The reason Google Assistant (that's the product you invoke when you say "OK Google" to your device) works reasonably well is that the Pygmalion team -- a small army of linguists -- work long hours handcrafting variations on common phrases ("set a timer for five minutes," "remind me in five minutes," "in five minutes, remind me...") and grammars that allow the system to correctly respond to your queries.
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NASA released this incredible image of the sky that depicts 22 months of X-ray data captured from the International Space Station using the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER). From NASA:
“Even with minimal processing, this image reveals the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant about 90 light-years across and thought to be 5,000 to 8,000 years old,” said Keith Gendreau, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We’re gradually building up a new X-ray image of the whole sky, and it’s possible NICER’s nighttime sweeps will uncover previously unknown sources.”
NICER’s primary mission is to determine the size of dense remains of dead stars called neutron stars — some of which we see as pulsars — to a precision of 5%. These measurements will finally allow physicists to solve the mystery of what form of matter exists in their incredibly compressed cores. Pulsars, rapidly spinning neutron stars that appear to “pulse” bright light, are ideally suited to this “mass-radius” research and are some of NICER’s regular targets.
Other frequently visited pulsars are studied as part of NICER's Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology (SEXTANT) experiment, which uses the precise timing of pulsar X-ray pulses to autonomously determine NICER’s position and speed in space. It’s essentially a galactic GPS system. When mature, this technology will enable spacecraft to navigate themselves throughout the solar system — and beyond.
When you grind coffee beans, you want to use a burr grinder, not a blade grinder. Burr grinders break the beans into uniformly sized chunks, unlike blade grinders, which slice the beans into pieces of widely varying size. I've had my Capresso Infinity Conical Burr for over 10 years and it's still working like a champ. It's on sale on Amazon today for $71.64
According to a widely reported rumor -- first published by the WSJ -- the DoJ is preparing to launch an antitrust probe of Google, though it's not clear on what basis such a probe would proceed.
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Veritasium visited Dr. Stephen Steiner at Aerogel Technologies in Massachusetts to learn about the wonders of silica aerogel, a solid that is only twice as dense as air. My sister gave me a small chunk of aerogel about 10 years ago and it's one of my favorite possessions.
A family in Edinburgh had this curious medieval chess piece, mostly tucked in a drawer, for more than 50 years since the grandfather, an antiques dealer, bought it for £5. Recently, his granddaughter had it appraised at Sotheby's where it was identified as one of the five missing pieces from the historically significant Lewis Chessmen from the late 12th/early 13th century and dug up on the Isle of Lewis in 1831. The single piece is expected to fetch £1 million at auction. The rest of the set is held by the British Museum and the National Museum of Scotland. From the BBC News:
They are seen as an "important symbol of European civilisation" and have also seeped into popular culture, inspiring everything from children's show Noggin The Nog to part of the plot in Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone...
The newly-discovered piece is a warder, a man with helmet, shield and sword and the equivalent of a rook on a modern chess board, which "has immense character and power..."
The discovery of the hoard (of pieces) remains shrouded in mystery, with stories of it being dug up by a cow grazing on sandy banks.
It is thought it was buried shortly after the objects were made, possibly by a merchant to avoid taxes after being shipwrecked, and so remained underground for 500 years.
Tech reporter and sf writer Brian Merchant (previously) calls our attention to the peculiar construction of the problem statement in articles about automation and obsolescence, in which "robots are coming to steal your job."
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The Sentinelese are one of the world's last "uncontacted" indigenous peoples, a hunter-gatherer tribe who live on the remote North Sentinel Island in India's Andaman Islands chain. You may recall that last November, a missionary named John Allen Chau, 27, obsessed with trying to convert the tribe to Christianity, paid local fishermen to help him get near the island. As soon as he illegally landed his canoe on the shore and started preaching, the Sentinelese fired arrows. He escaped with injuries but returned twice later and was eventually killed.
This footage above of the Sentinelese from 1991 was taken by anthropologist T N Pandit of India's Ministry of Tribal Affairs who attempted to visit them for several decades. Usually, the Sentinelese hid or fired arrows, but in 1991 they waded into the ocean to meet Pandit and his team peacefully.
"We were puzzled why they allowed us," he told the BBC last year. "It was their decision to meet us and the meeting took place on their terms."
"We jumped out of the boat and stood in neck-deep water, distributing coconuts and other gifts. But we were not allowed to step onto their island."
According to the BBC, "Mr Pandit says he does favour the re-establishment of friendly gift-dropping missions with the tribe, but says they should not be disturbed. 'We should respect their wish to be left alone, he said.'"
The speed of a hairy frogfish’s bite is the result of a vacuum in its mouth that can suck in its prey in just 1/6000th of a second. It’s so fast that even slow-motion video struggles to capture it.
The Oakland Public Library will no longer charge late fees and fines for books, because they don't incentive people to return books more quickly, it costs the library more money to process fines and fees than the revenue they generate, and fines and fees discourage people from using the library.
"It's a barrier that's unnecessary," said Library Director Jamie Turbak. "There's no impact to the rate of returned items when you eliminate overdue fines, so charging people fines more likely prevents them from using the library at all."
