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The title of this article is click-baity in its abuse of the vague, subjective word "consciousness."

"[blank] is already happening" is a trope, in wired's headlines, that gets reused frequently, to provoke exasperation. Wired probably advises writers with an internal style guide, since their tone has remained pretty consistent over the years.

The article is a lot of hype. There's a mix of several separate concepts brought into play, with anecdotal details, to produce an emotional effect.

Without explaining the differences between the peripheral nervous system and the central nervous system, ideas are presented to confuse such differentiation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_nervous_system

The article touches upon advanced ways to interface with the peripheral nervous system of the body, in particular the extremities, addressing paralysis and amputation.

The article is not about the brain itself, although witnesses within the article explain their personal experiences. It isn't about machines becoming alive. It isn't about replacing the mind with a computer.

It's mostly about advanced ways of restoring sensation and motor control, with computer systems that remap connections beween damaged nerves. The external stimulation of nervous tissue does not translate to a migration of human experience from a biological system to a machine.


Thanks for the summary.

I've noticed I started to avoid clicking links with titles I perceive as overly dramatic or emotional. I wish there was a browser extension providing community-sourced alternate titles and tl;drs for every news article on hover.


With a headline like this I just go straight to the comments, vast majority of the time the signal-to-ratio is far better.


I’m pretty sure there was one made by a HN member. First result in DDG is this: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tldr/giepilabiomhl...


Somewhat, yes. It seems that graphite is a somewhat more relaxed state than carbon's diamond crystal allotrope.

Both burn, and can be vaporized with LOX/acetyline torches:

http://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.com/files/styles/medium_1...

But apparently, over long periods of time, and unless coerced, carbon prefers to be graphite and so, diamonds can decay as such. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_properties_of_diamond...

Hence why graphite is generally more plentiful than diamonds.


Coal isn't graphite though.

And you're talking about burning, not storage. Coal produces lots of dust and debris. I'm sure diamond would produce some dust at volumes.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-coal-an...

Anyway, it's fantasy because I'm fairly confident we're not going to turn CO2 into mountains of diamonds in my lifetime!


I've noticed that on monitors at 120hz and 240hz, full motion video starts to look strange. Not just high resolution animated graphics renderings, but also legacy recordings of live action pre-dating HD standards.

Old NTSC and PAL recordings, and even Black and White TV shows like I Love Lucy or Leave It To Beaver, take on this interpolated, ultra-modern slick feeling of remastered image post-processing.

I can't tell what's going on, but I see it when I view certain monitors, at friends houses, in department stores and at some fast food restaurants that provide a TV in the dining room.

Re-runs of TV shows that I've watched hundreds of times on CRTs and first generation flat-screen monitors, have a certain quality and leave a distinctive impression, that a subset of recent monitors augment, contaminate and tamper with.

I can't tell what's going but I know it when I see it. I suspect that there may be some software inbetween the transcoder circuit and the final illuminated raster that attempts to reduce flicker, and provides virtual frames automatically tweened when low frame counts are encountered.

Few people agree with me, or notice a difference, but it's there, man.

It's there.


It's the "soap opera" effect caused by interpolation and it is another anti-feature in TVs these days. Bluerghh


Oh thank god other people can see this.

Sometimes I feel like I'm noticing fnords.


No and you can simply turn off.

Soap operas were filmed on usually on cheaper cameras that were designed for live capture like studio camera which operate at a higher frame rate.

All TVs these days have some sort of "smooth motion" mode it used to be for sports but now it's tacked on everything and makes things annoying.

A 240hz or w/e screen doesn't do anything to video a player with motion interpolation does.

Basically we're used to much slower motion in films when you get full 30 or even 60fps video it looks weird but you get used to it.

Soon most things will come at 60fps and old video will start looking weird.


Film's subjective fps is actually higher than 24 fps because of motion blur.


You're not alone, I hate theses processed added frames ! Sometimes it even introduces weird blocking artifacts. I even suspect it sometimes fail to recognize a scene cut (and try to interpolate movement..)

People can't see this because the answer to oculusthrift's "At what threshold does the human eye no longer notice an increase in frame rate" depends on people. Most people around me can't see above 30 fps. I know I can see the difference between 25 and 50 fps.


But some of the blocking artifacts are fascinating to behold! People have drawn from it a new aesthetic in the form of the Glitch GIF.

https://duckduckgo.com?q=!googleimages+glitch+gif+filetype:g...

http://0.media.collegehumor.cvcdn.com/51/69/9fc1f4a928590f14...


I guess thoses artifacts look similar because they're based on the same motion estimation method.

