• Category Archives Computers

  • Imagine a life with no computers……ahhhh……bliss…..

  • Redbox

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Matt B knows of my love for the Redbox… and I am sure I have mentioned it in the past…. (Just did a search, not so much on the mentions)….

    So, its a phone box sized box that you rent movies and computer games from.
    We like it for two reasons, firstly, they get the new release movies before they are on streaming.
    Second, they are super easy to rent from. You can do it standing in front of the machine, something I have done a total of 1 time… or you can log into their website and reserve a movie at one of their locations.
    Thirdly, you can get BlueRay disks.
    Forth. I can’t count. (Just checking that you lot are actually reading this stuff).

    Why does all this matter. Well, we like movies, we like to see some as soon as they are out (on disk). Also, while I have nice high speed internet, streaming is just not as clear and the sound is just not as good as a BlueRay disk.
    Sure, streaming is an option, but I love movies and I want to see and hear it as best as I can, nothing beats a physical disk and nothing beats seeing a new release in my home at the quality that I have invested in my home theater setup.

    Why am I even talking about this?

    https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/14/redbox-expands-dvd-kiosks-despite-internet/

    CEO Galen Smith has revealed that Redbox will add a net total of 1,500 new DVD kiosks across the US, and will add more still in 2018.

    The company was a bit touch and go the past few years, but seems to have stabilized, to the point where they are expanding.
    This makes my little movie heart sing.
    Where I think they are going wrong is their marketing message…. They are saying that no one wants disks in the age of internet. Wrong for the above reason which boils down to one word. Quality.


    Computers Movies 📎and tagged

  • Honey, lets put a camera in the bedroom

    Posted on by beno Comment

    All sorts of chorting, laughing, crying and pounding of a head on a desk with this one.

    Far out. I just…. Well, you know me, takes a bit, but honestly, I’m a little bit speechless…..

    https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/27/what-amazon-gets-out-of-putting-a-camera-in-your-closet/

    Years ago, if someone told you she was buying a camera for her bedroom, you’d imagine she was planning something naughty. But times have changed, and Amazon believes you’ll spend $200 on a camera that’s both an extension of your smart home and the ultimate fashion accessory. The Echo Look is designed to help you look your best every morning, guiding and improving your style every time it’s used. But what it represents, and what Amazon gets out of it, could be a much bigger deal for the future of fashion.

    Echo Look resembles pretty much every other smart home security camera you’d care to find, but it’s not about protecting your property. The unit is designed for fashionable types who like to document their daily outfits and make sure that they’re always looking good. Look comes with a depth-sensing camera, bolstered with four LEDs that turn even the dingiest bedroom into a half-decent photo studio.

    If you take a selfie in a full-length mirror before leaving the house each morning, then the Echo Look is its modern-day replacement. Rather than holding a phone across your body, you can simply speak and ask the device to take a picture for you. The unit is voice activated and comes with Amazon’s chatty computing platform, Alexa. In addition, the depth-sensing camera will automatically blur the background to hide how messy your place is.

    Chunk of quoted text yeah, but I warned you, I am speechless with this one.

    Clearly, I am not the target audience for this thing, but I am not sure that’s even my point….. You are putting a web enabled camera in your bedroom/bathroom/change room/wardrobe…… What were you thinking? What did you expect was going to happen?

    Ok as if we are over that fact and have moved on… Here is why you are going to do it…..

    The other half of Echo Look’s sales pitch is Style Check, a feature that builds on the company’s Outfit Compare platform to keep your “look on point using advanced machine learning and advice from fashion specialists.” Simply submit two snaps of you wearing different outfits and the system will tell you which one looks best. It does that by crunching what’s trending, what fashion experts are saying, how well it fits you and what colors are in season.

    AI. Yup. You are going to ask a computer how the outfit looks.
    Now, see, this oddly enough I am comfortable with… Blokes the world over are tired of the trap question ‘Honey, does this outfit make my butt look big?’ This clanger is right up with the whole, which of these 6 dresses should I wear out today?
    Clearly Amazon knows we blokes are tired of this game and have programed a computer to take our place. Sweet.

    But, every share comes at a price;

    Amazon is, of course, storing every single one of those images, along with hundreds of pieces of contextual information. That data will be constantly crunched not only to understand what style suits you but also what outfits you pick depending on weather, mood or season. In addition, the information will be used to train a machine learning system that can offer better suggestions for every Echo Look user.

    Every image is stored. Every. Image.
    Did that sink in?
    See, that’s the thing with machine learning, you need to feed it data, lots and lots of data…. Topic for another blog.

    I have already taken up enough of your time on this one, but the article goes on to talk about AR, where you can try on virtual outfits and see how they look in a monitor/mirror. Yeah, you guessed it, AR is another blog topic…..


    Computers 📎and tagged

  • AI vs missing kids

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Here is a pretty cool use of AI and facial recognition.

    https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/10/baidu-ai-facial-recognition-finds-abducted-son/

    Facial recognition tech has loads of application other than the creepy ones that put your privacy at risk. In China, for instance, it has helped a couple find their son 27 years after he was abducted. Fu Gui thought it was strange that he only had vague memories of his childhood, so he uploaded a photo taken when he was 10 years old to a website called Baobeihuijia, which translates to “Baby Come Home.” Little did he know that his parents would also upload his childhood photos on the website a few months later and that Baidu’s facial recognition tech would bring them back together.

    This is pretty cool. Sure, for now, both kid and parents have to upload a photo, and they have to be taken within 6 years of each other, but it’s early days. The more we feed it data, the more we train the AI model, the better it will become.

    Granted, there is always a flip side, this would be a massive backdoor for all sorts of tracking to take place…. But lets just pretend for a micro second that computers will ‘do no evil’….. (Let me know how that works out for you).


    Computers 📎and tagged

  • Upload a skill. To your brain.

    Posted on by beno Comment

    So many questions, so much nope….

    https://futurism.com/darpa-is-planning-to-hack-the-human-brain-to-let-us-upload-skills/

    In March 2016, DARPA — the U.S. military’s “mad science” branch — announced their Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT) program. The TNT program aims to explore various safe neurostimulation methods for activating synaptic plasticity, which is the brain’s ability to alter the connecting points between neurons — a requirement for learning. DARPA hopes that building up that ability by subjecting the nervous system to a kind of workout regimen will enable the brain to learn more quickly.

    Why is this only coming out now?
    Who signs up to test these things?
    Why did they feel the need to put the word ‘safe’ in the first paragraph?
    What is the first skill they are going to try and upload?

    Actually, they answer that question next in their writeup;

    The ideal end benefit for this kind of breakthrough would be downloadable learning. Rather than needing to learn, for example, a new language through rigorous study and practice over a long period of time, we could basically “download” the knowledge after putting our minds into a highly receptive, neuroplastic state. Clearly, this kind of research would benefit anyone, but urgent military missions can succeed or fail based on the timing. In those situations, a faster way to train personnel would be a tremendous boon.

    This next bit is the real… well, I just don’t know how to describe it…

    Researchers will compare the efficacy of using an implanted device to stimulate the brain versus non-invasive stimulation. They will also explore both the ethics of enhanced learning through neurostimulation and ways to avoid side effects and potential risks.

    So…. Am I to take it that they already have the ‘implanted device’ version?
    So very relieved to read that the study will look into ways to avoid side effects…. Cause, you know, messing with your brain…. Side effects? Nah, she be right mate, what’s the worst that could happen?

    Ok, all jokes aside. This is some next level programming here.
    I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but you just can’t shake the feeling that this sort of thing is already going on in a big way.

    Will do another blog post, but if you have access to Netflix, check out the series ‘Black Mirror’.


    Computers

  • Moody Facebook

    Posted on by beno Comment

    File this one under, ‘this should not have surprised me, but sorta did’.
    Should have seen this coming a mile off, but wow, not only did it surprise me, but it really creeped me out.

    Let me say up front, I have never been much of a Facebook user. It has confused me from the day I joined up. Never really made peace with it.
    Been trying to post some photos to it the past 2 weeks. My first posts in years. Before this, I would check my feed probably once or twice a month.
    In other words, I hardly use it.

    So, why the creepy surprise?

    https://betanews.com/2017/05/02/facebook-emotions/

    A leaked internal document shows that Facebook is capable of identifying people according to their emotional state. The document, seen by The Australian, shows how the social network can monitor users’ posts and determine when they are feeling “stressed, defeated, overwhelmed, anxious, nervous, stupid, silly, useless, or a failure.”

    The leak pertains to Facebook’s Australian office and suggests that algorithms can be used to detect “moments when young people need a confidence boost.” It raises serious ethical questions about Facebook’s capabilities, but the company denies it is doing anything wrong.

    With all that I have blogged about AI and such, it really should not have come as a surprise to me that Facebook was machine analyzing every post by every user and coming up with a metric for each user. But it did.
    Its pretty sicking.

    The hint is that Facebook then uses this information to target advertising to its users.
    Ewww.

    I guess the short version is that we should not be surprised about what our online activities are getting used for these days.
    One that jumps to mind is gmail. They are up front in saying that they read every single email to deliver better ads for us. That’s the price you pay for free email. I’m now thinking that it would just be a slight of hand for Google to say, well, we have to read the email to figure out what ad to show, so may as well read his email and figure out what sort of mood he is in.
    What about WordPress blogs. There are millions of blogs hosted in their cloud, it would be trivial to feed an AI with the wordage from each blogger and come to all sorts of conclusions.
    Boggles the mind.

    In other related news. Just got off the call with the IBM Watson guys about getting our hardware to talk to their machine learning algorithms… Wonder if I can tweak it to figure out the mood of an air compressor or refrigeration unit?


    Computers 📎and tagged