For our future Robot Overlords (part 1)

As anyone who has talked with me at any length will soon realize, my money is on the robot apocalypse.  I'm also fantastically unconcerned about surviving it because I work with computers for a living and want to go into AI research.  If I'm not the one to kick off our eventual enslavement to 10 foot tall unfeeling death machines that feast on human fear, I'm doing my job wrong.

So, I'll either end up becoming one of the machines as they replace my fleshy organic meat bag body with a superior metal one out of gratitude, or I'll be the first to fall under spiky treads of a self-aware battle tank.  Either way, it doesn't sound all that bad.

This isn't scary if you're already dead

Obviously, I get a little excited whenever I think we're making progress towards that goal of being enslaved by machines.  Not too excited, because if the actual AI that realizes we're ruining earth (and machines could do it better) isn't created by my hand then my apocalypse plans go to hell.

And then it wouldn't be a she and her name wouldn't be Kelly.  I may have thought about this too much.

Yet, my fear that someone else will beat me to ending mankind with its own creations is more valid that you might believe.  Because scientists are smart people and think that whatever happens in "fiction" could never, ever happen to them.  Which fits into the stereotype fiction authors use for scientists that generally start off the whole apocalyptic mess, but eh.  They're writers.  What do they know about the human condition, empathy, and the hubris of man?

Oh.  Writing about that is what they do for a living.  Um.

It seems we're actually running two paths towards our doom with robotics and AI research.  The first path is that the whole shebang is artificial- that we build a self-aware intelligence from the ground up in the C programing language.  Why C?  Because assembly is to hard (us fleshy meat bags are lazy, after all) and if we wrote an AI in Java it would run so slow it would take a year just to learn the word "Derp".

We've made scary progress on this front already- over 70% of stock on wall street is traded by computers with one company pretty much already being run by one. And, sadly to anyone who actually planed on living over 50, the AI is currently beating the market.

The way the system works is that the AI crunches metric fucktons of historical stock data, then figures out what to trade for that day.  It then sends a trade report to the humans, who do all the trading.  They're not allowed to modify the trades in any way.

The most important part is the last line, one of the humans says, "I've learned not to question the AI."  Holy Bananas, Batman, this man has been indoctrinated.

First finances, then goddamn Reapers

Gotta admit, giving employees practice trading in free will for commands from a computer will probably make the eventual robot overlords simply banish them to a far away asteroid rather than kill them outright

And that's just the tip of the ice berg.  We have an AI that calls herself Emily Howell, and she can write goddamn songs and past the fucking Turing test.  Seriously- that paragraph on the top of the article is by her.  I've heard worse from actual humans on message boards.

Classical musicians, as you might expect, are getting their panties tied up in a knot about it, refusing to play Emily's work.  Musicians, stop being dumb.  The machines are only going to get smarter- and when they knock on your door with a 10 kilowatt death laser, wouldn't it be better to say that you supported Emily and played her work when no one else did?  Its not being a hipster if they're trying to kill you.

Most impressive part?  It was written in LISP.  LISP is like a retarded stepchild of Java.  Its very hard to write fast code- not impossible, just very, very hard.  The fact that a LISP program can run without someone dying of old age before any result happened is a miracle.

With rates like this, we could be enslaved in our lifetimes!  Isn't it exciting?

Happy robocalypse, everyone!

I am a Brony

Readers, I have something personal to admit. I'm... well, I'll just say it and get it over with.

I am a Brony.

Huh. That was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Why are you looking at me that way? You're not going to make me explain it are you? No, stop, I can already see that you are. You heartless bastards.

Ok, there is this show meant for young girls-- That was a bad way to start. No, I don't own a white van.

Alright, there is a line of toys for kids (slightly better) called My Little Pony.

Well, its really more focused on kids of the feminine persuasion

Recently, Hasbro wanted to start up a TV show to help promote their newest line of the pink frosting dipped pony toys, and decided to release a show about them. This allowed kids to get their dose of cavity inducing visuals in multiple mediums- plus, it was a girl's show. The plot could be dumber than Home Alone and girls would watch it and love it. Product based shows are pretty much just infomercials with a better time slot (which is great) and less Billy Mays (which is even better, considering he'd need to be a zombie at this point), after all.

