It takes a human to create the level of lucrative hype that 'Paris-based art collective Obvious' have managed to come up with. Back in the day, Slashdot would have covered the more interesting story behind the Christie's auction, which you can read here:
'Obvious' just seem to have grabbed source from an Open Source project, generated a few images, cranked the hype up to 11, and made a killing. The community this comes out of, and especially the programmer who implemented the algorithm, aren't terribly impressed:
The 24 volunteers living in the "hotel influenza" would have private rooms and bathrooms, common areas with with chairs and TVs, along with exercise equipment, and catered meals in a dining room.
All very well if you find yourself in the successfully vaccinated group, but you might not have much interest in excercise, meals or even TV if you get full-blown influenza. The last time I had it, all I needed was the bedroom and the bathroom, and shivering deliriously in front of a fan heater with the central heating turned up to max I would happily have paid $3500 to make it go away.
I really wish Google, apparently with the collusion of the websites, would stop shoving AMP down my throat in the first place. Since they helpfully nuked text reflow on zoom in the Android libraries, I've been using Opera as my main mobile browser because it fixes this. Except for AMP pages, where I'm stuck with their fixed format until I tap through to the original page. How about a 'load canonical page' setting in the google search options?
'What's it like to float hundreds of miles above the Earth's surface? We asked seven astronauts to tell us everything.'
Barry Wilmore: "You never know true beauty until you see Earth from space, or true terror until you hear someone knocking on the space station door from outside. You look through the porthole and see an astronaut, but all your crew is inside and accounted for. You use the comm to ask who it is and he says he's Ramirez returning from a repair mission, but Ramirez is sitting right next to you in the command module and he's just as confused as you are. When you tell the guy this over the radio he starts banging on the door louder and harder, begging you to let him in, saying he's the real Ramirez. Meanwhile, the Ramirez inside with you is pleading to keep the airlock shut. It really puts life on Earth into perspective."
The copyright length of the recording in the UK is now 70 years after release. However, a 50 year limit still applies to recordings that have never been officially released. This sometimes forces record companies to put things out just to extend the copyright for another 20 years:
To be fair, Nottingham also wrote the draft that's now reserving the error code.
He recognized there was popular support for the error code, and revised his position to remove the error code only if every other three-digit error code starting with 4 is taken.
Yes, a classy response to the issue, unlike the humourless maintainer who removed the ddate (Discordian Date) tool from util-linux: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/sh...
as copyright periods run out, in next few decades, recordings of music from earlier part of 20th century (and increasingly great quality) will flood the audience. even more than new libre recordings, i think there should be a project to catalog and publish such music to public.
Quite a few bargain-price European labels are doing a good job of releasing out-of copyright historical recordings. Here in the UK, we were up to 1963 before copyright was extended from 50 years to 70, but not retroactively, so the 1947-63 period is still public domain. This covers most of the classic mono era and takes us intro the period when stereo was becoming mainstream. Glenn Gould's excellent (mono) Goldberg Variations from 1955, and probably his incomplete Art of Fugue on the organ recorded in 1962, should be out of copyright. It would be nice to see a central resource for making these recordings freely available, though there's apparently some legal ambiguity about whether you can re-distribute somebody else's digital re-master or have to rip from a contemporary disc (which is a challenging task from crackly 78s, where overenthusiastic noise reduction can kill the atmosphere). On the other hand, modern artists who want to make a living releasing Free recordings should be supported and encouraged.
It's a decent book, and the storyline keeps moving, but I'm trying to find what would make it both a Hugo and Nebula award winner.
For me, it's a beautifully written novel with a classic 'what if?' premise that, like most of the best SF, takes a sideways look at contemporary issues, set in a vivid and compelling world. But not everyone has the same taste. Looking at the list of joint Hugo/Nebula winners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I see plenty of favourites like Dune, Rendezvous with Rama, The Forever War, American Gods and The Windup Girl, not to mention Le Guin's The Dispossessed. But I'm baffled by the inclusion of Ender's Game. A lot of people love it, but this guy pretty much sums up my reaction to it (including his more positive view of the last chapter): http://www.businessinsider.com...
Oh come on, how could the President possibly be replaced by a malicious piece of software that does nothing more than post highly provocative, cynically manipulative content on Twitter, with the aim of enriching its creators regardless of the consequences?
