Make animated terminal GIF’s
VHS is a program that lets you write simple scripts that will generate animates GIFs of command lines.
ER Productions
Ever want to know how those really amazing concert productions are made? Or how the do all the lighting and special effects on TV shows like Dancing with the Stars, Britain’s Got Talent, and other major shows?
ER Productions have done a lot of award winning shows lately. Check the videos out, or check out the amazing bag of technical tricks they have available to anyone with the right amount of money.
Signs of bitcoin manipulation returning
Back in 2017, John Griffin, a professor of finance at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, noticed something strange. They were fascinated to see that a little-known token, Tether, that’s supposed to be backed one-for-one to the dollar was getting printed in large quantities. That clue led the pair to another: When new batches appeared, the price of Bitcoin seemed to jump. It looked like someone, or a group, was using that freshly printed “free money” to inflate Bitcoin’s price for their own profit.
In 2018, they coauthored a groundbreaking study showing that a single, still unidentified, Bitcoin “whale” almost singlehandedly drove the token’s giant run-up in late 2017 and early 2018 by distorting the trading in the token.
He believes it is happening again.
Toward the end of 2022, another mystifying trend caught Griffin’s eye. Despite the crypto crash and myriad other negative forces, every time Bitcoin briefly breached the $16,000 floor, it bounced above that level and kept stubbornly trading between $16,000 and $17,000. Almost unbelievably, as the crypto market has continued to unravel into 2023, Bitcoin has gone in the opposite direction, trading up 35% since Jan. 7 to $23,000.
“It’s very suspicious,” Griffin told Fortune. “The same mechanism we saw in 2017 could be at play now in the still unreal Bitcoin market.”
Update: It’s not like other cryptocurrencies are exhibiting strange behaviors either. Such as a Ether whale that dumped $41M just days before the market crashed.
Packing just got faster and easier
MIT has just developed a new computational method that can figure out how to arrange a dense placement of objects inside a rigid container – while also guaranteeing that the objects are separable/interlock free (can be taken out again without getting stuck on each other).
The optimal way of positioning 3D objects of varied sizes and shapes in a container is still considered an unsolved problem. In fact, it is classified as NP-hard, which means it cannot be solved exactly — or even approximately, to a high degree of precision — without gargantuan computational times that could take years or decades depending on the number of pieces that need to be fit into a confined space.
Researchers from MIT and Inkbit (an MIT spinout company in Medford, Massachusetts), headed by Wojciech Matusik, an MIT professor and Inkbit co-founder, is presenting this technique, which they call “Dense, interlocking-free and Scalable Spectral Packing,” or SSP, this August at SIGGRAPH 2023
The method leverages a discrete voxel representation and formulates collisions between objects as correlations of functions computed efficiently using a novel cost function that can be efficiently solved with a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT).
Definitely worth checking out.
ChatGPT v4 matches top 1% of humans on creativity tests
Another blow to human superiority?
ChatGPT 4 can already pass the Bar Exam, now it appears to be more creative than humans too. Is this a blow to arguments that computers can’t replace artists?
A University of Montana study used ChatGPT 4 take the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, a well-known tool used for decades to assess human creativity. They then submitted the AI’s test answers along with the test taken by 24 UM students taking Dr. Erik Guzik’s entrepreneurship and personal finance classes.
These scores were then compared with 2,700 college students nationally who took the TTCT in 2016. All submissions were scored by Scholastic Testing Service, which didn’t know one of the submissions was done by ChatGPT.
The result? The AI’s test answers placed in the top percentile for fluency – the ability to generate a large volume of ideas – and for originality – the ability to come up with new ideas. The AI slipped a bit – to the 97th percentile – for flexibility, the ability to generate different types and categories of ideas.
“For ChatGPT and GPT-4, we showed for the first time that it performs in the top 1% for originality,” Guzik said. “That was new.”
Links:
Self aware Tomb Raider
FoxMaster uses a wide variety of AI tools: vision, object recognition, chatgpt, and others to give Laura Croft the AI treatment. She not only can traverse the game, but also has personality and narrates what is going on.
Foxmaster admits some of this is not complete and may be stretched a bit – but his analysis and breakdown of the problems of navigation, identification, and character personality into discrete problems is very interesting.
Nefarious data collection disguised as public art
Beginning early July, mirrored spheres began popping up in cities across the world. It is not public art but a 6.2 pound biometric imaging device designed to scan your eyeballs and capture your irises.
No, it’s not a joke. The company doing this is Worldcoin. Worldcoin was founded three years ago by Alex Blania and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. Their intent is to create “a new identity and financial network connecting billions of people in the age of A.I.” via a privacy-ensuring digital identity it calls World ID and a digital currency, WLD. World ID is supposed to be a ‘perfectly safe’ global identity protocol to enable individuals to prove their personhood online in an era of rampant A.I. deepfakes. WLD is a tool to build an “A.I.-funded UBI [universal basic income]”
This should all sound familiar because they’re the same arguments being made for digital currencies like Bitcoin. The company stresses they have security all along the trust chain, but it reads more like a dystopian nightmare in which everyone has been cataloged and identified by an unknown party with unknown motives. This is a company that could be working for anyone. A 3rd party agent that has unknown motives, unknown technical expertise, and unknown longevity to keep your biometric data safe. You do not really know which government, people, nor company is really behind it all nor what their values nor legal protections you would have. It’s a terrify black box of giving up your biometric data to an almost completely unknown entity. I vote a hard no.
