What happens when you let computers optimize foorplans (I love this SO MUCH)

otherpeoplescreativity:

mostlysignssomeportents:

I eagerly await our new AI masters’ world of ultraoptimized, uncannily organic, evolving foorplans. Joel Simon:

Evolving Floor Plans is an experimental research project
exploring speculative, optimized floor plan layouts. The rooms and
expected flow of people are given to a genetic algorithm which attempts
to optimize the layout to minimize walking time, the use of hallways,
etc. The creative goal is to approach floor plan design solely from the
perspective of optimization and without regard for convention,
constructability, etc. The research goal is to see how a combination of
explicit, implicit and emergent methods allow floor plans of high
complexity to evolve. The floorplan is ‘grown’ from its genetic encoding
using indirect methods such as graph contraction and emergent ones such
as growing hallways using an ant-colony inspired algorithm.

Adds Simon: “I have very mixed feelings about this project.”

https://boingboing.net/2018/07/30/what-happens-when-you-let-comp.html

In the link are also some variants with optimization for windows; now I want to go to that school. I also want to feed this algorithm the floorplans for some other buildings, such as a shopping mall (can you optimize for impulse purchase? for a natural wander rate that inclines the shopper to slow down and take their time? Can you get rid of those trouble-mongering perfume and moisturizer kiosks?) or a multifamily home (could my entire gaming group live at the same address without growing to hate each other? people with different hours of activity, different sensitivities to sound and stimulation, different accessibility needs?).  

But most importantly: Science!

Japanese virus replaces files with pictures of squid

etirabys:

argumate:

(submitted by @zzedar​)

not just squid, but anime squid

Nakatsuji told police: “I wanted to see how much my computer programming skills had improved since the last time I was arrested.”

It’s not the first time that Nakatsuji has been arrested for virus creation. In 2008 he was convicted of violating copyright after coding malware that replaced data with an image from anime series Clannad. He told the police in this case that he didn’t think he’d be arrested again because he’d created the squid and octopus images himself, avoiding a breach of copyright.

oh my goodness

Japanese virus replaces files with pictures of squid

addycted:

anticritical-lapis:

writingandnerdshit:

whales-are-gay:

homophobes are not allowed to use computers because the inventor of the computer was gay

People think this is just a joke but Alan Turing was the inventor of the computer and his sexuality was illegal in his time (which was not even 100 years ago) and he was arrested. They put him on drugs that destroyed his genius brain and committed suicide a year after being covicted. He was gay and a war hero as well. He helped to break enigma which was a German code that they put all their messages through. He shorted WWII by two years and saved so many lives in the process.

Friendly reminder that if not for Alan Turing you wouldn’t be reading this post and we might be ruled by the nazis

The Alan Turing statue on my campus