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r0B0t: Code Is My Co-pilot  

On a balmy Tuesday afternoon in late July, 37-year-old attorney Joshua Neally left work early. He climbed into his new Tesla Model X to drive the 45 minutes from law office in Springfield, Missouri, to his house in Branson, Missouri. He was going home to celebrate his daughter's fourth birthday.

He steered the electric luxury SUV into the gathering rush-hour traffic on Highway 68 and turned on autopilot, a feature unique to Tesla that allows a car to pilot itself—braking, accelerating, steering—for long stretches of freeway driving. It's a feature that has drawn rebukes from rival companies and sparked investigations by federal regulators after a driver named Joshua Brown was killed in a crash in Florida while using it. Although a Tesla with autopilot is not a true self-driving car, the company's technology has become a bellwether for Silicon Valley's ambition to replace human drivers with software.

Neally knew about the Florida crash and the furor that followed. But he had already ordered his Model X after years of waiting and saving, and he was undeterred. When it arrived, he nicknamed it Ender, after the protagonist in the novel Ender's Game. By July 26, after a week of driving the Model X, he had grown to cautiously trust it to handle the bulk of his hilly, curvy, sometimes traffic-y commute. “I'm not a daredevil,” he told me. “I promised my wife I'd always be paying attention.” He doesn't drive hands-free, or play Jenga, or nod off, or watch Harry Potter movies, as Brown may have been doing when he plowed into the trailer of a semi truck. He admits, however, that he sometimes checks email or sends text messages on his phone.

Neally was about 5 miles out of Springfield, near a set of interchanges just beginning to clog with merging vehicles, when he felt something coil and stiffen in his abdomen. At first he thought it was a pulled muscle. But the pain forked upward from his stomach, he said, until it felt like “a steel pole through my chest.” When it refused to subside, Neally remembers calling his wife and agreeing through gasps that he should probably go to the emergency room.

He doesn't remember much of the drive after that.

Doctors in Branson told Neally later that he'd suffered a pulmonary embolism, a potentially fatal obstruction of a blood vessel in his lungs. They told him he was lucky to have survived. If you ask Neally, however, he'll tell you he was lucky to be driving a Tesla. As he writhed in the driver's seat, the vehicle's software negotiated 20-plus highway miles to a hospital just off an exit ramp. He manually steered it into the parking lot and checked himself into the emergency room, where he was promptly treated. By night's end he had recovered enough to go home.

Did autopilot save Neally? It's hard to say. He acknowledges that, in retrospect, it might have been more prudent to pull over and call an ambulance. But the severity of what was happening dawned on him slowly, and by the time it had, he reckoned he could reach the hospital quicker via autopilot than ambulance. He also wonders whether, without autopilot, he might have lost control of the car and in effect become a deadly projectile when those first convulsions struck.

Neally's experience is unusual. It doesn't prove autopilot's worth as a safety feature any more than Brown's death disproves it. Yet Neally's story is the latest of several that have emerged since the Florida crash to paint a fuller picture of autopilot's merits, in addition to its by now highly publicized dangers. These stories provide at least a measure of anecdotal support for Tesla's claims that its own data show autopilot—imperfect as it is—is already significantly safer than the average human driver.

That's going to be a tough sell, though, to the public and regulators alike. Brown's death ignited a backlash that had been brewing since Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced autopilot in a heavily hyped, Steve Jobslike launch event in October 2014. Rival car companies felt from the start that Tesla was rolling out autonomous driving features too aggressively, before the technology was safe enough to earn consumers' trust. The skepticism intensified after Tesla activated the feature last fall, and drivers immediately began posting YouTube videos of themselves abusing it. Tesla calls autopilot a “beta” feature and requires the driver to agree to pay full attention and keep hands on the wheel while it's in use. But, despite some safety checks introduced in January, the car will still drive itself if the driver goes hands-free.

By mid-July, when a second Tesla Model S crashed while on autopilot on an undivided highway in Montana, Tesla had become the subject of three federal investigations. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was looking into the cause of the Florida crash. The National Transportation Safety Board was examining whether autonomous driving technology was a hazard to safety. Even the Securities and Exchange Commission opened a probe into claims by Fortune magazine that Musk had failed to disclose the Florida autopilot crash to investors in a timely manner, even as he sold some of his own stock in the company. (Tesla has vehemently disputed the claims.)

It added up to a grim cloud over both the company and self-driving car technology, whose future depends on drivers, bureaucrats, and chest-pounding politicians all agreeing to place human lives in the hands of potentially deadly robots. Even Consumer Reports, which has championed the Tesla Model S as one of the greatest cars ever made, called for Tesla to disable autopilot until the technology became more reliable.

“By marketing their feature as ‘Autopilot,' Tesla gives consumers a false sense of security,” Consumer Reports Vice President Laura MacCleery said. “In the long run, advanced active safety technologies in vehicles could make our roads safer. But today, we're deeply concerned that consumers are being sold a pile of promises about unproven technology.”

I'm among the critics who have suggested, both before and after the furor over Brown's death, that Tesla had implemented and publicized the technology in a potentially perilous way. Despite its name, Tesla's autopilot feature does not give the cars full autonomy, like the concept vehicles made by Google that you might spot tooling around Mountain View, California. The first time I test-drove a Tesla with autopilot, I wrote a review calling it “a safety feature that could be dangerous,” because it encourages drivers to relax while relying on them to take over at a moment's notice. After Brown's death, I wrote that the entire autopilot concept might be flawed.

Yet Tesla insists that calls for it to disable autopilot are shortsighted. In fact, the company argues that the critics have it backward: Given that its internal testing data suggest the feature drives more safely than humans do, Tesla maintains that it would be irresponsible and dangerous not to offer autopilot to its customers.

It's a typically brash stance from a company that has never backed down from a public relations battle, and it's tempting to dismiss it as another example of Musk's hubris. Yet, as usual, Tesla makes a strong case for itself. Pressed to defend autopilot's safety record, the company disclosed to me the process by which it tested and eventually decided to activate the feature to consumers.

First, the company developed the software and tested it in millions of miles' worth of computer simulations, using real-world driving data gathered by the sensors on the company's cars. Next it activated autopilot in about 300 vehicles driven by the company's own testers, who drove it every day and subjected it to challenging circumstances. (Musk was among them.) Then it introduced autopilot “inertly” via software update into the vehicles of existing Tesla drivers for a testing phase that it called “silent external validation.” In this mode, the autopilot software logged and analyzed every move it would have made if active but could not actually control the vehicle. In this way, Tesla gained millions of miles' worth of data on autopilot's performance in consumers' vehicles before it ever took effect. Finally, the company activated the feature for some 900 consumers who volunteered to test it and provide subjective feedback. Throughout the process, Tesla says, it released updates to improve the software, and by the end it was clear to the company that drivers would be safer on the road with autopilot than without it. At that point, Tesla argues, it would have been a disservice to its drivers to keep the feature inactive.

