In the News

[hummingwolf]

Via mind_hacks: Your thoughts become your password. Mind Hacks wonders, "Maybe this will lead to a new generation of hackers who train themselves to simulate others mental states in an attempt to forge 'pass thoughts'?"

Also, LiveJournal's moodswings make the news. Of course people are trying to come up with commercial applications, which I suspect will be amusing.

And MH also links to a longish article on The Trouble with the Turing Test.

Now, via languagelog, there's a series of posts about recent news reports that "European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) accurately recognize acoustic patterns defined by a recursive, self-embedding, context-free grammar." I'm not sure which post to link to, so maybe you can just read this one and follow the links. If you'd rather not do that, this post goes into most depth.

Before I read any more RSS feeds, I think I need some breakfast. See you all in a bit.

Comments

[hai-kah-uhk.livejournal.com]

I haven't used moods much at all in the last couple years, and now I'm glad. They're not tracking me!

That's all right. I'm sure somebody else is tracking me for some other reason.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

LJ Moods have been tracked by different people for a while, I think. But mostly people have tracked them for purposes of entertainment or (occasionally) science. I think the marketers who try to take advantage of the new data will also be entertaining, but probably in a different way.