An anonymous reader writes "Tor Mail was an anonymized email service run over Tor. It was operated by a company called Freedom Hosting, which was shut down by the FBI last August. The owner was arrested for 'enabling child porn,' and the Tor Mail servers suddenly began hosting FBI malware that attempted to de-anonymize users. Now, Wired reports on a new court filing which indicates that the FBI was also able to grab Tor Mail's entire email database. 'The filings show the FBI built its case in part by executing a search warrant on a Gmail account used by the counterfeiters, where they found that orders for forged cards were being sent to a TorMail e-mail account: "platplus@tormail.net." Acting on that lead in September, the FBI obtained a search warrant for the TorMail account, and then accessed it from the bureau's own copy of "data and information from the TorMail e-mail server, including the content of TorMail e-mail accounts," according to the complaint (PDF) sworn out by U.S. Postal Inspector Eric Malecki.'"
'Aether is a new app that wants to help restore some privacy to your online activities. Available for Mac and Windows, it's an anonymized, encrypted network that lets people share content without worrying about who might be watching over their digital shoulder. Usernames are not unique, nobody is to be trusted or in any other way distinguished from the rest, and moderation is done purely by users voting stories up and down.' ... 'He'll be part of YouTube's user experience design team, focusing on the front end presentation'
Burak Nehbit, the 23-year-old author of the well liked Aether content-sharing network, has accepted a job with Google. After revealing the news on Twitter over the weekend, Nehbit told The Verge that he still very much intends to keep Aether development going, noting that he managed to keep it out of his employment contract with Mountain View.
The encrypted distributed network that Nehbit coded and designed single-handedly attracted the attention of both Google and Facebook, he says, with both submitting job offers. Eric Schmidt did recently say that encryption would solve many of the world's problems, though Nehbit's role at Google will actually be rather different from what he's been doing so far. He'll be part of YouTube's user experience design team, focusing on the front end presentation rather than the stuff behind the scenes.
As to Aether, there's a version 1.1 incoming soon that should make the app "working and performant," with continuing updates and improvements also in the works.
Easter Island’s Statues Reveal Bodies Covered With Unknown Ancient Petroglyphs
21 January, 2014
MessageToEagle.com - Standing some 2,000 miles west of Chile, on the Easter Island, 887 mysterious giant statues have intrigued scientists and the public for years.
For a long time it was believed that the massive statutes consisted of just the heads.
However, in October 2011, when the Easter Island Statue Project began its Season V expedition, scientists could reveal remarkable photos showing that the bodies of the statues go far deeper underground than just about anyone had imagined.
Project director Jo Anne Van Tilburg said: “Our EISP excavations recently exposed the torsos of two 7m tall statues.
The statutes on Easter Island have bodies covered with ancient undeciphered petroglyphs.
"We found a round, deep post hole into which the Rapa Nui had inserted a tree trunk," she said. Van Tilburg said ropes were attached to the tree trunk and to the partially carved statue. "We found a rope guide that was actually carved into the bedrock near the statue." The Rapa Nui then used the tree trunk to raise the statue upright. Before the statue was upright, they carved its front. Once it stood erect, they finished the back, Van Tilburg explained.
The excavation team also found about 800 grams of natural red pigment —nearly two pounds —in the burial hole, along with a human burial. Van Tilburg believes the pigment was used to paint the statues, just as the Rapa Nui used pigment to paint their bodies for certain ceremonies.
The unusually large amount of pigment found indicates that it might have been used by a priest or chief, perhaps as part of mortuary practice, she said. Human bones were found throughout the dig, indicating that people buried their dead around the statues.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of visitors to the island have been astonished to see that, indeed, Easter Island statues have bodies!
More important, however, we discovered a great deal about the Rapa Nui techniques of ancient engineering.”
Among their discoveries, the team discovered:
· The dirt and detritus partially burying the statues was washed down from above and not deliberatelyplaced there to bury, protect, or support the statues
· The statues were erected in place and stand on stone pavements
· Post holes were cut into bedrock to support upright tree trunks
· Rope guides were cut into bedrock around the post holes
· Posts, ropes, stones, and different types of stone tools were all used to carve and raise the statues upright
The two “heads” in the quarry where Van Tilburg’s team dug are standing figures with torsos, truncated at the waist, that have become partially buried by eroded dirt and detritus over centuries.