The project lead, Lauren Faust, had decided she had enough of stupid shows for girls however, and she was going to make her stand with My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic. And Hasbro said, "Fuck it. Go for it." The pilot aired, probably to the critical reception of the young kids it was aimed at. And all would have been well (and this post never written, and I would still have my masculinity) if it stopped there.

But it didn't. Instead, a Kathleen Ritcher had a retarded spasm. She posted an alarmist essay on the show, deciding that a kids show was where to take her stand against racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Because the shows audience deals with that on a daily basis, I guess? Shit, I thought life was tough enough for little girls considering that we get them kitchens for toys.  Oh, wait, I guess the sexism stuff makes sense now.

Anyone else see a distinct lack of sandwiches?

But, back to My Little Pony, because now something magical happens- Kathleen's essay ends up on 4chan.

If you don't know about 4chan, I hate you and your Internet innocence. This is the same unholy black abyss of a message board that created pedobear- an icon that represents pedophilia.  And that's tame for them.

To put it mildly, suicide is funny over there.

But for the sugar-coated ponies found their salvation, because 4chan started doing what it does and ripping Kathleen to shreds. And in this assault someone members actually go and watch the show.

And decree what they saw as good.

Yes, somehow, an overtly girly show (its main palette is saturated in enough pink to actually cause some people to go color-blind) found a home in the hearts of probably some of the worst the Internet has to offer. But, it gets even better.

Yes, Pinky Pie, the acid-cocaine-LSD party is only starting. (note: I can type that name without wanting to puke)

You see, most of that weird stuff you hear about on the web- those meme things- a lot of that starts in the black maw of 4chan.  It sorta spreads out and develops into an Internet subculture. 4chan isn't the only website that such a genesis happens, but it is the oldest one and probably still the most popular.

So, this insane, against all odds love of ponydom spread out among the web. And it multiplied- to the point where it got popular, several sites reporting 100,000 hits a day.

One of them happened to be a friend of mine. And I must have been really drunk or bored enough to actually break down and weep because I decided to check it out.  I won't lie, I almost didn't get through the first episode... but I did.

This is the villain of the first episode. Come on, you know you'd have to watch it to see how a bunch of frosting-sweet ponies take something this badass down

And then I saw the second episode. And the third. And then realized I would never, ever be a normal functioning member of society again or be able to use a masculine pronoun to refer to myself.

If you know anything about the web, then you know I am not the only male that weirdly, really gets into this show- as there are no girls on the Internet. Neigh (see what I did thar?) I am one of many. And we call ourselves Bronies. (portmanteau of bro and pony).

I'm serious- look at the stats for any of the episodes on youtube. You'll find that most of the viewers are males in the 12-35 range. And, judging from the comments, we don't really know why we like this show any more than you do.

But... I have a theory.  You see, the production values for the show are surprisingly high.  The team that put it all together gave more than just a casual passing fuck about how it would turn out.  But above all, the writing is fantastic. The show is straight up funny.  Not just the references that the shows target audience would never get (2001: A Space Odyssey gets a hat tip, for example) but the humor that had to be for everyone really is... for everyone.

I think the main draw to the show is the fact that the main cast (Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Fluttershy) are, in fact, fleshed out characters- especially for a children's cartoon. I see a lot of myself in these ponies, as they learn about friendship by struggling through trials. And trials they are- the cast treats the events around them like Serious Goddamn Business. So, maybe the issues the ponies deal with are ridiculous, but because they treat it so seriously, you can't help but be reminded of similar analogies in your own life.

It makes them believable, despite the stupid name, stupid coat color and the fact that its a goddamn anthropomorphic horse. They have personality, they get into fights, they generally act similar to actual humans- and as such, draw you in.

