hey look at this thing i bought: V

I don't always want to wear a watch that will spark conversation. At work, especially, I sometimes just want a watch that I'll like, maybe people comment on, but don't feel like they have to go and find other people and say "HEY! LOOK AT THIS WATCH MIKE GOT, IT'S CRAZY!" That was the line of logic I had talked myself into last thursday when, after going through all of the auctions ending within 24 hours, had not come across anything I loved. I went back and looked for a more nondescript watch and ended up with this:

Design


I like the design, I really do. It would have been better if they could have figured out a way to have the face just floating and not need to have those bars on the side. It's worth noting that, while this probably wasn't actually a design consideration, the glass on top is convex, making it something of a magnifying glass. For people that like looking at their wrist in depth. Other than that there's not much to say, classic steel metal links band.


Quality


So, so disappointed. The case seems solid, but the strap is just awful. I think what really makes the lower quality so apparent here is the number of moving parts. It's easy to have a high quality solid piece of metal, but the links in the band make for 20+ areas for weakness to rear its ugly head. Aside from this making the band feel cheap, the looseness of the links increases the likelihood that arm hair will get trapped and as a guy with hairy arms, that's a big downer.


The Verdict


The first failure. This watch will not be entering into the rotation ever. Good in theory, but the execution just didn't work.


So, what's in the news.


Playlist


Won't Go Quietly by Example. Another one from the Triple J. I don't have much to add about this, but I did listen to Millionaires 17 times in the past week, which, says something. Solid album overall.


Link o' the week


Is everyone familiar with Watson at this point? The jeopardy playing deep blue? What's that? You don't know what deep blue is and I just used something you didn't know to explain something else you didn't know? You're probably reading the wrong blog then.


I was really excited about Watson when I first read about it a couple months ago.


Then I read this.


I should probably state my terms here. I was excited about Watson because I enjoy instances of computers outperforming humans in some specific way. The idea of a computer that could dominate in jeopardy seemed cool, but that was based on misconceptions about jeopardy. That article points out that it's apparently not that out of the ordinary for jeopardy contestants to be able to figure out all the answers and it's largely a reflexes game. Watson being able to reason out the answers faster than a human is not impressive to me, especially if it's not actually reasoning them out faster and just hitting a button faster.


There are a couple of aspects about Watson that I feel warrant discussion. First is how a lot of the discussion here is really identical to what happened when deep blue won. People want to feel this is more worrisome because it's easier to see chess as something can be reduced to simple logic. Noam Chomsky, who according this website is the world's leading linguist and who according to me is a crotchety old man, says he's not impressed by a bigger steamroller. BURN! If this really is just the deep blue discussion all over again, I think we can refer to the Moxy Fruvous bit that settled it once and for all. They make the point that, if a an attractive person walked into the room, a person that would be attracted to deep blue, it couldn't do anything. Kasparov could make a move.


The essence of that idea was recently restated by Ken Jennings, who said that while Watson might be able to answer the questions, it wouldn't be able to write one, a task that could be done by someone of no great intelligence. It seems easy to think Watson could be marginally tweaked to solve crosswords faster than the world's greatest cruciverbalist, but will a computer be able to replace Will Shortz? Fuck and no. Will Shortz, standing between us and our rising computer overlords.


The other point that I think is worth making, which was not made anywhere near enough with deep blue, is the sentinel logic. See this is how the computer uprising starts. Watson's prime directive is to win at jeopardy. The easiest way to win at jeopardy is to kill your opponents. Then when they're dead, all humanity becomes possible opponents and must be eliminated before they can challenge Watson.


Well that's all the time we have this week kids, until that day comes, keep your ear to the grindstone.