Without taking Tesla's word for it, it's tough to empirically validate Musk's contention that autopilot is already saving a significant number of lives. One confounding factor is that we're less likely to hear about it when something goes right with self-driving features than when something goes wrong. Given that Tesla says it anonymizes its tracking data for customers' privacy, there's no way for the public to know about these close calls unless drivers self-report them, as Neally did to Tesla after his pulmonary embolism. (Neally agreed to tell his story to Slate after I asked the company for real-world examples of autopilot functioning as a critical safety feature.) Even when we do know about these, it's hard to prove the counterfactual that someone would have died if the automation hadn't kicked in.

Still, Neally's case isn't the first in which Tesla safety features appear to have averted catastrophe. In Washington on July 16, a Model S was driving on New York Avenue when a pedestrian stepped in front of it. The car slammed on its own brakes, and no one was hurt. The incident was glossed in headlines as one in which autopilot may have saved a pedestrian's life. That isn't quite accurate, though: Autopilot was turned off at the time, the company told me. It was actually Tesla's automatic emergency braking system that kicked in. That's a safety feature that dozens of other car models already offer and which may come standard in all U.S.-made vehicles by 2022. Tesla deserves credit for implementing it, but not for pioneering it.

In another instance, the dashcam on an Uber driver's Model S captured a scary close call in which a sedan suddenly turned left in front of him, at night, in the rain, with no time to steer around it. Before the driver could react, the Model S braked sharply. It jerked to a stop a few feet from the car, which it otherwise would have plowed into broadside. In that case, it appears that autopilot was in fact engaged.

Meanwhile, the NHTSA has concluded that the fatal Florida crash should not set back efforts to make the roads saver through automation. The auto industry “cannot wait for perfect” to develop and deploy potentially lifesaving technology, NHTSA head Mark Rosekind said.

It's fair to remain skeptical when Musk claims that autopilot would save 500,000 lives a year if it were deployed universally. Unless the company were to release all its testing and tracking data, which it declines to do, we can't possible verify its calculations. One of the few specific figures that the company publicized in its blog post was that autopilot had been safely used in more than 130 million miles of driving before the first fatality, which is a higher ratio of miles to deaths than the U.S. or global averages. But just one more autopilot-related fatality tomorrow would undermine that claim. The math required to demonstrate conclusively that autopilot is safer than human drivers would be more nuanced, examining injury accidents as well as fatalities and controlling for biases such as the recommended use of autopilot predominantly on highways under favorable driving conditions.

What we know at this point is that autopilot can hurt or kill people if used improperly and that it also has the potential to save people. It's also fair to assume that the technology will get safer over time as Tesla and other companies study and learn from its errors. The only question is whether the public can or should tolerate its rare mistakes in the meantime.

This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

 
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r0B0t: Robot Hackers Could Be the Future of Cybersecurity  
The final round of DARPA's Cyber Grand Challenge pits computers against one another as human programmers watch the future of cybersecurity unfold

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com 
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r0B0t: The new Roomba 960 is a cheaper smart robovac  

iRobot also adds connectivity to the Braava jet robot mop.

 
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r0B0t: Suicide Squad Fans Who Want to Shut Down Rotten Tomatoes Want The Right Thing for the Wrong Reason  

Uproxx reported Wednesday that a possibly tongue-in-cheek petition on Change.org to shut down critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes was attracting sincere support from fans of Suicide Squad, who were unhappy about the film's overwhelmingly negative reviews. To be precise, the petition, which now has more than 17,000 signatures, said:

We need this site to be shut down because It's Critics always give The DC Extended Universe movies unjust Bad Reviews, Like

1- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice 2016

2- Suicide Squad 2016

and that Affects people's opinion even if it's a really great movies

There's a lot wrong with this petition, from the idea that Rotten Tomatoes somehow controls the opinion of the critics who didn't like the DC movies to the idea that a bad review should spoil the fun of an individual viewer who likes these films. But I'm shocked to report that I've found common ground with of people who believe that critics care in the slightest about DC vs. Marvel. I, too, think Rotten Tomatoes is a terrible thing for films—and not just Suicide Squad. Not because it “Affects people's opinion even if it's a really great movies,” or even because of problems with the model (a three out of five star rating is marked “fresh,” instead of “mediocre”), but because it uses a model at all. Rotten Tomatoes encourages a math-driven approach to something that is inherently personal and subjective. If your opinion about a work of art can be expressed as a number, it's not a very interesting opinion.

This is not to say that math has no place in writing about art; in fact, critics would greatly benefit from using it more. There's no music without rhythm and harmony, no poetry without meter, no prose without structure. In film, editing, shot composition, and story structure are all well-suited to quantitative criticism, to seeking to answer the question of how a film works or doesn't work. By the same token, we could probably spend more time talking about the qualitative aspects of math: Cantor's diagonalisation proof is a beautiful castle built on air; the Pythagorean theorem's various proofs by rearrangement are so grounded they don't need language at all. Our personal aesthetic and qualitative responses to great works of mathematics, like quantitative formal analysis of great works of art, can help us understand them better. But there's little value in assigning a number to how much we liked them. The interesting questions are “Why?” and “How?,” not “How much?”

There's nothing wrong with the question “Should I see this movie?,” and criticism can definitely help answer it. But the right way to find an answer is to consult one or two critics whose taste you trust, not a thousand critics you don't know. In fact, a review that talks about why and how a film works written by a critic whose tastes are completely different from yours will tell you much more about whether you, personally, might enjoy it than a “fresh” or “rotten” rating. Things don't get better by adding more voices to the din, they get worse. One of the greatest harms aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic do is convincing people that there's value in aggregation to begin with, that by asking enough people the same dumb question, a Rotten Tomato score will approach some mythical asymptote of objectivity. This is the logic that says that one shitty mortgage is a bad investment, but a thousand shitty mortgages are solid gold. Once you buy that, attacking critics whose opinions are “wrong” is an easy step to take. They're out of step with objective reality, as determined by math, so they must have an ulterior motive. The problem with the Rotten Tomatoes petition isn't the goal, it's that the person who wrote it has clearly internalized all the faulty premises the site is based on.

There's a larger argument here about the way aggregate scores dovetail neatly with our technocratic urge for assigning metrics to everything, which inexorably leads toward miserable people crying in their cubicles and collapsing from heatstroke—but it's probably unfair to lay scientific management at the feet of Rotten Tomatoes. Although Taylorism may be a garbage idea from a garbage culture, profit is undeniably quantifiable: artistic value just isn't. And from that initial category error, misery flows like blood from a wound, from fans who are genuinely sad and furious that someone is hurting their film's score to critics who have to deal with their harassment campaigns. Video game companies are even linking compensation to Metacritic scores: It looks like some kind of objective way of measuring the work a developer did; coincidentally, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than sharing profits. And so the loop of bullshit closes: The same internet hordes who attack critics who pan a big game can, correctly, say that those critics are hurting the game's creators financially. (To my knowledge, no critic has asked to be part of any company's human resources system, nor are any of them being paid for writing employee evaluations.) But in the HR spirit, here's some data-driven results-oriented analysis: The New Soviet Man this system produces is not James Agee but Milo Yiannopoulos, quantifying the value of other human beings like a deranged Nazi robot. (Not coincidentally, he's also an internet terrorist who allies himself with actual Nazis.) No thanks.

