The first 3D animations of a human face are wonderfully creepy Boing Boing

Aug 252020
 

While a graduate student at the University of Utah in the early 1970s, computer graphics pioneer Frederic Parke created some of the first 3D models of human faces. The research was supported by the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (now called DARPA). Parke’s wife Vicky was one the models. Here’s the full technical report from 1972: “Computer generation animation of faces”

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 2020-08-25  Comments Off on The first 3D animations of a human face are wonderfully creepy Boing Boing

Pete Buttigieg Hoping To Leverage Rising Star Status Into Becoming Mayor Of Evansville, Indiana The Onion

Aug 222020
 

SOUTH BEND, IN—Calling his presidential run a “perfect launchpad” for becoming a leader on a larger scale, Pete Buttigieg told reporters Friday that he was hoping to leverage his rising star status into ultimately becoming the mayor of Evansville, IN. “After the incredible year I’ve had serving not just as the mayor…Read more…

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 2020-08-22  Comments Off on Pete Buttigieg Hoping To Leverage Rising Star Status Into Becoming Mayor Of Evansville, Indiana The Onion

Anti-Piracy Outfit Hires VPN Expert to Help Track Down The Pirate Bay TorrentFreak

Aug 222020
 

Tracking down, prosecuting, blocking and otherwise trying to prevent The Pirate Bay from operating has become an entertainment industry project for the last 15 years. The torrent site has faced more adversaries than any other on the planet yet today the site remains stubbornly online. Exactly where and operated by whom remains either a mystery or a topic of speculation. After a period of what seemed like calm, this year it became clear that the…

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 2020-08-22  Comments Off on Anti-Piracy Outfit Hires VPN Expert to Help Track Down The Pirate Bay TorrentFreak

In these uncertain times, a smile goes a long way… jwz

Aug 222020
 

…on an eviction notice.The single mother of two says she lost her job in March when the restaurant where she was working cut hours. She was denied unemployment and fell behind on rent for June, July and August.The letter goes on to say, “Pay your outstanding balance, or release your apartment and turn in your keys to the leasing office by 6 p.m. today. Eviction will be filed promptly Tuesday morning.””The notice wasn’t there until…

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 2020-08-22  Comments Off on In these uncertain times, a smile goes a long way… jwz

The Supreme Court’s Failure To Protect The Right To Assemble Has Led Directly To Violence Against Protesters Techdirt.

Aug 222020
 

It appears the Supreme Court is unwilling to address a another problem it created. The first major problem created by the Court has been discussed here quite frequently. Qualified immunity was created by the Supreme Court in 1967 as a way to excuse rash decisions by law enforcement if undertaken in “good faith.” Since then, it has only gotten worse. Fifteen years later, the Supreme Court added another factor: a violation of rights must be…

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 2020-08-22  Comments Off on The Supreme Court’s Failure To Protect The Right To Assemble Has Led Directly To Violence Against Protesters Techdirt.

Electric glove for police to handle “rough characters” Boing Boing

Aug 222020
 

In September 1935, Modern Mechanix covered a new “electric glove” invented by Cirilo Diaz of Cuba. According to the report, it’s intended for “use by police while handling rough characters or in quelling riots…” Persons contacted by an officer wearing the glove receive a 1,500-volt shock, sufficient to remove all traces of flight.” (Archive.org via Weird Universe)

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 2020-08-22  Comments Off on Electric glove for police to handle “rough characters” Boing Boing

Regulators Are Ignoring How Low Orbit Satellite Broadband Is Trashing The Night Sky Techdirt.

Aug 222020
 

As previously noted, Space X, Amazon, and others are pushing harder than ever into the low-orbit satellite broadband game. The industry, pockmarked by a long road of failures, involves firing thousands of smaller, cheaper, lower orbit satellite constellations into space to help supplement existing broadband services. The lower orbit means that LO satellite service will offer lower-latency broadband than traditional satellite offerings, which for 15 years or so have been widely maligned as expensive, slow,…

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 2020-08-22  Comments Off on Regulators Are Ignoring How Low Orbit Satellite Broadband Is Trashing The Night Sky Techdirt.

Can You Help us Make the 19th Century Searchable? Internet Archive Blogs

Aug 222020
 

In 1847, Frederick Douglass started a newspaper advocating the abolition of slavery that ran until 1851.  After the Civil War, there was a newspaper for freed slaves, the Freedmen’s Record.  The Internet Archive is bringing these and many more works online for free public access. But there’s a problem:  Our Optical Character Recognition (OCR), while the best commercially available OCR technology, is not very good at identifying text from older documents.   Take for example, this…

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 2020-08-22  Comments Off on Can You Help us Make the 19th Century Searchable? Internet Archive Blogs

The iconic Arecibo Telescope goes quiet after major damage Ars Technica

Aug 162020
 

That’s a big dish! The Arecibo radio telescope in its salad days. (credit: NSF) Early Monday morning, a cable suspended over the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico broke and left a 100-foot-long gash in the dish of the iconic radio telescope. The 3-inch-diameter cable also caused damage to the panels of the Gregorian dome that is suspended hundreds of feet above the dish and houses the telescope’s receivers. It is unclear what caused the cable…

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 2020-08-16  Comments Off on The iconic Arecibo Telescope goes quiet after major damage Ars Technica

Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating their data The Register

Aug 072020
 

Spreadsheet woes spanning 16+ years force official update Geneticists have issued new guidelines in naming human genes – after spending years wrestling with Microsoft Excel and similar software that automatically converts the names of genes to dates.…

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 2020-08-07  Comments Off on Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating their data The Register

Georgia School District Inadvertently Begins Teaching Lessons In First Amendment Protections After Viral Photo Techdirt.

