Neatorama |
- Mouse Movements and User Behavior
- The Smoothie King
- Lawsuits That Actually Weren't as Frivolous as Reported
- Cinderella's "Friends"
- Why the French Rarely Say 'I Love You'
- Shmorby's Guide To The Internet
- The Mystery of Greek Fire
- First-ever DNA Recovered from Extinct Miniature Elephants of Sicily
- Hackers Fool Facial Recognition AI
- This Cave Could Solve An Ancient Mystery
- Advance Wars 1 Plus 2 Reboot Camp Is Something To Look Forward To This December
- That Time When Thomas Jefferson Had A Stuffed Moose Sent To Paris
| Mouse Movements and User Behavior Posted: 27 Jun 2021 05:21 PM PDT
Computer scientists have shown in two recently published papers how mouse movements can be used to gain knowledge about your behavior. It is said that the information that could be acquired from said mouse movements could reveal sensitive details such as age and gender. Talk about scary. Prof. Luis Leiva, the corresponding author of the two papers, provides further details on the study. "We have demonstrated how straightforward it is to capture behavioral data about the users at scale, by unobtrusively tracking their mouse cursor movements, and predict user's demographics information with reasonable accuracy using five lines of code. For years, recording mouse movements on websites has been easy, however to analyze them one would need advanced expertise in computer science and machine learning. Today, there are many libraries and frameworks that allows anyone with a minimum of programming knowledge to create rather sophisticated classifiers. This raises new privacy issues and users do not have an easy opt -out mechanism." To combat this potential risk, they developed a method to distort mouse coordinates which thereby prevent mouse tracking. "It is inspired by recent research in adversarial machine learning, and has been implemented as a web browser extension, so that anyone can benefit from this work in practice," explains Leiva. The web browser extension called MouseFaker is available on Github. More about this over at TechXplore. (Image Credit: kaboompics/ Pixabay)  |
| Posted: 27 Jun 2021 05:21 PM PDT Have you ever seen smoothies being served this way? I sure haven't, and I'm looking forward to seeing something like this in person. It looks amazing. Every move just shouts experience and a long time of training. (Image Credit: Boojibs/ Gfycat/ The Awesomer) |
| Lawsuits That Actually Weren't as Frivolous as Reported Posted: 27 Jun 2021 05:10 PM PDT
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| Posted: 27 Jun 2021 05:10 PM PDT
(Last Place Comics/Zach Cranor) I've just discovered the comics of Zach Cranor. They have a common theme: something innocent turns into hell and something familiar becomes freakishly alien. They're wonderful, as Cinderella is discovering as she prepares for the ball and/or prison. |
| Why the French Rarely Say 'I Love You' Posted: 27 Jun 2021 05:10 PM PDT
The French don't say, "I love you" because they don't have a verb to express heartfelt sentiments for the people they care about. There is only the verb "aimer", which means both "to like" and "to love". As a result, a French person is not exaggerating when they conjugate "aimer" to explain their relationship to rugby, a warm baguette or the smell of lilacs. Naturally, then, it feels trite and rather mundane to use the same word when describing intense feelings of love for one's newborn baby, a childhood friend or a life partner. The upshot is that the language is insufficient to express the true depths of love. That sounds sweet, but why don't they come up with words that are sufficient? Maybe because the French know that actions speak louder than words. And there are still plenty of other words that hint at true love, too. Read more at BBC Travel. |
| Shmorby's Guide To The Internet Posted: 27 Jun 2021 05:10 PM PDT
Shmorby attempts to introduce newbies (meaning children) to the internet. While he wants to paint the web as a fun, useful place, alas, the real internet keeps butting in. Oh yeah, and don't beat yourself up over missing "the internet mascot everyone knows and loves," because the only people who knew Schmorby before last fall were his creators. -via Metafilter |
| Posted: 27 Jun 2021 08:01 AM PDT
Victory in warfare often goes to the entity that develops the most horrendous weapons, as we all learned in 1945. But mysterious but horrifying weapons that you wouldn't expect abound in history. In the 7th century, Byzantine warfare included the use of what appears to be a flamethrower! This weapon was called Greek fire.
