Category: Uncategorized

Claude Maginot would be real proud of me right now.

In the future, there will be robots. I don’t think anybody can deny this, since there’s evidence of this truth surfacing every day. With every release, your phone or computer gets closer to being a robot. You can talk to your phone and it’ll do stuff for you. It’ll even talk back. Pretty soon you’ll be able to talk to the computer in your house to open the blinds or turn on the shower.

I’m concerned that we has humans won’t be able to tell when to draw the line. I might just be scared from watching a lot of robot-apocalypse movies (I’ve seen like three), but I just can’t help it. When you hear about things like machine learning and Cleverbot, you begin to wonder how far intelligent robotics can be taken. Cleverbot was basically written by a guy in his basement. What can a multi-million dollar enterprise company like Google or Amazon do? Google has already made self-driving cars, and they’re incredibly good at what they do. With these advancements, it’s hard to imagine a future where self-driving cars is not everywhere. But when all the self-driving cars are on a grid, that makes it incredibly easy for someone to hack into the grid and control all the cars, doesn’t it?

Here. Consider this scenario. A company makes an intelligent anti-virus software that automatically alters itself when it comes into contact with a new type of virus. It quarantines the virus, identifies its properties and makes the computer immune to the same properties henceforce. Then it sends a message with a change to every iteration of itself on other machines across the internet instantaneously. Boom. Virus database has been updated.

Then a malicious user from the depths of Africa decides to use a similar algorithm, only in reverse. His virus scans the anti-virus software for security holes and alters itself to fit right into that hole. It’s the perfect virus. It can bore its way into any anti-virus software.

Until it meets the intelligent anti-virus software. Now we’re faced with the dilemma of having an unstoppable virus faced with an unbreachable anti-virus software. An unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, if you will. There’s one way this scenario can end: every computer that has the anti-virus software installed and has the virus will be the front lines for the greatest cybersecurity war ever and be destroyed in the process. Eventually one side would win, and both sides will suffer casualties.

Imagine if this happened not on computers but on robots. Our home robots that we will inevitably have, giving us a helping hand around the house. There will be permanent damage to everything we know. Maybe even explosions.

Whatever happens in the future, I’m not exactly looking forward to it.

I’ve been a redditor for a while now, and it pains me to say it. I don’t like having this label, mostly because I hate Reddit. I had the following thoughts when I first started to use it, and I decided to hold off on the blog post for a while to see whether I still have the same feelings further down the road.

I do.

I started using reddit around January of 2013 while watching Apex 2013, a Super Smash Bros. Melee competition on Twitch. I was glad to have found the smashbros subreddit because there was very little exposure for the game and its tournaments at the time–I had watched some videos from the tournament, “Melee-FC10R” after having become curious about where the game had gone. At this point there were only about 8,000 people subscribed to the subreddit (look at it now!). I created an account a few months later so I could ask questions to get better at Melee.

Before that, I had heard lots about reddit and had my own opinions on what redditors were like. It’s not hard for me to say that my assumptions weren’t completely wrong. Redditors are among the most crass, unoriginal people on the internet, yet this somehow attracts people. The site is literally a place to dump things that you’ve found elsewhere on the internet. There may be discussions within, but more often than not you’ll find it vain. Reddit comments usually devolve into either rehashed memes or arguments about some personal opinion that doesn’t matter (but I appreciate the puns). The only exceptions are if there’s a good question asked on /r/AskReddit or on specialty subreddits where people have specific answers to specific questions.

The biggest problem with Reddit is that it’s based on a point system integrated with an account system. People care way too much about their points (called “karma”), and will repost things that they’ve seen have been previously well-received. This results in the same drab content resurfacing to the front page. Interestingly, the culture of Reddit has changed from slightly agreeing with my opinion of this to vastly disagreeing with it. For what reason, I can’t say.

I also find it rather ironic that people want/expect anonymity on Reddit. There’s an account system that keeps track of everything you’ve ever posted. That’s the opposite of anonymimity. Do you want a system that keeps track of your imaginary internet points or do you want anonymity? If you want anononymity, you should go elsewhere. 4chan has exclusive anonymity. It makes 4chan users more genuine.

I will admit that there’s strengths to the point system, though. For example, it ensures that the validity of the contents of the link are checked before it makes it to the front page. Because of this, thinks like important news usually take some time before reaching the front page where it can be visible to everybody. It’s much faster to get your news from elsewhere. I hate to bring up 4chan again, but 4chan is usually where you can get news without the wait (once people find out about something, they’ll post it repeatedly so there’s more exposure to it). 4chan also has the added benefit of not having to censor things that an ordinary news site would.

