Interestingly all lasers in movies seem to move in bullet-like packets and at very low speeds :) But, yeah, your comment makes sense... Even "spray and pray" would be impractical with such huge distances..

One solution is to construct the space ship like a gyroscope - a heavy mass in the center around which the spaceship can rotate in any direction it chooses.

Bullets :) Or any projectile-based weapon, for that matter :) Remember - vacuum means no drag and no worries about aerodynamics and maximum speed of the projectile, you could use something like a railgun to accelerate a piece of metal to insane speeds :)

Infinite sources of energy do not and cannot exist - get your thermodynamics straight. If you put something like that in sci-fi, then it's just "fi".

Well... no. In Star Trek the battles are two-dimensional, meaning the spaceships only move in a plane instead of all three dimensions :) Also, "phazers", "photon torpedoes" and so forth do not really exist, nor are they based on something that could exist :)

Real battle ships would most likely be spherical, rotating in…

WTF this was a real song?!

A nice little thematic selection. Yet I can't help laughing when I see Windows users get excited that they get a central repo with 250 apps - especially compared to Debian's 37,000 :)

P.S. It would be so much fun to watch a first-time Windows user try to install something, say VLC or Firefox or whatever - especially…

That would be almost like Linux.... if they can make it resolve and fetch dependencies too :)

Sign up for Coursera's Machine Learning course, then you won't find it that amazing :) Not that ML itself is hard, but getting the right indicators is...

You wouldn't believe the extent to which humans have removed themselves from politics already :) "Science-based policy making" means "computer says ban/legalize" :D Of course, these are the simple goal-based AIs, but less and less decisions are made by humans - start with which book should I read next on Amazon, what…

AIs with hardcoded goals have existed since the '60s, and are not very interesting. Independent or "true" AIs are much more fun, and we have already done small-scale experiments with them. Watch http://www.ted.com/talks/alex_wis… , the robots that are shown are free to choose their own goals (in the limited world they…

Well, yeah, I guess it could decide to cooperate with us to further its own goals - if we're nice. We probably won't be, as we needed hundreds of years to recognize the rights of black people, even though we are from the same friggin' species. We still haven't recognized the rights of dolphins and other primates.

Maybe I'm not making it clear enough... The desire is to have more freedom of action in the future - i.e. have less restrictions on what you can do. For example before we started using tools we didn't have the freedom to skin animals and wear clothes, and consequently the freedom to survive in cold weather. And…

The main optimization goal, as stated in my previous comment, is maximization of future freedom of action. This implies any other sub-goal you mentioned so far.

This will cripple the AI - it is in direct contradiction with the main optimization goal that allows intelligence to arise.

If the simulation is truly realistic it may very well decide you're a noob and refuse to play games with you (in all meanings of "games"). As far as we know, for intelligence to arise the optimization problem is maximising future freedom of action - and you'll be limiting its freedom if you try to force it into…

Bought my tablet mainly as a gaming device, got disappointed by the App Store... There are like a total of 3 good games on it - Hearthstone, Real Racing 3 and Asphalt 8. Had to write my own game so we can have some fun with it - turned out better than 99% of published games in both controls and fun factor, which is…

Just a small remark: I know I'm probably the only person on Earth, but I want to spend hours in bed with a proper, engrossing game. I don't know about Bioshock (or any other shooter for that matter), but I'm glad devs are making or porting big games without worrying about the "mobile play style" :) The "15-minute…

In the meantime on the Near Death Star...

...or he could be playing Counter-Strike on loudspeakers with sound turned up. Someone starts shooting in-game, the police starts shooting IRL...