V1. More fundamentally, these findings force us to re-evaluate the notion of a ‘hard-wired’ retinotopy in V1. The finding that V1 contains a topographic map of the retinal projection of the visual field has been […]

1. Constraining, impelling; powerful, forcible. b. esp. Having power to compel assent or belief; argumentatively forcible, convincing. c. with dependent phr. – OED

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