In my opinion, this is a violation of privacy and an extremely bad idea. Even if they are secure today – are they really ready to protect your biometric data, collected surreptitiously, without consent, for all time, and never to sell it? It seems pretty unlikely as every country and every company who has promised this before hasn’t lasted 10 years before being hacked, leaking, being forced to turn over that data, or just flat selling you and your data to the highest bidder when they’re bought out or go bankrupt. Ready for North Korea, China, or Putin to have access to your World ID and any money you put in WLD?
So, maybe be sure to wear some good sunglasses when you find a shiny orb laying on the street.
At least some folks are starting to do an investigation – one I suspect will end badly for Worldcoin considering the EU’s less than open stance on collection/storage of biometric data collection and privacy.
File Graveyard
Well, this is different. Instead of just deleting your file, why not bury it in a digital graveyard – marked with its own digital tombstone.
Ulf Schleth’s /death/null offers us – a digital graveyard where our files no longer exist as they were, but are marked with a digital gravestone.
Simply upload your file and it is marked by a 4 x 5 matrix of colored blocks that represents the file. It is registered forever in the graveyard where you can check up on it any time you like.
And now my file has it’s own (very plain) ‘tombstone’.
Believing in God vs living in Christ
Sam Phillips : I don’t record material that doesn’t sell. Gospel, like that, doesn’t sell.
Johnny Cash : What’s wrong with the way I sing it?
Sam Phillips : I don’t believe you.
Johnny Cash : Are you telling me that you don’t think I believe in God?
Sam Phillips : You know exactly what I’m telling you. We’ve already heard that song a hundred times. Just like that. Just… like… how… you… sing it.
Johnny Cash : Well you didn’t let us bring it home.
Sam Phillips : Bring… bring it home? All right, let’s bring it home. If you was hit by a truck and you was lying out there in that gutter dying, and you had time to sing *one* song. Huh? One song that people would remember before you’re dirt. One song that would let God know how you felt about your time here on Earth. One song that would sum you up. You tellin’ me that’s the song you’d sing? That same Jimmy Davis tune we hear on the radio all day, about your peace within, and how it’s real, and how you’re gonna shout it? Or… would you sing somethin’ different. Somethin’ real. Somethin’ *you* felt. Cause I’m telling you right now, that’s the kind of song people want to hear. That’s the kind of song that truly saves people.
Despite declining numbers, the vast majority of people in the world and even US still believe in God. But I think this interaction from the movie Walk the Line about the singer Johnny Cash captures exactly the difference between when people that say they believe in God and people that live in God. It’s the difference between the hypocrisy of the Pharisees that did the deeds and followed the Mosaic laws to the letter vs those that lived in a relationship with God that asks for mercy, not sacrifice – Matthew 9:10-13
People know when you’re being authentic or not. When your actions or words are coming from the deepest part of who you are or if you’re just putting on a mask. They may not say it, but people almost always can tell when your lying, acting the part, or just feeding them a line you know they want to hear. You’re putting on a mask. When we wear masks of lies too often, what you experience is that people slowly drift away from you until you wonder – how did I get here? Alone and just with superficial relationships.
I think the reason people are increasingly filled with less hope is that a we are increasingly wearing more and more masks despite decades of calls to always just ‘be your self’, encouraging people to bring their authentic self, and live all manner of different ways to challenge the status quo/patriarchy/etc.
People have a deep seated hunger for real relationship. Relationships are based on authenticity, truth, and vulnerability. It’s in the very core of our being – and we create it if we don’t have it. Right now, we’re seeing LOTS of different groups trying to fill that need for relationships using words like ‘community’ and ‘culture’ as we cast off previous social norms.
As we cast off the past, we cannot cast off our need for belonging and meaning. We have replaced belonging and meaning in business by creating and promoting certain ‘cultures’. Non-profits and activist movements try to build ‘community’ around values. The problem is those entities, without real truth, just create more masks.
Each community and culture constructs a narrative and sets up rules and expectations of behaviors. If you challenge those behaviors, rules (written or unspoken), or leaders – you are immediately causing disunity and problems. I have seen this kind of clash happen in business environments and in non-profit and activist movements. Increasingly, many of them act more like cults under charismatic cult leaders than the ‘enlightened’ groups they claim to be.