The team also discovered that ceremonies were certainly associated with the statues.
On the project website, Van Tilburg said: “We found large quantities of red, some of which may have been used to paint the statues.
Finally, and perhaps most poignantly, we found in the pavement under one statue a single stone carved with a crescent symbol said to represent a canoe, or vaka.
The backs of both statues are covered with petroglyphs, many of which are also vaka.
A direct connection between the vaka symbol and the identity of the artist or group owning the statue is strongly suggested.”
Still, many of these ancient petroglyphs remain undeciphered and the history of one of the most remote islands in the world is now even more mysterious than ever.
Democratic Senator Charles 'Schumer said the program will cost about $10 million. He will formally introduce the legislation Monday, and he expects that it will pass within a few months.'
no word on whether it's compulsory; unsure why legislation is required otherwise, unless this is just the feds buying the trackers for parents who want them
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer will today formally introduce legislation that would allow law enforcement agencies to track children with autism using GPS devices. Schumer dubbed the proposed legislation "Avonte's law," named for Avonte Oquendo. Oquendo, who suffered from severe autism, disappeared from his school in Queens last October. His remains were found in the East River earlier this month.
Oquendo's mother, Vanessa Fontaine, stood beside Schumer as he unveiled the proposed legislation on Sunday. The voluntary scheme would see children with autism wearing GPS trackers in belts, shoelaces, or even sewn into clothes. In Oguendo's case, New York police and volunteers had to resort to unconventional methods in an attempt to find the child in a months-long search that included playing his mother's voice from truck-mounted loudspeakers. According to WABC-TV News, the new trackers would reduce the time it takes to find a child by 95 percent.
The voluntary program would see children with autism wearing GPS trackers
The traits that characterize autism also mean autistic children have an increased chance of getting lost. Studies have shown that children with autism are four times more likely to flee from safe environments such as school or their homes than non-autistic siblings. In 2011, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention designated "wandering" as a "potentially life-threatening" aspect of autism-spectrum disorders, a danger compounded by the fact that one-third of children with autism are non-verbal and unable to explain their situation or request help.
Avonte's law — called "a great solution" by executive vice president of autism advocacy group Autism Speaks, Michael Rosen — is modeled after an Alzheimer's program that gives grants to organizations that search for missing patients. Schumer reportedly expects the legislation, which will cost around $10 million, will pass within a few months. "We know how to do it. We've seen it done. It works," the Senator says. "All that's standing in the way is funding."
Be sure to bookmark SB Nation's complete coverage of Super Bowl XLVIII. Everything from the build up, to live coverage and reactions after the big game, all in one beautiful package.
Having flown into the area on Sunday, both teams are settling in and bracing for the cold week ahead. One of the main concerns for both coaches are the practice field conditions, according to ESPN.com. Not surprisingly, the fields are snowy and frozen, making them useless.
"We haven't had a chance to get over there yet, but we understand there's snow on the fields and they're frozen and we likely could be inside for most of the week," Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said.
For now, it appears both teams will have to practice indoors at the New York Jets and Giants training facilities. Seattle will work in East Rutherford where the Giants practice and Denver will head out to Florham Park to practice in the Jets' building.
Ultimately, both teams will be able to get all the practice time they need, but will have to do it on a synthetic surface instead of grass, a concern for Broncos head coach John Fox, per ESPN.
"We'll look at the fields and test the fields, and we brought our grounds crew people," Broncos coach John Fox said. "I understand the indoor facility is very much like ours, except their field house is completed, which is a big difference. So we may or may not go in there. I'd prefer grass. It saves out players' legs. But if need be, we'll go indoors or on their synthetic surface."
The highs and lows of The Hobbit are made instantaneously clear here in this nifty interactive chart, which maps out both the evolving character relationships and the emotional ups-and-downs they experience as the story unfolds.
