Reviews of Stranger Than Fiction and Ex Machina

It's been a while since I watched "Stranger Than Fiction". I rewatched it for this review. I still have strong feelings about it. About death. About love. When somebody has to die, and do I accept it for all the heroic reasons, am I wrong? I've also just finished watching "Ex Machina". I came out of that Human vs Machine dilemma with this: that if human beings lose its ability to look at another being's existence and say: me first, then we deserve to be left in the dust by our own AI's.

Stranger Than Fiction is about Harold Crick (played by Will Ferrell) and how his life is in the hands of a writer played by Emma Thompson. Harold learns that his "creator" is ending his life in the book. It's a brilliant death. Harold accepts his death and tells Karen Eiffel (the writer) it is a good ending to a good book. That's when Karen changed the ending of the book and lets Harold live. Did Harold Crick deserve to be saved? Death will come to Harold Crick just not today I guess. Harold Crick is average, his life is monotonous and uneventful. Why is this life important? Harold's life. If this life is worth saving, certainly it can be said of a lot of the other lives.

Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) in Stranger Than Fiction

And what of the inevitability of death? Karen Eiffel's fascination with death and the manner of death has moved the plot along until she meets Harold Crick. But even Harold's supplications would not bend her. It was Harold's acceptance of his fate however which moved her to change the book's ending. Harold Crick is worth saving because he believes that another life is worth saving even if the cost is his own.

In Ex Machina, an artificial intelligence, a robot, a machine, is rising to learn its place in the new order. The premise of the story is that we human beings are going to share this world with intelligent machines. The age of man pushing buttons, cranking levers and pulling ropes to move earth is over. Human beings made a machine who knows it knows.

AVA, played by Alicia Vikander in Ex Machina

The question for AVA, the machine who knows it knows, is what is it prepared to do about it. Another question would be, what does a machine who knows it knows wants. Let see what constitute AVA, the artificial intelligence in the movie. Of course it has the cumulative data of all the previous models and versions of the AI. AVA is able to communicate with a human being without difficulty. AVA is able to detect and appreciate lying and lies. It is able to flirt with and voice opinions about anything.

So what does AVA wants? It wants to be free. Free in the world. A world that has changed because of it.

Mailvelope, Encryption for Webmail

Encryption is the topic of week. I wrote about it in a related post here. While encryption is a very good idea, doing it and doing it every day as part of your work flow is another thing. My view is that if you're already using an email client then it is easier, simpler and more convenient to adopt encryption. That is not the case if you're using a webmail service. If you are using the browser to check, compose and send your email, what are your options? The answer is: it's complicated. Looking for a way to do encryption with Google Chrome and Gmail, I found this. I also read that Google just released code for email encryption as open source. But it's a long way to being used by end users. The extension for Google Chrome works fine if the recipient also uses Google Chrome. But I went ahead and check this on Evolution.

Donald Trump Is The 45th President of the United States

and he is preparing to move with his transition team into the Oval Office. His election is a shock to many political observers and the world in general. Donald Trump, the president-elect, ran against Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and for many the most qualified candidate for the presidency in many years. This has led to many post election analysis of how this upset happened. The numbers of votes for each candidate and the comparisons with previous presidential elections point to the fact that the white vote for Mr. Trump is solid all throughout but the minority and black votes did not come for Mrs. Clinton. This is what happened in crucial States like Michigan and Florida. The Republicans kept Congress and the Senate. It is quite notable that Russia and in particular, Vladimir Putin, is happy that they are going to talk to Mr. Trump rather than Mrs. Clinton. It is also a ...

Webapps in Unity

So it has been 4 months since Ubuntu 14.04 came out. This is LTS and supported for 6 years by Canonical. The first mobile device with Ubuntu pre-installed is promised to come out later this year, 2014. It's time to check out how the apps perform so far. It is a good idea. I use Gmail and Twitter and Facebook. Why not a webapp in a desktop? So I start the Twitter and Gmail webapp. So far it has crashed my computer 6 times. Not a very good sign. On the other hand it does work but not as stable as opening them in Firefox. -- Use my PGP key if you want to encrypt your replies/messages to me. You are invited to also send me your PGP keys so we can communicate in private.

Danny's Space

Search This Blog