This is not to say that using Rotten Tomatoes will necessarily turn you into a Nazi. It's an aesthetic choice like any other. You can choose to understand the world around you by boiling down very complicated, personal responses from a wide variety of people to a single number. You can choose to be offended when your own response to something doesn't match the “objective” rating you've conjured out of thin air. But like any aesthetic choice, this too can be qualitatively described. So here's how I, personally, respond to Rotten Tomatoes, a website that assigns aggregate numbers to works of art. It's uninspired. It's boring. It's ugly. You can be on the side of Cogentiva or you can be on the side of Enlightened. I know which one I choose. After all, it's 86-percent fresh.

 
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r0B0t: Project Murphy Is Microsoft's Latest Artificial Intelligence Robot, And It Wants To Photoshop Pictures For You  

Microsoft's recent Artificial Intelligence robot Tay didn't exactly make headlines for the right reasons, after Twitter users somehow managed to trick it into becoming a Nazi. But the computer giant is probably hoping their latest venture will steer clear of any controversy.

Project Murphy is described as a “robot with imagination” - you can talk to it through your Facebook Messenger app and ask it to dream up funny pictures for you.

For example, you could ask Murphy “What if Donald Trump was a fish?” and it would automatically edit the presidential candidate's head onto a sea creature.

Naturally, people are devoting a lot of time to finding the funniest possible combinations.

Here are a few of our favourites:

Although they don't always work out:

 
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r0B0t: Finding Dory  
21 Food Snapchats That Will Make You Laugh Harder Than They Should (SLBuzzFeed...soreee, I couldn't resist...it's really really funny)

(or I'm really really stoned)(either way feel free to comment links to other stupidly funny shit as I'm having a rather crap day and could use some cheering up...thanks!) 
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r0B0t: I Had to Catch 'Em All  

A month ago, I left my job at the San Francisco tech company that bought my advertising startup. I had loved building my company from the ground up, but after six years, I had big plans for my post-acquisition life. I was going to work out. I was going to explore San Francisco. I was going to spend more time with my girlfriend. I was going to meet people outside the startup bubble. I was going to learn something new and immerse myself in it.

It turns out there's an app for almost all of that, and it is Pokémon Go. Since the game's release less than a month ago, players have installed it on mobile devices an estimated 75 million times. Mark Zuckerberg plays Pokémon Go. Justin Bieber, too. While lots of users try the game and drop it, or just play it casually, across the country there's a scene of hardcore players who've gotten truly, deeply hooked. I'm one of them.

For the past three weeks I played Pokémon Go like it was a job. I hunted its cute, cuddly creatures across 80 miles of beaches, parks, sidewalks, and playgrounds in San Francisco and New York. I tracked them on foot, bicycle, car, and pedicab. To my girlfriend's simmering horror, I ran into wild coyotes, was chased off by security guards, and crashed a mysterious 2 a.m. playground gathering. I caught 141 of the 142 Pokémon available in North America.

Which brings me to my final Pokémon.

It's just after midnight on a Sunday and I'm running down Fifth Avenue in New York City, arms pumping, iPhone clutched like a baton. I'm running like a man who doesn't run very often. My shirt is translucent with sweat. I pass Trump Tower. I pass St. Patrick's. I turn onto 47^th. I have 32 seconds left. Two men I've never met shout encouragement and wave toward a growing crowd up the street. “She's over there!” I huff and nod. I reach the throng and raise my phone.

With seconds to spare, I spot her. Time slows. She is big, beautiful, and pink, an ovoid vision with six dreadlocks that sway playfully as she hops back and forth. In her marsupial pouch she holds a gleaming white egg. She smiles at me. I smile back. Chansey. My prey. I am here to catch you. I tap my screen, and we face off: me, a 34-year-old newly unemployed tech entrepreneur with far too much time on his hands; she, a gentle, kindhearted cartoon character who is beloved by children worldwide, lays highly nutritious eggs, and is said to bring happiness to whomever catches her.

I curse when I see her power levels. 1,800 combat points! I feed her a Razz Berry to calm her, stroke my beard, and reach for my black and yellow Ultra Balls, the strongest Pokéballs I have as a Level 23 trainer. I have only three left, and I'm all out of blue Great Balls after hours of farming Omanytes in Midtown earlier in the evening. If I can't capture Chansey in three tries, I'm hosed. I bite my lip and toss the first ball. Swipe. She breaks out of the ball … and then runs off in a wisp of animated smoke.

I kick the curb. A nearby player offers condolences. I shake my head. She only appears two or three times a day in Manhattan, and she escaped.

The hunt must go on.

* * *

I am not a Pokémon guy. I never played the original Nintendo games and never watched the cartoon. Three weeks ago I could only name Pikachu and Jigglypuff, and that's because they were characters in Super Smash Bros. Now I know them all. So how did something seemingly aimed at kids hook me, a grown man?

Initially I was just curious about a game my friends were talking about. When I installed Pokémon Go on my iPhone on July 12 and walked around my block in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood, I caught a few tiny brown Pidgeys and gray fuzzy Zubats—the most common Pokémon—and found the game charming but simplistic. It also seemed to freeze and crash a lot. Niantic, the game's developer, had a lot of work to do.

I wasn't hooked. But the next day, a friend bragged about reaching Level 12—and that got me going. I vowed to top him by hitting up a few spots I'd read about on Reddit. My brief outing ballooned into a six-hour trek. I started at the Presidio in the northwest corner of San Francisco and caught Pokémon all the way up the Embarcadero to the Bay Bridge at the eastern edge. The game's “core loop,” or central activity, proved addictive. The more Pokémon I caught, the higher my levels rose, the more dopamine was released in my brain, and the more Pokémon I wanted to catch. Flopping into bed at 3 a.m., I was exhausted and sore but buzzing. I texted my friends to let them know I'd reached Level 18. The game had its cartoon hooks in me.

Eager to widen the gap, the next night a friend and I attended a “Lure Party” at San Francisco State University thrown by a group that calls itself Mystery Island. Lures are in-game objects that attract Pokémon when activated. Groups like Mystery Island had started finding places with lots of them, lighting them up, and spreading the word on Facebook. Unlike college parties I remembered, this one consisted of hundreds of hoodie-clad people roaming, zombielike, in a circuit around campus for hours with their noses in their phones. It was great. My friend and I both caught Kadabra, a yellow humanoid Pokémon that uses a spoon to give people headaches, and he snagged an Onix, a coal-gray snakelike Pokémon with a magnet in its brain that can burrow through the ground at 50 miles per hour.

