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  1. Re: Machine learning game strategies on AI System Invents New Card Games (For Humans) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We use several forms of evolutionary programming in several sections of the learning systems' areas.

    There are hybridized genetic algorithms in the portions involving the strategy blending evolution system, which does a few different forms of strategy selection pressure and evolution controls, which is critical due to training time to not cause premature convergence or genetic instability.

    Additionally, we introduce additonal factors such a genetic drift and migration so that out competing strategies can evolve independently as the explore the strategy plane.

    There are macro level evolution techniques to handle the complexity growth of the strategy species, so that the complexity can be altered depending on how "advanced" the system needs to be. In a simple sense of a turn based game, it would equate to the number of plies or analysis depth you would go. For more complex multiobjective systems, like military tactics involving minimizing casualties, civilian losses, maximizing kill or capture of enemy units, minimizing structural damage to infrastructure, etc., then it modifies the strategy complexity. For example, you could send eveyone with guns to kill everyone, or you could parallel it on intelligence gathering with drone units to direct fire, long range snipers or diversionary tactics, or factoring logistical support costs.

    A lot of the core work is maximizing the efficiency of the evolutionary strategies, as they are the biggest fator in learning time. It's really easy to write inefficient logic that ends up taking much longer to arrive at good solutions without getting lost due to too much noise or oscillation in the system.

    Another method that is used is a version of PSO, which is used to optimize subsections of the strategy (depending on what we are trying to find a solution to) that further get to optimal solutions.

    So a lot of bachelors level CS is used. Although a lot of customization has been done, the benefit is it uses a lot of basic concepts, and utilized processing power rather than trying to algorithmically come up with solutions. Also, it can be continuously adaptable so it adjusts to situational changes. The strategy isn't locked, it can be reacts based on changes to frontier so to speak. If your opponent changes what they're doing, or doing something new, it can adjust itself to that.

  2. Re:Machine learning game strategies on AI System Invents New Card Games (For Humans) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Let me clarify that, as that statement was misleading.

    We don't program what winning is as any function of the strategy. The system comes up with several strategies, which all play against each other. At the end of a series of competitions, a strategy is told "Hey, you played against a bunch of different people, you won more than the rest. We don't define what winning is, how it won, or even what winning is, we just tell the system that strategy 1532 was the best. The system knows what strategies work better than others, so it can learn what methods are more successful. The system doesn't know why it won, just that when it made certain decisions it won more often. We don't even tell it on each game, we tell it after an aggregation of multiple competitions how it did. By comparing all the strategies it tried, then it develops better and more complex ways to win (which we didn't tell it how to do).

    Even more interesting is when it comes up with what is considered doctrinal tactics that humans have arrived at to win as well (or statistically increase the chances of such) although no such logic was included in the programming.

    The benefit to this is that although it takes a LONG time to develop "good" strategies, it comes up with completely unique and novel approaches to winning, even though it doesn't know how exactly it won, only that its strategy wins more than everyone else.

    The benefit to us is we just tell it the game rules, we don't have to come up with any specific playing algorithm, the learning system figures that out. We just tell it the rules, whether they are concrete like in chess (bishops move diagonally, pawns move one, or start with two, etc) or variable rules based on other complexity factors. Whether its poker or chess or military tactics, the systems job is to come up with the strategy. How good or complex that strategy is allowed to be, is a function of how much processing time we want to give the system to learn the best way to win.

  3. Machine learning game strategies on AI System Invents New Card Games (For Humans) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    On a tangentally related idea, we're working on a project of machine learning to take games and the rules of play, then derive strategy based on the rules.

    Nothing particularly new, except we don't define what winning is, just the rules of the game. No hint is given to what constitutes good play, or even what "playing" is. Although it is a very slow process depending on game complexity (learning can take weeks and sometimes months of processing time), it requires no real programming effort, beause we don't have to know what "good" play is or some series of algorithms; it produces better and better tactics and strategies of play during the learning process, by experimenting with the rules, how to play, and such.

    What's cool about this, is that you can watch it teaching itself different strategies and tactics. Some of the "tactics" it creates are many times counter intuitive or plain bizarre, but based on the overall strategies it develops, allows for some really different playing experiences as it doesn't follow human game logic based on experience with "similar" games or "intuition".

