HOMILY OF JOSEPH RATZINGER April 2005

HOMILY OF JOSEPH RATZINGER April 2005

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A then mere cardinal Ratzinger gave a prophetic homily April 18th, 2005.

Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be “tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine”, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.

We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of true humanism. An “adult” faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deception from truth.

HOMILY OF HIS EMINENCE CARD. JOSEPH RATZINGER
DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF CARDINALS
Maze Mania

Maze Mania

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Did you know one of first live action video games was played on a Laserdisc system? Before CD games like Mad Dog McCree, Night Trap, and other console and PC live action games, laserdisc games were a thing. Unfortunately, laserdisc technology was expensive and was quickly replaced by cheaper magnetic recording media like VCR and CD’s.

Welcome to Maze Mania. It was one of the first laserdisc games, and the folks over at Don’t Make Us Bored invited fel_temp_reparatio to hook up his actual 1980’s era laserdisc and play through one of the 4 games on the disc (They play Maze Mania at 1:54:00 into the video).

The laserdisc plays a live action video sequence for a short time, and then like a choose your own adventure book, the video stops and you are presented with a trivia question. If you answer right (by typing in the right fame number of where to continue), the video story continues. Answer wrong, and your story ends.

The low-budget productions, bonkers plots (like men in monkey suits jump out of piles of hay in westerns), and cheesy acting are definite a treat for people that like corny stories.

AI Filmmaking courses

AI Filmmaking courses

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The Future of filmmaking is here – and it’s done by a single person using AI tools. I’ve already posted about AI videos before, and included a number of trailer-like ones on the Curious Refuge channel or these humorous fake commercials from Turbodong2000.

Now Caleb Ward, who is the force behind Curious Refuge, is offering $749 AI Filmmaking classes.

The first 3 courses are completely sold out with waitlists to even apply for the November courses. For that price, you get:

  • 4 Weeks of Video Modules
  • Private Group Chat Access
  • Feedback from Pro Artists
  • Weekly Homework Assignments and Critiques
  • Downloadable PDFs
  • Prompt Templates
  • After Effects Templates
  • Title Templates
  • Notion Templates for Organizing the Production Process
  • Distribution Feedback and Critique

Besides Caleb’s work, here’s some sample student work:

Here’s one that plays more like an ad – with voice matching:


Anti night vision hoodie

Anti night vision hoodie

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This hacker decided to make a hoodie that can blind night vision cameras. It does this by having 12 embedded ultraviolet leds (light that is invisible to the naked eye) that strobe and blow out night vision cameras.

Obviously, this can equally be used for either anonymity or criminal activities. One thing is for sure, if you’re running away from cops or helicopters using night vision – you’re going to stand out like like a Christmas tree.

This is a more active approach to similar anti-paparazzi clothes that came out a few years back. Though those are a little expensive. A trendy anti-paparazzi scarf is $249.

Near-ultrasonic attacks on any device

Near-ultrasonic attacks on any device

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Just because you can’t hear it doesn’t mean your smart device can’t.

Researchers have developed a novel attack called “Near-Ultrasound Inaudible Trojan” (NUIT) that can launch silent attacks against devices powered by voice assistants. The main principle that makes NUIT effective and dangerous is that microphones in smart devices can respond to near-ultrasound that the human ear cannot, thus performing the attack with minimal risk of exposure while still using conventional speaker technology.

The team demonstrated NUIT attacks against modern voice assistants found inside millions of devices, including Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa, showing the ability to send malicious commands to those devices.

Inaudible attacks

NUIT could be incorporated into websites that play media or YouTube videos and tricking targets into visiting sites or playing malicious media on trustworthy sites.

The researchers say the NUIT attacks can be conducted using two different methods.

NUIT-1, is when a device is both the source and target of the attack. For example, an attack can be launched on a smartphone by playing an audio file that causes the device to perform an action, such as opening a garage door or sending a text message.

The other method, NUIT-2, is when the attack is launched by a device with a speaker to another device with a microphone, such as a website or over TV to a smart speaker.

Just one more reason not to have a bunch of smart devices in your house.

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nVidia uses AI for place and route on it’s chips

nVidia uses AI for place and route on it’s chips

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nVidia just published a paper and blog post revealing how its AutoDMP system can accelerate modern chip floor-planning using GPU-accelerated AI/ML optimization, resulting in a 30X speedup over previous methods. Hopefully it doesn’t get the treatment the Google AI place-and-route solution got.

AutoDMP is short for Automated DREAMPlace-based Macro Placement. It is designed to plug into an Electronic Design Automation (EDA) system used by chip designers, to accelerate and optimize the time-consuming process of finding optimal placements for the building blocks of processors. In one of Nvidia’s examples of AutoDMP at work, the tool leveraged its AI on the problem of determining an optimal layout of 256 RSIC-V cores with 2.7 million standard cells and 320 memory macros. AutoDMP took 3.5 hours to come up with an optimal layout on a single Nvidia DGX Station A100. 

Initial metrics shows it does an amazing job – in a fraction of the time. Definitely worth the read.

AutoDMP is open source, with the code published on GitHub. Below is a link to an article about Cadence’s Cerebrus AI place-and-route solution.

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Light Pillars in Oregon

Light Pillars in Oregon

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Light pillars are an interesting natural phenomenon in which a vertical beam of light appears to extend above and/or below a light source. The effect is created by the reflection of light off tiny ice crystals slowly falling through the air, reflecting light rays off of them.

While more common in Canada/Alaska and other northern latitudes, they recently appeared in the night skies over Redmond, Oregon on Christmas Eve 2022. Pretty cool!

Steam Deck tidbits

Steam Deck tidbits

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Valve is paying open source developers

The Steam Deck is a wonderful bit of hardware. The software that underpins it uses open-source packages like the Mesa graphics driver, the Vulkan graphics API, and Valve’s own Proton compatibility layer. This means the Steam Deck only runs thanks to open-source developers.

In a recent chat with the Verge, Steam Deck designer Pierre-Loup Griffais mentioned that the company is paying over a hundred open-source devs to work on the various bits of software for the Steam Deck. Valve has them working on stuff like Steam for ChromeOS and Linux, too.

Griffais said Valve’s corralling of open-source devs is part of “a larger strategy to coordinate all these projects and set up kind of an overall architecture” for gaming on Linux.

This also means the Steam Deck may never be “stable” like a traditional console. “I don’t think you should expect that,” says Griffais. “Stable in terms of having a great experience for people? Yeah, absolutely. But I think we are always going to be pushing updates as long as there’s people playing.”

For updates, the team is primarily working off two big lists, says Yang: “things we want to fix, and things we still want to make.”

It’s a fascinating and different way to develop a gaming platform. One I’m happy to play with since I own a Steam deck myself.

The Verge article also has more information from Griffais about hardware fixes, future plans, and other great tidbits of information and insights as to what Valve is planning. It’s worth a read.

Installing Epic Games Store on Stream Deck

Windows Central gives you instructions to show it’s possible to install the Epic Games store and it’s games on the Steam Deck. You use the Heroic Games Launcher to access and install games from not only Epic, but Good Old Games as well. It takes some work and jumping through a number of hoops but seems like a great way to get even more games on your Steam Deck.

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