Twitch plays modern art
Whether or not the art world wants a robotic painter, it’s going to get one. Chris Chen, founder of Instapainting, a web service that converts your photographs into paintings, has built a machine that’s creating an artwork live on Twitch. Users can punch in commands on the gaming platform for the paint brush wielding machine to follow.
Inspired by Twitch Plays Pokemon, a popular stream that allowed people to play the game collectively through the chat, Chen decided to hook up his robot to a stream for a similar collaborative experience. “I wanted [people] to take control of the robot to paint,” he gushes. “The idea is to integrate technology into the creation process [of art] so people can watch it being painted in real time.”
Painting isn’t a new artistic endeavor for robots. From AARON, the first autonomous painting machine, to eDavid and bitPaintr more recently, inventors have been toying with the idea of robotic artists. But unlike AARON, created by Harold Cohen in the ’70s, Chen’s robot isn’t painting with imagination or intent. It’s being fed a set of instructions for every stroke and color. It can either follow the lead of an artist who shows it how it’s done or it takes its cues from users on the Internet.
The robot, which cost about $200 to build, made its first mechanical reproduction of an artwork a couple of months ago. When Jean Liang, a digital artist, drew on a Wacom tablet, the robot responded in real-time and followed the motions of the pen. But it also recorded the artist’s movements to create a replica of the painting autonomously soon after.
Whether or not a robot can be creative is a heated, inconclusive debate. But experiments like Chen’s do fall neatly into the category of human-machine collaborations. When he first made the robot available on Twitch, programmers in the viewer-crowd took control and managed to write scripts in real-time to make the robot paint circles and mash up colors. But Chen wanted to make the collaborative process of robot painting more accessible. “I’m redoing it to make it a valid experiment of collaborative art so regular people wouldn’t be inhibited to try and take control,” he says. “It’s a basic control GUI, so all you have to do is click and it’ll move.” When a user types a command in the chat, “up 400 right 300 brush 40” for instance, the robot averages all three dimensions — X, Y and Z coordinates — to follow the precise command for a stroke on the canvas.
Chen’s entire business model for Instapainting is based on the similar sentiment of making art accessible. But he’s quick to clarify: “You shouldn’t necessarily see it as art, unless your photo is a piece of art. I’d prefer not to add creative input. Not because people can’t do that, but because that’s not good business.” The way he sees it, adding an artist’s creative interpretation to a painting will lead to a lot of dissatisfied or fickle customers. So he sticks to replicas of photos exactly as the customers want them. “It’s not perfect artwork,” he says. “It’s perfect painting.”
When Instapainting launched in 2014, backed by YCombinator, there was a small but instant demand. There were people who wanted their favorite pet pictures converted into oil paintings and a quick Google search threw up Instapainting as an option. At the time, when the service was slowly gaining traction on Reddit, it seemed feasible for them to have the paintings made in the country. But soon, when art studios in China reached out to Chen with their price lists, he couldn’t turn them down. “They offered really good quality,” he says. “They were cheaper, too.” Soon, the paintings were outsourced to Chinese art studios.
For now, the robotic painter exhibits the possibilities of man-machine collaboration. But eventually, when the AI-version of this robot, which is expected to follow as per the company’s blog, becomes capable of churning out replicas of photographs, it could rival Chen’s Chinese studio suppliers. “If you get a painting right now [that’s] different from the [photo], it’s not because the artist added a creative input, it’s because they made a mistake,” he says. “We want to offer a service that’s close to a printer. Except, right now it’s cheaper to have an actual human artist do it rather than robot.”
[Image credit: Instapainting. Gif: Prosthetic Knowledge]
Search all your favorite streaming services at once with Yahoo Video Guide
Yahoo has a new app called Yahoo Video Guide that allows users to search all their favorite video streaming services from one place. Some of the streaming services included to search are, HBO, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and more.
Yahoo says their new app should make your life a lot easier because you can search for a TV show or movie in their app and it will direct you to the streaming service that has it. Once you find what you are looking for, simply tap the playback button to watch it on the service that offers it.
However, with all the TV shows and movies out there, there is another problem. What to watch? Yahoo Video Guide solves this problem as well by adding a browse by mood section known as “Mood Picker”. Just pick the image that matches your mood and let Yahoo Video Guide do the rest.
Yahoo Video Guide is available to download in the US for iOS or Android.
Source: Yahoo
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Blu’s Life One X offers up 5.2-inch Lollipop on a budget
Blu’s latest Android smartphone, the Life One X, plays in the Motorola Moto G sandbox. In other words, it’s an unlocked handset that delivers respectable hardware with a budget-friendly cost.