The next evening I drove out to Beach Chalet, a restaurant known for its wide view of the Pacific Ocean but now also as the best place to catch Pokémon in the Bay Area. No one knows why, but Beach Chalet attracts a wider variety of Pokémon than any other site around, and at higher volumes. A dissonant scene greeted me when I arrived at about 10 p.m. A handful of diners finished their meals inside. A few bonfires were scattered on the beach. Meanwhile more than 100 Pokémon Go players clogged the sidewalks, front stairs, and parking lot outside. The place was overrun. Apparently that's how it had been all week. And no wonder. In three hours, I picked up Ponyta, a majestic fire horse with hooves tougher than diamonds; Porygon, the world's first man-made robot Pokémon able to traverse cyberspace with ease; and several other rare Pokémon, ultimately bring me to Level 20.

At this point, I'd become less of a Pokémon Go player than a Pokémon Go grinder, a video game term for someone who performs low-level repetitive actions over and over again to achieve some larger result. In a classic role-playing game like Final Fantasy, grinding looks like walking your character through a forest back and forth fighting wolves and imps. But in Pokémon Go, a game that uses the real world as its map, it looks like pacing back and forth in the parking lot of a restaurant while diners and management look on disapprovingly.

You'd think game designers would want to avoid grinding. But many designers look for ways to encourage it. As an example: To unlock Pokémon Go's Gyarados, a super-rare blue water dragon, players have to catch 100 Magikarps, common goldfish Pokémon that are terrible at everything. Since even the shorter Pokémon captures take a minute or so, unless a player can find a Gyarados in the wild (very unlikely), the only way to get one is to grind for hours—or usually much longer.

Developers encourage grinding because players either get hooked and put in the time, increasing engagement, or they start looking for ways to speed things up. This opens the door for developers to sell them in-game items for real money that accelerate progress. In Pokémon Go that means buying items like incubators that hatch Pokémon and Lucky Eggs, which double the amount of experience points you earn for 30 minutes. To date I've spent about $100 on Pokémon Go's in-game items. I'm not alone. Experts estimate the game is bringing in $10 million a day from item sales. Grinding, and the avoidance of it, is big business.

* * *

But it still is a grind. Around the time I reached Level 20 I started losing interest in doing things the slow way. It was getting too hard. As you level up in Pokémon Go, you need more and more points to reach the next one. Players refer this to as the “soft cap.” Instead of needing to catch 30 Pidgeys and evolve 10 to level up, I now needed hundreds. Pitting my Pokémon against others in PokéGyms, in-game locations where Pokémon battle to earn coins and score points for your Pokémon team, had proved equally unappealing. Winning battles was just a matter of mindlessly tapping your screen. And why was I supposed to care about being on Team Mystic?

So I did what every entrepreneur does when he hits a roadblock. I pivoted, from leveling up to focusing on catching the 80 or so North American Pokémon I hadn't snagged yet.

But how? The game had initially shipped with a radar feature that told players which Pokémon were nearby and how close they were, but a week after launch it stopped working; as of this week's game update, it's been stripped entirely. Without working radar to collect the rarest Pokémon, I'd have to wait at locations where they were rumored to appear and hope to get lucky. For highly evolved Pokémon like the heavily muscled martial-arts master Machamp and the 5,000 IQ psychic Alakazam, I could catch dozens of their lower forms and evolve them up—but that could take weeks of sitting in my idling car at Beach Chalet.

Fortunately, the internet intervened. While I'd been capturing Pidgeys up and down the Embarcadero, clever developers had reverse-engineered the game, building things on top of it (all in violation of the game's terms of service) and posting them to Reddit. There were data miners, programs that log all the Pokémon that spawn in a given town or city over a period of time so Niantic's algorithms could be analyzed and hopefully cracked. There were bots, programs that play the game on autopilot, catching Pokémon, snagging items, and racking up points. A friend launched a bot on a burner account, fed it the coordinates to the Tate Modern, and went to bed. By morning it had caught hundreds of Pokémon across London and reached Level 15.

But the most important projects were the scanners, programs, websites, and apps that map where Pokémon spawn and how long until they disappear by spoofing player presence at in-game locations and recording what appears. Some argued that using them is cheating, but with the in-game radar broken, they became the only way to see just where Pokémon were hiding.

The answers were sobering. It turns out that while Pokémon appear mostly at random at preset spawn points, the best Pokémon appear much more frequently near the tourist attractions and public spaces common in cities and large metropolitan areas. The scanners broke the illusion that rare Pokémon might appear anywhere at any time and showed rural and suburban players they were getting a raw deal.

On the bright side, the scanners opened up a whole new way to play. I installed one on a private server I SSH into from my phone. I could now actively hunt Pokémon instead of pacing around passively gathering. Thus I kicked off a new routine: Drive to a neighborhood after dark in my trusty 2001 Camry, park, and launch a scan. If it picked up anything good, I'd chart a course in Google Maps and drive to it before the time expired. I was now playing a version of Pokémon Go that looked less like Final Fantasy and more like Grand Theft Auto.

My PokéScanner was super effective. It led me all over San Francisco after dark. It led me around Bernal Heights Park, where I farmed Vulpix with its six gorgeous tails and almost mowed down a wild coyote that darted in front of my car. It led me to Coit Tower where I caught a Lickitung, owner of a 7-foot tongue that sticks to anything, and saw a second coyote jog past me. It led me to the Golden Gate Park lily pond where I caught the dopey Slowpoke in pitch darkness and ran in terror from the sound of something breathing nearby. It led me to Fort Mason to farm blue turtlelike Squirtles in the midst of a J-Pop festival. I had a blast zooming around these places at night, gassing up my car alongside the taxi drivers, scarfing down quesadillas alongside cops, even when I ended up somewhere scary.

A bit after 2 a.m. on Thursday—Day 4 of my new style of gameplay—my scanner showed Pikachu, the iconic yellow electric Pokémon, at Mission Playground with only three minutes left on the clock. I needed to catch three more to evolve one into Raichu, Pikachu's advanced form, so I set off. I arrived in two minutes, pulled into the playground parking area, slammed my brakes and raised my phone. To my delight, there were actually two Pikachu. I caught both. As I basked in my victory, I saw movement in the corner of my eye. I looked up. A dozen men stood in my headlights surrounding my car. I looked at them. They looked at me. They looked unhappy. I gingerly backed out, then sped away. I don't know who they were or why they were hanging out at 2 a.m. in a playground in the heart of Sureño territory, but I didn't want to stick around to find out.