When the fire alarm system goes off on the ship, and carbon-dioxide starts to flow into the engine house, some lines of codes running on the monitors….but I managed to catch them with a screenshot….apparently the fire alarm system is CSS & HTML based? :D
The code appears to be the start of the source code for google.com around 2006 with the word Google replaced by Origami.
Charlie Shrem speaks at a Quartz panel in May 2013.
Quartz/Mia Mabanta
Charlie Shrem, the vice chair of the Bitcoin Foundation and CEO of BitInstant, once an exchange for the popular digital currency, was arrested at New York’s JFK Airport last night for violating money transmission rules.
At first, the news was a surprise: Many payments start-ups, including bitcoin companies, run afoul of money transmission laws, and typically face legal expenses, business challenges and bad press—but not arrest.
Then the US Department of Justice issued a press release announcing charges against Shrem and a co-conspirator, and the picture became a lot more interesting. The government alleges Shrem was using his legitimate bitcoin business as a front while knowingly supplying bitcoins for illegal purposes at Silk Road, the erstwhile online drug and contraband market that first brought the crypto-currency to wide repute.
BitInstant, Shrem’s bitcoin exchange, allowed users to exchange bitcoins for dollars and vice versa. It was one of the premiere bitcoin start-ups—Quartz hosted Shrem for a panel on bitcoin where he predicted good relations between the government and bitcoin users. The company even raised a $1.5 million investment round led by the venture-capitalist twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss; we’ll let you write the jokes about that one.
While BitInstant was growing as a company, authorities allege that Shrem was using its resources for less savory purposes at the same time. According to the complaint, Shrem personally sold bitcoin to a man named Robert Faiella, who went by the online handle BTCKing. Faiella, in turn, sold the bitcoin to users on Silk Road, who could then purchase that market’s products, illegal and legal. The Department of Justice alleges that Shrem knew that the bitcoin in question were being used by Faiella and others to purchase drugs—in part because he bought some himself through Silk Road—but continued providing the service without alerting authorities, as is required by state and federal law, to protect a key source of revenue.
The potential for bitcoin to succeed widely as a payments technology, as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently described, largely depends on the end of criminal bitcoin—otherwise, police officers and financial regulators will likely relegate it to the fringes of the internet economy. The arrest of Shrem, who is associated with efforts to clean up bitcoin’s image, isn’t a good sign for those who want to separate bitcoin from its sometimes unsavory reputation—but then, we knew that would be hard anyway.
The other test here is for the government, which let HSBC executives simply pay fines for money laundering violations far more serious and wide-ranging than Shrem’s alleged crimes. If sophisticated financiers can launder billions of dollars for drug cartels and not go to jail, a double standard for start-up financiers using new technology to launder perhaps a million dollars for drug buyers would confirm a lot of unfortunate suspicions about the influence of the financial industry in the halls of power.
Anatoly Pakhomov says homosexuality does not exist among the residents in Sochi and it is not accepted in the city.
The mayor of Sochi, the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics, told BBC on Sunday that homosexuality does not exist among the residents of the city. While he backed off on the claim shortly thereafter, Anatoly Pakhomov also told BBC that homosexuality is "not accepted" in Sochi.
"No, we just say that it is your business, it's your life. But it's not accepted here in the Caucasus where we live. We do not have them in our city."
When challenged, the mayor admitted that he was not certain there were no gay people in Sochi: "I am not sure, but I don't bloody know them."
Russia has drawn criticism for its stance on homosexuality in relation to the Winter Olympics, including anti-gay laws that have since been lifted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the months before the Games are set to begin.
On Friday, Putin told reporters that the country does not ban "nontraditional sexual relations," but is looking to put a stop to the "propaganda of homosexuality and pedophilia" to minors. As such, Putin said gay athletes are welcome at the game with the stipulation that they "leave the children in peace."
In reaction to Pakhomov's comments about homosexuality among the residents of Sochi, opposition leader Boris Nemstov told BBC that there are several gay bars in the city:
"As far as I know there are several gay clubs in Sochi. How do they survive? Why they are not bankrupt?"