  4. Re:Nothing New on North Korea Declares a State of War · · Score: 1

    I was browsing the library the other day and looking at, of all things, congressional record minutes which is utterly boring as hell. I was only in that section because, for some reason, in the opposite aisle was the book I wanted, about Samuel T. Cohen. I've never understood why university libraries are always set up in bizarre ways.

    So I browsed one of these old congressional record books, and saw a section, ironially, about neutron bombs being discussed, with a fascinating discussion of the neutron bomb in committee. The best part was by a young Al Gore FOR neutron bombs (rather than against as I would have thought), and quite stridently so.

    I thought it was maybe because of the environmentally friendly nature of such weapons, originally designed to irritate soviet tank blitzes, but I highly doubt he was even into environmental concerns that much in the past.

  5. Re:So France should fix it on Twitter Sued For $50M For Refusing To Identify Anti-Semitic Users · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Exactly. This is an issue for France vs. Internet. Not France vs. Twitter.

    If France decides it really doesn't want to hear tweets about Blue vs. Red states in the U.S., then they can bloody well create Le Carnivore on their own dime and filter those evil horrid thoughts that makes Jews or activists or whiners who never learned to deal with the world go Boo Hoo..

    This is like your little sister crying to mom because you said 'girls have cooties' instead of her cowgirling up and learning to deal with it. Don't want to hear about cooties? Solve your own problems. Don't like people being anti-semitic because it twists your nads? Handle your own homeland. Don't complain because someone, somewhere, is saying something you find "offensive". And stop bowing down to every sociopathic "activist" who thinks words kill rather than actual violence.

    Clearly France needs to hire Adria Richards to manage their twitter relations.

  6. ...and the moral is... on 41 Months In Prison For Man Who Leaked AT&T iPad Email Addresses · · Score: 1

    Don't snitch.

  7. Apollo 18 on A Moon Base Made From Lunar Dust · · Score: 1

    I know all about how the Apollo program went.. The moondust will just walk off, then kill everyone. Screw that.

  8. Worker Bees on Caffeine Improves Memory In Bees · · Score: 4, Funny

    But does this increase bee's productivity? Can we improve that productivity with 6-sigma? Let's have discussion during the break-out.

  9. Good for Disney on Scientists Have Re-Cloned Mice To the 25th Generation · · Score: 1

    I'd been hoping for a live action Clone Wars on Ice.

  10. Yay on Global Temperatures Are Close To 11,000-Year Peak · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Finally, winter has been a bitch.

    Also, thanks to prudent home buying I'll get ocean front property while getting it at cut rate prices.

    Why do I care if the earth gets warmer, say, to Jurassic levels?

    Benefits: We get great new places to live in northern Canada, Siberia, Greenland, etc. Billions of tons of food will be able to be grown where it never has been before. Due to outcry, really polluting industries clean up their act so I don't have to smell there disgusting dumping all over the neighborhood.

    Cons: Whining rich people with ocean front property go Wah Wah because my house is the new ocean front property. New Jersey is eliminated to make new cleaner beaches. New York returns to New Amsterdam and is a beautiful playground of water traffic like Venice and is still irritating as hell. Doomsday preppers act smug around everyone else. Florida is eliminated, easing political issues from there, but at the same time frees up billions in social security liabilities and 401K assets.

    Sounds like an even push to me. It's going to happen whether we want it to, attempt to stop it, go back to the stone ages and live in caves, or pray to Allah. 11,000 years after that there will be glaciers down all the way into the Socialist Republic of New Texas.

    So calm the fuck down about religion, deniers, AGW, man made causes, SUVs, smug ass Californians, and Al Gore. Just realize accordingly, spend less money on ski equipment and more money on boats.

  11. Re:Not really surprising on Most Doctors Don't Think Patients Need Full Access To Med Records · · Score: 2

    Some doctors will argue that by allowing the patient full access to the notes in the system, a doctor may be less frank about the mental condition of the patient or be reluctant to place information in the record which reflects poorly on the patient's demeanor, such as cooperativeness, a tenancy toward hypochondria, or just plan belligerence. In their defense, this honesty could lead to lawsuits (in the worst cases).

