If you’ve ever needed to quickly remove the background of an image you know it can be tedious, even with access to software like Photoshop. Well, Remove.bg is a single-purpose website that uses AI to do the hard work for you. Just upload any image and the site will automatically identify any people in it, cut around the foreground, and let you download a PNG of your subject with a transparent background. Easy.
It’s the latest example of how machine learning techniques that were once cutting-edge are being turned into simple consumer tools. In the case of removing an image’s background, there are already a few open-source algorithms that can handle this particular task. Remove.bg has simply turned them (or something like them) into a...
In this incredible archival footage taken by the Lumière company, production artist Guy Jones has faithfully speed correct and added sound, giving the high quality footage new life—and making it available for all to see on YouTube.
Seen above is a collection of high quality remastered prints from the dawn of film taken in Belle Époque-era Paris, France from 1896-1900. See below for timestamps:
0:08 – Notre-Dame Cathedral (1896)
0:58 – Alma Bridge (1900)
1:37 – Avenue des Champs-Élysées (1899)
2:33 – Place de la Concorde (1897)
3:24 – Passing of a fire brigade (1897)
3:58 – Tuileries Garden (1896)
4:48 – Moving walkway at the Paris Exposition (1900)
5:24 – The Eiffel Tower from the Rives de la Seine à Paris (1897)
If you appreciate Guy Jones’ work you can check out his GoFundMe page here.
First thing is to look back on all the comics made this year and pick five of my personal favourites. To be honest it was quite surreal scrolling through all of them because with each one I distinctly remember feeling like that was the last comic idea I’ll ever have and yet here we are.
Anyway, here are my five top favourites in no particular order:
As we did last year, let’s again take a trip down the HALL OF MEMES where I’ve collected some of my favourite memes and memories we’ve shared during 2018 (these are from our Twitch chat and Discord server).
And that’s 2018 wrapped up!
Thank you very much for reading and for being a part of Loading Artist! I didn’t get around to doing everything I wanted to achieve this year (*cough* book), but 2019 is a new year with FRESH NEW DISAPPOINOPPORTUNITIES!
I’m taking a little break from streaming/comic until next week, but in the mean time you can follow me on Patreon, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and Discord if you wanna stay in touch!
The story that follows supposedly happened more than a hundred years ago on the eve of New Year. It spanned two centuries, yet was over in a couple of seconds.
The story involves a passenger steamer named SS Warrimoo that was launched in 1892, originally to serve the Trans-Tasman route between Australia and New Zealand but later began ferrying passengers between Canada and Australia. The extraordinary event happened during one such trip.
Right now, I can open up Google Photos, type "beach," and see my photos from various beaches I've visited over the last decade. I never went through my photos and labeled them; instead, Google identifies beaches based on the contents of the photos themselves. This seemingly mundane feature is based on a technology called deep convolutional neural networks, which allows software to understand images in a sophisticated way that wasn't possible with prior techniques.
In recent years, researchers have found that the accuracy of the software gets better and better as they build deeper networks and amass larger data sets to train them. That has created an almost insatiable appetite for computing power, boosting the fortunes of GPU makers like Nvidia and AMD. Google developed its own custom neural networking chip several years ago, and other companies have scrambled to follow Google's lead.
Over at Tesla, for instance, the company has put deep learning expert Andrej Karpathy in charge of its Autopilot project. The carmaker is now developing a custom chip to accelerate neural network operations for future versions of Autopilot. Or, take Apple: the A11 and A12 chips at the heart of recent iPhones include a "neural engine" to accelerate neural network operations and allow better image- and voice-recognition applications.
For nearly half a century, the Canadian province of Nova Scotia has been sending a gift to the people of Boston in the form of a Christmas tree. This annual tradition of holiday goodwill goes back to 1971, but the events that led to it is older still and was one of great tragedy.
In 1917, the port city of Halifax in Nova Scotia was a bustling scene of activity. The Great War in Europe was in its third year and Halifax’s strategic location in the Caribbean-Canada-United Kingdom shipping triangle made it an integral part of Allied war efforts not only during the First World War but the second one as well. The port’s protective waters sheltered convoys from German U-boat attack, while Halifax’s railway connection and world class port facilities enabled supplies, munitions and troops to be assembled from all around Canada and the US before they headed out into the open Atlantic Ocean and to the Western Front.
The Boston Common Christmas Tree—a gift from Nova Scotia to Boston. Photo credit: Keith J Finks / Shutterstock.com
Enlarge / Robot, heal thyself. (credit: Gmas3r, via Getty Images)
Welcome to Ars UNITE, our week-long virtual conference on the ways that innovation brings unusual pairings together. Each day this week from Wednesday through Friday, we're bringing you a pair of stories about facing the future. Today's focus is on AI in manufacturing and space—stand by to blast off!
Manufacturing is in the early stages of a state of disruption brought on by technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D printing. "Additive manufacturing" has already worked itself into companies such as Porsche and Bugatti, and aircraft builder Airbus is experimenting with UAV THOR, a drone made entirely of 3D-printed parts. At the same time, AI is coming into play in a number of ways, in everything from analytics to manufacturing robotics. So the "factory of the future," as envisioned by projects such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Adaptive Vehicle Make program, is one in which software drives the manufacturing process and the factory can be rapidly reconfigured to change what it makes.
AI has increasingly played a role in designing products in the form of generative design software. AI-driven generative design software makes it possible for humans and AI to work together to rapidly consider every conceivable design option and to test them all before choosing one for production.
Hovertext: Pyrite is actually much more visually interesting than gold, but after the apocalypse comes, you won't be able to trade it for dune buggies, scimitars, and spiked helmets.
Last year animator and illustrator Thomas Romain found himself marvelling at one of his son’s drawings. He admired his imagination and figured as an artist himself, maybe he could embellish and build upon his son’s originality.
Fast forward to today and Romain has illustrated hundreds of his two sons’ (now aged 9 and 11) fantastic drawings, and the family have amassed a huge online following for their ongoing series of works.
Thomas has even launched a YouTube channel and Patreon page that shows how each drawing comes to life. Below you will some of our personal favorites but be sure to follow the family at the links below for much more!
Enlarge / The Wizard of Oz tops the list. The rankings are based on an "influence score" determined by how many times each film has been referenced in subsequent films. (credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
Well, this is sure to spark some intense debate. The classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz is the most influential movie of all time, with Star Wars: A New Hope and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in second and third place, respectively. That's the conclusion of a new study by Italian scientists in the journal Applied Network Science, suggesting a fresh metric for determining a film's success, similar to that used for scientific publications.
According to co-author Livio Bioglio of the University of Turin, the usual metrics used to measure a film's success are inadequate for evaluating its true quality and significance. Box office receipts, for example, are affected by such non-aesthetic factors as advertising and distribution, while reviews are by nature inherently subjective. Plenty of now-classic films bombed at the box office and/or were critically savaged at the time of their release. (Ahem. Blade Runner, anyone?)
The Italian scientists reasoned that maybe the science of complex networks can help. "We propose an alternative method to box office takings and reviews for analyzing the success of a film," said Bioglio. "We have developed an algorithm that uses references between movies as a measure for success, and which can also be used to evaluate the career of directors, actors and actresses, by considering their participation in top-scoring movies."
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