The Opening Ceremony for the 2014 Winter Olympics is scheduled to begin on Friday, Feb. 7 and will be broadcast on NBC at 7:30 p.m. ET.
is this an orrery? if so, orrery + shredding = TAfuckingL
You can now have that solar system diorama you made in school on your wrist in the form of a watch. Van Cleef & Arpel have debuted a gorgeous new astronomical watch, the 44mm Midnight Planétarium, at Geneva's annual Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie. The watch shows both numerical time and the rotation of five planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn — visible from Earth. Each planet is represented by precious and semi-precious stones, which rotate around the sun (a stone in the center) in the amount of time it takes for the actual planet make a rotation. You'll easily be able to see a full rotation of Mercury every 88 days and Venus every 224 days, but it'll take a while to see a full rotation of Saturn — 29 years to be exact.
The watch makes telling regular time easy and whimsical, using a shooting star on the outermost area of the face. In addition to the rotating planets, the "Lucky Day" feature adds another layer of luxury and fancy: use the bezel to select any special day of the year to be your Lucky Day, and the Earth will fall underneath the painted star on the watch's crystal on that day every year.
It will take years to see every planet complete one rotation
Midnight Planétarium is a testament to Van Cleef & Arpel's legacy of making watches with stunning, playful displays, as well as Dutch boutique designer Christiaan van der Klaauw's astronomic prowess. Van Cleef's master watchmaker Denis Giguet told Cool Hunting that the biggest challenge was making the planets rotate correctly, and doing it in such a small, thin frame. Van der Klaauw's expertise in astronomic design made him a wise partner for the company, which wanted a special watch to add to its Poetic Astronomy series. While it looks like a fanciful tool out of Harry Potter's world, the watch is a kind of ridiculous beauty that warrants the $245,000 price tag, and that will be striking every time someone looks at it.
"I don't always participate in the Sochi Winter Olympics. But when I do, I'm 55 and a literal Prince."
Prince Hubertus of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, a slalom skier from Mexico who fairly demands that you read his Wikipedia page at once, has the best outfit of the Winter Olympics, hands down.
He is 55 years old, is a literal prince of German descent and will have you quoting Lucky Day, Dusty Bottoms and Ned Nederlander for the remainder of the day. We're okay with that.
Anyone holding out hope that the next Gears of War game would somehow be available on a non-Microsoft platform has had those hopes dashed this morning. Microsoft has announced its acquisition of the entire Gears of War franchise from previous owner and Unreal Engine developer Epic Games.
The move isn't much of a shock, considering that Microsoft Studios published the first four Gears of War games as Xbox 360 exclusives (not counting a Windows version for the 2006 original). Still, the acquisition locks up another high-profile shooter exclusively in the Xbox One camp, alongside the Halo series and EA/Respawn's heavily anticipated Titanfall.
"It all comes back to our commitment to Xbox fans," Microsoft Studios President Phil Spencer said in a statement. "The Gears of War franchise has a very strong, passionate, and valued fan base on Xbox... This franchise, and these fans, are part of the soul of Xbox."
tl;dw: trolls (not harassers) help you improve your arguments by getting angry, _if you're a white guy_ and _if trolling and harassment are totally different things that never turn into each other_.
"Creating things on the internet does not mean you sign up to be harassed. ... In a vacuum, the existence of argumentative rhetorical sparring is ultimately harmless, and yes, maybe even good to have around. But no culture exists in a vacuum. ... My reasoning on the road to the good side of trolling lacked accurate context, and as a result was flawed at best and dangerous at worst."
A thousand points if you don't leave bed all weekend.
Gold medal for you if you quit your job, sell that gold medal, invest in the bond market, gain wealth, thereby proliferating more gold. This will translate to happiness. Mail your teenage nephew red Beats by Dre headphones for his "domepiece." This is a successful game of curling (into a ball).
DOWNHILL
A brash alarm begins its unforgiving beep. It's the morning; dawn peeks through your window.
"It's all downhill from here," you say.
Bronze medal.
HOCKEY
Punch someone! Reflect on how weak you are! Try to break their teeth! Really try!
