Large Hardon Collider

[Hatedregret]

DAMN, NDT is owning people as usual.

[Plow]

the fact that not even 2000 people are watching is kinda depressing

fuck it's all laggy for me too ; ;

[Tyche]

I get hard everytime Dawkins opens his mouth.

[Tyche]

the fact that not even 2000 people are watching is kinda depressing

fuck it's all laggy for me too ; ;

It's Saturday and this wasn't at all advertised. If it does get upped to YouTube, it'll crush.

[Plow]

anybody know of a place that has the 320 embed? or how to change to it on ustream itself? I can't get anything lower than the 480 stream

[Headspace]

I feel like this talk would be a lot better if Tyson wasn't talking over everyone and ranting like crazy.

It's funny and humorous, but egh

[Hatedregret]

Tyson makes me want to stand up and slowclap. Nye is being amazing as well. I do wish Krauss and Dawkins could say more, but Tyson isn't having it lol. Tone it down a tiny bit yeah.

[Tyche]

Man, that was fucking fantastic. I will be deeply disappointed if it doesn't get upped somewhere. I missed the first half.

[Mizango]

Tyson makes me want to stand up and slowclap. Nye is being amazing as well. I do wish Krauss and Dawkins could say more, but Tyson isn't having it lol. Tone it down a tiny bit yeah.

Dawkins is just quiet, so are Brian Greene (saw him in person) and so is Neil Stephenson, so that is why they didnt talk much. If you like Bill Nye, you should join myself and others in the Planetary Society, he is accessible as fuck to anyone. Its like 30 bucks a year iirc, ive been a member for 5 years already. Krauss is great too, heard him and Alan Guth speak twice and loved every second of it, too bad he was busy narrating. Funny thing is that one of the driving forces behind this was the FB group that many of us belong to; I fucking love science. She even got a shout out from the panel, as she was sitting in the front row.

Very cool.

Man, that was fucking fantastic. I will be deeply disappointed if it doesn't get upped somewhere. I missed the first half.

That shit was awesome.

[Mizango]

The next one should have Lee Smolin on the panel so he can grate at the nerves of everyone involved.

[Hatedregret]

Yeah, I saw tons of people in the chat linking IFLS. Already been with them, but didn't know about the Planetary Society. Will check it out. Thank you.

[Mizango]

You're welcome Oh yeah, I forgot about the chat, I had that shit blocked.

[Mizango]

You get discounts and free trips to museums, planetariums, observatories (assuming one is in your area) and shit like that. Its cool as shit and your money gets you all sorts of perks. Got a certificate of commemoration from 2004 when I sent my daughters name on the Mars Spirit Rover. It was for members only but something cool and tangible that you have. Like Voyager, they oft put various forms of writing, audio and pictures with every object jettisoned into space on the off chance it is discovered.

Def check it out, hope to see you around.

[Kryssan]

I haven't seen a video of this one hitting YouTube yet - I hope it does because I add these sorts of things to my collection for viewing at leisure - but for those of you who haven't seen Krauss except for this talk, here are a few more of his ( with various others ):

[Kryssan]

For those that may have missed the March discussion mentioned earlier, it should be available from here ( link ) by the end of this month.

[myreality]

http://www.distancetomars.com/

This is an interesting website, put's the distance to Mars into perspective. Takes some time though.....

[Hatedregret]

[Mizango]

Cool, thanks for posting for those that missed it. I saw it on Krauss' page earlier but forgot to link it.

Good heads up. Def check it out for those that missed it, its awesome.

[myreality]

Thought this was interesting.

http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/articl...etter-reflexes

Foc.us is a company that makes headsets for gamers. Those headsets, starting to ship in July, send electricity through your brain. This is their pitch:
Overclock your brain using transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) to increase the plasticity of your brain. Make your synapses fire faster.
Faster Processor, Faster Graphics, Faster Brain!
If that sounds a little sketchy to you, that's because it probably should.
The excellent NeuroBollocks blog explains how transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) is an interesting idea: sending targeted, low-level electric currents through the brain with TDCS excites certain regions, which could have implications in treating depression and stroke victims. Plug in a patient for 20 minutes, and you could get the effects for up to days at a time. So foc.us is marketing $249 headsets ("Maximum 2 headsets per order.") that claim to "[e]xcite your prefrontal cortex," thus improving your gaming ability. To the company's credit, at least one study suggests hooking up a 9-volt to your skull could improve gaming ability, although that was all done in the lab, under professional supervision.
That's definitely not the only field TDCS is exploring. Brain-zapping for medical (or extra-medical) purposes has been around for years: Giovanni Aldini was using electricity to treat treat patients with personality disorders in the early 19th century. But with the rise of brain scans able to show the results of electricity pumped into the brain, TDCS and related processes like transcranial random noise stimulation are undergoing a boom. TDCS, although still controversial, could be used to improve math skills (or get you high).
Still, NeuroBollocks outlines some of the issues with foc.us's claims:
So – does it work? Possibly… But it almost certainly doesn’t do what the company says it does. For a start, if you want to “get the edge in online gaming” wouldn’t you want to stimulate your motor cortex (at the top of the head) and/or the visual cortex (at the back)? It’s unclear how stimulating the prefrontal cortex (behind the forehead) would give you an advantage in games. In fact, (as this article explains) placement of the electrodes over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is most often used for treatment of depression and chronic pain, so potentially these devices might have more of an effect on mood or emotions than any useful gaming-related functions.
Sure, the process could result in skin lesions, and there's still some debate over what's a safe amount of electricity to juice yourself with, but do you want to beat your friends at video games or not? (Engadget tried out a prototype and noted "a strange, almost burning, sensation.")
And no: according to the foc.us website, the headset isn't FDA-approved: "The focus gamer headset offers no medical benefits, is not a medical device, and is not regulated by the FDA."
Can't we go back to the good old days, like three weeks ago, when people were just shocking themselves to improve video games for fun?

Can already hear the new cries on Call of Duty....

[myreality]

http://www.popsci.com/technology/art...ecognition-app

TechCrunch has a nice look at a new API from Lambda Labs, an "early-stage startup" (meaning, brand-new) from San Francisco, that's causing a bit of consternation. Lambda Labs makes a facial recognition API, which you can actually try out here in your browser. But now Lambda has released a version of that API specifically for Google Glass.
There are certain software restrictions that hold back what the hardware can do--in this case, you can't use the facial recognition API to get a real-time identification. Instead, you have to take a picture, send it to the app's developers for it to be analyzed, and then receive the ID. That doesn't take long, but it's not exactly a Robocop-level ID system.
But the Glass hardware is capable of that kind of real-time information flow, to a degree. Glass isn't an augmented reality system; it's more like a tiny notifications screen in the corner of your field of view. You won't see a face with a name under it, but you might see a face, then tilt your eyes up and to the left and see text with an ID on it.
The bigger and perhaps more interesting issue here is whether this will fly with Google and the US government. In a New York Times article, Steve Lee, director of project management for Google Glass, said: "We’ve consistently said that we won’t add new face recognition features to our services unless we have strong privacy protections in place." And then there's the inquiry from eight members of Congress about Google Glass's potential privacy implications.
I've written about how Google Glass isn't a surveillance device, but this is something a little bit different: the debate here is all fine lines and shades of gray. The API already exists, the technology is common, and the hardware is out there. Does it really matter if you're performing this action with a smartphone or Google Glass? Can you ethically stop someone from accessing previously-accessible data just because it's in a slightly different form? It's a nuanced and complex question, one we don't have an answer to--but one that Google and lawmakers will have to address.

This keeps getting better and better.