What algorithmic art can teach us about artificial intelligence

Prints made by Tom White appear to humans as meaningless blobs, but to AI algorithms they look like specific objects and items. 

Photo: Ramesh Pathania

We live in a world that’s increasingly controlled by what might be called “the algorithmic gaze.” As we cede more decision-making power to machines in domains like health care, transportation, and security, the world as seen by computers becomes the dominant reality. If a facial recognition system doesn’t recognize the color of your skin, for example, it won’t acknowledge your existence. If a self-driving car can’t see you walk across the road, it’ll drive right through you. That’s the algorithmic gaze in action.

This sort of slow-burning structural change can be difficult to comprehend. But as is so often the case with societal shifts, artists are leaping headfirst into the epistemological fray. One of the best of these is Tom White, a lecturer in computational design at the University of Wellington in New Zealand whose art depicts the world, not as humans see it, but as algorithms do.

WHITE’S PRINTS EXPOSE THE WORLD AS SEEN BY ALGORITHMS

White started making this kind of artwork in late 2017 with a series of prints called “The Treachery of ImageNet.” The name combines the title of René Magritte’s famous painting of a pipe that isn’t a pipe, and ImageNet, a database of pictures that’s used across the industry to train and test machine vision algorithms. “It seemed like a natural parallel for me,” White tells The Verge. “Plus, I can’t resist a pun.”

To humans, the pictures look like haphazard arrangements of lines and blobs that lack any obvious immediate structure. But to algorithms trained to see the world on our behalf, they leap off the page as specific objects: electric fans, sewing machines, and lawnmowers. The prints are optical illusions, but only computers can see the hidden image.

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A porn company promises to insert customers into scenes using deepfakes

The concept of “deepfakes” hit the internet late last year like a weirdly rendered bombshell after amateur coders discovered that they could use AI to quickly and easily face-swap celebrities into pornographic clips. The phenomenon raised important questions about consent and revenge porn, but advocates for the technology have always maintained it can have non-harmful uses, too.

One of these is porn company Naughty America. This week, it launched a service that lets customers pay to customize adult clips to their liking using AI. They’ll be able to insert themselves into scenes alongside their favorite actor or actress or edit the background of an existing clip. “We see customization and personalization as the future,” Naughty America’s CEO, Andreas Hronopoulos, told Variety in an interview.

AI CUSTOMIZATION COULD BE THE FUTURE OF PORN

The company demoed the service with a pair of sample clips (link very much not safe for work). One blends the faces of two actresses and another swaps the background of a scene from a bedroom to a beach. It’s not the most advanced use of the technology, but the face-blending is relatively seamless, and it shows how accessible this sort of AI-powered video manipulation has become.

Customers who want to be inserted into a scene will have to send Naughty America a set of photos and videos of themselves, including different facial expressions that help the software accurately replicate their likeness. The company says its legal team will get consent from the actors involved. Simple edits will cost just a few hundred dollars, and longer, more complicated changes will run into the thousands.

There are a number of potential problems with this service. For example, how will Naughty America know that the photos and videos submitted by customers are also consensual? They could be taken under false pretenses and submitted to the site by a third-party. (The Verge has reached out to Naughty America with questions but has yet to hear back.)

It might also be important for the company to indelibly watermark the resulting videos, so they’re not confused with original pornographic clips. This is something that a number of companies and researchers are looking into, especially as experts worry that AI video editing will be used to create fake videos for the purpose of political manipulation.

But Naughty America is presenting this as a natural use of the technology. “It’s just editing, that’s all it is,” said Hronopoulos of the “deepfake” concept. “People have been editing people’s faces on pictures since the internet started.” He told FastCompany: “Deepfakes don’t hurt people, people using deepfakes hurt people.”

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Windows 95 is now an app you can download and install on macOS, Windows, and Linux

Windows 95 is the operating system that’s now used as a yardstick for what’s possible on modern devices and platforms. We’ve seen Microsoft’s popular OS appear on the Apple Watch, an Android Wear smartwatch, and even the Xbox One. Today, someone has gone a step further and made Windows 95 into an app that you can run on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Slack developer Felix Rieseberg is responsible for this glorious app, allowing nostalgia lovers to play around with Windows 95 in an electron app. Rieseberg has published the source code and app installers for this project on Github, and apps like Wordpad, phone dialer, MS Paint, and Minesweeper all run like you’d expect. Sadly, Internet Explorer isn’t fully functional as it simply refuses to load pages.

The app its only 129MB in size and you can download it over at Github for both macOS and Windows. Once it’s running it surprisingly only takes up around 200MB of RAM, even when running all of the old Windows 95 system utilities, apps, and games. If you run into any issues with the app you can always reset the Windows 95 instance inside the app and start over again. Enjoy this quirky trip down memory lane.

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The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing FREE EBOOK DOWNLOAD

The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing, Second Edition - Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Made Easy

2013 | ISBN: 0124116442 | English | Pages: 225 | PDF | 3.48 Mb

The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing, 2nd Ed. serves as an introduction to the steps required to complete a penetration test or perform an ethical hack from beginning to end. No prior hacking experience is needed. You will learn how to properly utilize and interpret the results of modern day hacking tools, which are required to complete a penetration test. 

