perfect play or macky, micky, mucky, mocky

As an experiment to explore how norms and ethics might be introduced to artificial intelligence in a broad and general fashion, researchers, as Slashdot reports, have trained implicitly one such programme to play Pac-Man and win without gobbling up the ghosts.
The training was a balance between the programme’s drive for optimisation tempered with lessons from human players that avoided the ghosts, even at their most vulnerable, and eventually netted more ethically informed play. It’s not quite the level of trust that I would want in a moment of pursuit but I suppose it does illustrate the potential to build in moral false-safe measures.

scullery

A ride-hailing service that’s disrupted the business of food delivery and ordering-in—once nearly exclusively the domain of pizza, we learn via Duck Soup, is creating an empire of virtual franchises that only exist as menu-options when ordering from the service.
Of course it’s nothing new or novel to set up a booth or a concession within a larger venue, but it is strange to think of a branded concept “restaurant” existing only in the corner (without seats or a storefront) of a host kitchen of a larger food preparation operation, as hundreds of affiliates are revealed to be. What do you think? It’s an interesting way to pool resources and reputation but there’s also an inscrutable and alienated quality to it, like a letterbox business that’s not open to public inspection—sort of like the couriers themselves.

regnum, benfacta, carcer

Public Domain Review showcases another visually stunning and alluring work with the 1825 publication The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century: Or, The Master Key of Futurirty, Being a Complete System of Astrology, Geomancy & Occult Science. Volumes such as these both informed and were reflections of a revival in the supernatural which had lost currency and credibility and been in decline since the Era of Enlightenment and was for the most part a repackaged anthology of previously serialised works, journals and a success almanac of ephemeridies, Latin for diaries—daily charts of the position of the planets in the sky consulted by navigators and astrologers alike.
Though the book includes sections on diverse magic practises including divination, prophecy and communing with the dead, the author places greater stock and confidence in celestial omens and warns his readers of the dangers of not heeding one’s horoscope. Discover a gallery of select illustrations and peruse the whole book at the link up top.

frolic & detour

Following the court case of a disgruntled employee who collected personal data of staff and released it to the public in order to embarrass and humiliate his former employer, we were introduced to an interesting concept of tort law and the limits of vicarious liability (respondeat superior) on the part of an employer for the acts of persons in its employ.
Derived from the 1834 case of Joel v Morison (no relation to the present defendant) that involved a pedestrian struck by a horse-drawn cart, to which the cart’s owner begged off due to the fact that the driver had taken a different route than the one he was assigned to visit an acquaintance and because of that deviation, was responsible for the accident. The court, however, ruled, “if servants, being on their master’s business, took a detour to call upon a friend, the master will be responsible… but if he was going on a frolic of his own, the master will not be held liable” and thus the driver was still covered for the negligent act while in the “course of employment” and the cart’s owner had to pay for damages. The company in the present day case is appealing the decision, arguing it cannot be held responsible for the data breach because the employee was acting maliciously and outside of his scope of practise.

6x6

connect-the-dots: the distant constellations discovered by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope include the TARDIS and Godzilla

᚛ᚑᚌᚐᚋ᚜: an introduction to the Ogham script through the challenge of encoding an alphabet without spaces

teslaquila: a look at the other probable intent-to-use trademark applications from Elon Musk

frigate shoals: rather than being erased by sea level rise, a powerful storm obliterated an ecological significant Hawaiian archipelago over the weekend, via Super Punch

cloak & dagger: former Central Intelligence Agency’s Chief of Disguise reveals how field agents go undercover

geo-stationary: Chengdu announced plans to launch its own, fully adjustable artificial moon to replace street lighting

positive reinforcement

Wanting a routine and ritual to better her own practise, tinkerer and engineer Simone Giertz (designer of some hilariously unhelpful robots that are just glad that they can participate) is prototyping, we learn from Swiss Miss, a perpetual calendar with responsive buttons that light up like a golden star.
There are a lot of twee and coddling gimmicks lying in wait to ambush one’s attention but I certainly would not count this idea and method (you can use actual gold stars and a calendar too) among them. Sometimes by being too adult we are also too arrogant to understand how encouragement and motivation can nurture and enrich. Just as a recent episode of Hidden Brain masterfully exposited, many seasoned professionals might believe that their experience and expertise is insulted by consulting something as pedestrian and rudimentary as a check-list, much of the world—from rocket-science to brain-surgery—is run off simple protocols. None of us are above earning our gold stars either.