I'm off to Utah for a weekend visit.

Overcoming Bias: 9/26 is Petrov Day

Today is Petrov Day!

Today in 1983 Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov saved the world.

The link for more details, but suffice to say that on his personal authority, he countermanded the automatic response to ICBM launches from the US. It was a sensor error, but he had no way of knowing that. He decided not to respond, and because of that, we didn't have a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

after
Originally uploaded by boo d

the internet is a scary place. sometimes you see something you wish you hadn't.

but once you've seen it. you can't unsee it.

Anne Corwin

I have a relative, who is an engineer! Who is also a transhumanist apparently.

Her focus is life extension, which is cool. I wonder how/if she's related to me.

Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry is one of my favorite entertainers. Smart, and funny, he represents a huge swath of intelligent civilized people who too often are overshadowed by their boorish and less talented cousins.

His show, QI, is my favorite scored gameshow, now that Win Ben Stein's Money is off the air.

And he's opened up a blog, where he opens, aggressively establishing internet cred, with an exhaustive dissection of the various attempts at mobile computing via smartphones. Very interesting stuff, and in inimitable Fry style. His feed goes on the dashboard.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Solar plane flies into the night

solar power plane, very cool.

My old friend peeyush asked me an interesting question a while ago, to get together a list of things to do before I'm 30. I thought about it off and on, but I forgot about it. he reminded me today, and here's what I have so far:

Things to do before I'm thirty
Be financially secure
complete:
Attention (time-management, desktop interface software, ver 0.1 existed)
Grayswandir (wearable computing interface/hardware, half designed, specs on request)
Jack of Shadows (communications interface, specs on request)
DocDesignr (XML document design meta-tool, ver 0.0.1 existed, specs on request)
Rationalizer (bayesian statistics visualization tool)
toy_decider (utility hypothesis bot)
Dr.Know (tutor/research bot)
Attitude Adjuster (modular airship design)
Home One (factory ship design)
be romantically secure
have some idea what the state of the possible art in AI is.
be incorporated
be physically stable
have published my papers on decision theory as high dimensional vector analysis
have completed every nanowrimo in between then and now
have had at least one satisfying computer or computer-mediated rpg experience
have experimented with consulting