Western leaders know full well that bringing in masses of poorly-vetted Muslim refugees is dangerous and will lead to conflict. That's the goal. Just look at TFA. Crisis => invasions of privacy. They set up the conditions for the crisis and step in to "save the day" with new losses to individual liberty and privacy.
If this were in a medical context, we'd be discussing Munchausen syndrome by proxy with Western citizens the victims and their governments their abusers.
No, Strat, we'd be discussing paranoia and why people believe in ludicrous conspiracy theories: https://xkcd.com/258/
I use Opera on my Android phone. Apart from having its own (optional) 'acceleration' using Opera's own servers, it's one of the few mainstream browsers on Android that does text reflow (word wrapping) when I zoom in to enlarge the text (most other browsers use WebKit, which no longer supports this). But following a link from a Google search, I get the AMP version of the page, which totally breaks text reflow. I need a couple more taps to get the original version of the page from Google's link bar, which takes much longer than if I'd been served the real page in the first place.
How about this: respect the version of robots.txt that was on the site AT THE TIME OF ARCHIVING. Do not apply subsequent versions of robots.txt to old snapshots retroactively (as when a domain changes ownership), but allow the owner to request deletion when an appropriate robots.txt was omitted by mistake.
My guess is they have some model that says being "proactive" reduces scams by $x but has a side effect of reduced $y legitimate sales, too, along with the risk of some big negative publicity when a legitimate seller has his account cancelled or something.
Depressingly that may be true. Perhaps there's no simple way of reporting an obviously hacked account, because that would be admitting they exist, which could put off purchasers. But I think Amazon should be putting more resources into this behind the scenes. I've reported very blatant hijacked scam accounts in the past, and although they've eventually been blocked, the response has been downright sluggish. Surely an invitation to contact the 'seller' outside Amazon is a direct violation of their terms and conditions? No legitimate seller should be doing this. Perhaps high profile news stories like this will give Amazon a bit of encouragement to tighten things up...
Experienced customers can spot most of the scams easily. A small trader who has good feedback for selling a couple of lawn chairs a week suddenly has a vast portfolio of 4k TVs, top of the range dSLRs and high-end laptops, all at half price. A naive customer doesn't look beyond the overall feedback score, or see anything odd in the line in the description that asks them to contact the seller before purchasing, or in the official looking email they get back that links to an 'Amazon' purchase page that helpfully relieves them of their cash. But Amazon isn't naive, and has vast resources they could be using to clamp down on this sort of scam. Why not have an easy way of reporting obviously hacked accounts, rather having to dig through their help system looking for something vaguely appropriate? Why not keep a close watch on the lowest prices of popular items that are repeatedly used as bait? I used to see pretty regular price alerts on a camera lens in my saved item list that invariably turned out to be scams. Why not search item descriptions for email addresses (or obvious address obfuscations) inviting purchasers to contact the seller outside Amazon? Scammers often re-use the same text, and even the same email addresses, for the next hacked account. Why doesn't anyone check when a long-standing seller's established shopfront changes drastically overnight? Basic analytics ought to ring alarm bells here.
A planet where we have short memories? Today, you can easily switch between Unity, the Gnome 3 shell, the Gnome 3 Classic interface and MATE on Ubuntu, or move to Mint and use Cinnamon or MATE. Back in 2011-12 everything was a mess - Ubuntu was dropping Gnome 2 and switching to Unity with Gnome 3 as the main alternative. Anyone who wanted something like Gnome 2 either had to put up with Gnome 3's rudimentary fallback mode, or learn the necessary incantations to install an early version of MATE from the developers' own site, or get used to Xfce. Ubuntu seemed to have forgotten the formula that brought its early success - a straightforward OS that was both stable and up to date, with an interface than anyone used to Windows or the Mac could easily jump into.
Slashdot Mirror
Second RPi running the renderer for about the same price as a Chromecast?
Would it be easier to run a DLNA renderer on the Pi (or another Pi), add a DAC (HAT or USB), and plug it straight into the receiver?
It takes a human to create the level of lucrative hype that 'Paris-based art collective Obvious' have managed to come up with. Back in the day, Slashdot would have covered the more interesting story behind the Christie's auction, which you can read here:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/...
'Obvious' just seem to have grabbed source from an Open Source project, generated a few images, cranked the hype up to 11, and made a killing. The community this comes out of, and especially the programmer who implemented the algorithm, aren't terribly impressed:
https://twitter.com/DrBeef_
If you want a go, the code is on github:
https://github.com/robbiebarra...
