Category: Mike Jurney

Dear Science Fiction Writers

Dear Science Fiction Writers,
  Please stop using Shakespeare in your stories.  I know that it must seem like an incredibly flexible bridge between the world of abstract and technical ideas, and the world of literature and human feeling.  It’s not, though.  It’s a tired, hackneyed device that does more to suck away the originality and complexity of your characters than it does to elevate your ideas.

Yes; precisely.

Yes; precisely.

I’d further add that responding to “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter” is an appropriation of effort; it attempts to subsume the real, diligent efforts of the protesters and activists and extract their yields.

Saying “all lives matter” is pure pablum; it won’t achieve anything, and is insulting to those trying to make a difference.

Now you can generate your own dreamy neural net image

Now you can generate your own dreamy neural net image

#deepdream  

For those of you who liked the post I shared a couple of weeks ago about the images generated by neural nets (old post: https://plus.google.com/+JeffDean/posts/jVBUgDxhbRd), I’m happy to announce that Alexander Mordvintsev, Christopher Olah , and Mike Tyka have put together an open-source iPython notebook containing the code that generates these images, and you can play around with it on your own images.  (Note: this notebook depends on a few other packages, so you have to have enough persistence to install numpy and caffe to get this to work).  The iPython notebook is at https://github.com/google/deepdream, but see the blog post linked to by this post for details.

The blog post asks that people tag images they generate and share with #deepdream , so I suspect you can keep looking at that tag to see all kinds of weird and wonderful images.

Have fun, everyone!

Dear Larry Page

Dear Larry Page,

The Confederate Flag is a painful reminder to many black people that there are those in the South who still very much wish the Confederate Army would have won the Civil War. They defend the actions of the Confederacy. They believe the Confederacy was in the right. If pressed, they’ll say that no no, they don’t wish slavery would have continued, that they believe in States Rights and Southern History, but they never finish those sentences. They never say that the states of the Confederacy were fighting for their right to continue with slavery in the face of the US Government outlawing the practice. They never say that the Southern history they so romanticize was built on the backs of black slaves. That flag flies every day in South Carolina as a symbol of those values, reminding black people in South Carolina of where their feelings stand in the hearts of their neighbors and leaders. That the pain of slavery and being reminded of it daily takes a back seat to “Southern Pride.”

In October 2014, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley stated the following: “I can honestly say I have not had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag.” (via http://www.vox.com/2015/6/18/8803661/charleston-sc-shooting-confederate-flag-statehouse)

Google has a data center in Moncks Corner, South Carolina. Please be the first to CEO to step up and say something. Tell Gov. Haley that the continued presence of the Confederate flag stands in the way of Google’s continued presence in South Carolina. This is where you can not just talk about, but BE about diversity. Demonstrate that inclusion, that the feelings and history of black people in this country, in your company, are important to you. Please take this opportunity to lead, not only by word but also by deed.

Thanks,
Erica
Xoogler (2006-2015)

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/18/8803661/charleston-sc-shooting-confederate-flag-statehouse