Researchers Make A Breakthrough Toward The Next Generation Of Memory Devices

Machine learning could finally crack the 4,000-year-old Indus script

After a century of failing to crack an ancient script, linguists turn to machines.

The ultimate puzzle!

Things auto-tagged ‘Jungle Gym’ on Flickr

Flickr has introduced auto-tagging, aided by Machine Learning (I checked that it is with ML and found this Yahoo machine learning presentation). The user response has been quite negative so far, this Flickr forum post has a lot of angry pro users having to correct thousands of photographs for inexact tagging. Flickr openly say they want people to correct their tags because that will further help train their ML algorithms. 

Alex Hern of the Guardian wrote about some contentious cases such as when people have been auto-tagged ‘ape’ and when concentration camps get tagged ‘sport’ and ‘jungle gym’. In isolation these cases seem really outrageous so I did a search for ‘jungle gym’ and found many false positives, painting a much more systemic problem; it seems Flickr’s strategy is to auto-tag as much as possible, forcing their users, often not bothered about tags, to respond by curating a better set of tags for each image. So the bigger strategy seems to pitch machine learning against human labour in an attempt to make their algos smarter and their image service perfectly tagged. 

LASER SOCKS!

Game developed by Glen Chiaccchieri where players lose life bar when opponent’s feet is hit with a laser from a pointer, and is a proof-of-concept implementation of the computing concept ‘Hypercard in the Room’:

In the video above two people are playing Laser Socks, a game I invented in an afternoon using a research programming system, common household items, and a couple lines of code.

Players try to point a laser pointer at their opponent’s socks while dodging their opponent’s laser. Whenever they score a hit, the health meter closest to their opponent’s play area fills up with blue light. Whoever gets their opponent’s meter to fill up first wins.

In August 2015, my research group (The Communications Design Group or CDG) had a game jam — an event where participants create games together over the course of a few days. The theme was to make hybrid physical/digital games using a prototype research system Bret Victor and Robert Ochshorn had made called Hypercard in the World. This system was like an operating system for an entire room — it connected cameras, projectors, computers, databases, and laser pointers throughout the lab to let people write programs that would magically add projected graphics and interactivity to physical objects. The point of the jam was to see what playful things you could make with this kind of system. We ended up making more than a dozen new and diverse games.

I made Laser Socks, a game about jumping around and shooting a laser pointer at an opponent’s feet. It was fun, ridiculous, and simple to make. In some ways, Laser Socks became one of the highlight demonstrations of what could be done if there was a medium of expression that integrated dynamic computational elements into the physical world.

More Here

Struggle no more – Virtually choose your nail polish color

In an effort to solve the trial-by-purchase problem, the nail gurus at Sally Hansen are introducing a new app which lets you virtually paint on nail polish.

With ManiMatch, there’s no need to upload a photo or take a picture. Launch the app and put your hand in front of the camera and it starts scanning to determine your skin tone in order to provide color recommendations. Choose one, and the app paints the color right onto your nails then, Voila! Your nails on the screen.

😂

3D Printing A Fabulous Lion [x]

Verizon Cancels Elderly Woman’s Service on Her 84th Birthday http://ift.tt/2vePM37

THIS IS THE VIRTUAL REALITY I WAS PROMISED

Presenter Erika Ishii presents a wireless solution for Virtual Reality experiences, with a high powered laptop strapped to the back with an Htc Vive pro (though it isn’t clear how long the batteries will last):

THIS IS THE VIRTUAL REALITY I WAS PROMISED. @TeaganMorrison built us a wireless VR rig! @Alienware 15 laptop, @htcvive pro, army frame backpack. 

Source

I can not argue with that