The 24 volunteers living in the "hotel influenza" would have private rooms and bathrooms, common areas with with chairs and TVs, along with exercise equipment, and catered meals in a dining room.
All very well if you find yourself in the successfully vaccinated group, but you might not have much interest in excercise, meals or even TV if you get full-blown influenza. The last time I had it, all I needed was the bedroom and the bathroom, and shivering deliriously in front of a fan heater with the central heating turned up to max I would happily have paid $3500 to make it go away.
They probably haven't made the F6 for years either, though it's still in the catalogue for now.
Email is Only for Old People (who have already retired, and can use the internet at home).
Yes, but that's another two taps to get to the actual page.
I really wish Google, apparently with the collusion of the websites, would stop shoving AMP down my throat in the first place. Since they helpfully nuked text reflow on zoom in the Android libraries, I've been using Opera as my main mobile browser because it fixes this. Except for AMP pages, where I'm stuck with their fixed format until I tap through to the original page. How about a 'load canonical page' setting in the google search options?
'What's it like to float hundreds of miles above the Earth's surface? We asked seven astronauts to tell us everything.'
Barry Wilmore: "You never know true beauty until you see Earth from space, or true terror until you hear someone knocking on the space station door from outside. You look through the porthole and see an astronaut, but all your crew is inside and accounted for. You use the comm to ask who it is and he says he's Ramirez returning from a repair mission, but Ramirez is sitting right next to you in the command module and he's just as confused as you are. When you tell the guy this over the radio he starts banging on the door louder and harder, begging you to let him in, saying he's the real Ramirez. Meanwhile, the Ramirez inside with you is pleading to keep the airlock shut. It really puts life on Earth into perspective."
http://www.clickhole.com/post/...
I don't see anyone rushing out to use a browser on Android that nobody want to use on the desktop
Well, I use Opera on Android, and nowhere else. But only because it does text reflow on zoom.
Humans marked these AI-generated reviews as useful at approximately the same rate as they did for real (human-authored) Yelp reviews.
Eliza> How does that make you feel?
I'm not confusing them, but I think you are! I'm talking specifically about the copyright in a sound recording as defined in the UK:
https://www.gov.uk/government/...
The copyright length of the recording in the UK is now 70 years after release. However, a 50 year limit still applies to recordings that have never been officially released. This sometimes forces record companies to put things out just to extend the copyright for another 20 years:
https://www.theguardian.com/mu...
To be fair, Nottingham also wrote the draft that's now reserving the error code.
He recognized there was popular support for the error code, and revised his position to remove the error code only if every other three-digit error code starting with 4 is taken.
Yes, a classy response to the issue, unlike the humourless maintainer who removed the ddate (Discordian Date) tool from util-linux: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/sh...
as copyright periods run out, in next few decades, recordings of music from earlier part of 20th century (and increasingly great quality) will flood the audience.
even more than new libre recordings, i think there should be a project to catalog and publish such music to public.
Quite a few bargain-price European labels are doing a good job of releasing out-of copyright historical recordings. Here in the UK, we were up to 1963 before copyright was extended from 50 years to 70, but not retroactively, so the 1947-63 period is still public domain. This covers most of the classic mono era and takes us intro the period when stereo was becoming mainstream. Glenn Gould's excellent (mono) Goldberg Variations from 1955, and probably his incomplete Art of Fugue on the organ recorded in 1962, should be out of copyright. It would be nice to see a central resource for making these recordings freely available, though there's apparently some legal ambiguity about whether you can re-distribute somebody else's digital re-master or have to rip from a contemporary disc (which is a challenging task from crackly 78s, where overenthusiastic noise reduction can kill the atmosphere). On the other hand, modern artists who want to make a living releasing Free recordings should be supported and encouraged.
It's a decent book, and the storyline keeps moving, but I'm trying to find what would make it both a Hugo and Nebula award winner.
For me, it's a beautifully written novel with a classic 'what if?' premise that, like most of the best SF, takes a sideways look at contemporary issues, set in a vivid and compelling world. But not everyone has the same taste. Looking at the list of joint Hugo/Nebula winners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I see plenty of favourites like Dune, Rendezvous with Rama, The Forever War, American Gods and The Windup Girl, not to mention Le Guin's The Dispossessed. But I'm baffled by the inclusion of Ender's Game. A lot of people love it, but this guy pretty much sums up my reaction to it (including his more positive view of the last chapter): http://www.businessinsider.com...
