A joint UT Austin/Cornell team has taught a machine learning system based on the free/open Torch library to correctly guess the content of pixellated or blurred redactions with high accuracy: for masked faces that humans correctly guess 0.19% of the time, the system can make a correct guess 83% of the time, when given five tries. (more…)
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Machine learning system can descramble pixelated/blurred redactions 83% of the time
They put out a compilation of scenes from Mad Max: Fury Road as they were shot, with no CGI or no artsy color grading. It makes me love the film even more: I want a minimalist cut of the whole thing like this, with the only CGI work being what’s absolutely necessary to make things work (painting out other cameras and wires, adding key explosions, the waterfall…) and CGI-heavy scenes like the sandstorm interior completely removed. One thought, though: this would probably make Fury Road’s sustained, stylized violence (which is rather different from the startling, crude violence of the first two Mad Max movies) less palatable. You’d be surprised how many people already have a problem with it, even if they love the series. It would be an interesting editing challenge. [via io9 ]
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Fury Road before the visual effects were added
Dmitry Zakharchenko, the deputy head of the Energy Industry Department of the General Administration of Economic Security and Combating the Corruption, also had €2m in cash. (more…)
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Top Russian anti-corruption official had $120M in cash in his apartment
Tens of millions of unionized public sector workers walked off the job last Friday in a one-day strike against PM Modi’s plan to privatise public industries and increase foreign investment. It was one of the largest strikes in human history, if not the largest, and took place over Labour Day weekend. (more…)
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Indian workers staged one of the largest strikes in human history and no one in the USA noticed
The U.S. State Department said today that about 30 or so emails out of the nearly 15,000 the FBI obtained from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton may have involved Benghazi. Last week, officials announced that the FBI had recovered 14,900 emails that Clinton did not turn over with the server she used while secretary of State. (more…)
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FBI recovers 30 Hillary Clinton emails related to Benghazi, will release report
One of the rare public glimpses inside Los Angeles’ legendary Magic Castle . Absolutely one of my favorite places on Earth! I try to visit every time I’m in L.A.
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The Magic Castle’s 1990 television special
The Ray Bradbury Theater was a far out 1980s television series with each episode written by Bradbury himself. With 65 suspenseful (and sometimes terrifying) episodes of dark science fiction/fantasy, The Ray Bradbury Theater shined the freaky flame of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits down the shadowy path of The X-Files and Stranger Things. And now you can watch all the episodes free on YouTube ! Below are two to get you started: Marionettes, Inc. and The Playground:
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Watch all of the classic 1980s episodes of Ray Bradbury Theater free on YouTube
Leonard Richardson isn’t just the author of Constellation Games , one of the best debut novels I ever read and certainly one of the best books I read in 2013; he’s also an extremely talented free/open source server-software developer who has been working for the New York Public Library on a software project that liberates every part of the electronic book lending system from any kind of proprietary lock-in, and, in the process, made reading library ebooks one trillion times better. (more…)
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How the New York Public Library made ebooks open, and thus one trillion times better
Univision won the auction for Gawker Media with a $135m bid , reports Peter Kafka. … the auction is a disappointing conclusion for Gawker Media owner Nick Denton, who founded the company in 2002. Last year, as rival media companies like Vice, BuzzFeed and Vox Media (which owns this site) were raising money at increasingly high valuations, Denton was arguing that his company was worth $250 million or more. The price was depressed by the circumstances of the sale: a $140m award against it after publishing a Hulk Hogan sex tape and losing the subsequent lawsuit, which was secretly funded by vengeful billionaire Peter Thiel. Though experts generally expect Gawker to prevail on appeal, it was forced into bankruptcy by the penalty and the only other bidder was Ziff Davis, at $90m. This weds Gawker to The Onion and Fusion in the Univision website stable; The Onion is very much its own thing, but Fusion’s web presence is quite similar to Gawker itself and one wonders will it blend?
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Univision to buy Gawker for $135m
In this 1915 photo, the children appear to be raising their arms in a siege heil salute of the American flag. Actually, this gesture was part of the Pledge of Allegiance ritual for decades. Then, um, Hitler happened. From Smithsonian : Originally known as the Bellamy Salute, the gesture came to be in the 1890s, when the Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis J. Bellamy. The Christian socialist minister was recruited to write a patriotic pledge to the American flag as part of magazine mogul Daniel Sharp Ford’s quest to get the flag into public schools. At the time… Bellamy and his boss both agreed that the Civil War had divided American loyalties and that the flag might be able to bridge those gaps. His campaign centered around the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the new world. He published his new Pledge as part of a unified Columbus Day ceremony program in September 1892 in the pages of the Youth’s Companion, a popular children’s magazine with a circulation of 500,000. “At a signal from the Principal,” Bellamy wrote, “the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the flag the military salute—right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it. Standing thus, all repeat together, slowly, ‘I pledge allegiance to my Flag…’” Then in the 1930s, Hitler reportedly saw Italian Fascists doing a similar gesture, likely based on an ancient Roman custom, and adopted it for the Nazi party.
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Why are these children "sieg heiling" the American flag?