[Oooh, no shortage of ethical difficulties down this road…-egg]
Realistic animated 10-year-old girls are being used to catch sexual predators in the act, and creating moral, legal, and human rights quandaries in the process.
via Why Are We Building Jailbait Sexbots? ⚙ Co.Labs ⚙ code + community.
[Really important look at what the consequences of climate change are likely to be. It’s huge, but just the executive summary alone will explain a lot. -Egg]
“This report focuses on the risks of climate change to development in Sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia and South Asia. Building on the 2012 report, Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided, this new scientific analysis examines the likely impacts of present day, 2°C and 4°C warming on agricultural production, water resources, and coastal vulnerability for affected populations. It finds many significant climate and development impacts are already being felt in some regions, and in some cases multiple threats of increasing extreme heat waves, sea level rise, more severe storms, droughts and floods are expected to have further severe negative implications for the poorest. Climate related extreme events could push households below the poverty trap threshold. High temperature extremes appear likely to affect yields of rice, wheat, maize and other important crops, adversely affecting food security. Promoting economic growth and the eradication of poverty and inequality will thus be an increasingly challenging task under future climate change. Immediate steps are needed to help countries adapt to the risks already locked in at current levels of 0.8°C warming, but with ambitious global action to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, many of the worst projected climate impacts could still be avoided by holding warming below 2°C. “
[Useful info. -egg]
These rigs are built to handle the incredible demands modern games put on them, rendering state-of-the-art graphics quickly and smoothly to create a realistic gaming experience. At least, that’s the theory. The conventional wisdom is that a cheap PC will produce a jerky, low-resolution image that ruins the immersive effect of modern games.
However, we found that a $700 computer was more than capable of running one of the most demanding games out there at high resolution, and that most gamers don’t need to spend more than this.
via You’re Spending Too Much on Your Gaming PC | Product Reviews | Wired.com.
[Solid review from The Wirecutter]
After sifting through literally hundreds of options, seriously considering nearly 150 models, testing the top 40, and calling in audio experts to blindly evaluate the top 20, we’re pleased to report that if you want to buy an inexpensive pair of in-ears, you should get the Panasonic RP-TCM125 “Ergo Fit”. They sound good, they have a one-button remote and mic, they fit well, they come in a variety of colors, and they’re less than $15.
Huh? is not trivial. It might seem frivolous or even trivial to carry out scientific research on a word like Huh? But in fact this little word, along with others that function in similar ways (e.g., ‘Sorry?’ ‘What?’) is an indispensible tool in human communication. Without such words we would be unable to signal when we have problems with hearing or understanding what was said. Because conversation moves along so quickly, if we did not have reliable ways of signaling trouble, we would constantly fail to stay ‘on the same page’ in social interaction. While Huh? may seem an unlikely topic of scientific research, in fact human communication, and thus common understanding in social life, relies heavily on the use of such linguistic devices.
Huh? is universal. We sampled languages from around the world in this study, and we found that all of them have a word with a near-identical sound and function as English Huh? This is an exception to the normal situation, namely that when words in different languages mean the same thing, they will usually sound completely different: compare, for example, these very different-sounding words for ‘dog’: inu in Japanese, chien in French, dog in English. Why do these differences between the sounds of words across languages occur? Because language does not impose any necessary connection between sound and meaning in words (a principle that linguists call ‘the arbitrariness of the sign’). This study shows that ‘Huh?’ is a rare exception to this otherwise strong rule.
The Fear of Missing Out by Jonas Lund ‘proposes that it is possible to be one step ahead of the art world by using well-crafted algorithms and computational logic. The works in the show are the result of a computer algorithm written by Lund. By analysing and categorizing a wide range of artworks, by the most successful contemporary artists, a set of instructions were generated explaining, step by step, how to make the most successful works of art. The artist then simply made the work following the instructions.’The project was published in the Huffington Post under the headline Controversial New Project Uses Algorithm to Predict Art providing more details about the algorithmic process: Lund enters vitals such as his age, the size of the space he’s exhibiting in, the price point he wants for his work, etc. The algorithm sifts through a vast database scraped into existence by Lund and populated with the names of top-ranking curators, works, galleries and artists. It then spits back an imagined work Lund should make. Each of the algorithms answers involve three elements — title, materials and instructions. One of Lund’s MAMA installations, “Cheerfully Hats Sander Selfish,” demanded that he “place the seven minute fifty second video loop in the coconut soap.” ‘
via #algopop.
Who hasn’t had the desire just to be someone else for awhile? Dressing up is a way of creating an alter ego and a second skin which one’s behaviour can be adjusted to. Regardless of the motivating factors which cause somebody to acquire a costume, the main principle remains the same: the civilian steps behind the mask and turns into somebody else. ’Just the Two of Us’ deals with both: the costumes and the people behind them.
via Just the Two of Us: Portraits of Cosplay Enthusiasts in their Homes by Klaus Pichler | Colossal.
[This is spooky enough that I wish I’d seen it in time to post it on halloween. -egg]
In the following months, Ruiu observed more odd phenomena that seemed straight out of a science-fiction thriller. A computer running the Open BSD operating system also began to modify its settings and delete its data without explanation or prompting. His network transmitted data specific to the Internets next-generation IPv6 networking protocol, even from computers that were supposed to have IPv6 completely disabled. Strangest of all was the ability of infected machines to transmit small amounts of network data with other infected machines even when their power cords and Ethernet cables were unplugged and their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards were removed. Further investigation soon showed that the list of affected operating systems also included multiple variants of Windows and Linux.
via Meet “badBIOS,” the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps | Ars Technica.