Running Android 5.1 Lollipop, the Life One X offers up a 5.2-inch 1080 pixel display and a 13-megapixel rear and 5-megapixel front-facing camera combo. The 1.3GHz MediaTek octa-core processor is bolstered by 2GB RAM; storage is 16GB internally with microSD expansion for up to 64GB.
The Life One X is sold like all other Blu models, unlocked and direct to consumer via Amazon. Normally, the phone will carry a $150 price tag, however a limited-time promotion sees the cost dropped by $50. That’s right, through December 12 you can grab the Life One X for a mere $100.
The Life One X is unlocked and supports dual-SIM cards, meaning it works with T-Mobile, AT&T, Cricket, MetroPCS, and other GSM carriers.
Purchase the Blu Life One X at Amazon
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Deal: iDea Power battery chargers on sale, $5 for 2600 mAh and $7 for 5200 mAh
Today’s smartphones are extremely powerful, with display resolutions as high as 4K, processors with quad or even octa-core configurations, and so much more. One area where smartphones lag however, is in battery performance. While there are phones out there with exceptional battery life, many phone struggle to make it a full day with moderate to heavy usage. That’s where a reliable portable charger can really come in handy.
For those looking for a portable charger, right now iDeaPower has two choices for you, the 2600 mAh portable battery charger and flashlight, or the 5200 mAh iDeaPower battery charger. The pricing for the former is just $5, with the latter at $6.99 with the use of coupon code IDPME44L.
If size doesn’t matter to you, the 5200 mAh is certainly the better deal at only $2 more. If you’re looking for something that takes up less room however, the smaller unit is perfect for those that want some small and discrete that fits nicely in a pocket, bag, purse, or whatever have you.
Either one of these would make a great stocking stuffer this year, don’t you think?
Facebook’s offline news feed lets you continue your obsession even in the subway
Anybody who uses public transport on the regular knows the frustration of having to stop obsessively scrolling through their Facebook news feed whenever they’re underground. Folks living in places with sketchy internet access are all familiar with the irritation that comes with composing a well-articulated political argument, only to have their internet go out right as they hit the “Post Comment” button. Facebook is working on a solution to this problem by giving you access to your news feed even if you’re offline.
See also: Facebook makes its best effort at being a shoulder to cry on post-breakup
Although they’re still testing this feature, the concept seems very workable. The idea is that your Facebook app will keep a cache of recent stories posted to Facebook. If it detects that you don’t have an internet connection, instead of just showing you an error message, the app will shuffle through the cache and pick out some stories you haven’t read yet. Whenever you get even the barest trickle of internet, Facebook will attempt to grab new content for you.
The update also gives you a little bit of interactivity as well. You can post comments or statuses even without internet, and the app will store them for the next time you’re online. Once you get data service or a wifi connection, Facebook will post the content for you. I guess you just have to cross your fingers that what you had to say will still be relevant to the conversation.
We’re not sure yet if Facebook is rolling this feature out for all app users or if they’re just testing it with a limited audience. It seems like a feature with more pros than cons, so I think it’s safe to say that we’ll be seeing offline news feeds pretty soon either way.
Gimmick or useful update? Let us know in the comments!
Facebook makes the hardware it uses for AI open-source
You might not think of it often, but behind the scenes Facebook uses a lot of artificial intelligence. The company leans heavy on AI, using machine learning to curate a better news feed, sort through photo and video content and even read stories or play games. Now, the company is making Big Sur, the hardware it runs its AI experiments on, open-source.
Facebook says it will release its AI hardware design to the Open Compute Project soon, promising to give the community a system designed specifically for AI tasks built from off-the-shelf components. This design features eight NVIDIA Tesla M40 GPUs seated into an easily serviceable motherboard. “The CPU heat sinks are the only things you need a screwdriver for,” the company says.
“We want to make it a lot easier for AI researchers to share techniques and technologies,” the company said in a statement today. “We believe that this open collaboration helps foster innovation for future designs, putting us all one step closer to building complex AI systems.” Sounds pretty good. Check out the source link below for Facebook’s official announcement.
Source: Facebook
In hacking, the blame game is purely for entertainment
As the holidays approach, I find myself missing the drama and spectacle of the Sony hack.
You know, the kind of drama where a movie studio realizes it’s under attack and decides that overacting will save the film. Or that threatening journalists to stop writing about it will put an end to all those “bad reviews” everyone’s suddenly writing about Sony security. The holidays were made for this sort of thing. Can you even remember any of last year’s Christmas specials? No. That’s because watching Sony utterly fail to handle the epic breach with grace or wisdom was way more entertaining than seeing anything on ice last December.
And then the whole twist, where FireEye points the finger at North Korea as a sort-of “red scare’ Krampus in act three, well, that must be what people mean when they talk about the magic of Hollywood. Now, that’s entertainment.