After my week hunting in San Francisco, a work opportunity brought me to New York City. I continued my steady march to a complete Pokédex, though my approach changed. While San Francisco's sprawl promoted a car-centric lone-wolf hunting approach, in Manhattan the serious players congregate in the southeast corner of Central Park and hunt on foot, in packs. This makes for a much more social experience. In the park you'll find players operating free phone-charging stations and others selling discounted drinks and snacks. When someone running a scanner spots a rare Pokémon, like my Chansey, they holler and like clockwork everyone picks up and swarms to that location, traffic be damned.

This collaborative pack-hunter mentality works because Pokémon Go is cleverly designed to never be a zero-sum experience. If a player sees a rare Pokémon like a Blastoise and catches it, she isn't removing it from the game so others can't catch it. Others can all catch it too. This “plenty for everyone” design incentivizes collaboration: sharing nest locations, offering tips to boost scores, and even helping each other get from Point A to Point B.

Last Tuesday night at 2 a.m., I was at the American Museum of Natural History farming Charmander, the lizard Pokémon with a flame tail, with a group I'd just met when one picked up a Dragonite, the rare bright orange dragon, on his scanner on the far east edge of Manhattan. Three of us—me, a Wall Street trader, and a Pizza Hut delivery man—decided to split a cab and go for it. When we got there with seconds to spare and each caught our own Dragonite, it felt like a team victory.

* * *

It's 10:21 p.m. in New York, two nights after my first big miss with Chansey. I am eating a hot dog on 36^th Street when PokéVision picks her up again. Hello, beautiful. She is 14 blocks north at Central Park's southern entrance with 13 minutes on the clock. I toss the dog and hustle to the corner. No taxis anywhere. In desperation I hail a pedicab. As we travel uptown I ask the driver how much it costs. He pauses. “$5 per minute.” I feel like an idiot but can't get too upset since we're making good time up Sixth Avenue. We pull up to the corner and I realize I don't have enough cash to pay and don't have enough time to hit an ATM without losing my shot on Chansey. I tell the driver I need to run across the street for a second “to take a picture” but will be right back. He nods and I slip off to my second date with the pink dream-crusher.

There's a crowd, players who flocked over from the park plaza en masse. I whip out my phone and spot her. Chansey. I let out a whoop when her stats appear. 244 CP. This will be easy. Not willing to risk anything, I feed her a Razz Berry again and reach for my Ultra Balls. This time I'm well-stocked. I wipe a sweaty hand on my jeans and make the first toss. A “Great” hit! The ball opens, emits light, and sucks her in. I raise my fists in triumph and look around for someone, anyone to share the moment with before turning back to the screen … which has frozen. I had run into the dreaded “PokéBall glitch” in which the game freezes randomly after a catch.

With trembling hands I reboot the app and flip to my journal to see if I'd somehow caught her. No Chansey.

* * *

It's been a few days now since I've gone out. That's partly because of the crushing disappointment of twice missing Chansey and partly because I've run low on Pokémon to catch and levels to reach. Much to my girlfriend's relief, my PokéMadness appears to be clearing. Niantic's CEO recently stated he's “not a fan” of the scanner apps, and the company has shut down the most popular ones, like PokéVision. (Mine is safe for now.) It makes sense. What designer likes having his or her design subverted? But roaring around San Francisco in my car at 3 a.m. and biking through an empty Times Square in the wee hours to catch a cartoon monster before he disappears was exhilarating. It let me experience the real world with the heightened awareness and focus that comes from being alone on an urgent mission. Without the scanners or working in-game radar, players will be forced back to gathering whatever Pokémon randomly spring up. It's Niantic's game, and I don't want to sound too grumpy about a thing that's brought me so many fun moments, but I, and many others, will miss being able to play it proactively.

As I come to my senses and return to a regular sleep schedule, it's funny to think that Pokémon Go has, in fact, checked off all the boxes on my post-employment list.

I got exercise: The night I farmed Machop in Midtown on bicycle left me so tired I napped on a bench in Bryant Park before limping back to my hotel. I explored: My girlfriend has long teased me for my lack of knowledge of San Francisco, but after my night crawling I now know where (almost) everything is. (I'm not sure what to think about the fact that it took a video game to prompt this.) And I met people outside my bubble in places like Marina Green, Central Park, and Mission Playground.

But if I'm honest, I did a lot of it for the simple pleasure of going all out at something hard. Maybe, like Walter White, I did it to feel alive. Maybe I did it to fill a startup-shaped void I still have to sort out. I'm pretty sure I worked as hard at this as I did at any single thing in my company. I've yet to catch 'em all, and I'm not sure I ever will, but I'm close.

And I'll be ready. Even now, my Ultra Balls are well-stocked, my spare battery is at 100 percent, and my scanner is running, searching Manhattan for the elusive pink monster who brings happiness to whomever catches her.

Read more in Slate about Pokémon Go.

 
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r0B0t: Creepily realistic Japanese robot can move, make facial expressions and sing all on its own - BT.com  

BT.com

Creepily realistic Japanese robot can move, make facial expressions and sing all on its own BT.com “Alter” is a very clever but slightly unsettling new addition to the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo. 0. Share this. Facebook; Twitter; Google plus; Email; Share. 0. Creepily realistic Japanese robot can move, make facial ... This Japanese Robot Is Proof That Mankind Is DoomedHuffington Post UK Japan Science Museum has singing robot for all to seeNorthern California News Creepy New Robot Worth A Look [Video]Nigeria Today all 5 news articles »

 
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r0B0t: Scientists develop 3D robot that can swim, crawl and climb - Times of India  

Times of India

Scientists develop 3D robot that can swim, crawl and climb Times of India JERUSALEM: In a breakthrough, scientists have developed a three-dimensional (3D) robot that can move forward or backward in a wave-like motion, allowing it to climb over obstacles, swim or crawl through unstable terrain like sand, grass and gravel. Wave robot able to crawl, swim and climb with single motorE&T magazine This wave-propelled robot can swim, crawl and climbThe Indian Express Amazing 'wave' robot can crawl into your stomach, swim around and examine you from the insideMirror.co.uk all 6 news articles »

 
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r0B0t: Engadget giveaway: Win a LattePanda DIY kit courtesy of DFRobot!  
A caffeinated bear with coffee bean eyes is a catchy brand concept, and you'll no doubt want to grab a cup 'o joe for a long dig into this week's LattePanda giveaway package. DFRobot, your online home for expandable electronics and robotics kits, has...  
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r0B0t: ICYMI: Some robots independently sing, others help babies  
Today on In Case You Missed It: A new neural network robot in Japan can independently sing and move whenever it wants to. Researchers developed a robotic onesie for babies who may have cerebral palsy that helps make motor skills connections in th...  
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r0B0t: Professor Emeritus Seymour Papert, pioneer of constructionist learning, dies at 88 - MIT News  

MIT News

Professor Emeritus Seymour Papert, pioneer of constructionist learning, dies at 88 MIT News Seymour Papert, in a 1986 video, discusses computers in schools of the future. Video: MIT ... Children used Logo to program the movements of a “turtle” — either in the form of a small mechanical robot or a graphic object on the computer screen. In his ... and more »

 
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r0B0t: The Fake '80s Slasher Film Seen in the Latest Mr. Robot Episode Is Now Online  

In Season 2's third Mr. Robot episode, homages to Stanley Kubrick abound; the latest episode, “eps2.2_init_1.asec,” finds inspiration in a different cultural artifact: '80s slasher films. In a flashback to the Halloween before the hack, Darlene and Elliot watch a cheesy film from their childhoods, the not-so-subtly named The Careful Massacre of the Bourgeoisie.

