U. TEXAS – AUSTIN (US) — A new, free website provides tools to “de-noise” photos, such as removing imperfections from low light, and to enlarge images without losing picture quality.
“The free image-processing website allows users to upload as many as 1,000 images daily,” says Wilson Geisler, director of the Center for Perceptual Systems and professor in the department of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.
ClarissaHere's hoping it'll be handled well, but with cape comics' track record I'm not holding my breath.
If you've ever needed a temporary phone number for whatever reason, there are several apps out there that you could turn to. Last summer, we wrote about Burner, an application on iOS that enables users to take on another phone number for a small fee. Unlike Google Voice or Skype, the app can assign your mobile phone a new number with just the touch of a button. Today, Burner has made its app available to Android users.
To make a burner phone number with the app, select the “Create Burner” button to choose an area code and then input the number the burner should forward to (it will automatically default to the number on your mobile phone). Unfortunately, you can’t use a land line as the callback number, because the number requires text message verification. You can then pick from a variety of burner options, with the most standard being the Mini Burner for $1.99, which offers a number valid for a week, 20 minutes, or 60 texts. After that, the number is effectively disposed of. There are also payment tiers: eight credits for $4.99, 15 for $7.99, or 25 for $11.99.
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STANFORD (US) — A new technique can make a mouse brain transparent, allowing researchers to probe its intact wiring and structures with light and chemicals.
The process, called CLARITY, ushers in an entirely new era of whole-organ imaging that stands to fundamentally change our scientific understanding of the most-important-but-least-understood of organs, the brain, and potentially other organs, as well.
I’m reading through the latest digital edition of Game Developer Magazine which contains their annual survey. The salary numbers overall weren’t concerning to me, until I scrolled down and saw the differences between the male and female survey respondents. The next time someone tells me that men and women get paid equally for their talents in the game industry, I wanted something to link to them. This is just plain disgusting.
This isn’t so bad right? Female programmers are currently making 4.5% more annually than male programmers. However, considering they only make up 4% of the entire field of programmers in the game industry, companies are probably paying them more to retain them. I’m glad to see the few lady programmers we have in games aren’t underpaid.
However, expect things to get more grim.
Male artists make 29% more per year than female artists in the game industry. Women represent 16% of the game industry’s artists, which is sadly a pretty decent number.
Male game designers make 23.6% more annually than female game designers, and men comprise 89% of the game industry’s designers.
The producer field doesn’t look so terrible. It has the highest percentage of female representation at 23%. Women still are underpaid compared to men though: 8.3% less.
Audio development is completely dominated by men. 96% of audio developers are male, and they make a whopping 65% more than women.
It’s starting to get a big redundant, but here you can see that men make 24.9% more than women per year in QA.
Finally, in business and legal we see that men make 31% more than women. This is a broad field that includes Community Management, CEOs, HR, IT, and admin. I suspect part of this discrepancy in wage is that HR, admin, and community management have a lot of female representation anecdotally while upper management is dominated by men at most game companies.
I’m sure there are more details that might make these numbers less damning. For example, we all know that games have been long dominated by men and the industry is taking small steps to change that. As a result, many of the women who answered the survey might be new to the game industry, might not be in as senior of roles as the men who responded. However, I don’t think this changes the fact that we need to recruit and encourage more women at all levels of every organization — and we’re failing to do so.
Leadership: look at your organization. Compare the salaries of the women to the men who work at your company, and align their salaries. If all of your women are junior, evaluate them. How long have they been junior? Are they deserving of an increase in role, capabilities, and salary? If you don’t have many women in various departments, recruit them. Make an effort to keep your space positive and encouraging for women. Consider that raising women up in your company means for more mentors in our industry for the young women who might be interested in working in games. These numbers are disgusting and we see them year after year. Who is out there working to change it? Every studio should be proactive in solving this, because with numbers like these — why would women want to work in games?
These images are all from the April 2013 issue of Game Developer Magazine.
Many of the laws that Congress passed to rein in big banks in the wake of the 2007 financial meltdown have yet to go into effect, but lawmakers are already working to dismantle them. And it's not a partisan thing either.
A group of 21 House lawmakers—including eight Democrats—is pushing seven separate bills that would dramatically scale back financial reform. The proposed laws, which are scheduled to come before the House financial-services committee for consideration in mid-April, come straight on the heels of a major Senate investigation that revealed that JP Morgan Chase had lost $6 billion dollars by cooking its books and defying regulators—who themselves fell asleep on the job. Why the move to gut Wall Street reform so soon? Financial-reform advocates say Democrats might be supporting deregulation because of a well-intentioned misunderstanding of the laws, which lobbyists promise are consumer-friendly. But, reformers add, it could also have something to do with Wall Street money.
Plus: How the National Rifle Association sold its grassroots firepower to the Koch brothers, Karl Rove, and conservative donors.
| 1967 | The NRA declares it "is not affiliated with any manufacturer of arms or ammunition." |
| 1977 |
 A 1975 NRA ad appeals to hunters; a 1993 ad features a photo of goose-stepping Nazis and warns of a coming "police state."
Hardliners oust NRA leadership for going soft on gun rights. New president Harlon Carter turns the group into a political powerhouse. |
| 1982 | Sturm Ruger, Smith & Wesson, and other gun companies help fund the NRA's $5 million drive to defeat California's "handgun freeze" proposition. |
| 1991 | The NRA asks 16 gun makers for input on whether it should start a satellite TV channel to present "our truthful unbiased story." Manufacturers are enthusiastic. |
| 1999 |
NRA president Charlton Heston delivers his "cold, dead hands" speech, 2003. Preston MacUMAPress
NRA president Charlton Heston tells gun manufacturers facing product liability lawsuits: "Your fight has become our fight. Your legal threat is our constitutional threat," even if "others are going to say we've become what they've always thought—a shill for the industry." |
| 2000 | The NRA organizes a boycott of Smith & Wesson after the gun maker works with the Clinton administration to make safer guns in exchange for legal immunity. Taurus firearms offers a free NRA membership to all customers, bringing in more than 40,000 members over the next 12 years. |
| 2004 | The NRA helps block renewal of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban. Rifle production jumps 75 percent in the following seven years. |
| 2005 |
Remington and other gun makers offer free NRA memberships to customers. Remington
Congress passes the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which blocks product liability suits against gun makers and sellers—a shield no other industry enjoys. The NRA launches its Ring of Freedom campaign to enlist corporate partners. By 2011, about 50 gun companies sign up, raising as much as $38 million. Beretta USA and ammo maker MidwayUSA kick in more than $1 million each. |
| 2007 |
Rocking out with her Glock bag out at the NRA convention Les Stone/ZUMAPress
The NRA thanks Glock for signing up 10,000 of its customers as new members. |
| 2008 | Beretta pledges $1 million to the NRA over the next five years. |
| 2011 |
Friends of NRA host Jessie Duff visits handgun maker Taurus Friends of NRA
Friends of NRA launches on the Outdoor Channel; episodes include visits to gun companies such as Winchester, Barrett, and Taurus. Ruger promises the NRA $1 for every weapon it sells in a year. It ends up donating $1.2 million. Gun industry and other corporate donations to the NRA total more than $59 million.
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| 2012 | MidwayUSA donates $1 million to the NRA; Smith & Wesson donates more than $1 million. |
| 2013 | The CEO of the Freedom Group, maker of the AR-15 rifle, is nominated to run for the NRA board of directors. The NRA's Eddie Eagle gun safety website declares the group is "not affiliated with any firearm or ammunition manufacturers." |
As NRA rhetoric has ramped up, so have gun sales (as measured by the number of federal firearm background checks.)
