Pluto 1994 | 2018
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"Distilling Reality through Psychedelics & Philosophy" - Interview with @PeterSjostedtH:
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Synthesizing Images of Humans in Unseen Poses: https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.07739v1 #ML
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Algorithm Automatically Spots 'Face Swaps' In Videos:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610784/this-algorithm-automatically-spots-face-swaps-in-videos/The new technique could help identify forged videos as they are posted to the web. But the work also has sting in the tail. The same deep-learning technique that can spot face-swap videos can also be used to improve the quality of face swaps in the first place -- and that could make them harder to detect.
FaceForensics: A Large-scale Video Dataset for Forgery Detection in Human Faces:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.09179The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) says it's "fighting back" against the dangers posed by new face-swapping technologies:
https://deadline.com/2018/04/deepfaking-technology-sag-aftra-actors-union-fighting-back-1202371117/A deepfake homage to Grace Kelly, with Grace Kelly's face replacing Nicole Kidman's:
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My upcoming botnet will be called Lo-bot-omy - you heard it here first. #Bots
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The makers of the virtual influencer, Lil Miquela, snag real money from Silicon Valley:
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/23/the-makers-of-the-virtual-influencer-lil-miquela-snag-real-money-from-silicon-valley/Everything We Know About the Feud Between These Two Computer-Generated Influencers: https://www.thecut.com/2018/04/lil-miquela-hack-instagram.html #Bots
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Live Forever As You Are Now With Alan Resnick - a comedic infomercial by Adult Swim
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Collection of images, showing how bizarre our online social lives are today
- created by Carl Steadman (@guydeboredom)
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The perils of placebo overdose when you're depressed:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17484949
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Sheldon County is a procedurally generated podcast about life in a simulated American county that inhabits your listening device, with just a single listener: you. It is made by James Ryan (www.jamesryan.world). Podcast coming in 2019 but you can listen to some proof-of-concept episodes online already: #Generative #Music #AGB
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Thoughts on Botnets and Creativity
Today, Botnets impact almost every aspect of human life. Promoting products, providing support, creating and distributing entertainment, and even winning national elections - all have become unthinkable without Botnets. They are a deeply transformative, yet silent technology.
A realistic solution to the rapidly exploding challenges related to Botnets (fake-news/social engineering/spam/pressures on human economic-systems/etc.) can't be more top-down regulation, censorship and control systems, developed and maintained by giant corporations, post-democratic governments and armies of shadowy contractors - all operating out of reach of effective public controls. As the surface for abuse of such systems is close to infinite, predictably the outcomes will be much worse than the original "evil" they pretend to combat.
Instead, I suggest making the tools and knowledge needed to create Botnets widely available to the creative class - and heavily investing in public education and the establishment of global efficacy standards. The resulting scenario will be equally chaotic and dangerous, but at least more fun, inclusive and transparent. To illustrate this, contemplate the following idea: "Brand celebrity endorsements, powered by generative deepfakes". Clearly, a botnet carrying out such a campaign at scale would be deeply disruptive (or deadly) for the advertising industry.
Beyond fear, there is hope - and so I leave you with the following prediction:
Botnets will be the quintessential art-form of the 2020s.
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Wall++: Room-Scale Interactive and Context-Aware Sensing: #HCI
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Nabi Tajima, the world's oldest person, has died at age 117 in Japan:
She was born in 1900, when cars, planes, phones, electricity and antibiotics were either not invented yet, or a very obscure thing. She had more than 160 descendants.
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Clip from the movie SAMSARA showing our food production and consumption system:
