More advances in recreating images from brain scans

More advances in recreating images from brain scans

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I wrote about using AI trained models to re-create images from brain scans before. Improvements have been rapidly developing.

In a paper published in Neural Networks, researchers at the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST) in Japan were reportedly able to use artificial intelligence (AI) to reconstruct images solely from people’s brain activity with over 75% accuracy.

They recorded the brain activity of subjects who viewed 1,200 various images while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. “Score charts” that included 6.13 million factors such as color, shape, and texture were also created by making the AI recognize the images. The subjects were then shown another set of images that were different to the original images. Their brain activity was measured under the fMRI 30-60 minutes later while asked to imagine what kind of image they had seen.

According to the publication, the scientists’ groundbreaking method allowed them to use AI to reconstruct original images with a 75.6% accuracy rate — which is a big step from previous efforts with allowed a 50.4% accuracy rate

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2015 Crosstrek CVT servicing

2015 Crosstrek CVT servicing

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Should you service your Subaru Crosstrek CVT with a fluid change? There’s lots of conflicting information, but MrSubaru1387 gives us a great skinny. Long story short:

  • CVT fluid does not perform the same purpose as fluid in a regular transmission – so many arguments on the internet are not correct.
  • Subaru of America says the fluid is lifetime and you do not need to service it with a fluid change unless you’re doing towing or severe driving off-road
  • Some groups say every 30k or 60k. His shop recommends every 125k, my local shop in Oregon says 105k
  • He recommends not touching it until 100k miles and then changing it every 100k (unless you’re doing severe driving – which he would recommend every 50k-ish)

Here’s a video of him doing a CVT service on a Forester with 189591 miles that was having some hesitation off the line. Afterwards it

Crowds attacking self-driving vehicles

Crowds attacking self-driving vehicles

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A Waymo driverless taxi was attacked and burned to the ground Feb 10, 2024 in San Francisco’s Chinatown around 9PM PT. A crowd formed around the car, covered it in spray paint, broke out its windows, and set it on fire.

https://twitter.com/michael_vandi/status/1756550257851449372

The Verge couldn’t figure out who did it, but I have a pretty good guess where to go look first. It’s not like they’re being subtle about it since they talked about doing exactly this in the New York Times as well as publicly talking about destruction of property.

DREM – MFM/RLL hard drive and Floppy emulators

DREM – MFM/RLL hard drive and Floppy emulators

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Connecting old floppy disk drives to modern hardware is not easy. Resurrecting old MFM and RLL hard drives is even harder. The primary method would simply be to get an old PC with the legacy hardware to read the hard drives. But now there’s a few soltuions.

DREM:

DREM is based on the high performance FPGA platform and does not require the use of a PC for any file encoding operations. DREM is equipped with an VGA output, PS/2 keyboard input and file manager software. A user can browse the SD card and insert DSK images into virtual drives.

DREM uses DSK disk image files, which contain the raw dump of a disk. The raw image consists of a sector-by-sector binary copy of the source medium.

If you’re just looking for floppy emulation, I recommend GreaseWeazle or other solutions.

https://www.drem.info/drem

MFM Board Emulator:

Also available, but doesn’t seem quite as well baked, is the pdp8online MFM board emulator.

Catholic Shops for 2024

Catholic Shops for 2024

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I was recently looking for good baptism gifts for an adult joining the church.

Multnomah homeless plan has utterly failed and cost millions

Multnomah homeless plan has utterly failed and cost millions

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Yet another report has come out demonstrating the incompetence and failures of Oregon and Portland leadership – this time (again) due to Multnomah Vega Pederson. It’s a story of incompetent management, millions poured down the drain, doing things for political show, and hiding failures of leadership.

The “Housing Multnomah Now” initiative was supposed to use $14 million to house 300 people into apartments. A year later, however, the program has only placed 37 individuals or households in apartments.

Over the last month, Vega Pederson and other county officials repeatedly refused to answer questions on the record or provide details about how they set the program’s initial targets, identify officials who set them or say whether any review or analysis was conducted.

Read more about how badly this has gone from this article on Oregon Live.

Three-pete. Portland population continue to decline for 3rd straight year

Three-pete. Portland population continue to decline for 3rd straight year

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The bad news continues for Oregon and Portland. Populations are actually shrinking city, county, and state-wide.

Multnomah County has had a net lost of nearly 27,000 residents from 2020 to 2023 — a 3.3% drop in population, according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Tidbits:

  • 50% of out-migrant households from Portland’s tri-county area went to central Oregon, Washington, Texas and Arizona
  • Clark County, Washington (just across the river in Washington State), saw a 3.1% increase in population from 2020 to 2023

https://www.axios.com/local/portland/2024/03/25/multnomah-county-population-decline-continues-census

Rock formations of the Ulakhan Sis

Rock formations of the Ulakhan Sis

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The Ulakhan-Sis Mountain Range is in the Sakha Republic, Far Eastern Federal District, Russia. This range is one area of Yakutia – which is one of the most isolated and distant portions of northern Russia. This area is largely unexplored and uninhabited – only being first mapped in 1870. It’s nearest inhabited neighbor to the south is the infamous Kolyma area of Russia that served as Stalin’s brutal gulags.

They’ve been getting a little more exposure lately with climbers and visitors making the treacherous thousand mile trip to the range. What makes it interesting is that the area is marked by fascinating baydzharakhs rock formations. Kigilyakh rock formations are also found on this range, some of them quite impressive.

Baydzherakhs are formed by a cryo-lithic process in which polygonal ice-wedges thaw within the permafrost and reach heights of 15-30 feet. They form a landscape of unearthly spires. Not that different than the Penitentes in the Atacama desert.