TIME OUT. PENALTY.
Slip on a patch of ice at the corner of your block while trying to reach the deli for more Nilla Wafers. The glint in the sidewalk is tinged like silver as you lie moaning, bruised, probably with a shattered ribcage. This is your award.
SNOWBOARDING
Dim the lights in your room. Scroll through pictures on Facebook of your ex-boyfriend snowboarding in Vermont or whatever with his blonde girlfriend, Erica or whatever. Have the unhinged gall to "like" each photo and comment "Powder looks fresh, guys! Keep shredding that gnar!!" For every comment you post, one silver medal. Make a batch of hot mulled wine in the tub, bump yourself up to gold.
This is sort of the pivot point for what makes this whole trend of reclaiming existing women characters from the male gaze. Sonja's armor is impractical, but in the context of the setting, if she had her druthers she wouldn't even have the top on.
But that circles back around to it being scale mail (or chain mail, but it's never really depicted as chain mail despite the moniker, is it?)--that's an aesthetic decision, since even a bikini of it is impractically heavy compared to almost anything else, and she would probably be better served with a tightly bound cloth wrap if she wanted minimal impedance while keeping her breasts from flopping around as she's decapitating fools.
So then why a bikini, and why specifically a metal one? It's not like Conan has a scale-mail loincloth.
There were MANY cultures that disliked armor for warfare, it’s not a secret.
It’s such a weird misunderstanding of the character.
I get that the bikini can be a little much in the wrong hands, but to say ‘practical armor’ is all that matters to a character who clearly doesn’t WEAR armor is just plain missing the point.
G.W. & C.B. Colton & Co.'s Railroad and Connections of the Toledo, Cincinnati & St. Louis. 1881 Toledo, Cincinnati, & St. Louis Railroad and connections Date: 1881 Author: G.W. & C.B. Colton & Co. Dwnld: Full Size (17.8mb) Print Availability: See our Prints Page for more details pff This map isn't part of any series, but we have other railroad maps that you might want to check out. A map...
In Scenic Routes, Mike D’Angelo looks at key movie scenes, explaining how they work and what they mean.
Raise your hand if you love your cable company. Now raise your hand if you didn’t raise your hand just now. There we go. As I write this column, analysts are justifiably wringing their hands about the recent court decision that effectively ended net neutrality, but the more fundamental problem with cable—and with the delivery of high-speed Internet in particular—is that most of us have no alternative to whatever massive conglomerate is dicking us around. If your area is served by, say, Time Warner Cable, your only options are TWC or TCBY; either you accept their terms or you head for the nearby yogurt place and hope to hell they offer free Wi-Fi. Consequently, the handful of cable giants can do pretty much whatever they like, without being overly concerned about customer ...
This toy theater comes with a small book of children’s fables, and two characters from each story are depicted in the accompanying cardboard cutout puppets. The labels below were intended to fit into slots below the window and along the brick wall, but they are left out here so they can be seen.
brilliant in application, the tiling is baller masterclass
In Sum: Greater
(Est. 2006) "The Women's Fund of Greater Chattanooga unites advocates, donors, and activists striving for social change that improves life for women and girls all across the region. Through advocacy and philanthropy, we catalyze movement toward a just society that is safe, nurturing, and full of opportunity for women."
Select Quote: The Identity Audit revealed that the Women's Fund serves as a connector, tying many organizations and people together. When the Women's Fund, its members, and partner organizations combine, the results are always greater than the sum. From logo to tagline to website design, each piece we created points back to this idea: the Women's Fund of Greater Chattanooga unites the community and catalyzes a better society — a society where women and girls are treated properly, a healthy society, a connected society. The voice and aesthetic rely on this theme throughout their assets, each word and design element relying on the next to relay the core values and identity.
Condensed video case study.Pattern on back of business cards.Identity materials.
"Apparently even the circulation of a 31-year-old live set damages Prince’s earning capability, with the singer leveling charges of direct copyright infringement, ‘unauthorized fixation and trafficking in sound recordings’, contributory copyright infringement and bootlegging."