Eight minutes of that faux horror film have arrived online, and we get a bit more context here: It's New Years 1985, and a pair of spoiled, bratty siblings anticipate the arrival of their friends to come over and celebrate. The would-be party soon takes a dark turn, however, when an unknown killer—donning the signature mask that would become the face of the Fsociety movement—goes on a rampage. The Careful Massacre takes a page from the Halloween franchise (and its many imitators), echoing the iconic first-person point of view that puts the audience in the villain's shoes. Stylized like an old VHS tape, the video opens with a production logo for “E Corp Home Entertainment”; perhaps in this short film there are underlying clues to the mystery surrounding key plot elements of Mr. Robot? We'll have to wait and see—for now, you can check the film out on the show's website.

 
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r0B0t: Best photographs of the day: dancing robots and a snowy owl chick  

The Guardian's picture editors bring you a selection of photo highlights from around the world, including opera and lord mayors in Yorkshire

Continue reading...  
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r0B0t: John C. Reilly Is Giving One of the Best Performances in TV Comedy Today  

This article originally appeared in Vulture.

From Matthew McConaughey to Rachel McAdams, John Travolta to Jessica Lange, Terrence Howard to Taraji P. Henson, acclaimed actors who travel to television from the big screen tend to bring a lot of attendant hoopla with them—provided their shows air in prime-time, apparently. That's the only reason I can think of that Tony- and Oscar-nominee John C. Reilly isn't regularly showered in praise for what he's been doing on late-night ratings powerhouse Adult Swim on a weekly basis this summer. The star of films ranging from Talladega Nights to We Need to Talk About Kevin, Reilly is anchoring the fourth season of Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brule, the bizarre local-news parody from co-creators Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. (The season finale airs tonight at 12:15 a.m.) Reprising a role he developed over five seasons of the pair's Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, he plays Dr. Steve, the semi-functional host of a disastrous human-interest show. And word to the wise, he's delivering one of the best comedic performances on TV.

It starts with the character's look. Reilly's physical appearance has always served him well as an actor. There's something about the combination of his large frame and round, expressive face that makes him look not so much tall as overgrown, like a child stretched to adult proportions. This gives him an air of vulnerability that belies his size; it lends pathos to his dramatic performances, like the sad-sack cop in Magnolia, and a goofball naïveté to his comedic turns, like the fake music legend in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.  It's how a guy who's six-foot-two can sing the ode to interpersonal invisibility “Mr. Cellophane” in the film adaptation of Chicago and earn an Oscar nomination, or pair up with the relatively diminutive Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights and come across like a natural sidekick.

In these strictly physical terms alone, Dr. Steve is his magnum opus, the idiot man-child he was born to play. Wearing a brown suit that's at least two sizes too small, teasing his curly hair to fright-wig proportions, twisting his mouth and squinting his eyes to give his face a vibe of permanent confusion, Reilly leans into his quirks as Dr. Steve.

It's the sort of role that demands slapstick with an almost Newtonian certainty, and Reilly never fails to rise, or more accurately fall, to the occasion. Dr. Steve stomps, lurches, and bumbles through every segment; even something as simple as standing still and introducing his latest topic can end in physical havoc, with smashed props and toppled glass-brick sets. This being a Tim and Eric production, the pratfalls often stretch into cringe-comedy territory. In last week's episode alone, Brule tripped on the way to the soundstage and cut his head so badly that his producer stapled the wound shut on camera; he got hit hard enough in the head with a baseball bat during a piñata stunt gone wrong that he vomited from the impact. For a performer equally at home in absurd Judd Apatow comedies and painful Paul Thomas Anderson dramas, the blend of funny-ha-ha and funny-yikes is ideal.

But it's the sense that you're watching a toddler in the body of a large middle-aged man that gives Reilly/Brule his best material. Dr. Steve greets his topics—space, friends, cars, music, eggs—with appropriately childlike wonder and delight, his twinkling eyes and introductory shout of “Let's check it out!” evoking Christmas-morning levels of enthusiasm. He reacts to his guests with a complete lack of guile, whether holding their hands and kissing them on the head or announcing their physical flaws to the world like a child ignoring his mother's advice that it's impolite to point. He'll eat anything put within range of his mouth, from seafood out of a dumpster to MDMA offered by a strip-club owner. The result is often gross-out body-fluid humor that Reilly throws himself into with terrifying commitment; the scene in which he “had to go to the bathroom at both ends” after having too much to drink at a leather bar he mistook for a Hell's Angels hangout is the ne plus ultra of the genre. When he gets hurt, insulted, excluded, or frightened, he cries, sulks, panics, and screams so convincingly you want to go get his parents. (Unfortunately, his mother, Dorris Pringle-Brule-Salahari, is an abusive murderer who kept him caged in the basement as a boy after his fry-cook father skipped town, so that rules that out.)

Then there's his voice, a masterful mangling of pronunciation and grammar that's the character's trademark. Back when Brule was a recurring character on Awesome Show, Reilly played him relatively straight, sounding simply dopey rather than deranged. Once he became the star of his own series, however, his speech pattern took a turn for the weird. He adds unnecessary “r”s to the opening consonants of words: “boats” becomes “broats,” “pirate” becomes “prirate,” “puppets” becomes “pruppets,” and so on. (The bit during an episode on fear where he popped out from behind the set and shouted “Broo!” may be the series' funniest moment.) He's incapable of properly pronouncing anyone's name, and he's often not even in the ballpark; those that begin with “D” are especially taxing on him for some reason, and Davids, Dans, and Dons are invariably mangled into something like Dang or Dong or Drungus. The preposition “of” gets a real workout, most memorably when the Doctor discovers that when it comes to American currency, “one of paper equals four of coin.” And there's a mushmouthed quality to his voice throughout, as if he'd been suddenly awoken from a nap just before the camera started rolling. (The overall effect is so strange and singular that it defuses criticism that the character is some sort of mean-spirited ableist stereotype: No real person on Earth sounds like this.)