We are doing this at a more and more furious pace than ever before as we tear down the ‘shackles’ of past community and culture – only to replace them with a new community and culture. We have largely given up on reforming cultures as we throw out the values of forgiveness and repentance. Instead we tear them down as soon as they fall out of favor to only be replaced by a new one with even more dubious leaders with even shorter track records. It is no wonder that people are exhausted and increasingly skeptical running from one new movement and activist group to the next. It seems businesses embrace new cultural values each year. Activist movements come and go with breakneck speeds. Leaders are again and again outed and canceled for hypocrisy, embezzlement, and lies. It’s activity that creates emptiness, disillusionment, and hopelessness for many people.
The real answer is that we need to see ourselves and the desires of ours hearts, in the light of real Truth. That is not something, in our broken world and limited understanding, we can do ourselves. Instead, we need to see ourselves in the light of something that is proven to be True. Something that has stood scrutiny for literally thousands of years – and not just a movement/philosophy of this day, this week, this month, this quarter, this year, or this decade.
There is such a real Truth – it is the teachings and life in Jesus Christ. It’s not about following a rulebook/wrote behavior (as Sam told Johnny Cash) or chasing a fad movement of today. A set of rules or guidelines is empty song we’ve heard a thousand times. Instead, Christ offers real and true relationship with Him – and the promise of eternal life with Him forever. Where every tear is wiped away, everything that has ever been done revealed, every hurt healed, every wrong righted, and every relationship repaired. All we need to do to start the journey is to turn to Him today, invite Him in, and live by his teaching. This requires work. We need to dedicate ourselves to learning what Jesus taught and converting our lives and behavior to become His friend.
So, just like Sam Philips would say, don’t just repeat the words of someone else or give the same pat answer – respond with your whole self authentically and be amazed where a life in Christ leads. I can confirm you’ll never be the same – God will take you places you never knew were possible, met people you never imagined you’d meet, open doors to things you never thought possible, and change your and other lives in ways that are nothing short of miracles.
The Grand Tour turns into the horrors of Overtourism
“Over-tourism is turning the world’s most perfect destinations into the opposite of what they once were”
It’s interesting to see how tourism has evolved in the last 400 years. Tourism started in the 16th century for younger upper-class aristocrats and wasn’t designed for fun. Travel in those days was expensive, arduous, and dangerous. It was the natural progression of those aristocrats who had a thorough grounding in classic Greek and Latin literature that was the root of modern culture (until the 1900’s anyway). The goal was to become more well rounded and enlightened gentlemen, scientists, writers, philosophers, artists, speakers, and leaders by exposing themselves to the best art and cultures of the world. This idea even had a name: The Grand Tour.
You can still see the shadows of that in travel today. Have you ever wondered why there is an unwritten rule that travelers to Europe spend a lot of time visiting museums, famous churches/buildings, and arts of all kinds (plays, music, paintings, architecture)? It’s because the idea of travel comes from the idea of becoming more cultured and seeking truth.
As anyone trained in classical education will tell you, in the past we had a much better understanding of the universal artistic language in these famous works of art and buildings. A lot of classical works are largely lost and unintelligible to modern generations that have very little classical education. Even when read, the great majority of in-jokes, cultural digs, and people are unknown and themes completely missed.
It’s a terrible shame that even I was guilty of as a computer scientist. Why should I read a bunch of old dead people that seem irrelevant? I can’t even tell what they’re talking about half the time. Oh what a world was opened to me when I took some classical literature and Latin classes. Unfortunately, we have traded a millennium of thought and experience for a much more utilitarian and entertainment focus in education these days – and hence so is our travel.
Where our philosophy goes, so we go.
It makes sense how we’ve gotten to where we are today in modern travel. Without a grounding in the culture that created these great works, many people are largely ignorant of what these monuments and artworks mean. One might argue the reason we’re seeing the destruction of famous historical/artistic works is that younger people experience them as just as foreign to them as cultures they’ve never encountered in other parts of the world. It’s nearly the same level of cultural destruction as an invader who has a whole different value, ethical, and political system – except it’s their own history they are destroying. Our modern society can be seen as culturally insensitive, or downright hostile, to our very historical selves. Not the first time this has happened in history – to disastrous consequences.
It’s great that travel is now open to just about everyone with safer and cheaper travel than any time in history – but this also comes at a social, economic, and historical price. Europe, and other places, are struggling with not only record, sweltering heat this summer but also destruction of famous historical/artistic works, local livability/culture, and economic destruction by crushing numbers of people. This has now caused numerous destinations around the world to close in recent years. The trend is accelerating as tourism is rapidly destroying once pristine and amazing places.
Now Europe, and other places, are starting to do the unthinkable – actively dissuading tourists.
Even I have started to rethink my own reasons for travel in an era where you can tour just about any major world location, museum, or event in 4k. While videos do not give you the cultural or personal interactions and friendships you develop from travel – you can still experience great works of art or festivals.
But now we have Twitch streamers that broadcast their daily interactions in foreign lands, live webcast tours of most famous places, and with VR travel becoming more of a thing, we may even be able to tear down those barriers as well.
It’s not like we haven’t thought about solutions to broadcasting live experiences before. Who knew the screaming, brash, over-the-top streamer was predicted almost 2 decades before it happened…