A trip on London's underground is rarely a relaxing experience, but the Covid-19 pandemic has added an extra level of anxiety for many. I'm off to try out a new technology that promises to train my brain to relax. Sitting far apart from other passengers in the carriage while wearing a hot surgical mask, I'm hoping it works. I'm meeting Dr Jamil El-Imad who enjoyed a successful career in the computer industry before, in his words, "getting sucked into neuroscience". The Lebanese-born IT expert knew all about computer languages and was intrigued by the similarities between data and the way the brain processes information. Recognising the potential of virtual reality devices he worked on how to use cloud computing techniques to capture and analyse brain signals and create a machine to replicate the meditation experience.

Considering the immense challenges to building quantum computers, I'd say we are roughly where we were in around 1970 with classical computers. We have some quantum computers, but they are still pretty unreliable compared to today's standard. We call them NISQ devices - Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices. Noisy because they are pretty bad, and intermediate-scale because of their small qubit number. There are a few public quantum computers available for anyone to programme on.

Video games presents an immense dissonance between its narrative and interactive sections. These two elements are commonly presented in a format where each occurs at a certain time, but rarely simultaneously. Besides, other elements, such as the background music, are also usually pre-defined, denying for the users the condition to establish new forms of creative expression within the system. This work, therefore, intends to propose new systems and algorithms to fit this paradigm.

Welcome to the third installment of Learning AI if You Suck at Math. If you missed the earlier articles be sure to check out part 1, part 2, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7. Today we're going to build our own Deep Learning Dream Machine. This machine will slice through neural networks like a hot laser through butter. Other than forking over $129,000 for Nvidia's DGX-1, the AI supercomputer in a box, you simply can't get better performance than what I'll show you right here. Before we dig into building a DL beast, I want to give you the easiest upgrade path. If you don't want to build an entirely new machine, you still have one perfectly awesome option. Simply upgrade your GPU (with either a Titan X or a GTX 1080) and get VMware Workstation or use another virtualization software that supports GPU acceleration! Or you could simply install Ubuntu bare metal and if you need a Windows machine run that in a VM, so you max your performance for deep learning.

When I first talked with Anders Gustafsson and Erik Zaring in 2012, they promised their creepy, psychedelic, stop-motion game, The Dream Machine, was going to be "better than sex with Jesus." They had a lot of work ahead of them -- they were building the game by hand, with physical materials, and the stop-motion process was inherently time-consuming. Plus, they had to wrangle episodic installments of an intimate yet sprawling story inspired by LSD trips and theories of alternate realities. Five years later, as the sixth and final installment of The Dream Machine finally lands on Steam, I ask Gustafsson and Zaring if they think their game delivers on its sacrilegious promise. "I think we under-promised and over-delivered as far as sexual congress with the lord and savior is concerned," Gustafsson says.