Tool coverage includes Backtrack and Kali Linux, Google reconnaissance, MetaGooFil, DNS interrogation, Nmap, Nessus, Metasploit, the Social Engineer Toolkit (SET) , w3af, Netcat, post exploitation tactics, the Hacker Defender rootkit, and more. The book provides a simple and clean explanation of how to effectively utilize the tools and introduces a four-step methodology for conducting a penetration test or hack. You will be provided with the know-how required to jump start your career or gain a better understanding of offensive security. The book walks through each of the steps and tools in a structured, orderly manner, allowing readers to understand how the output from each tool can be fully utilized in the subsequent phases of the penetration test. This process allows readers to clearly see how the tools and phases function and

relate.

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101 Most Useful Websites You Dont Know About (TIPS)

The list primarily highlights the lesser-known or undiscovered websites and misses out all-time favorites like Google Docs, Wikipedia or IMDB that most of us are already aware of.

Useful Websites Worth a Bookmark!

The sites mentioned below, well most of them, solve at least one problem really well and they all have simple web addresses (URLs) that you can easily learn by heart thus saving you a trip to Google. [via]

01. screenr.com – record movies of your desktop and send them straight to YouTube.

02. bounceapp.com – for capturing full length screenshots of web pages.

03. goo.gl – shorten long URLs and convert URLs into QR codes.

04. untiny.me – find the original URLs that’s hiding behind a short URLs.

05. localti.me – know more than just the local time of a city

06. copypastecharacter.com – copy special characters that aren’t on your keyboard.

07. topsy.com – a better search engine for twitter.

08. fb.me/AppStore – search iOS app without launching iTunes.

09. iconfinder.com – the best place to find icons of all sizes.

10. office.com – download templates, clipart and images for your Office documents. Please Share This Post Using Your Favorite Tools Share68

11. woorank.com – everything you wanted to know about a website.

12. virustotal.com – scan any suspicious file or email attachment for viruses.

13. wolframalpha.com – gets answers directly without searching – see more wolfram tips.

14. printwhatyoulike.com – print web pages without the clutter.

15. joliprint.com – reformats news articles and blog content as a newspaper.

16. isnsfw.com – when you wish to share a NSFW page but with a warning.

17. e.ggtimer.com – a simple online timer for your daily needs.

18. coralcdn.org – if a site is down due to heavy traffic, try accessing it through coral CDN.

19. random.org – pick random numbers, flip coins, and more.

20. mywot.com – check the trust level of any website – example.

21. viewer.zoho.com – Preview PDFs and Presentations directly in the browser.

22. tubemogul.com – simultaneously upload videos to YouTube and other video sites.

23. truveo.com – the best place for searching web videos.

24. scr.im – share you email address online without worrying about spam.

25. spypig.com – now get read receipts for your email.

26. sizeasy.com – visualize and compare the size of any product.

27. whatfontis.com – quickly determine the font name from an image.

28. fontsquirrel.com – a good collection of fonts – free for personal and commercial use.

29. regex.info – find data hidden in your photographs – see more EXIF tools.

30. tineye.com – this is like an online version of Google Googles.

31. iwantmyname.com – helps you search domains across all TLDs.

32. tabbloid.com – your favorite blogs delivered as PDFs.

33. join.me – share you screen with anyone over the web.

34. onlineocr.net – recognize text from scanned PDFs and images – see other OCR tools.

35. flightstats.com – Track flight status at airports worldwide.

36. wetransfer.com – for sharing really big files online.

37. pastebin.com – a temporary online clipboard for your text and code snippets.

38. polishmywriting.com – check your writing for spelling or grammatical errors.

39. awesomehighlighter.com – easily highlight the important parts of a web page.

40. typewith.me – work on the same document with multiple people.

41. whichdateworks.com – planning an event? find a date that works for all.

42. everytimezone.com – a less confusing view of the world time zones.

43. warrick.cs.odu.edu – you’ll need this when your bookmarked web pages are deleted.

44. gtmetrix.com – the perfect tool for measuring your site performance online.

45. imo.im – chat with your buddies on Skype, Facebook, Google Talk, etc. from one place.

46. translate.google.com – translate web pages, PDFs and Office documents.

47. youtube.com/leanback – enjoy a never ending stream of YouTube videos in full-screen.

48. similarsites.com – discover new sites that are similar to what you like already.

49. wordle.net – quick summarize long pieces of text with tag clouds.

50. bubbl.us – create mind-maps, brainstorm ideas in the browser.

51. kuler.adobe.com – get color ideas, also extract colors from photographs.

52. followupthen.com – setup quick reminders via email itself.

53. lmgtfy.com – when your friends are too lazy to use Google on their own.

54. tempalias.com – generate temporary email aliases, better than disposable email.

55. pdfescape.com – lets you can quickly edit PDFs in the browser itself.

56. faxzero.com – send an online fax for free – see more fax services.

57. feedmyinbox.com – get RSS feeds as an email newsletter.

