Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: entertainment – Page 130

You can now run Windows 95 in your web browser

Windows 95 just won’t die. The older it gets, the more versatile it becomes. We’ve seen it running on smartwatches, tablets, and handheld consoles — and now you can run it right inside your web browser in an instant.

Andrea Faulds, a 19-year-old developer from Scotland, has been able to get Windows 95 running in almost any web browser using emscripten, an emulator that converts C++ code to JavaScript in real-time. It requires no downloads, plugins, or any special software.

The emulator takes a minute to load up, but once you’re inside it, it’s surprisingly snappy. It provides you with a full Windows 95 operating system and everything you’d expect to get with it — including classic games like Solitaire and Minesweeper — and it runs incredibly well.

Read more

How AlphaGo Mastered the Game of Go with Deep Neural Networks

The game of Go has long been viewed as the most challenging of classic games for artificial intelligence due to its enormous search space and the difficulty of evaluating board positions and moves.

Google DeepMind introduced a new approach to computer Go with their program, AlphaGo, that uses value networks to evaluate board positions and policy networks to select moves. These deep neural networks are trained by a novel combination of supervised learning from human expert games, and reinforcement learning from games of self-play. Without any lookahead search, the neural networks play Go at the level of state-of-the-art Monte-Carlo tree search programs that simulate thousands of random games of self-play. DeepMind also introduce a new search algorithm that combines Monte-Carlo simulation with value and policy networks. Using this search algorithm, our program AlphaGo achieved a 99.8% winning rate against other Go programs, and defeated the European Go champion by 5 games to 0. This is the first time that a computer program has defeated a human professional player in the full-sized game of Go, a feat previously thought to be at least a decade away.

Read more

Preview: Fractured Space

Fractured space is the title of this article which highlights the drastic changes occurring in space. However, it does raise a question around “what could be the broader impacts resulting from future space colonization and mining operations on asteroids and planets/ moons?”

Pretty much the only time I compete online is in the world of MOBAs. Fractured Space has been going through a huge amount of changes, tweaks and updates but is heading firmly towards the ultimate goal of a final build. It’s a good start setting off in a sci-fi universe as pretty much every single MOBA worth playing is set in a fantasy world. There’s nothing wrong with orks and elves gameplay but giant capital ships blasting away at each other in deep space holds a greater appeal to me. First though, Fractured Space has a lovely new video to take a look at so sit back enjoy.

A few alterations to the core MOBA gameplay set Fractured Space apart from the rest. Team wide resources are a consideration with the team holding the most outposts generating the most resources. The key to winning the battle of resources is undoubtedly to maintain control of the gas mining station that resides in the centre of the map. There are only short windows of opportunity to take control of the station however and you can be sure that a battle will take place whenever the timer allows it. It’s such a valuable resource that you just can’t ignore it.

Read more

Google DeepMind: Ground-breaking AlphaGo masters the game of Go

In a paper published in Nature on 28th January 2016, we describe a new approach to computer Go. This is the first time ever that a computer program “AlphaGo” has defeated a human professional player.

The game of Go is widely viewed as an unsolved “grand challenge” for artificial intelligence. Games are a great testing ground for inventing smarter, more flexible algorithms that have the ability to tackle problems in ways similar to humans. The first classic game mastered by a computer was noughts and crosses (also known as tic-tac-toe) in 1952. But until now, one game has thwarted A.I. researchers: the ancient game of Go.

Despite decades of work, the strongest computer Go programs only played at the level of human amateurs. AlphaGo has won over 99% of games against the strongest other computer Go programs. It also defeated the human European champion by 5–0 in tournament games, a feat previously believed to be at least a decade away. In March 2016, AlphaGo will face its ultimate challenge: a 5-game challenge match in Seoul against the legendary Lee Sedol—the top Go player in the world over the past decade.

This video tells the story so far…

With Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind.

Deep Blue photo credit courtesy of International Business Machines Corporation, © International Business Machines Corporation.

Continue reading “Google DeepMind: Ground-breaking AlphaGo masters the game of Go” | >
/* */