Oh come on, how could the President possibly be replaced by a malicious piece of software that does nothing more than post highly provocative, cynically manipulative content on Twitter, with the aim of enriching its creators regardless of the consequences?
If anyone doubts Adam West was the greatest, here is the definitive analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Western leaders know full well that bringing in masses of poorly-vetted Muslim refugees is dangerous and will lead to conflict. That's the goal. Just look at TFA. Crisis => invasions of privacy. They set up the conditions for the crisis and step in to "save the day" with new losses to individual liberty and privacy.
If this were in a medical context, we'd be discussing Munchausen syndrome by proxy with Western citizens the victims and their governments their abusers.
No, Strat, we'd be discussing paranoia and why people believe in ludicrous conspiracy theories: https://xkcd.com/258/
I use Opera on my Android phone. Apart from having its own (optional) 'acceleration' using Opera's own servers, it's one of the few mainstream browsers on Android that does text reflow (word wrapping) when I zoom in to enlarge the text (most other browsers use WebKit, which no longer supports this). But following a link from a Google search, I get the AMP version of the page, which totally breaks text reflow. I need a couple more taps to get the original version of the page from Google's link bar, which takes much longer than if I'd been served the real page in the first place.
Clearly our Home Secretary Amber Rudd has now found some people who "understand the necessary hashtags": http://mashable.com/2017/03/27...
How about this: respect the version of robots.txt that was on the site AT THE TIME OF ARCHIVING. Do not apply subsequent versions of robots.txt to old snapshots retroactively (as when a domain changes ownership), but allow the owner to request deletion when an appropriate robots.txt was omitted by mistake.
The inmates were able to get the parts from a program where inmates break down computers in order to learn computer skills and recycle the parts.
To be fair, it seems that this program was a complete success.
My guess is they have some model that says being "proactive" reduces scams by $x but has a side effect of reduced $y legitimate sales, too, along with the risk of some big negative publicity when a legitimate seller has his account cancelled or something.
Depressingly that may be true. Perhaps there's no simple way of reporting an obviously hacked account, because that would be admitting they exist, which could put off purchasers. But I think Amazon should be putting more resources into this behind the scenes. I've reported very blatant hijacked scam accounts in the past, and although they've eventually been blocked, the response has been downright sluggish. Surely an invitation to contact the 'seller' outside Amazon is a direct violation of their terms and conditions? No legitimate seller should be doing this. Perhaps high profile news stories like this will give Amazon a bit of encouragement to tighten things up...
Experienced customers can spot most of the scams easily. A small trader who has good feedback for selling a couple of lawn chairs a week suddenly has a vast portfolio of 4k TVs, top of the range dSLRs and high-end laptops, all at half price. A naive customer doesn't look beyond the overall feedback score, or see anything odd in the line in the description that asks them to contact the seller before purchasing, or in the official looking email they get back that links to an 'Amazon' purchase page that helpfully relieves them of their cash. But Amazon isn't naive, and has vast resources they could be using to clamp down on this sort of scam. Why not have an easy way of reporting obviously hacked accounts, rather having to dig through their help system looking for something vaguely appropriate? Why not keep a close watch on the lowest prices of popular items that are repeatedly used as bait? I used to see pretty regular price alerts on a camera lens in my saved item list that invariably turned out to be scams. Why not search item descriptions for email addresses (or obvious address obfuscations) inviting purchasers to contact the seller outside Amazon? Scammers often re-use the same text, and even the same email addresses, for the next hacked account. Why doesn't anyone check when a long-standing seller's established shopfront changes drastically overnight? Basic analytics ought to ring alarm bells here.
A planet where we have short memories? Today, you can easily switch between Unity, the Gnome 3 shell, the Gnome 3 Classic interface and MATE on Ubuntu, or move to Mint and use Cinnamon or MATE. Back in 2011-12 everything was a mess - Ubuntu was dropping Gnome 2 and switching to Unity with Gnome 3 as the main alternative. Anyone who wanted something like Gnome 2 either had to put up with Gnome 3's rudimentary fallback mode, or learn the necessary incantations to install an early version of MATE from the developers' own site, or get used to Xfce. Ubuntu seemed to have forgotten the formula that brought its early success - a straightforward OS that was both stable and up to date, with an interface than anyone used to Windows or the Mac could easily jump into.