    If they are less frank, then doctors are adding opinions and personal biases, not facts. If they don't stand behind their diagnosis or professional medical opinion, then they are a failure and it should be well known to everyone, especially the patient. If doctors are able to say "Patient is non-cooperative" that's an opinion with no context that can cause the patient immeasurable harm by other doctors looking at that and either denying treatment or not moving forward with a dagnosis because they are led to believe the patient is a problem. "Bitch didn't show me her tits, she's 'non-cooperative', and probably 'bipolar'." No doctor should have any power like that, and it sure as hell shouldn't be hidden in some "permanent" record that the patient doesn't get to see.

    Now, the best way to combat this is to allow comments on the records by patients. It will keep some of the sillyness out of records (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/The-Last-Page-UBI-in-the-Knife-and-Gun-Club.html) and will allow legitimate differences of opinions.

    How will I, as a patient, be able to have a legitimate difference of opinion if I'm not allowed to see what's in there? If the doctor secretly noted that I was "refusing to take pain medication, patient is masochist" or "patient didn't accept pain is in their head", how can I comment on this information?

    Another item of concern is from the insurer's side. There will be people who attempt to expunge their records of items which decrease their insurability or increase their rates (and this will only get worse with mandatory insurance without cost caps or guaranteed rates).

    ...and that's the whole problem with obamacare, universal healthcare, and insurance in the first place. I should be able to have whatever facts are in my history for the sole purpose of discussing treatment with medical professionals in a secured, private way. All the idiots were convinced that a law that now forces everyone to buy insurance whether they want it or not, now guarantees that you'll be screwed as maximally as possible. Believe it or not my life is more important that a bureaocrat's agenda, and insurance company's profit margin, or some doctors psychotic break. I don't mean in the case of insurance fraud, I mean in the case of "Well, you admitted that in 1972 you smoked 3 cigarettes, so you are not covered for lung cancer decades later." or "based on the fact that you privately admitted you tried marijuana in college, you are ineligible for a liver transplant since most likely drinking caused you liver damage because all out social scientist bureauocrats say that its a gateway drug. And we need to cut funding that anyway because of the recent political weather tells us that we need to shore up the banking industry."

    Pretty much all this is going to do is drive people to cash only doctors, fake identities, outright lying, and, as you said, editing and falsifying medical records, because "permanent record" no longer screws you out of a job in your city, it now screws you out of life anywhere in the country.

  12. Re:Government control of your most private propert on EU To Vote On Proposal That Could Ban All Online Pornography · · Score: 1

    "Government control of your moist private property"

    Fixed it for you.

  13. Thank God For Govt. Control on EU To Vote On Proposal That Could Ban All Online Pornography · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Calls on the Member States to establish independent regulation bodies with the aim of controlling the media and advertising industry and a mandate to impose effective sanctions on companies and individuals promoting the sexualisation of girls;"

    Thank God. I was worried because we hadn't had a strong government control over the media since the 1930s in Europe. I look at this as positive signs of a strengthening EU, and the champion of this should be Germany, what with them having the only sound economic basis.

    I wasted time reading the whole "proposal". I'm not sure why they couldn't have just used the word "citizens" or "people" instead of micromanaging it to "girls" and "women". Next you'll need every other damn subgroup there is. Why the hell can't they just say "We seek to limit discrimination and sterotyping of citizens based on religion , national original, gender, whatever"...why do they always have to divide and conquer? Other than the obvious reasons.

    This proposal sucks. Not the least of which they keep spelling it "Labour". They sound like a bunch of damn Canadians.

  14. Re:Very simple on The Wall That Knows If You're a Criminal · · Score: 1

    It works just like our cops - it looks at the color of your skin: if your skin is somewhat darker, you are a criminal!

    Perhaps that's the software engineering behind this. It doesn't so much have a neural network looking at the precise differences between the relative positions of facial elements, the system is much simpler to design.

    1. Convert scanned image to greyscale.

    2. If greyscale_value > const_michael_jackson_value then

    3. Full body cavity search.

    3. Otherwise, upgrade passenger to First Class

  15. Re:Face scan? on The Wall That Knows If You're a Criminal · · Score: 1

    My mistake.

    Minority Report!

  16. Face scan? on The Wall That Knows If You're a Criminal · · Score: 4, Funny

    Phrenology!