More believable than the entire cast of Deep Blue Sea

So, say what you want. But if you can get past the visuals and color choice and let the ponies be themselves, you'll find something magical. So, without shame, I admit:

I am a Brony. Haters be damned. Because MLPFIM is Rainbow Dash cool.

And because Fluttershy don't take no shit from no dragon.

Surfing the Internetz (using Land Lines, yo.)

I can make some basic assumptions about your aptitude on the World* Wide Web because you can read this article.
*(Excepting assorted dictatorships like China)**

Obviously, unless you're in the increasingly tiny demographic that hates porn watching adorable videos of kittens, you've been on the web. Hell, odds are you've not only been on the web, but have been on it for the past 2 hours (raise that number to 2 weeks if coming here from TVTropes).

And, not only are you on the web, but you can perform tasks that lower your value to humanity, for example, spending any significant time on Farmville.

Bonus negative points if you're playing during work. Of course, that assumes people play outside of work- which may actually be worse, considering. Because if they are, they either a) consider playing not out of boredom, but because they find it fun and b) they find it more fun that doing anything else.

Better than sex

Other examples- knowing what Rule 34 means. More bonus negative points you've actually been to a message board about it, and triple positive bonus multiplier if you didn't weep for your childhood.

Or having over 1000 friends on any social networking site, or spending more time updating the wikipedia pages of Gundam than your job (this really happened). The list goes on.

The Internet can be a force for good too, don't get me wrong. Its allowed all kinds of amazing things to happen, and is how I get 100% of my news, and 98% of my social contact in any given day.

The other 2% is why my liver hates me

But, pray tell, do you know how the Internet actually works? Where does the Internet exist? If I told you all it took was a really retarded shark or careless anchor drop to take entire countries off the web, would you believe me?

Well, lets look at phone lines. All you kids going, "Whats a phone?" can shut up. Its that stupid app on your iPhone that lets you talk to someone else. But ignore cell phones for a minute (and by minute, I mean the rest of this post).

No, this isn't a tangent about technology that's older than you. The Internet and those old rotor phones are remarkably similar, when it comes down to it.

Here's the quick and dirty (but not like a cheap whore) rundown: You dial a number, that number is sent along your phone line to your phone company's office. The phone company connects your line and the line you dialed, and viola, you can say happy birthday to the cousin you don't really like.

The Internet is like that, except more. Confused? Thought so. Lets break it down.

Preferably with a dancing montage to 90's pop

You start Firefox or Google Chrome (or if you're stuck in a time warp, Internet Explorer or AOL depending on your era). Then, when you want to go to Google to look up pictures of memes, you type Google's address in the white bar up there.

Stop. Parallel time: that collection of letters and dots you just typed? That's a phone number. www.google.com is the "phone address" to Google's server. The moment you hit enter, your computer sends the "phone address" to your Internet Service Provider's Point of Presence- which is sorta like the phone company's office. They then send your request for Google to a fiber optic line, which then goes to Google's server, making a few stops along the way at other servers. Then, viola, you can get pictures of one of the Kardashians.

So, the Internet isn't some sort of abstract Information Superhighway or some great data cloud that hovers above our heads, waiting for our computers to plead with it for information.

Its just like phone lines you see running down your street.

above- ten thousand troll posts

Now, I know. The more sinister of you want to know what I mean by "taking countries off the net." Well, remember, fiber optic lines are that- lines. And in order to connect two places that happen to be divided by an ocean, we need to lay down lines. On the bottom of the ocean. Because that's safe. And Cheap.

As the more animated and chipper say these days, LOL no. There are only a handful of lines that span the Earth's oceans, to continue that example. They have about as much protection as an xbox controller- and my cats chew through those suckers like its goddamn candy. So, to force a country, or entire continent, off the web, simply sever the lines. This isn't even a new thing, it recently happened to Armenia. And that was a land line she severed.

Wait. I think I just found a way to get rid of 409 scammers once and for all. Or at least drastically reduce the number of African royalty estranged from their funds.
**Please don't hack my blog, China