Jul 202011
 

The key thing about this process is that the neural network doesn’t even know whether it’s correctly identifying state/action pairs when it starts—it doesn’t know how to “read”—much less whether it has correctly interpreted the advice they convey (do you build near a river, or should you never build by a river?). All it has to go on is what impact its interpretation has on the outcome of the game. In short, it has to figure out how to read the owner’s manual simply by trying different interpretations and seeing whether they improve its play.

Despite the challenges, it works. When the full-text analysis was included, the success of the authors’ software shot up; it now won over half its games within 100 moves, and beat the game’s AI almost 80 percent of the time when games were played to completion.

via Computer Beats PC Game After Reading Manual | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Jul 192011
 

Authorities have arrested 14 people today in the United States in connection with hacking attacks by the Anonymous group of online activists, sources said.

The arrests follow raids earlier in the day on homes in New York, California, New Jersey, and Florida, a law enforcement source told CBS News.

via FBI arrest 14 in Anonymous hacking investigation | InSecurity Complex – CNET News.

Jul 192011
 

Facebook Opens Viral Growth Channel for Pages, Delivering Invites to Like as Notifications…

Admins of new Pages looking to establish an initial fan base should use the new “Invite Friends” link that appears on their Page. Adding a large number of admins that can all use the feature on their own friends could be an effective growth strategy for smaller Pages.

via Facebook Opens Viral Growth Channel for Pages, Delivering Invites to Like as Notifications.

Jul 172011
 

App developer Michael Lee Johnson, conscious of the need to be big on Google+ or be nobody, wondered what the best way to levitate his Google+ circles might be. He hit upon a fine idea: he placed an ad on Facebook. It was a simple thing that was headlined: “Add Michael to Google+.”

The copy read: “If you’re lucky enough to have a Google+ account, add Michael Lee Johnson, Internet Geek, App Developer, Technological Virtuoso.”

If those words weren’t enough to persuade Facebook users that Johnson was a must for their Google+, he added a fine picture of himself wearing a jaunty cap.

via Facebook bans Google+ ad | Technically Incorrect – CNET News.

Jul 172011
 

A Las Vegas federal judge has sanctioned copyright troll Righthaven to the tune of $5,000 for making misrepresentations to the court.U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt of Nevada last month ordered Righthaven to explain why Hunt should not sanction it for trying to “manufacture standing.” .pdf

via Judge Fines Righthaven $5,000 | Threat Level | Wired.com.

Jul 142011
 

The potential to find almost any piece of information in seconds is beneficial, but is this ability actually negatively impacting our memory? The authors of a paper that is being released by Science Express describe four experiments testing this. Based on their results, people are recalling information less, and instead can remember where to find the information they have forgotten.

via Study: why bother to remember when you can just use Google?.

Jul 142011
 

Comcast Bans Seattle Man From Internet for His Cloudy Ways

The end of the internet comes not with a bang or a procession of four lolcats of the apocalypse, but just with two blinking lights on a modem.At least that’s how it came for Andre Vrignaud, a 39-year-old gaming consultant in Seattle, when Comcast shut him off from the internet Monday for using too much data.Vrignaud, it seems, committed the foul of using more than 250 GB of data on Comcast two months in a row, triggering the company’s overage policy that results in a year-long ban from using its services.

via Comcast Bans Seattle Man From Internet for His Cloudy Ways | Epicenter | Wired.com.

Jul 132011
 

U.S. hotel industry loses approximately $1.9 billion annually in online bookings because channel partners and affiliates compete with the hotels’ direct channels by using branded search terms in paid search campaigns. Once a customer who is searching for a specific hotel brand has been attracted to the website of a hotel partner or affiliate, that customer often books a room at one of the competing properties displayed on these sites.

via How to protect your company’s branded search terms – iMediaConnection.com.

Jul 122011
 

“Welcome to the human network,” is the companys advertising slogan, and according to a Bloomberg report, Ciscos internal human network is going to be cut down by as many as 10,000, or about 14 percent of its workforce.

via Maximum PC | Cisco Reportedly Plans to Slash Up to 10,000 Jobs.

Jul 112011
 

 Ethan Marcotte coined the term responsive design to describe the process of using liquid layouts and media queries to scale websites so that they fit any screen size.

via Tips, Tricks and Best Practices for Responsive Design | Webmonkey | Wired.com.

Forget Photoshop, build your comps in the browser. It’s virtually impossible to mock up liquid layouts in Photoshop, start in the browser instead.

Scale images using img { max-width: 100%; }. For very large images, consider using something like Responsive Images to offer the very smallest screens smaller image downloads and then use JavaScript to swap in larger images for larger screen.