  17. No Big Thing on NCTC Gets Vast Powers To Spy On U.S. Citizens · · Score: 1

    This is no big thing, The reason for the need to be able to look up anyone without warrants is so they can apply analytics to the data. With all the data being stored in the big new data centers, limited counter-terrorism resources can be applied in a correct fashion. With this option they can apply a sophisticated neural network or equivalent to look at all the data items and see if there is any pattern match for those who might hit a correlation for what constitutes a "terrorist" based on location, movement, associations, background, etc.

    Domestic terrorism will be up one day, so by having systems in place they have a better idea of where to allocate drone surveillance resources, human intel on the ground, allocate training and information for law enforcement, etc.

    For example, right now you "might" get a lot of hits in the Detroit area as they have a large arab population (assuming arabs are correlated with terrorists), whereas in the future it might be militia types who hang out at gun shows, have particular criminal backgrounds, spent time at a prison known as a breeding ground for certain terrorism related gangs, etc. Another hit might be large sales of fertilizer and diesel fuel in known extreme anti-government areas. It's much easier to know where you might need to investigate if you can apply automated analytics to volume data, rather than hoping Sherriff Boscoe calls in a question about why he finds blocks of C4 all over his county.

    It's not just assuming everything happens in New York City so you put all your people there. Getting and properly analyzing this data might notice that a particular state or region might be hiding a training or bomb making facility. Being able to to a target a possible area, quietly, is a lot better than having to randomly hassle everyone. Although everyone "could" be a terrorist, the chances are that mostly people with certain habits and criteria are going to have a higher chance of being one. Doesn't make it right but "profiling" potential targets could be more useful than randomly searching my 80 year old grandma from Fargo with a rubber glove and lots of lube.

    Counter-terrorism is a difficult job and has to pull in intelligence and analysis from a large number of sources, so while different agencies may have the data, they may not have all the data they need to give them ideas of where to apply themselves, so it's no surprise that they are looking for vast swaths of data to try and give indications of where to put their efforts. It's a parallel to if they needed a lot of satellite imagery from NRO, NASA, etc. to make analytical decisions. I'd prefer not having random government agents doing telemetry against my shopping, game,and internet behaviors, but at the same time, if volumetric data analysis helps assess me as not being a person of interest, and focuses that attention somewhere else more useful, I'm less worried about it.

  18. pr00gers on Do Recreational Drugs Help Programmers? · · Score: 1

    Studies have been done where they tested learning, while under the influence of alcohol, cannabis, etc. and later tested these individuals on the learned material.

    They found that testing improved when they were under the influence if they had learned under the influence. Cramming all night eating pot brownies would show better test results if you did pot brownies when taking a test on the material.

    Note: These were small, level 1, doses here, not baking yourself into oblivion or drinking until you passed out.

    From a programming standpoint, which usually is not a one day coding effort on real projects, do you think that would that require maintaing a semi-constant "high" or drug effect to aid in the project? If you've developed code following a certain way of thinking, would going dry alter your thinking enough to cause programming inconsistencies to what you first designed?

    On another note, I personally make and use psychedelics. I find them to be tremendously useful in allowing you to think is amazing new ways. Not every idea has ended up past the drawing board, but I've been able to construct completely different ways to do something that I had never even thought of doing before, which is one of the nice side effects of the particular psychedelics (the mind expanding type) that I make. I've had some great strides in developing different topologies for neural networks and training them directly related to the ideas brought on from the use of these substances which did not require me to use them after the initial "idea" was come across

    Is it good? Bad? For me they work. But then I take them specifically for mind expansion. Most people I know, who do weed or booze, is for depression or stress relief. I don't see someone sitting in a bar drinking whiskey because they want to find new spiritual meaning. I can't speak for weed, but most I know use it for relaxation or have fun, not to gain new insights. Or maybe they do. Any weed smokers do it purely for the intellectual opportunities?

    Anyone else use psychedelics to try new avenues of thinking?

  19. Bad doggie. on Supreme Court Hearing Case On Drug-Sniffing Dog "Fishing Expeditions" · · Score: 1

    Maybe the problem is that they think the dogs are trained to smell drugs, when they just smell pigs. It's no surprise that the the dogs always happen to detect drugs when the cops are with them.

    Correlated? Causal? Who knows.

  20. Halloween 2012 on Scientists Move Closer To a Universal Flu Vaccine · · Score: 1

    ...and queue the opening credit sequence, the soundtrack, and the scenes of the population being mass innoculated before the "rage virus" mutation overtakes New York.