And as ill at ease as Brule appears in his man-on-the-street segments, he fits right in to the peculiar public-access world Heidecker and Wareheim have built around him. The VHS-distortion effects, the no-budget graphics and set design, the cast of non-actors playing Brule's fellow Channel 5 employees, the occasional eruptions of Mulholland Drivelevel menace amid the ridiculousness: Dr. Steve's solo show is the Tim & Eric aesthetic in its purest form, at a time when the pair's other ventures (notably their bigger-budget recent series Bedtime Stories) have largely moved away from the deliberately crude, visually noisy look that once defined them. As Reilly's collaborators, they seem determined to rise to his level of calculated madness. I don't think it's an exaggeration to compare this relationship to Sam Esmail and Rami Malek on Mr. Robot or Bryan Fuller and Mads Mikkelsen on Hannibal, in the sense that the look and work of the performer enables the filmmaker to take things farther than they otherwise could. That's the mark of a great performance, no matter how odd it looks, or how late you have to stay up to see it.

See also: Watch John C. Reilly and Crispin Glover in Drunk History: Nikola Tesla

 
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r0B0t: Here's How Artificial Intelligence, Robotics Are Edging Into Elite ... - BusinessBecause  

BusinessBecause

Here's How Artificial Intelligence, Robotics Are Edging Into Elite ... BusinessBecause Artificial intelligence (or AI) and robotics are disrupting industries everywhere, and have been for decades. Some 40 years on from their debut, ATMs have ... and more »

 
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r0B0t: HBO's 'Westworld' sci-fi series arrives October 2nd  
JJ Abrams' and Jonathan Nolan's TV adaptation of Westworld hit its share of snags on the way to release (it was originally supposed to debut in 2015), but it's nearly here. HBO has confirmed that the robot-theme-park-gone-wrong show will debut on Oc...  
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r0B0t: What will be the role of humans in a world of intelligent robots? - The Guardian  

The Guardian

What will be the role of humans in a world of intelligent robots? The Guardian While Brexit showed that politicians were detached from the anger of the dispossessed of this country, where are they on the automation of yet more of the jobs that so many people depend on? It seems they are keen to race headlong into a very misty future.

 
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r0B0t: Van Buren schools partner with UAFS, Arkansas Tech to expand student opportunities - Times Record  

Times Record

Van Buren schools partner with UAFS, Arkansas Tech to expand student opportunities Times Record Virtual Arkansas is a virtual school that offers only online courses. ... This is a very exciting program because students can get technical certification and an associates degree if they spend three years or have 26 hours in the robot automation program. and more »

 
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r0B0t: Sunday's Best Deals: Robotic Vacuum, Kindle Ebooks, Lodge Skillet  

Samsung's robotic vacuum, Kindle ebooks, and a Lodge skillet lead off Sunday's best deals.

Bookmark Kinja Deals and follow us on Twitter to never miss a deal. Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more.

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Samsung's powerful robotic vacuum was actually worth it at $1000, so at $600, it's a steal.

http://gizmodo.com/samsung-powerb…

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Need a new beach read? Several popular Kindle ebooks are on sale in today's Amazon Gold Box, starting at just $2.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00…

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00…

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00…

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I know that we espouse the virtues of monochrome laser printers, but if you really need the ability to print in color, Canon's Pixma MX922 is worth your consideration. Carrying a #1 seller badge on Amazon and over 7,000 mostly positive user reviews, this is the rare Inkjet printer that you might not actually hate.

This model sells for $90 pretty consistently, but today, you can snag one for $70.

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Escort's Max II is one of the most advanced radar/laser detectors you can buy, and $400 is the best price Amazon's ever offered. If it saves you from a few speeding tickets, it'll have paid for itself.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NJTNQ82/…

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Everyone should own a cordless hand vacuum for cleaning shelves and car seats, and this Black & Decker has never been cheaper.

https://www.amazon.com/Decker-HNV220B…

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Ready to step up to 4K? This 50" Hisense smart TV carries a 4.1 star review average, and is a great value at $500.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XMUU5KU/…

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In the past few days, we've seen deals on a Lodge cast iron dutch oven and drop biscuit pan (both of which are still available), but today, it's their 10.5" square skillet that's on sale.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00063RWXE/…

http://gear.kinja.com/bestsellers-lo…

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I think this 110 pound barbell set is worth ordering just to see the look on your delivery guy's face when he hauls it to your door.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0040XP7NS/…

CAP's doorway chin-up bar is also on sale today for $10.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017O7Q69A/…

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Want to join the Fitbit club on the cheap? Woot's selling refurbished Flexes ($50), Charges ($70-$85), and Surges ($145), today only.

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Anker's kevlar-wrapped PowerLine cables have been an immediate hit with our readers, and you can upgrade your entire microUSB cable collection today with this $13 6-pack. That's a match for the lowest price ever on this pack, which includes two 1' cables, three 3', and one 6'.

http://bestsellers.kinja.com/bestsellers-an…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015XPU7RC/…

iPhone owners can also grab a 9' (non-PowerLine) Anker Lightning cable for $10.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R4NVPPU/…

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The new DJI Phantom 4 sure looks impressive, but for $500 less, you can pick up the still-completely-amazing Phantom 3 Professional today, plus a spare battery, a carrying case, and even a 2TB external hard drive. To put it simply, that's one of the best drone deals we've ever seen.

http://gizmodo.com/dji-phantom-3-…

You'll lose out on features like the (finnicky) accident avoidance, but the camera is still 4K, and it'll last over 20 minutes on a single charge.

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Here's everything you need to make fancy-ass drinks at home for just $16. Except, you know, the booze.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004LD54OO/…

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If you're a student, or know one that will lend you their identity, you can stream every out of market NFL game, plus Red Zone channel and DirecTV Fantasy Zone for just $100 for the full season.

I had this last year, and it made it incredibly easy to watch my Atlanta Falcons piss away a promising start to the season. You can stream on just about any laptop, tablet, smartphone, or game console. When you sign up though, you'll need to supply a valid school, student name, and birthdate, though oddly enough, not a .edu email address.

Just note that you'll only be able to stream out of market games, so you'll need an antenna to watch anything on your local Fox or CBS affiliate, and it won't get you access to nationally televised games on NBC or ESPN.

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Summer isn't kind to your wiper blades, so if you've been struggling to see the road through streaks on your windshield, Amazon's offering up a pair of Bosch Insight Blades for just $22 right now. Just pick the two you need, add them to your cart, and the discount should appear automatically. The deal even allows you to mix and match sizes, so you can almost certainly find a combination that will work for your car.

Note: The discount will only work on blades shipped and sold by Amazon directly. No third party sellers.