There are accounts of what went into Greek fire, but they must have not been too helpful, because the technology was eventually lost. Read about Geek fire at Heritage Daily. -via Strange Company |
| First-ever DNA Recovered from Extinct Miniature Elephants of Sicily Posted: 27 Jun 2021 08:00 AM PDT
Some time in the distant past, African straight-tusked elephants (which were larger than existing elephants) traveled to Sicily when the Mediterranean sea level was low, and then got stranded there. They somehow evolved into dwarf elephants. The first dwarf species on the island was around the size of a Shetland pony! But it went extinct, and then came a slighter larger species which, at 1000 kilograms, was still quite small for an elephant. Fossils from Puntali cave in Sicily give a somewhat confusing timeline for Sicil's elephants, but now mitochondrial DNA has been extracted from a fossil, and its sequencing may yield answers. It shows that the Puntali elephants were isolated on Sicily at least 175,500 years ago, but potentially as recently as 50,000 years ago. Read more about the research on dwarf elephant DNA at the British Natural History Museum. -via Damn Interesting |
| Hackers Fool Facial Recognition AI Posted: 27 Jun 2021 07:21 AM PDT
Technology is constantly improving and evolving. With the rise of facial recognition software, it comes as no surprise that there are now ways to fool these complex algorithms. An AI technique, developed by Adversa, is claimed to fool facial recognition systems into identifying a picture of one person's face as that of someone else by adding minute alterations, or noise, to the original image: The companyannounced the technique on its website with a demonstration video showing that it could alter an image of CEO Alex Polyakov into fooling PimEyes, apublicly available facial recognition search engine, into misidentifying his face as that of Elon Musk. To test this, I sent a photo of myself to the researchers, who ran it through their system and sent it back to me. I uploaded it to PimEyes, and now PimEyes thinks I'm Mark Zuckerberg. Adversarial attacks against facial recognition systems have beenimproving for years, as have the defenses against them. But there are several factors that distinguish Adversa AI's attack, which the company has nicknamed Adversarial Octopus because it is "adaptable," "stealthy," and "precise." Other methods are "just hiding you, they're not changing you to somebody else," Polyakov told Motherboard. And rather than adding noise to the image data on which models are trained in order to subvert that training—known as a poisoning attack—this technique involves altering the image that will be input into the facial recognition system and doesn't require inside knowledge of how that system was trained. Image via Vice |
| This Cave Could Solve An Ancient Mystery Posted: 27 Jun 2021 07:21 AM PDT
Scientists now believe that a particular group of people came first before the Neanderthals. Thanks to a cave in the Altai Mountains in Russia, experts have found evidence that another, little-known group of ancient humans, called the Denisovans occupied the site first before sharing it with the Neanderthals. Inverse has more details: "This is a group we know very little about," lead authorElena Zavala tells Inverse. Zavala is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "By increasing our knowledge, we are provided with another perspective or reference for understanding what are the elements that make us modern humans 'human.'" Our understanding of who exactlythe Denisovans were is still murky, but it's one that's steadily becoming improved. Denisovans andNeanderthals — the ancient sister kin of humans — both belong to the same Homo genus, but we knew little about these ancient peoples until 2010. This is when scientists discovered their fossilized remains in what's known called Denisova Cave, the three-chambered site in the Altai Mountains. Scientists had previously discovered a dozen remains ofNeanderthals and Denisovans in the cave, as well as ahybrid child with a mix of Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA, suggesting that the two groups mated with each other. However, the researchers didn't fully understand when and how these different groups of ancient humans overlapped. That's where the new study comes into play. Contrary to what we previously thought, Denisovans may have actually predated the Neanderthals. Image credit: Dr. Richard G. Roberts |
| Advance Wars 1 Plus 2 Reboot Camp Is Something To Look Forward To This December Posted: 27 Jun 2021 07:21 AM PDT
The Internet (well, a specific portion of it) was on its toes during the E3 week, waiting and hoping for announcements about the games they want to play in the future. While a lot of surprises definitely made people lose their marbles, personally, Nintendo announcing a reboot of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-boot Camp was the one that made their Nintendo Direct a success for me. Sure, there's Metroid Dread, there's also the new trailer for the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but the shock that went through me was different when the Advance Wars reboot was announced. So what is Advance Wars anyway? Simply put, the game is a turn-based tactical strategy game. It's kind of like Fire Emblem-- which says something, as it was created bythe same studio: For those who are unfamiliar, Advance Wars is a turn-based tactical strategy series that pits armies against each other on a grid map. Created by the same studio behind the Fire Emblem series,Intelligent Systems, Advance Wars is arguably one of the most beloved Nintendo series not starring Mario or Pikachu, with a fandom that obsesses over the games as much as Nintendo's other franchises. Unlike Fire Emblem, which has seen its popularity skyrocket ever since its 3DS debut, Advance Wars has remained dormant for more than a decade. Now, fans and newcomers alike can experience the first two games in the series, revamped from the ground up. The game is being developed by Way Forward, who are the fine folks behind the underrated platforming series, Shantae, so it's in good hands. They also developed River City Girls and are working on the upcoming sequel. Advance Wars 1+2: Re-boot Camp includes Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, which originally launched on theGame Boy Advance. While the game is sticking with the original mechanics, it's getting a complete makeover, with a new art style and updated graphics. I'm very excited about this one as I remember playing it as much as possible on my Gameboy Advanced. I certainly did not expect Nintendo to revive this franchise, out of all the possible games they could. Image credit: Nintendo |
| That Time When Thomas Jefferson Had A Stuffed Moose Sent To Paris Posted: 27 Jun 2021 07:20 AM PDT
Back in the mid-18th century, it was assumed that the animals and the vegetation in America only grew to a modest size and were much smaller than those found in Europe, due to the climate of the continent. This absurd idea was thanks to Georges-Louis Leclerc, Compte (Count) de Buffon. At this point, America had been flourishing for 200 years, perfectly long enough – in his eyes – to produce great and famous people. Yet, Benjamin Franklin was one of the only names that made it to Europe's ears. Attempting to understand their strange "lack of success", Buffon hatched a theory – the environment was too swampy. With Europe being such an international powerhouse, Buffon concluded that America was simply an inferior version of Europe. Plagued by swampish odors and dense forest, it was of course impossible that anything of good size and stature could arise from such conditions, and therefore both the people and the animals must be smaller. Thomas Jefferson strongly disagreed over Buffon's theory. He stated that he had seen moose that were taller than humans and were much larger than the English stag. Unfortunately, the Europeans did not believe him, as he did not have evidence to back up his claims. So Jefferson produced one. Writing to John Sullivan of New Hampshire in 1786, Jefferson requested that he send the "skin, the skeleton, and the horns of the Moose, the Caribou, and the Orignal or Elk ... but most especially those of the moose" off to Paris. The animal was to be left in the skin, the horns attached to the head, and the belly and neck was to be sewn up. Certainly a strange request for anyone to receive, but Jefferson expressed that the package was of great importance, and Sullivan obliged. Upon seeing the moose when it finally arrived in Paris, Buffon was impressed and eventually changed his view on the state of wildlife in America. Thanks, Jefferson! (Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons) |
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