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Archive for the ‘media & arts’ category: Page 107

Mar 28, 2016

Watch a man manipulate George Bush’s face in real time

Posted by in categories: entertainment, media & arts

You know that scene in the classic film Bruce Almighty when Jim Carrey uses his God-like powers to mess with Steve Carrell’s character while he’s giving a live news broadcast? That’s what this video looks like (kind of), except replace Steve Carrell for George W. Bush, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Barack Obama, and Jim Carrey for a team of wily researchers.

The system was designed by researchers from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Max-Planck-Institude for Informatics, and Stanford University. The same team worked on a similar facial expression transfer project last year, but that involved controlling the expressions of someone in the same room. This time they’re doing it with YouTube videos. First, the “target actor” (that’s Bush, Trump, Putin, and Obama) is rendered with a neutral expression. Then, the expressions of the source actor (that’s the other guy) are captured via webcam, and those expressions control the animation in the YouTube video.

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Mar 28, 2016

Want to live forever? Ray Kurzweil thinks that may be possible very soon

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, media & arts, Ray Kurzweil

When rock band Queen asked us “Who wants to live forever?” back in 1986, we interpreted it as standard lyrical rhetoric. But now, three decades and what feels like light years in technological, medical, and scientific advances later, the answer to that age-old question may have changed. And according to Ray Kurzweil, the famous American inventor who has been described as the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” we’re nearing immortality.

As the man responsible for the first CCD flatbed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer, and much more, Kurzweil has a knack for spotting trends and anticipating the future. And if history is any indication (and his word stays true), we may be in for a long, long lifetime.

In an episode of PBS’s News Hour last week, Kurzweil noted that death, which he describes as “a great robber of meaning, of relationships, of knowledge,” will soon be conquered. Indeed, the futurist notes, our species will soon be able to defeat disease and degeneration, and live “indefinitely.”

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Mar 27, 2016

Heat-assisted storage could give you 10x more space on your computer’s drive

Posted by in categories: computing, media & arts

If you’re always running out of room for photos, videos, and music on your laptop, then science might have the answer. Using a laser to write data to magnetic storage, researchers have been able to increase the potential data storage capacity of hard drives by as much as 10 times — a process konwn as heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR).

Our computers write, read, and store information by controlling and detecting whether tiny regions of the disk are magnetised or not. This magnetic state corresponds to either a “1” or a “0” in the binary code — known as a bit — and our files are stored across thousands (or millions) of these bits at once. So if we want more space, we need to find a way to shrink those magnetic regions — which are made up of magnetic grains. And that’s where this new development comes in.

As Gizmodo reports, the new technique relies on shrinking the size of the magnetic grains used to store data, while minimising the interference with surrounding grains, and the researchers have now done that more effectively than ever before by using a precise laser alongside a magnetic field.

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Mar 22, 2016

Can Google Expand Cuba’s Censored Internet? — By David Talbot | MIT Technology Review

Posted by in categories: education, internet, media & arts

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“President Obama seems to think Google can help increase Internet access in a country that has not historically been interested in unfettered connectivity.”

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Mar 18, 2016

X-Men: Apocalypse — Newest Official Trailer | 20th Century FOX

Posted by in category: media & arts

“Only the Strong Will Survive”

Mar 15, 2016

Movies & TV

Posted by in categories: entertainment, media & arts, mobile phones

Enjoy millions of the latest Android apps, games, music, movies, TV, books, magazines & more. Anytime, anywhere, across your devices.

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Mar 12, 2016

We Are From the Future Let There Be Light

Posted by in categories: energy, media & arts, quantum physics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIlmzFf19Mw

“We are from the future. Everything is going to be alright. The future is a beautiful place. But you will need some training in order to get there…” More: http://WeAreFromTheFuture.com

Words, Voice & Editing by Garret John LoPorto.
Connect on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/GarretJohn
& on Twitter: http://twitter.com/garretloporto
Music: “Time” by Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer feat. Satellite Empire — Time (The Machinist Remix)

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Mar 8, 2016

LIFE™ Series — Enlightenment

Posted by in categories: futurism, media & arts

I wrote/narrated and did the Visual FX/editing for this. Thought some of you might enjoy it. Has undertones of humans ability to reach for the stars.


http://yaw.life You’re Always Wealthy.

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Mar 6, 2016

Dopamine Headphones

Posted by in categories: media & arts, neuroscience

Prepare to feel music like you never have before…

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Feb 29, 2016

The House of Four Winds — M.C. Escher

Posted by in category: media & arts

Escher.HandSphereLR

“George Escher, eldest son of the famous artist M.C. Escher, shares personal stories of growing up in Rome and witnessing his father at work in this short film, titled The House of Four Winds, by Filiz Efe McKinney, Uriah McKinney and Aaron Sarnat.” —http://www.mcescher.com/news/a-conversation-with-george-escher/

Link to film