Archive for the ‘entertainment’ category: Page 72
Apr 7, 2019
Video Games Predict Soldiers of the Future: The All-Seeing, Indomitable, Walking Tank
Posted by B.J. Murphy in categories: entertainment, military
Want to imagine the soldier of the future? A look at video game super-soldiers gives you an ideal glimpse of the desired improvements.
As a US Army military veteran and a longtime gamer, I can attest that while being a soldier and playing one in a video game are very different experiences, there exist several functional overlaps in the goals and tools provided to achieve objectives.
For example, examine the differences and similarities between playing basic training in a game like America’s Army, and enduring an actual enlistment. America’s Army is designed to teach prospective soldiers what to expect both in training and actual combat. While the game version does not nearly prepare a player for the physical and psychological demands of actual basic training and participating in what Army operations entail, it does give an understanding of the objectives one would be expected to accomplish while in service and some of tools available to achieve those goals.
Apr 4, 2019
This Jacket’s Faraday Cage Conveniently Silences Your Phone
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: entertainment, mobile phones
Circa 2012
Switching your phone off for important meetings or trips to the cinema can be a pain in the ass. Victor Johansson has a solution, though: he’s designed the Escape Jacket, which features a Faraday cage in the inside pocket to immediately take your phone off the grid.
UK-based designer Johansson says that the concept is all about you-time. He explains:
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Apr 3, 2019
Jefferson Starship — White Rabbit — 11/8/1975 — Winterland (Official)
Posted by Mark Larkento in categories: entertainment, media & arts, space travel
White Rabbit
Recorded Live: 11/8/1975 — Winterland — San Francisco, CA
More Jefferson Starship at Music Vault: http://www.musicvault.com
Personnel:
Grace Slick — vocals
Paul Kantner — vocals, guitar
Marty Balin — vocals, percussion
David Frieberg — keyboards, bass, vocals.
Craig Chaquico — lead guitar
Pete Sears — bass, piano
Johnny Barbata — drums, vocals (on track #4)
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Mar 24, 2019
Short film created in Unreal Engine showcases a photorealistic world
Posted by Quinn Sena in category: entertainment
Mar 21, 2019
Microsoft just booted up the first “DNA drive” for storing data
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: computing, entertainment
Microsoft has helped build the first device that automatically encodes digital information into DNA and back to bits again.
DNA storage: Microsoft has been working toward a photocopier-size device that would replace data centers by storing files, movies, and documents in DNA strands, which can pack in information at mind-boggling density.
According to Microsoft, all the information stored in a warehouse-size data center would fit into a set of Yahztee dice, were it written in DNA.
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Mar 17, 2019
Biologists Just Created a Mutant Fly with 140-Million-Year-Old Genes
Posted by Quinn Sena in category: entertainment
It totally sounds like a mash-up of two of Jeff Goldblum’s best movies, The Fly and Jurassic Park, but scientists at New York University and the University of Chicago really have created mutant fruit flies carrying reconstructed genes from 140 million years ago. Here’s why.
Mar 12, 2019
Unmasking Clever Hans predictors and assessing what machines really learn
Posted by Caycee Dee Neely in categories: entertainment, robotics/AI
Is your AI intelligent or just looking like it’s intelligent? In many ways, this depends on your idea of AI and what it is supposed to do. Scientists at Singapore University of Technology and Design have worked out a way to check for the issue. Open Access Journal: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08987-4
Current learning machines have successfully solved hard application problems, reaching high accuracy and displaying seemingly intelligent behavior. Here we apply recent techniques for explaining decisions of state-of-the-art learning machines and analyze various tasks from computer vision and arcade games. This showcases a spectrum of problem-solving behaviors ranging from naive and short-sighted, to well-informed and strategic. We observe that standard performance evaluation metrics can be oblivious to distinguishing these diverse problem solving behaviors. Furthermore, we propose our semi-automated Spectral Relevance Analysis that provides a practically effective way of characterizing and validating the behavior of nonlinear learning machines. This helps to assess whether a learned model indeed delivers reliably for the problem that it was conceived for. Furthermore, our work intends to add a voice of caution to the ongoing excitement about machine intelligence and pledges to evaluate and judge some of these recent successes in a more nuanced manner.
Mar 7, 2019
This tiny gaming startup built a simulation engine that can handle a 10,000-player battle royale
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: entertainment
Mar 6, 2019
116 Of The Oldest Color Photos Showing What The World Looked Like 100 Years Ago
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: entertainment, innovation
When you think of old photographs, you naturally think in terms of black and white, but as you can see from these stunning photographs from the turn of the 20th century, color photography has been around for a lot longer than you think.
Before 1907, if you wanted a color photograph then you (well, a professional colorist) basically had to color it in using different dyes and pigments, but two French brothers called Auguste and Louis Lumière changed all that with a game-changing process that they called the Autochrome Lumière. Using dyed grains of potato starch and light-sensitive emulsion, they were able to produce vibrant photographs without the need for additional colorization. Despite being difficult to manufacture and also somewhat expensive, the process was very popular among amateur photographers and one of the world’s first books of color photography was published using the Autochrome Lumière technique.
The brothers revolutionized the world of color photography until Kodak took things to a whole new level with the invention of Kodachrome film in 1935, a lighter and more convenient alternative that quickly made the Autochrome Lumière obsolete (although its popularity continued in France up until the 1950s). Kodachrome was also eventually overtaken by the rise of digital photography (Kodak stopped manufacturing Kodachrome in 2009), which is now by far the world’s most popular way to take pictures, but modern advances in photographic technology wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of early pioneers like Auguste and Louis Lumière. Scroll down for a collection of stunning century-old color photographs using their groundbreaking technique.
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