International superstar Prince is back on the copyright warpath, yet again targeting individuals who are quite possibly some of his biggest fans. In a lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California, Prince is chasing down fans who found links to his live concerts and posted them on Facebook and blogs. The unlucky 22 individuals, 20 of whom are yet to be identified, face a damages claim of $22 million.
Prince Rogers Nelson is undoubtedly a great and prolific singer/songwriter, but if people want to be a fan they better pay for every last second of his music they listen to – or else.
Prince loves to file copyright infringement lawsuits and at the start of 2014 another has landed, ready to stir up a storm as the details become known and the case develops.
Filed in the United States District Court in the Northern District of California, the lawsuit targets 22 individuals, only two of which are referenced by their real names. The others remain ‘Does’ although eight are indicated by their online nicknames.
Sadly, with names such as PurpleHouse2, PurpleKissTwo and NPRUNIVERSE it’s difficult to see these people as anything other than Prince fans. But it is Doe 8 – THEULTIMATEBOOTLEGEXPERIENCE – that gives the clearest indication of what this lawsuit is all about.
“The Defendants in this case engage in massive infringement and bootlegging of Prince’s material,” the lawsuit reads.
“For example, in just one of the many takedown notices sent to Google with respect to Doe 2 (aka DaBang319), Prince identified 363 separate infringing links to file sharing services, with each link often containing copies of bootlegged performances of multiple separate musical compositions.”
While it’s clear by now that Prince doesn’t share the same opinions as the Grateful Dead or Nine Inch Nails on bootlegs, for once a file-sharing site isn’t in the cross hairs. The lawsuit says that the defendants used Facebook and Google’s Blogger “to accomplish their unlawful activity”, either by running fanpages or blogs and linking to live concert recordings without permission.
The complaint lists several pieces of audio offered by the defendants, concluding Prince performances from 2011 in North Carolina, 2002 in Oakland and 1983 in Chicago. Apparently even the circulation of a 31-year-old live set damages Prince’s earning capability, with the singer leveling charges of direct copyright infringement, ‘unauthorized fixation and trafficking in sound recordings’, contributory copyright infringement and bootlegging.
“Prince has suffered and is continuing to suffer damages in an amount according to proof, but no less than $1 million per Defendant,” the lawsuit reads.
Prince has a long tradition of suing anyone who dares to use his material without permission, but doesn’t always carry through on his threats. A 2007 effort to sue The Pirate Bay went nowhere. This new lawsuit is likely to go much further.
the proposition that the real war is between hardware makers and the cloud--to want powerful chips in everything instead of weak chips in most things and powerful servers--and not software makers against each other, is very interesting
There’s a problem with today’s voice recognition systems: They’re just too slow. Anyone who has waited in frustration while Siri or Google’s Voice Search “thinks” about even the simplest commands knows what I’m talking about.
The problem isn’t voice recognition software per se, which is more accurate than ever. The problem is that voice recognition is still a challenging enough problem, computationally, that all the major consumer platforms that do it—whether built by Google, Apple or Microsoft with the new Xbox—must send a compressed recording of your voice to servers hundreds or thousands of miles away. There, computers more powerful than your phone or game console transform it into text or a command. It’s that round trip, especially on slower cellular connections, that make voice recognition on most devices so slow.
Update: To clarify, Google has had offline voice recognition since Android 4.1, but it’s still in the experimental phase and isn’t available to non-Google developers of apps. In addition, Scott Huffman, head of the Conversation Search group at Google recently told me that while Android can do some offline processing of voice commands, it’s much less accurate than what Google can accomplish when it sends your voice to the cloud.
Intel wants to process your voice right here, instead of in the cloud
Intel has a solution, says the company’s head of wearables Mike Bell in an exclusive interview with Quartz. Intel partnered with an unnamed third party to put that company’s voice recognition software on Intel mobile processors powerful enough to parse the human voice but small enough to fit in the device that’s listening, no round trip to the cloud required. The result is a prototype wireless headset called “Jarvis” that sits in the wearer’s ears and connects to his or her smartphone. (Perhaps coincidentally, Jarvis is also the name of the voice recognition and artificial intelligence software in the Iron Man franchise.) Jarvis can both listen to commands and respond in its own voice, acting as both a voice control and a personal assistant.
Not only is Intel’s voice recognition solution more responsive than those offered by its cloud-obsessed competitors, but it also leads to what Bell calls “graceful degradation,” which means that it works even when the phone it’s connected to is not online.
Voice commands that work even when you’re not connected
“How annoying is it when you’re in Yosemite and your personal assistant doesn’t work because you can’t get a wireless connection?” says Bell. “It’s fine if [voice recognition systems] can’t make a dinner reservation because the phone can’t get to the cloud,” he adds. “But why can’t it get me Google Maps on the phone or turn off the volume?”
Processing voice commands right on the device is one of those trivial but not so trivial innovations. As cloud and Internet of Things journalist Stacey Higginbotham has observed, people won’t want to wait three or more seconds when we command our automated house to “turn on the lights.” For true voice interaction with computers, the kind that involves clarifications and a genuine dialogue, our devices are going to have to respond to our voice just as quickly as a human would—or even faster.
Voice recognition performed right on a computer has been available on desktop computers for several years, but the processors in mobile phones and other mobile or wearable computers simply haven’t been powerful enough to accomplish the same feat until now. As it moves into mobile with products like the just-announced Edison PC-on-a-chip, Intel pitches its expertise in making powerful microchips for servers and PCs as a unique advantage for making the world’s most powerful mobile processors, which are typically much less capable than the ones that are Intel’s bread and butter.
Coming to a phone or wearable near you
Bell says that Intel is working on selling its voice recognition technology to unnamed mobile phones manufacturers, which could allow them to differentiate themselves from Apple and Google’s usual offerings—or the tech could go into phones by those companies.
The result could be voice-recognizing devices with which we can have an actual conversation. That could mean something as simple as telling our phones to “please email Mike,” followed by the phone asking which “Mike” we mean. It will also, inevitably, mean something like the artificially intelligent conversation systems pictured in Iron Man, transforming our computers into something like true personal assistants.
Sharla in Japan, a Canadian student finishing University in Japan, visited several cat cafes in Japan and created a cute and informative video tour. She visits Kyariko Cat Cafe, which sells drinks for visitors and snacks for its purebred cat inhabitants, and Ekoneko Cat Cafe, which takes in stray cats, nurses them back to health, and allows visitors to permanently adopt the cats.
The Theremini by Moog is a new version of the Theremin that can help beginners learn the complicated instrument. The Theremin — which was first invented and patented by Léon Theremin in 1928 — is played without any physical contact. Instead, the musician moves their hands in front of two metal antennas on the Theremin. The distance from one antenna controls the pitch and the other controls the volume.
Moog’s Theremini has a pitch control knob that, when set at 100, makes it impossible for the musician to play a wrong note. Players can turn the knob all the way down to zero for gradually decreasing levels of pitch assistance. The Theremini also has a built-in tuner that shows players how close to perfect each note is in real time, a useful feature that could help beginners learn to master the unusual instrument. It’s available to purchase online at Moog.
Be sure to bookmark SB Nation's complete coverage of Super Bowl XLVIII. Everything from the build up, to live coverage and reactions after the big game, all in one beautiful package.
• All 12 Olympic rosters • Olympic jerseys ruined by Nike's gimmicks • Snubs were inevitable for Canada • Analyzing the USA roster • Olympic rosters constructed with NHL logic?
CURLING (Into A Ball)
G.W. & C.B. Colton & Co.'s Railroad and Connections of the Toledo, Cincinnati & St. Louis. 1881 Toledo, Cincinnati, & St. Louis Railroad and connections Date: 1881 Author: G.W. & C.B. Colton & Co. Dwnld: Full Size (17.8mb) Print Availability: See our Prints Page for more details pff This map isn't part of any series, but we have other railroad maps that you might want to check out. A map...
Prince Rogers Nelson is undoubtedly a great and prolific singer/songwriter, but if people want to be a fan they better pay for every last second of his music they listen to – or else.
