What chess engines lack, in my opinion, is the ability to play the natural moves.

If I were designing such algorithms, yes, I would look for solutions to make the computer play better, but I’d also look for solutions to make it play like a human.

99% of the players playing chess can’t even dream of ever beating a computer at the top level. So, they change the difficulty of the algorithm lower. What happens next is that the computer plays either incredibly good moves, or very poor ones, but they all look artificial. A human won’t be either very good or very poor, but on an overall line. Playing against the computer is chaos. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be like this.

For example, a human chess player will always look at the last moved piece, but it might ignore a piece that is not in the center of the action. A human is also more likely to see one or two moves ahead, but not a lot. A human will overlook, at times, checkmate, while a chess engine almost never, even a weak one.

Citește mai departeChess engines

I’m amazed by life. People, things, happenings, events, movies, books, encounters, emotions, principles. And also the dark side, the fail, the fear, the lack of courage, missing ethics.

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”

― Helen Keller, The Open Door.

And a video:

But it is! It is a daring adventure! I’m in awe! I’m surprised! Give me more!

Citește mai departeLife is amazing!

A quote:

Murray Campbell of IBM was part of the Deep Blue project. As he says, chess computers do play differently. They make moves that sometimes make no sense to their human opponents.
“Computers don’t have any sense of aesthetics or patterns that are standard the way people learn how to play chess,” Campbell says. “They play what they think is the objectively best move in any position, even if it looks absurd, and they can play any move no matter how ugly it is.”

(via »)

Machines think in standard ways. In chess, they play so well that most likely no human can currently beat them in a 100 matches game.

Yet, their moves in chess look weird to humans.

What can you get out of this? If you find a good solution, don’t ask 10 people if they think your solution is any good, they will most likely refer to conformity and say “it’s not conform to what I think, thus is not valid”.

Instead, ask them how you can perfect the idea, how can t get better understood, how they would better resonate with that idea.

Citește mai departeEmotions inspired by machines

Sometimes I write a message at times such as Friday evening, Saturday mornings, National Holidays, things like that. I know the message I write won’t get read if I send it right away, so I use Gmail’s Schedule Send feature and send the message on a time like Monday morning, 8 AM, or things like that.

The thing is, if I write the message Friday, and it only gets sent Monday, by that time I usually forget that I’ve sent the message. It’s not on my working memory, anyway.

So, if I were to send the message right away, as far as I can tell, there would be a more likely chance that I’ll remember it.

That’s why “Posting in advance is not advanced posting” – it is, from this perspective, a bit silly, rather.

Citește mai departePosting in advance is not advanced posting

I’ve seen “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (2000). Thoughts? (with spoilers!)

Citește mai departeOn “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (2000)

I like to read Hacker News. Lots of very cool information.

The thing is – there are loads of IT guys in the world and fewer online marketing ones. Both of the worlds blog a lot.

So, it may be so – from a large pool of data, it may be that HN can get some good articles.

Still, it makes me a bit envious of not being in IT. :)

I like “their” news better.

Citește mai departeNews of the news