Joke of the day

*knock knock*
- Neutrinos!
- Who's there?



Found here.

Scova l'outlier

La fregatura di non poter frequentare tutte le lezioni, anche a causa di tediose sovrapposizioni di orario. A tal proposito, sarebbe interessante sviluppare l'organizzazione settimanale degli insegnamenti con gli algoritmi genetici, chissà se ci ha già provato qualcuno... idea che puntualmente ha già avuto qualcun'altro.

Anyway, let's call it a day. Avanti tutta verso la tesi! :)

Che bello...

...quando le cose iniziano a funzionare.

Tra qualche anno, son certo che la programmazione GPGPU sarà all'ordine del giorno ed esisteranno efficaci strumenti di supporto allo sviluppo e al debug.

Fino ad allora resterà puro autolesionismo.

Teamwork 2

I took this picture in Corse, while camping at Plage d'Arone. I found these three ants busy in carrying a grape to the nest. They simultaneously attacked the fruit and began to cooperate, by placing at a distance of 120° from each other.

Once again, the question is whether we're in front of intelligent behaviour or not. Appearently,  this doesn't seem to be the smartest way to achieve the goal: every ant pulls in its direction and, even if they want to reach the same place, their vectors of forces are often opposed resulting in no movement at all.

So, are they "stupid"? Do they just grab the good, pulling toward the colony as a consequence of the pheromone stimuli, without any agreement? Maybe, yet I don't think it is so easy. They usually look forward when bringing stuff, therefore pulling obstinately in one direction can result in the unpleasant side effect of blocking into obstacles. By applying more forces, the group follows alternative paths along the way, avoiding the traps.

For the record, they took about an hour to carry the grape to the colony, distant less than three meters.

Teamwork

I'm Hofstadter's huge fan, therefore I use to look at ants as sub-symbolic living metaphors, without any real will except that of the colony. From the collective behaviour, smoothed by evolution, emerges a sharp intelligence.

Still, looking at such a stunning demonstration of cooperation, I have hard time considering them like empty shells that simply react to external stimulus. That's a fascinating change of level: do ants know about the strategies they're carrying on? and the colony, is it aware?