As accustomed as we are to hearing there’s a huge new breach every week, we’re getting equally used to some insider lay the blame on China. With every breach-attribution cycle, hackers roll their eyes when headlines and PR firms whip out the same-old terms, methods and culprits. The chorus of “Chinese hackers did it” and lately “Russian hackers did it” has led to a lot of ridicule and no small amount of vocal annoyance from hackers in all quadrants.
The thing is, all that snark and frustration has some very legitimate grounding in reality.
Attribution is seldom fast, neat, easy or reliably accurate. Naming who did it can be near to impossible, even though that seems to be what PR departments and out-of-the-loop executives believe is the answer.
This is especially true because the name of the game for serious attackers is obfuscating one’s tracks with “false flags.” As in, leaving misleading clues, like hints of a specific country’s language or planting markers that implicate another attacker. Either way, it’s really easy to get attribution wrong.
Less than a month ago, the U.S. charged three Israeli men for hacking and robbing JPMorgan Chase & Co, in what is the largest-ever theft of customer data from a U.S. financial institution (and one of the biggest breaches to date). A fourth culprit, and American citizen, is still at large and wanted by the FBI. Except when news of the breach hit in August 2014, it was reported that “some members of the bank’s security team to tell outside consultants that they believed the hackers had been aided by the hidden hand of the Russian government” — and attribution was firmly assigned to Russia.
On top of issues with accuracy, attribution is seen by most as a waste of time for defenders because attribution has nothing to do with strategy. Matthew Monte, author of Network Attacks And Exploitation: A Framework, nailed it when he wrote, “What does full attribution change? Nation states maintain their innocence with an ever-weakening shield of plausible deniability as mountains of evidence pile up against them. … But do not expect blame to slow down espionage.”
Despite the follies of attribution, breached organizations seem inclined to use blame as a get-out-of-bad-PR card. The Sony Pictures Entertainment hack was mainstream America’s first real taste of the breach-PR cycle, which with SPE practically became a musical production on ice of clinging to attribution for salvation.
The breach-PR cycle begins when a bad breach occurs.
A neat — or shall we say, Hollywood — ending is needed. An insider rolls in to announce a villain while headlines are still fresh, a role that goes to either a security company or an “unnamed insider.” This misdirects attention from everything that really matters about the crime, and annoys the hell out of those of us in the audience with critical thinking skills.
Sony gave the role to FireEye Inc’s Mandiant forensics unit. Its infosec reputation meant everyone expected that it would “blame China.” So, the Sony hack was a show with a twist ending for some of us. In FireEye’s script, turns out it was North Korea all along.
If this sounds a lot to you like “Colonel Mustard in the Library with the candlestick” then you’re starting to understand the sarcasm and exasperation that led to the creation of Attribution Dice.
Like many, I was delighted to see the creation of Attribution Dice early this year — they’re sort of like sex dice, which unimaginatively reduce foreplay into randomized “Mad Libs,” but for breach blame. The dice finally meant that anyone with $20 could assign attribution like a high-priced security consultant, and predict breach headlines before PR firms have a chance to feed them to reporters.
They sold out on December 2nd, but I think we can expect a lot of hackers over the holidays rolling the dice to wow friends, family and neighbors with their hacker super-cyber-powers.
But blaming North Korea sure didn’t help Sony in court. Sony got an anniversary lump of coal in its stocking last month, in the form of a preliminary settlement in a class action suit against Sony by 435,000 former employees harmed by the hack. On November 25, a year and one day after the hack, a U.S. District Judge batted aside Sony’s attempt to avoid blame by claiming that “injuries were the result of a hack attributed to North Korea.”
So attribution, as a service, is really only selling the idea of knowing who did it. In our current atmosphere it’s more like Three-Card Monte. Which, by the way, is not actually a game.
I think at this point, attribution should always come with a disclaimer — that it’s “for entertainment purposes only.”
[Image credit: – via Getty Images]
Tim Cook throws more shade at Google because Apple can’t win the classroom
Once he and his company is threatened by an outsider, Apple’s Tim Cook heads straight to the press and drops a quote that gets attention. The latest victim of a frustrated outburst from the Apple CEO is the Chromebook, the family of computers that runs Google’s Chrome OS. This comes as Google expects there to be more Chromebooks distributed in schools than all other devices combined.
While not naming Chromebooks specifically, Cook was clear in targeting them indirectly.
“Assessments don’t create learning. We are interested in helping students learn and teachers teach, but tests, no. We create products that are whole solutions for people — that allow kids to learn how to create and engage on a different level.”
