Science & Technology
How brains, machines and the systems underneath them actually work.
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The Electric Being
The Rat That Pressed a Lever Without Moving
A rat sat still while a robotic arm brought it water, driven by nothing but its own neurons. The scientist behind that line of work now calls artificial intelligence statistics in disguise. I admire the experiment and think the verdict outruns it.
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Head in the Clouds
The Price of Perfect: What Five Nines Takes from the People Behind It
We celebrate 99.999% uptime as engineering excellence. But behind every decimal point is a human being who missed dinner, skipped a birthday, or woke at 3 AM to a pager screaming. What does perfection cost the people who build it?
