NERD NEWS

WRITERS OF SCI-FI AND AI

Baidus Verne Plan, named after the famous sci-fi writer Jules Verne, is attempting to make artificial intelligence with the advice of science fiction authors. According to Xinhua, six people are in the first group of advisers, and it has been highlighted that it is extremely exclusive—with both Liu Cixin and David Brin on the list—both Hugo Award winners. Hopefully, many at Baidu will have read Lius “Curse 5.0” in which (spoilers ahead) a jilted woman destroys the whole of planet Earth with a computer virus designed to ruin her exs life. Baidu, please keep Liu away from the interface. The other three authors involved are Ken Liu, Chen Qiufan, and Yao Haijun, all giants in the field of sci-fi and most with pretty destructive ideas with what AI could mean. The annoying part of this, however, is that Baidu announced this on April Fools Day, and it got dismissed by a number of organizations, but it does appear to be quite real. Liu Cixin told the Chinese news platform The Paper that, “This is an innovative organization...Many ideas will be born here.” – Tyler roney

NEW DINO-EGG IN GANSU

Most dinosaur fossils found in China come from the Early Cretaceous period, an age in Paleontology known for its awesomeness of having T-Rexes stomping about. The Late Cretaceous came about 40 million years later and brought with it further awesomeness in the Carcharodontosaurids vein—it means “shark-toothed lizards” just in case you thought that word wasnt cool enough—which includes the Giganotosaurus, which, scientists agree, would probably have been able to bitch slap a T-Rex. This egg, however, is slightly less impressive, weighing in at just a few centimeters, but the implications for this discovery are quite wide-ranging, not least of which is the concept that China has a horde of Late Cretaceous fauna waiting to be discovered. The egg, “may represent a more basic type of dinosaur egg, which had been extinct in Late Cretaceous,” said author of the paper in Vertebrata PalAsiatica, XieJunfang, from the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History. China has long been a hotbed of paleontological discovery and evidence from the Late Cretaceous puts new hope in dino-lovers eyes. – T.R.

WEIBOS HAWKISH SENTIMENTS

Stephen Hawking is a popular guy in China, far more popular than his cult status among nerds would suggest elsewhere. But even with this fact in mind, it still came as a surprise when he landed on Weibo and amassed over a million followers within six hours. Comments were almost universally adulatory, with many being tongue-in-cheek responses that gave Hawking near godlike powers of prophecy and more. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Weibo account is being managed by an LA-based marketing company, which is also helping with the translations. Hawkings first post on the platform described his visit to China in 1985 and has evidently proven to be a hit with readers. He followed up a day later with another post, this one with information on a project to launch teeny-tiny light-propelled devices into space which will hopefully be able to reach speeds as high as 20 percent of the speed of light and carry out a flyby mission to the closest star to our sun in 20 years.? – david dawson

COMPLICATED ALGORITHMS TO FIND WHO DEALT IT

Held by Guokr.com, a Chinese science website, and the Zhejiang Science and Technology Museum, the annual Pineapple Prize for physics went to Li Jigong from Tianjin University who invented a device and its accompanying algorithm to trace the source of flatulence—or toxic chemical leaks, landmines, survivors of horrific accidents, whatever. Mainly its farts, according to media reports. The winner of this Ig Nobel Prize-like award uses a grid-like system of increasingly precise measurements to locate scent, and each movement from the device collects information on air-speed and odor concentration, eventually leading the sniff-bot to the scents source, meaning your butt. Li wrote in one of his many publications on the subject: “It is expected that mobile robots developed with such olfaction capability will play more and more roles in such areas as judging toxic or harmful gas leakage location, checking for contraband, searching for survivors in collapsed buildings, humanitarian de-mining, and anti-terrorists attacks.” One of the most amazing things about the fart (or harmful chemical leak) sniffer, is that it constantly updates information so as to pin-point where a scent is coming from rather than where its going. Though there are currently no plans for this type of technology to be put in mobile phones, it would certainly be useful for the elevators in the TWOC offices.? – T.R.