58. isendr.com – transfer files without uploading to a server.

59. tinychat.com – setup a private chat room in micro-seconds.

60. privnote.com – create text notes that will self-destruct after being read.

61. flightaware.com – live flight tracking service for airports worldwide.

62. boxoh.com – track the status of any shipment on Google Maps – alternative.

63. chipin.com – when you need to raise funds online for an event or a cause.

64. downforeveryoneorjustme.com – find if your favorite website is offline or not?

65. example.com – this website can be used as an example in documentation.

66. whoishostingthis.com – find the web host of any website.

67. google.com/history – found something on Google but can’t remember it now?

68. errorlevelanalysis.com – find whether a photo is real or a photoshopped one.

69. google.com/dictionary – get word meanings, pronunciations and usage examples.

70. urbandictionary.com – find definitions of slangs and informal words.

71. seatguru.com – consult this site before choosing a seat for your next flight.

72. sxc.hu – download stock images absolutely free.

73. imo.im – chat with your buddies on Skype, Facebook, Google Talk, etc. from one place.

74. wobzip.org – unzip your compressed files online.

75. vocaroo.com – record your voice with a click.

76. scribblemaps.com – create custom Google Maps easily.

77. buzzfeed.com – never miss another Internet meme or viral video.

78. alertful.com – quickly setup email reminders for important events.

79. encrypted.google.com – prevent your ISP and boss from reading your search queries.

80. formspring.me – you can ask or answer personal questions here.

81. snopes.com – find if that email offer you received is real or just another scam.

82. typingweb.com – master touch-typing with these practice sessions.

83. mailvu.com – send video emails to anyone using your web cam.

84. ge.tt – quickly send a file to someone, they can even preview it before downloading.

85. timerime.com – create timelines with audio, video and images.

86. stupeflix.com – make a movie out of your images, audio and video clips.

87. aviary.com/myna – an online audio editor that lets record, and remix audio clips online.

88. noteflight.com – print music sheets, write your own music online (review).

89. disposablewebpage.com – create a temporary web page that self-destruct.

90. namemytune.com – when you need to find the name of a song.

91. homestyler.com – design from scratch or re-model your home in 3d.

92. snapask.com – use email on your phone to find sports scores, read Wikipedia, etc.

93. teuxdeux.com – a beautiful to-do app that looks like your paper dairy.

94. livestream.com – broadcast events live over the web, including your desktop screen.

95. bing.com/images – automatically find perfectly-sized wallpapers for mobiles.

96. historio.us – preserve complete web pages with all the formatting.

97. dabbleboard.com – your virtual whiteboard.

98. whisperbot.com – send an email without using your own account.

99. sumopaint.com – an excellent layer-based online image editor.

100. lovelycharts.com – create flowcharts, network diagrams, sitemaps, etc.

101. nutshellmail.com – Get your Facebook and Twitter streams in your inbox.

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Deepfreeze + Anti Deepfreeze

Faronics Deep Freeze Enterprise makes PCs indestructible. It protects endpoints by Freezing the desired configuration set by you – the IT professional. Any unwelcome or unwanted changes users make while in-session are prevented from sticking. It’s really simple. By restarting your computers, systems are returned to the desired state. Meanwhile, user data can be stored safely on a network drive or in a ThawSpace to be retained across reboots. This helps machines run smoothly and efficiently, while giving you more up-time and boosting user productivity. The built-in Deep Freeze Enterprise Console or Core Console makes life even easier.

Deep Freeze’s central management capabilities allow you to enjoy the benefits of customizing, deploying, and managing Deep Freeze on your endpoints from one central location. Need to manage Windows Updates? Simply download them while Frozen and they’re automatically applied when machines are Thawed. Once the process is finished, machines are automatically returned to their Frozen state.

Since Deep Freeze ensures 100% workstation recovery with every restart, you can watch that mountain of support tickets shrink. Customers report an average reduction of 63%. You can also forget about disk protection, accidental configuration changes, malicious software, and operating system degradation. Now you and your IT staff can get more sleep, worry less, and maybe even leave the office on time once in a while.

SITE PASSWORD:

sharestack.blogspot.com

RAR PASSWORD:

rn-hxx

READ INSTRUCTIONS ON THE RAR FILE.

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Viral Video on Facebook : TWO MEN IS KISSING INSIDE A PUBLIC TRAIN IN THE PHILIPPINES ! EWWWWWWW

A video of two men kissing inside the Metro Rail Transit is spreading all over the social media right now.

photo screenshot source : youtube.com

This video was taken by another passenger of the public transportation. It has become a topic for the netizens.

This video was uploaded The opinion of the people of the internet were divided.

Most of the people are not in favor of what the couple did. They said that it was not the right place. Stating the fact that they are not the only ones who are in the MRT.

However, there are other people who supports the love and affection that the two men showed. Some can relate to the feelings of the couple involved in the video. They said that they are also proud of the two because they were not afraid to show that they have a "something" for each other.

The world is full of judgmental people. Whatever we do there will be side comments. It can either be positive or negative.


At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is what we think of ourselves. Be loud and proud!

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