Under the old system, late fees ranged from 25 cents to $1 per day. If someone accrued $50 or more in fines, they could not borrow additional materials until the amount was paid down to less than $50. The library brought in $77,600 in late fees in the last fiscal year, but Turbak said it cost the library twice that to process the fines.
According to Turbak, a city analysis found that adults living in predominantly non-white zip codes were 5% more likely to have their account blocked due to fines, 26% more likely to owe fines and 45% less likely to use their library cards, even though many more of them had library cards.
Another incredible deepfake execution. Ctrl Shift Face reports that his videos are demonetized due to ContentID claims by the original filmmakers: "Since I cannot monetize any my videos on youtube because of copyright claims, please consider supporting me on patreon. You'll gain access to a ton of exclusive content and also help this channel to survive. Thank you."
A particularly uncanny thing about how deepfake works is that it isn't the 1992 Stallone you might expect to see, but an ageless metastallone comprising elements of every age of Stallone.
Canuck the crow, Vancouver's most notorious bird, is being accused of flying away with a knife from a crime scene.
The crow has quite a reputation in Vancouver and its antics are regularly chronicled on social media, including a dedicated Facebook page that has a profile photo of the bird holding a knife in its beak.
Earlier on Tuesday, police had shot a man near Hastings and Cassiar streets. They were called to the scene of a car engulfed in flames. When they arrived, police said, they were confronted by a man with a knife.
Shots were fired and the man was arrested.
Vancouver Courier reporter Mike Howell said he saw the bird — which had a red tag on its leg as does Canuck — swoop in and pick up an object from inside an area cordoned off by police tape.
"A cop chased it for about 15 to 20 feet, and then the crow dropped it and took off," Howell told CBC.
"It was really strange. In my 20-plus years reporting from crime scenes, I've never seen anything like that crow trying to take a knife."
Spanish YouTube sensation Kanghua Ren (aka ReSet) thought it would be funny to give a homeless man an Oreo cookie with a toothpaste filling. The video showed the man eating the cookie and vomiting afterwards. Many people who watched the video were disgusted and ReSet found himself on the receiving end of a shame campaign. After trying to buy his way out of trouble, ReSet was arrested and tried. He explained to the judge that the cruel stunt wasn't really his fault, but that he was only giving his audience what they demanded: “I do things to mount a show: People like what is morbid,” he said.
Mr. Ren, who was 19 at the time, filmed himself in early 2017 replacing the cream inside the cookies with toothpaste after being challenged by one of his 1.2 million followers to carry out the prank. He gave them to the homeless man outside a supermarket, along with a €20 bill. The homeless man was identified only as Gheorge L., a man in his early 50s who was born in Romania and who once worked as a shepherd before migrating to Barcelona, according to the newspaper El País. The homeless man vomited after eating the cookie.
After the posting of the video prompted widespread condemnation, Mr. Ren replaced it with one in which he visited the homeless man again and offered him another €20 bill. According to the police, he later offered €300 to the daughter of his victim in return for not filing a lawsuit.
A judge sentenced ReSet to 15 months in prison but it's not likely he'll spend any time behind bars because Spain usually gives first-time non-violent offenders in a suspended sentence, according to the Times.
The New York Times has inaugurated its "Op-Eds From the Future" ("science fiction authors, futurists, philosophers and scientists write op-eds that they imagine we might read 10, 20 or even 100 years in the future") with a piece from Ted Chiang (previously) that imagines a future in which genetic engineering of human embryos is commonplace, leading to a well-intentioned attempt at preventing literal speciation into the haves and have-nots by subsidizing "intelligence boosting" genetic manipulation for lower-income families.
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Hey @realDonaldTrump, we read the story about the sailors on a US warship being ordered to hide from you because you’re triggered by the name on their hats. So we turned Madame Tussaud's into a giant USS John McCain baseball cap. Welcome to London! pic.twitter.com/KuynOwupFm
Trump likes to boast about economic growth, and while many have pointed out that many of the policies that produced the rosy figures are leftovers from Obama's policies, it's also important to note that the "growth" is highly localized, with aggregated national figures hiding the incredible economic desperation in the poorest parts of America.
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To spoof the "Special Edition" re-release of Star Wars in 1997, which included additional scenes and more advanced digital special effects, Hardware Wars was re-released on VHS as a twenty-minute "Special Edition," with new digital "special defects." Fosselius did not participate or approve of this release, as noted in a disclaimer on the packaging.
The new digital effects in no way improve either film.
This is a fantastic short documentary on Teddy the Great Pyrenees. Teddy is a working livestock guardian, as opposed to my Great Pyr Nemo, who is a big walking carpet.
In this clip, an Englishman circa 800 A.D. is asked to chatter about his life. He understands the eallníwe léasspellung but prefers the old talk.
A fun little thing to show reconstructed pronunciation of textbook Old English in a casual setting. I've tried to throw in a few natural abbreviations (for example 'c rather than ic), but I know I missed the mark on one or two of the diphthongs. Either way, hopefully this gives some idea as to how the language sounded in casual speech. Message or comment if you'd like any clarifications, want to correct me on anything, or if you're just interested in the topic and would like to know more! I didn't have any decent Anglo-Saxon clothing...