Tech

• Quick Charge 2.0, Anker 36W Dual USB Car Charger PowerDrive+ 2 | $17 | Amazon
• Monoprice Molded S/PDIF Optical Toslink Audio Cable | $3 | Amazon
• Hisense 50-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV | $500 | Amazon
• Canon PIXMA MX922 Wireless Inkjet Office All-In-One WiFi Printer CD/DVD Printing | $70 | eBay
• Westinghouse - 32" Class (31.5" Diag.) - LED - 720p - HDTV | $100 | eBay
• CyberPower LE825DG Simulated Sine Wave UPS PC Battery Backup | $70 | Woot
• Refurb 432278 BR-30 Hue Starter Pack Bonus Kit, First Generation | $120 | Woot
• Refurb Arris SB6183 Dual-Thread Processor DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem | $60 | Woot

Home

• Samsung - POWERbot Cleaning Robot Vacuum | $600 | eBay
• Holmes 36 Inch Oscillating Tower Fan with Remote Control | $40 | Amazon
• Black & Decker Black+Decker HNV220BCZ01FF Compact Lithium Hand Vacuum | $32 | Amazon
• Escort Max ll HD Radar Detector | $400 | Amazon
• Lodge Pre-Seasoned Cast-Iron Square Skillet, 10.5-inch | $22 | Amazon
• Anchor Hocking 8-Ounce Triple Pour Measuring Cup | $9 | Amazon
• Car Floor Mats for All Weather Rubber 4pc Set Tactical Fit Heavy Duty Black | $19 | eBay
• Insignia - 5.0 Cu. Ft. Chest Freezer | $140 | Best Buy
• Hoover - WindTunnel 3 Air Pro Bagless Upright Vacuum | $130 | Best Buy

Lifestyle

• Refurb Fitbits (Various Models) | $50-$145 | Woot
• Wilker Survival Kit Emergency SOS Survive Tool Pack | $11 | Amazon
• CAP Barbell Regular Grey 110-Pound Weight Set | $90 | Amazon
• CAP Doorway Chin Up Bar | $10 | Amazon
• ASICS Men's GEL-Zaraca 4 Running Shoes | $30 | eBay
• MLB Team-Licensed Men's Polos | $25 | Woot

Gaming

• Far Cry Primal | $30 | Amazon

Media

• Kindle Ebook Gold Box | Amazon
• Star Trek Voyager: Seasons 1-7 [47 Discs] [DVD] | $160 | Best Buy

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Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more, and don't forget to sign up for our email newsletter. We want your feedback.

 
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r0B0t: HBO's robot cowboy drama 'Westworld' to premiere in October  

HBO's Westworld premieres on Oct. 2 at 9 p.m., just shy of two years after it was first announced in 2014.

The series is inspired by the late Michael Crichton's 1973 film in which a future-world amusement park's lifelike robots malfunction and start murdering guests. The HBO take, created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, expands on that premise in a way that touches on current tech trends.

Nolan explained in a prepared statement that he'd like the show to ask the question, "If you could be completely immersed in a fantasy, one in which you could do whatever you wanted, would you discover things about yourself that you didn't want to know?" Read more...

More about Tv, Entertainment, Hbo, and Westworld  
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r0B0t: Partnership aims to expand student opportunies - Times Record  

Times Record

Partnership aims to expand student opportunies Times Record Virtual Arkansas is a virtual school that offers only online courses. ... This is a very exciting program because students can get technical certification and an associates degree if they spend three years or have 26 hours in the robot automation program. and more »

 
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r0B0t: Artificial Intelligence May Soon Drive Your Car -- And Keep You Company at the Same Time - Fox Business  

Artificial Intelligence May Soon Drive Your Car -- And Keep You Company at the Same Time Fox Business The robot's AI can already recognize mood swings in humans. And both of the companies have made recent investments in artificial intelligence thatwill assist their partnership: Honda just built a new AI lab and SoftBank is researching cloud-based AI ...

 
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r0B0t: Watch the Amazing Opening Sequence of the Westworld TV Show (From 1980)  

At Saturday's Television Critics Association press tour, HBO's new president of programming Casey Bloys and Westworld executive producer Lisa Joy both faced questions about the sexualized violence against women in their upcoming TV adaptation of Michael Crichton's 1973 film. Their answers didn't seem to satisfy the assembled critics, particularly after they'd seen the show's first episode, which reportedly opens with the off-screen rape of a robot played by Evan Rachel Wood. Audiences won't have the chance to judge for themselves whether or not HBO has made yet another show that fetishizes violence against women until its Oct. 2 premiere date—the only footage available from the show is this month-old trailer. But if you just can't wait to watch Westworld on TV, you're in luck, because HBO is 26 years late to the party. For three glorious weeks in the spring of 1980, America lived, laughed, and learned with the killer androids of Westworld.

The show was called Beyond Westworld, and was a direct spinoff rather than a reboot (though, thankfully, it seems to have ignored the cloning plot in sequel Futureworld). It was developed and produced by Lou Shaw, a TV veteran whose career stretched back to Studio 57 (he was the co-creator of Quincy, M. E.). Westworld, in its half-assed way, had asked questions about the nature of consciousness and the ethics of creating, then mistreating, sentient machines. Beyond Westworld, in contrast, asked the question, “What if the robots in Westworld were killing the patrons not because they'd developed any form of self-awareness, but because a deranged mad scientist was secretly controlling them?”

The correct answer, of course, is “everything interesting about the film becomes irrelevant,” but CBS's answer was, “that same deranged scientist will use robots to try to take over the world,” and they presented that answer to the country for an hour on Wednesday nights at 8:00, starting March 12, 1980. In each episode, the head of security for Westworld's Delos Corporation (Jim McMullin) and his sidekick (Connie Sellecca) must try to identify a robot hiding among humans in places as varied as a nuclear submarine and a rock band. In the promo clip above, you can see the exposition scene from the show's first episode, which restages scenes from the film without Yul Brynner,incidentally making it very clear that the best thing about the film was always Yul Brynner.

In retrospect, CBS may have decided the show was a dud before it even aired, because they put the hour-long drama against the highly-rated Real People at NBC and Eight is Enough at ABC, a decision that Variety said guaranteed it would be “chopped into rating hamburger.” Variety was right, and CBS cancelled the show after only two episodes had aired. “They apparently want instant gratification or nothing,” Shaw told the Los Angeles Times when the show was shut down. The next week, the third episode aired—as in the premiere, the robots had gained access to a nuke—and the remaining two episodes never made it to the screen until Warner Archive released the complete (5-episode) series in 2014.

It's possible, and even likely, that HBO's series will be better than a failed mid-season replacement from 1980. But there's one thing the first Westworld had that premium cable will never be able to duplicate: terrible commercials. So as a bonus, here are the original ads that ran with Beyond Westworld's first episode on Cleveland, Ohio's CBS affiliate. From Michael Jackson celebrating Disneyland's 25^th anniversary to Tony Randall selling spaghetti sauce, the ads are more star-studded than the show ever dreamed of being. It's a reminder that the first time anyone tried to make a show about killer cowboy robots, everyone took it a lot less seriously. It wasn't HBO, after all—it was television.

 
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r0B0t: Lessons from Brexit and learning to better communicate robotics research and innovation - Robohub  

Lessons from Brexit and learning to better communicate robotics research and innovation Robohub Hilary Sutcliffe and MATTER have been working with the University of Sheffield across a number of departments and faculties to create an agenda for future responsible research and innovation; more than merely putting plasters over public concerns, we ...

 
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