Sean McBride

"Have you ever wondered how Wolfram Alpha works? If so, you’re in for a treat. Stephen Wolfram, the CEO of Wolfram Alpha, explains the algorithmic capabilities behind Wolfram Alpha. It is powered by massive data sets — so much that it cannot be simply retrieved from sources on the internet. Stephen Wolfram even states that “there actually isn’t enough data on the Web to get all of the things we need.”" - Sean McBride

A psychological aspect is people lie to themselves about what they like, so the more "accurate" a news service is the more users dislike it. - Todd Hoff

Most Internet startups across all genres fail. The more interesting question is, which personalized news startups have succeeded and why. - Sean McBride

"Syracuse University announced Tuesday that it is formally divesting endowment funds from coal mining and other fossil fuel companies. SU will continue to seek investments through its endowment in companies that are focused on developing new technology involving solar energy, biofuels and advanced recycling, according to an SU News release." - Sean McBride

"Next month, teams from around the world will engage in a dress rehearsal for the U.S. Pentagon's Cyber Grand Challenge, a competition to develop automated hacker-fighting software. The challenge's final event will be held in Las Vegas next year and the winning team will be awarded $2 million. The competition is being managed by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which held an unofficial 24-hour test run last December, just to see if the competitors' vulnerability-obliterating software would function." - Sean McBride

"The research agency is making underwater robots that can sleep for years and other robots that can fix satellites in space. Space" - Sean McBride

And the time between insight and execution keeps shrinking. - Sean McBride

We learn new words by absorbing the totality of their associations and connections with other words, with particular pragmatic situations, with particular emotions, with particular sensory stimulation, etc. Words are embedded in many patterns across multiple dimensions of experience. And this is why the natural language understanding component of artificial intelligence is so difficult to solve. Words are the tip of a huge invisible iceberg. How does one make conscious and formally map out all that unconscious complexity? Make it computable? - Sean McBride

Is there a word for that? - Todd Hoff

Not one that rolls off the tip of my tongue. - Sean McBride

But there is a large sector of natural language that can be skimmed off and quickly mapped with algebraic and logical formalisms. - Sean McBride

This may be my favorite brief animal video of all time so far. - Sean McBride