For today’s edition of Deal of the Day, here are a few great deals we stumbled on while browsing the web this morning:
–OxyLED OxyWild MD50 Super Bright LED Flashlight Bundle with Rechargeable Batteries – $36.99 $9.99 (Use Promo Code OXYBMD50 at Checkout)
–WE Furniture 70″ Espresso Wood TV Stand Console – $208.15 $119
–Marcy Recumbent Exercise Bike – $199.99 $89.99
–Insulated Stainless Steel Water Bottle with Double Wall Vacuum – $14.99 $9.59
I’m posting this because today is caturday. Not that I need a specific reason to post cat videos, of course.
From Mayim Bialik, Neuroscientist and actress on The Big Bang Theory:
Here’s me discussing the beauty and complexity of DNA with an emphasis on seeing mine in my kids. We are all made of the same exact molecules and that’s amazing.
Whether you sop it up with bread or use it to boost your cooking, olive oil is awesome. But a lot of chemistry goes on in that bottle that can make or break a product. Take the “extra virgin” standard: Chemistry tells us that a higher free-fatty-acid content leads to a lower grade, less tasty oil. And those peppery notes are thanks to antioxidants that contribute to olive oil’s healthy reputation. Check out the latest Reactions video for more olive oil chemistry, including how to keep yours fresh and how to best use it to give your food a flavor boost.
We gamers are an easy lot to judge, yet no one seems to judge us accurately. We are sometimes mocked in pop culture as geeks, yet video games are making more than Hollywood movies now, so clearly it is not just “geeks” who game. Everyone from little girls to single dads game, with every demographic in between. But still, there are a great deal of misconceptions out there about us. We are not “jobless creepy people” like the video points out. I, for one, have nine jobs, jeez, get it right.
So anyway, for those confused about gamers, here are 10 things non-gamers get wrong about gamers and I hope it clears up some of the confusion.
Tags: gamers, Games, gaming, geeks, video games
Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington set out to prove their worth as creators. They ended up forming Valve and creating Half Life, one of the most acclaimed games of all time.
Metalcore singer Linzey Rae has recently released the 7th episode of Metal Kitchen, where she teaches us how to prepare Ratatouille at home.
Catch a sneak peak of Zola showing off his dance moves in a behind-the-scenes video shot by Primate Supervisor Ashley Orr. You may remember Zola when he was a youngster from the viral video of him breakdancing at The Calgary Zoo, but there’s a lot more to this behavior than you may think.
Enrichment helps enhance the environment and lives of animals, like Zola, by providing them with mental and physical stimulation to increase natural behaviors. Enrichment can take many forms, but for this spunky great ape, it means playing and spinning in his favorite blue pool while off habitat!
Facebook reports that artificial intelligence bots can not only learn to negotiate, but can do so while using what could be described as a “non-human language.”
The study from the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research lab aimed to get chatbots to use conversations to negotiate. One negotiation involved splitting up a set of objects (books, hats and balls), with varying points for each object and the negotiators aiming to maximize their points total.
The bots weren’t given any specific instructions or tactics and instead had to figure out the best way to negotiate and learn from their experiences. It turned out that they soon became pretty sophisticated, most notably learning to deceive one another by pretending to be interested in the items with no points and later offering to give them up as a (bogus) sign of compromise.
The real surprise came in the language however. Inititally the bots negotiated using recognizable language such as:
“I want the books and the hats, you get the ball.”
“Give me a book too and we have a deal.”
“Ok, deal.”
Eventually though the bot conversations broke down into what appears to human eyes to be utter nonsense despite using English words, such as an exchange that in part read:
Bob: i can i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
Bob: you i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
While these baffling exchanges often struggled to resolve deadlocks, the researchers found that in some cases the bots were able to reach a deal while using the seemingly nonsense language, suggesting it did have its own syntax and stucture. They also found evidence that they were indeed negotiating, as shown by the fact that changing one bot’s goals or values placed on items meant the conversation went a different way with a different outcome.
