A household robot can learn how to do almost any chore in about 20 minutes when taught by a human using an iPhone camera and a grabber.
Mahi Shafiullah at New York University and his colleagues created a way to teach robots that involves using the grabber equipped with an iPhone to train the operation.
Massive in the 90’s, Demoscenes are not dead. Revision 2024 demo party just took place March 29th to April 1st in Saarbrücken Germany.
There was music, seminars, videos, livestreams, a 5k run, and of course – amazing code demos. This included some competing 256-byte demos here. One of the best was a post-apocalyptic black-and-white city created with just 256 bytes of Gopher code running on DOS.
Chris Zukowski’s website about Indie game marketing is an absolute treasure trove of information if you’re going to make an Indie game or want to know if you’re game will make it, or likely end up never seen by anyone.
While most of VR is focused on creating 3D worlds like we currently know them – some artists are experimenting with mathematically generated audio-visual journeys.
Recombination is an VR album by Dutch artist Julius Horsthuis. When it launched a year ago, the VR app offered eight experiences that take you on a journey through beautiful mathematical spaces
Algebra of Awe is another of his works that focuses more on fractal geometry.
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Luma Labs Genie can take a text prompt and generate a 3D model for you. You can inspect and download it in a variety of standard formats.
They seem to do a much better job than some of the earlier generative AI methods I wrote about before (like DreamFusion).
LumaLabs AI also has an AI powered 3D scene capture technology that looks very good as well.
Emm used her iPhone 12 Pro + @Scenario3d iphone app to generate this 3D image of her daughter.
Scenario makes a number of products. Read more about Scenario3d here.
LumiLabs also has some of their own offerings to capture scenes.
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Back in 2016, I wrote about how a grad student created a fighter pilot AI that was able to defeat a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene “Geno” Lee. It was so good that it didn’t do it just once. It shot him down every time.
Fast forward just 8 years and now there is the real thing.
The US military has tested an AI-controlled F16 named X-62A in a dogfight with an actual test pilot. The Variable Stability In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft, or “VISTA” for short, is essentially a modified F16 fighter jet controlled by AI that has previously conducted multiple test flights to demonstrate the capabilities of its artificial pilot (via The Telegraph).
In a press release, the USAF Test Pilot School and DARPA revealed that they initially tested various defensive maneuvers with the AI controlled jet to establish initial in-flight safety, before engaging in air-to-air simulated combat with another F16 in the skies above Edwards air force base in California last year.
It’s not clear if the tested dogfights were limited purely to aerial combat maneuvers with simulated weapons fire or how it did against live pilots. However, a previous AI developed by Heron Systems as part of a DARPA tournament was able to defeat a human pilot in five out of five tested scenarios.
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It’s official. Farrell McGuire has found the actual location of the famous Backrooms photo. Technically he re-discovered it had been discovered in 2019, but nobody noticed.
For almost 20 years people have tried to figure out the location of this mysterious photo that spawned an entire genre of creepy pasta writings, videos, and games. It’s location has been investigated for years – but the location was elusive because there’s is almost no history of the photo online and so few clues. Image searches and examing for EXIF data came up blank.
McGuire did a lot of investigation into the image. He tried everything from low level digital file and image forensics to reverse image searches. He noted the photo appeared to be unedited copy straight from an old Sony Cybershot digital camera. The outlets on the walls appeared to place its origin in North America. The biggest addition is an observation about the strange walls – including some that don’t go all the way to the ceiling. He said it reminded him of older furniture store show floors. Searches, however, lead to too many dead ends and it was uncertain how to narrow things down more. There’s been a lot of furniture stores over the years.
Only a few weeks after his original video, a breakthrough was discovered. It turns out someone HAD found the original image. Way back May 29th, 2019 a Twitter user (@rkfg_me) posted that he found it. But nobody noticed.
The original image link is dead, but the Internet Wayback machine had a copy of the Hobbytown website. Here’s the original image: https://web.archive.org/web/20040702085556/https://hobbytownoshkosh.com/Dsc00161.jpg
And the domain name gives the location away. It’s location is the HobbyTown in Oshkosh Wisconsin (807 Oregon St, Oshkosh, WI 54902). It’s also connected to a shop called Fabulous Finds next door that shared some of the original space.
The picture was part of a series of pictures from when Hobbytown employees were renovating the building from it’s previous owner in 2004: Rohner’s Furniture store. The store was purchased by Hobbytown and the photo was from the empty upstairs showroom when they converted it into a RC racetrack. Conversations people have had with the shop owner seem to confirm the renovation and story.
Here’s the rest of the photos from that website:
Amazing.
Previous investigation video with many of the twists and turns he took while investigating the photo:
Other interesting links:
Video walkthrough of the current Hobbytown space so you don’t have to go visit.
nVidia released software that turns 2D photos Into 3D scenes using a AI augmented, CUDA powered NeRF generator (neural radiance fields).
Learn more about Instant NeRFs: https://nvda.ws/3AU5wgA
Tutorial on how to make a 3D render from 2D photos: https://nvda.ws/3ciMLJI
Find the code on GitHub: https://github.com/NVlabs/instant-ngp
More Instant NeRF creators: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2022/08...