  21. Re:What could possibly go wrong? on New Cell-To-Cell Communication Process Could Revolutionize Bioengineering · · Score: 3

    There is no outcome to this that doesn't end up with all of us dead, or praying for depth. Wasn't this the same idea behind the movie "Mimic"? Bioengineering things without any thought to what would happen in the end?

  22. Sounds Risky on New Cell-To-Cell Communication Process Could Revolutionize Bioengineering · · Score: 1

    Am I the only one who sees this in the first 3 minutes of a movie, followed by a scene with a caption "6 months later...".

  23. Not First on New Cell-To-Cell Communication Process Could Revolutionize Bioengineering · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Not first post!

  24. My ass on Book Review: Digital Forensics For Handheld Devices · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If I want it preserved, I'll copy it to local storage or upload it to the cloud if I so choose. Other than that, if I hit the wipe button there better be smoke coming from it.

    If I wanted it "preserved" I wouldn't be wiping it out in the first place.

  25. What I use on Ask Slashdot: What Tech For a Sailing Ship? · · Score: 1

    I've been coastal sailing for years, and I've tricked out quite a bit of electronics (nerdgasm) even though my boat is only a 30'.

    There are quite a bit of high end touchscreen nav panels out there. I use a garmin integrated system that gives me satellite weather info, radar, sonar, GPS, etc. all in one panel.

    From using it I can say that its a good idea to have two panels, one inside and one in the helm, because when you're anchored and down below and you have no idea what's going on outside, it's nice to be able to look and see incoming weather, wind, nearby boats, or just plot a course without having to go outside into either the freezing rain or 100% humidity, 100 degree heat, buck naked at 3am to see what's up when.

    Now GPS is great, but they are basically just charts, and you can rely on just a hand held if you have a lesser budget (you ARE getting all your paper charts right?) but if you want something more useful, get radar. GPS looks neat and you can track plots and such, but in an unfamiliar anchorage or in the middle of the ocean, it doesn't help in the slightest, especially when the chart was last updated in 1978. Radar, however, gives you real time info, and shows you everyone around you at an anchorage, can have alarms set for things getting inside a circle range of concern, can ping on every 15 minutes and warn you of problems, shows you were the markers are when it's pitch black and foggy and you can't see a damn thing and GPS swears marker 23 is there, but you don't see it anywhere, etc. Really can't push radar as requirement enough.

    That having been said, most of what you really need is low tech. Not counting rescue level equipment (EPIRB and Sat phone), having extra plugs for broken throughholes, long poles to pull seaweed out of your engine water intake (everything in the world gets sucked in there), snakes to clear out your head when your tank back flows on you, hand pumps for when your bilge pump gets clogged full of the wifes tampons and your floor has a foot of water, etc.

    But for all the tech stuff, you need power. And more power than necessary. You need to do a power budget of every watt, and every watt hour, and be very generous. There's nothing like seeing your battery bank decreasing (with your voltmeter you bought right?) and realizing you didn't really need the DVD player running all night that some jackass left on. At least two battery banks, and the correct starting vs. deep cycle batteries. Don't use "hybrid" types that can be used both ways, not a good idea.

    Multiple ways to charge said power banks. Solar, more than you need (as the sails, seagulls, and everything else drop your power generation to zero). Have a wind system (great wattage can be brought in when it's breezy but the sun is behind clouds) and a back up towed generator just in case.

    Compute your watts and watt hours and know exactly how long you can leave your radar and GPS running while on pure sail power. Can you get through an entire night without your batteries dropped to almost nothing? Is it mathematically proven?

    Personally I don't use refrigerators or freezers, they use WAY to much power and they're really not worth it to me, mainly because they're a constant drain on the system, and I don't like any continuous drain as you only need to screw up once and drain your batteries in an unfamiliar dock that forgets to turn your power cable on or flips it off in the middle of the night by accident.

    Your boat is an island. You're the only electrician, plumber, garbage man, and doctor there. Get anitbiotics from your doctor that can survive non-cold temperatures if you're going world wide and any other medications you need, because you won't be finding them in the middle of nowhere, and most circumnavigations are leaving you at the whim of the third world.

    So I'd recommend radar to show you what's really going on (GPS doesn't show you a cargo ship heading straight at you at 3am), an absolutely bullet prood, and over powered power-plan of your exac