It’s probably worth mentioning that there was a scandal with 9gag in the past, where people found proof that it was run by a team of mods who were just pulling stuff from reddit and posting it, pretending to be users. Posts by users were always buried.

So yeah, if you don’t like sifting through incredibly honest / rude comments or things for which you need eyebleach, reddit is the best option. But it still doesn’t fail to remind me of how much I dislike people.

To this day, I am still feeling the effects of the list I made. I still feel like I’m trying to assemble a list of quotes every day (do something every day for a year and it’ll become a habit). Because of this, I’m still paying pretty close attention to everything people say, making sure to note little witticisms or plain wisdom.

There’s a part of me that’s very sad when I hear something great and want to put it down somewhere, but realize that I don’t do this anymore. This is especially true now, now that I’ve made new friends (already) who have said some great things. It’s now too late in the year for me to do any “___ of the day things” and I don’t really have a way to store the great quotes that I hear occasionally. The blog isn’t really a good fit for that–it’s a little too public. Facebook isn’t that easy either: the quotes area is a little too hidden and way too obscure.

How else will I keep track of where my random friendships were? I remember talking to specific people during specific times of the year, keeping track of little things they said. I think this might be my favorite aspect of the QOTD list. It lets me (and everyone else, I guess) know who my best friends are and who I liked to see the most.

Oh wells. This leaves more time for writing. and stuff. stuff.

If you haven’t noticed already, there’s been a button at the top of my page for a year now, entitled “Quote of the Day (2014).” I’ve come back to my blog every day to add a quote to the page for the entire year. Part of me was skeptical that I could keep it up the entire year, while the other part of me wanted to prove that wrong. I succeeded.

Anyway, chances are if I had a conversation with you during this past year, you’ll have made the list (and if you aren’t, don’t take it personally).

I originally started the list because I wanted a way to keep track of what I did that particular day, the same way that people do “Picture of the Day” albums on Facebook, but with just snippets of speech that I happened to pick up during the day; rather than setting up an image for a picture, I would capture an idea as in its truest and basest form, as a quote. I wouldn’t have to be in a specific place to document this; I could be at home at the end of the, reflecting on what happened.

Because of this, my original intent of the list was to capture quotes that made me laugh. What better way to record your day than with a hilarious quote? Eventually this got pretty tough (especially on days when I didn’t see or talk to people), so I began to write down quotes that made me think as well as ones that made me laugh.

This gave me enough steam to go through pretty much the whole year, especially through the summer. It got difficult through the end of the year when I was going through a particularly hard part of my quarter and wasn’t paying as much attention to what people were saying. Even though I was prepared to give up on it, I’m pretty glad I perservered through to the end.

Keeping track of quotes has helped me pay more attention to everything around me. Rather than just watching the world whiz by as I go through my daily routine, I’m forced to open my mind and ears even if I’ve spent the day staring at a screen. It forced me to open up conversations with people I wouldn’t necessarily have spoken to, just for a tidbit of their life. For a tidbit of their experiences expressed through their choice of response, word choice, or lack thereof. And if my quote wasn’t directly from a conversation I had, it would be something I read online or just a Bible verse. These were more rare, since it takes quite a bit of cleverness to create a single-sentence quote that says something substantial and makes complete sense without context.

Before I ramble any further, I’d like to challenge you to do something similar. It doesn’t necessarily have to be quotes or pictures, but these are probably the easiest to do. And don’t be afraid of what you put on your list….I have zero consent of any of the quotes I’ve written down.

Enjoy life, but pay attention to it.

I hope 2015 will bring as much joy as 2014 did.

If you drive a truck, you need to seriously consider your life choices.

Haha, I’m just kidding. You can drive around whatever you want. But in all seriousness, I’m pretty irked by the number of people who drive unnecessarily large vehicles on the road.

Now if you drive around a truck for work or have one around for hauling things around every once in a while, this does not pertain to you. The people I’m talking to are the ones who drive trucks on a daily basis as part of their commute or going out their daily tasks otherwise.

What is even the point of driving around such a large vehicle? It’s not practical and it’s not fuel-efficient. There are spaces in some parking lots that you are literally banned from using and you have to be extra careful while driving down the street, no matter how narrow it is. All this and you still get ~15 miles to the gallon.

Personal things aside, trucks are almost so large to the point of being inconsiderate. Think of the people around you. The people behind you can’t see in front of you and the people in front of you can’t see behind you. People also make the argument that it’s more safe for when you get into a car accident. But what about the other guy? If you get into an accident with a smaller car, chances are your truck will decimate the other car, significantly reducing the driver’s chances of survival.

I don’t know. Just seems like overcompensation to me.

But get a truck if you want, it’s not like I can stop you.