Cook referred to Chromebooks as “test machines” even before providing that little bit on allowing students to learn and teachers to teach. Are students and teachers not benefiting from Google’s efforts in education? The company has continuously built up its Classroom platform since launching in 2014 and introduced virtual reality to the classroom as well. Meanwhile, Apple is trying to sell school districts iPads, but that hasn’t worked out very well for and the Los Angeles Unified School District legally went after the company in April. The two parties reached a settlement of $4.2 million in September. This is all while Google can get hardware manufacturers to produce low-cost Chromebooks for schools at a rapid pace.
And this still doesn’t feel as feisty as the time Cook called Android a “toxic hellstew,” to which Sundar Pichai defended Android’s security and pointed out that Google’s mobile operating system is being adopted at faster pace than anything else. You’re going to have to try harder next time, Tim. Because none of the millions of people using Chromebooks around the world are feeling like they have “test machines” in their hands. Perhaps Apple could do better in education if they released accessible products. A glorified iPad that starts at $799 and is way less productive than a mountain of Android and Windows devices probably shouldn’t have been Apple’s most recent move if education is such a big deal to the company. Who knows, maybe the next “one more thing” at an Apple event will be a low-cost MacBook.
Source: BuzzFeed News
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Griffin’s ‘Survivor Play’ Case for Apple TV Siri Remote Now Available
Back in September, Griffin announced its first product for the fourth-generation Apple TV, a silicone case designed to protect the Apple TV Siri Remote. As of today, Griffin’s Survivor Play remote control case is available for purchase.
The Survivor Play mimics the design of sleeves for the hand-held Wii Remote, wrapping the Siri Remote in a soft textured silicone that adds grip and padding that may save it from breaking should it be dropped on accident. The Siri Remote slips easily into the sleeve, which protects the back, the sides, and part of the front while still leaving the buttons, the built-in touch pad, and the Lightning port available for use.
At the back, there’s a thick but ergonomic grip included, which Griffin says makes the Survivor Play easy and comfortable to hold on to even during long gameplay sessions.
Given that there have already been multiple reports from people who have broken the glass touch area on their Apple TV Siri Remotes, the Survivor Play is a useful accessory that could prove to be quite popular with Apple TV owners. Because it leaves the Lightning port open, it can be paired with a Remote Loop for even more peace of mind.
Griffin’s Survivor Play for the Siri Remote can be purchased from the Griffin website for $19.99.
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Samsung Pay now incorporates buying and using 50 popular gift cards
Samsung Pay is the most widely accepted mobile payment platform on the planet, and now they’re stepping up their game even further. Samsung Pay will now support the purchase, storing, use and sharing of 50 of the most popular gift cards on the market, just in time for Christmas. Samsung also announced a gift card store where users can purchase gift cards for themselves or others right on their phone within the Samsung Pay app.
Samsung is making a major push to be the king of the mountain in the mobile payment game. The biggest advantage they have is being able to use the mobile payment platform with older style magnetic strip detectors with their Magnetic Secure Transmission technology. This technology lets Samsung Pay emulate magnetic strips and expands the ability to pay at many more stores and shops with older hardware.
“With the support of more than 50 major retail gift cards and the launch of the in-app gift card store, Samsung Pay is bringing consumers an easier way to use gift cards“
The mobile payment industry is right now in a race to the most convenient. Samsung has a challenge because they’re only on Samsung devices, which to be fair dominate the Android landscape. But, now that you don’t have to carry multiple credit cards and multiple gift cards with you it’s easy to envision leaving the house with just your phone and ID and being fine.
Here is a list of all the gift cards Samsung Pay will now support:
| 1800Flowers.com | Buca di Beppo | Gap Options | OfficeMax | Southwest Airlines |
| ArcLight Cinemas | Carnival Cruise Lines | Ghirardelli Chocolate | Old Navy | Spafinder Wellness® 365 |
| Athleta | California Pizza Kitchen | Goodcents Deli and Subs | Omaha Steaks | Staples |
| Babies “R” Us | Curtis Lumber | Gordmans | PacSun | Sur La Table |
| Baby Gap | Detroit Zoo | Grinders Above and Beyond | Panda Express | Swinging Doors |
| Banana Republic | Dominos | Gymboree | Pep Boys | Tabasco |
| Barnes & Noble | eBay | Legal Sea Foods | Puckett’s Grocery | The Container Store |
| Bass Pro Shops | Express | Lucille’s Smokehouse Bar-B-Que | Regal Entertainment Group | Toys “R” Us |
| Bob Evans | GameStop | Max & Erma’s | Rue 21 | Whole Foods Market |
| Bow Tie Cinemas | Gap | Nike | Shoney’s | Wooden Nickel |
Source: Business Wire
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AIVAnet 