Aug 072020
 

There’s this dumb but persistent meme in American culture that somehow the First Amendment simply doesn’t exist within the walls of a public school district. This is patently false. What is true is that there have been very famous court cases that have determined that speech rights for students at school may be slightly curtailed and must face tests over “substantial disruption” of the speech in question in order to have it limited. Named after…

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 2020-08-07  Comments Off on Georgia School District Inadvertently Begins Teaching Lessons In First Amendment Protections After Viral Photo Techdirt.

Tracking Apps are Unlikely to Help Stop COVID-19 American Civil Liberties Union

Aug 072020
 

Proposals to use the tracking capabilities of our cell phones to help fight COVID-19 have probably received more attention than any other technology issue during the pandemic. Here at the ACLU, we have been skeptical of schemes to use apps for contact tracing or exposure warnings from the beginning, but it is clearer than ever that such tools are unlikely to work, and that the debate over such tracking is largely a sideshow to the…

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 2020-08-07  Comments Off on Tracking Apps are Unlikely to Help Stop COVID-19 American Civil Liberties Union

FSF News: Geoffrey Knauth elected Free Software Foundation president; Odile Bénassy joins the board Planet GNU

Aug 062020
 

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Wednesday, August 5th, 2020 — The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced the addition of a new director to its board, and the election of a new president. Long-time free software activist and developer Odile Bénassy, known especially for her work promoting free software in France, was elected to the FSF’s board of directors. Geoffrey Knauth, who has served on the FSF’s board for over thirty years, was elected president. On…

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 2020-08-06  Comments Off on FSF News: Geoffrey Knauth elected Free Software Foundation president; Odile Bénassy joins the board Planet GNU

Sony Shuts Down Its Digital Paper Division The Digital Reader

Aug 062020
 

My competitor is reporting that Sony has thrown in the towel on its writing slate division, and he is very likely correct. The main landing page for the Digital Paper devices has been removed from Sony’s website, and neither the 10.3″ Sony DPT-CP1 or the 13.3″ DPT-RP1 are available from Sony’s authorized retailers such as Amazon or B&H. In fact B&H lists both models as discontinued. The first model in this product line was announced in 2013, and shipped…

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 2020-08-06  Comments Off on Sony Shuts Down Its Digital Paper Division The Digital Reader

We Deserve Better Than Trump Versus Biden Jacobin

Aug 062020
 

In the past week, two separate and very painful videos have circulated showing Donald Trump and Joe Biden the presidential nominees of the two major US political parties in action. Watching them, there’s only one conclusion we can reach: we’re so screwed. President Trump 2020 and Joe Biden 2020 sweatshirts displayed for sale on the boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey. (Mark Makela / Getty Images) In the past week, two videos have appeared showing the…

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 2020-08-06  Comments Off on We Deserve Better Than Trump Versus Biden Jacobin

Geoffrey Knauth elected Free Software Foundation president; Odile Bénassy joins the board Planet GNU

Aug 062020
 

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Wednesday, August 5th, 2020 — The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced the addition of a new director to its board, and the election of a new president. Long-time free software activist and developer Odile Bénassy, known especially for her work promoting free software in France, was elected to the FSF’s board of directors. Geoffrey Knauth, who has served on the FSF’s board for over thirty years, was elected president. On…

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 2020-08-06  Comments Off on Geoffrey Knauth elected Free Software Foundation president; Odile Bénassy joins the board Planet GNU

Scientists Created the Brightest Fluorescent Material Ever Known Motherboard

Aug 062020
 

Behold: The mesmerizing glow of the brightest fluorescent material ever made. These colorful bundles of light may look like visions from a dream of the 1980s, but they are real 3D-printed objects illuminated by a new class of materials called SMILES, according to a study published on Thursday in the journal Chem. SMILES, which stands for small-molecule ionic isolation lattices, are crystals scaffolded by star-shaped structures that can brighten the light of fluorescent dyes to…

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 2020-08-06  Comments Off on Scientists Created the Brightest Fluorescent Material Ever Known Motherboard

Wine Windows jwz

Aug 062020
 

Medieval ‘wine windows’ reopen, reviving Italian plague traditionThus, the “wine windows,” or buchette del vino, of Tuscany. They are just as they sound: pint-size hatches, carved into the concrete walls of urban wineries and shops, where beverage merchants would serve sips at a safe social distance.First introduced in the 1600s, their true purpose went untapped for centuries after the plague — that is, until a new one came along this year.Previously, previously, previously, previously.

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 2020-08-06  Comments Off on Wine Windows jwz

Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating crucial data The Register

Aug 062020
 

Spreadsheet woes spanning 16+ years force official update Geneticists have issued new guidelines in naming human genes – after spending years wrestling with Microsoft Excel and similar software that automatically converts the names of genes to dates.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/08/06/excel_gene_names/

 2020-08-06  Comments Off on Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating crucial data The Register
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