The most artistic use I could find was this video : https://vimeo.com/31774324 :) Another one : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS_rdl_iVFo I think they basically delete/change H264 keyframes


The premise here, being that powerful (or technically adept) people may have the capacity to impersonate a phone number, or clone a SIM card.

...since that part isn't directly stated, and might not be obvious to everyone.


That would indeed be enough. The other conceivable scenario is that the server gets compromised (and suppresses the "delivery receipts", then sends a spurious "rekeying" message).


PR snake oil.

Fitness didn't come true with the Wii. Better be prepared to still go outside and have a life. Your body will produce vitamins as your reward.

Eyestrain is subjective, and this is far from an optometrist's prescription to treat any disease or disorder. Doctors recommend tooth brushes, but which is THE ONE TRUE toothbrush?

Psychology is not hard science. This technology can either harm or help, with no guarantee of either. Use as directed.


There is no evidence this is funded by anyone, so please, keep the allegations to yourself.

> Better be prepared to still go outside and have a life. Your body will produce vitamins as your reward.

Many people don't have good fitness options outside a controlled environment, for a variety of reasons.

> Eyestrain is subjective

No, it's measurable externally!

> but which is THE ONE TRUE toothbrush?

Dentists generally don't give a shit about brands, but ask 20 what the right toothbrush to get if budget is not a factor and they'll all quickly converge on one answer that has a fair sum of science backing it.


> Fitness didn't come true with the Wii

The question is 'why'? There's no denying playing a Wii game involved burning calories so the only explanation is that people stopped playing it.

So the question is really about whether or not people will do the same with VR and currently the majority of users seem to think otherwise.

Personal note. I had a Wii and never used it. I bought a Vive 6 weeks ago and have used it every day.


Visibility.

Most people imagine that if they lose their homes, the fate that awaits them is the one they step over each morning on their way to work.

Most people don't have contingency plans, should they find themselves out of a job, and evicted from their residence, with no family or friends to assist with temporary resources.


In the Netherlands, I'd assume most people make the same assumption as I would in Britain:

If I lose my home, and have no savings or sufficient income, the local government will provide accommodation. At short notice, for a single male, that's likely to be a pretty grim hostel, but it exists.

Example: https://www.richmond.gov.uk/if_you_are_homeless

Advice about this from a charity: http://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/gu...

So, following the charity's advice, it might not be true that the local government would provide help -- but that would still be most people's assumption.


I put myself in the shoes of a homeless person for a few minutes while looking at that site for Richmond. They require you to bring both "Proof of homelessness" and "Proof of residence". I don't know what the first one might be, and the second seems to contradict the first (unless "residence" == "right to remain in the UK"?). In any case, I think i'm ill-equipped to be a homeless person, and looking outside at the snow falling I'm appreciating how lucky I am that this isn't an issue I have to deal with right now. Just remembered a local bar/restaurant lets you pay a little extra on top of your bill to fund a dinner for the homeless, I'm making a note to do that next time I'm in.

Note: the first part wasn't a criticism of the site, just a little bit of reflection. I'm actually impressed they have such some sort of information/guidance available


I think proof of residence means proof of a link to Richmond, otherwise it is some other council district that is responsible.

The proof of homelessness might be an eviction notice? I have no more experience than you in this matter.


Ahhh makes sense


These hostels exist in Amsterdam as well but they charge a small fee for spending the night there, something like 5 euro. There are programs to provide longer term housing for homeless who are willing to cooperate, but in the short term some homeless really have to beg money in the streets to get access to a shelter.

Most homeless people in Amsterdam however have psychological and/ or drug problems that make it impossible for them to live in a home or in a shelter.


I have seen some of these hostels in the UK and they are definitely not the kind of place you'd want to live. As a single male with no issues you're certainly not guaranteed to get a place either.

Another problem is people coming from different areas, say from North to South, who are just offered a bus ticket back there.

That said, in the UK at least, if you have no income you'll get the same level of cash benefit as anyone else so there is absolutely no need to be begging for money. Those that do either have a dependency problem or are just scamming.


Uh, the point is that, on a slow connection, everything is going to suck in unpredictable ways, because of server-side bloat, and the trendiness of developers deploying 5MB js libraries.

Worrying about whether the browser was recent or supported misses the point. Any browser can suffer these sorts of problems on a 56KB dial-up connection. (3G mobile data is frequently throttled at 128KB by popular ISP's, btw)


Uh, reading in a whole slew of things into a simple question is missing the point.


The "nanodegree."

If anybody ever tried to use that as a credential, they'd waste more words trying to explain what it is, and what it's worth, than if they just told you what they actually knew verbatim.

I have a nanodegree in microwaving hot pockets. Ask me to defend its intrinsic value.


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