These Portraits Were Made by AI: None of These People Exist
December 26th, 2018Via: PetaPixel:
Check out these rather ordinary looking portraits. They’re all fake. Not in the sense that they were Photoshopped, but rather they were completely generated by artificial intelligence. That’s right: none of these people actually exist.
NVIDIA researchers have published a new paper on easily customizing the style of realistic faces created by a generative adversarial network (GAN).
Christmas: Skid Row vs. Beverly Hills
December 25th, 2018In case you’re not familiar with Los Angeles, these two areas are about 12 miles apart.
Top Trump Official Calls Bankers, Will Convene ‘Plunge Protection Team’
December 24th, 2018Via: Reuters:
U.S. President Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary called top U.S. bankers on Sunday amid an ongoing rout on Wall Street and made plans to convene a group of officials known as the “Plunge Protection Team.”
U.S. stocks have fallen sharply in recent weeks on concerns over slowing economic growth, with the S&P 500 index .SPX on pace for its biggest percentage decline in December since the Great Depression.
“Today I convened individual calls with the CEOs of the nation’s six largest banks,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Twitter shortly before financial markets were due to open in Asia.
…
The Treasury said in a statement that Mnuchin talked with the chief executives of Bank of America (BAC.N), Citi (C.N), Goldman Sachs (GS.N), JP Morgan Chase (JPM.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Wells Fargo (WFC.N).
“The CEOs confirmed that they have ample liquidity available for lending,” the Treasury said.
Mnuchin “also confirmed that they have not experienced any clearance or margin issues and that the markets continue to function properly,” the Treasury said.
Industrial Hemp Legalized
December 23rd, 2018Via: Boston Globe:
President Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalizes industrial hemp after decades of the crop being caught up in broader cannabis prohibition, into law on Thursday.
The signing ceremony represents the culmination of a months-long debate over various provisions of the wide-ranging agriculture legislation. But after the House and Senate Agriculture Committees reconciled their respective versions, the final Farm Bill easily passed in full floor votes last week.
Hemp legalization, a provision of the bill championed by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, received bipartisan support, with members on both sides of the aisle celebrating its inclusion in the now signed law.
While the move has been widely characterized as outright legalization, it’s important to note that strict regulations still apply. Although hemp will no longer be in the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice, prospective growers will have to submit cultivation plans to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), either through the state government or the USDA itself.
China: A Dog Meets His Own Clone
December 22nd, 2018Via: Reuters:
Juice is a one-foot tall canine wonder who has starred in dozens of Chinese film and television productions.
As he gets older and his illustrious career peaks, his Beijing-based master has one wish for the mutt – to live on. Maybe forever.
A mongrel stray adopted off the streets, the nine year-old Juice — or “Guozhi” in Mandarin — is unable to reproduce since he was neutered from an early age. But his master, animal trainer He Jun, wants to continue his star pooch’s image by making a genetic clone.
“Juice himself is a piece of intellectual property with social influence,” said He.
To achieve that, He went to Sinogene, China’s first biotech company to provide pet cloning services. Sinogene made headlines when it successfully cloned a gene-edited beagle in May last year. A month later, it launched commercial cloning services.
For at least 380,000 yuan ($55,065), pet owners can clone their pets.
Sinogene’s CEO Mi Jidong said the company’s pet cloning business is in its initial stages, but he plans to expand services to eventually include gene editing.
Indian Government to Intercept, Monitor, and Decrypt Citizens’ Computers
December 21st, 2018Via: FastCompany:
The Indian government has authorized 10 central agencies to intercept, monitor, and decrypt data on any computer, sending a shock wave through citizens and privacy watchdogs.
Narendra Modi’s government late Thursday broadened the scope of Section 69 of the nation’s IT Act, 2000 to require a subscriber, service provider, or any person in charge of a computer to “extend all facilities and technical assistance to the agencies.” Failure to comply with the agencies could result in seven years of imprisonment and an unspecified fine.
In a clarification posted today, the Ministry of Home Affairs said each case of interception, monitoring, and decryption is to be approved by the competent authority, which is the Union Home Secretary.
The agencies that have been authorized with this new power are the Intelligence Bureau, Narcotics Control Bureau, Enforcement Directorate, Central Board of Direct Taxes, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Central Bureau of Investigation, National Investigation Agency, Research and Analysis Wing, Directorate of Signal Intelligence (in service areas of J-K, North East, and Assam), and Delhi Police.
Trump Planning to Pull 7,000 Troops from Afghanistan, Reducing Force by Half
December 21st, 2018Via: ABC:
The Trump administration is planning to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with the possibility that some troops begin withdrawing in the coming weeks, according to a U.S. official. The current force of 14,000 is expected to be cut in half, with those troops arriving home by the end of the spring, a second U.S. official said.
Musk Says He Will Consider Buying GM Factory in Ohio
December 20th, 2018Via: Electrek:
At the suggestion of Ohio Governor John Kasich, Tesla CEO Elon Musk says that he will consider buying a GM factory in Ohio as it’s shut down next year.
Last month, GM announced that they are closing 3 assembly factories in North America.
In an article, we suggested Tesla should buy one of those GM factories after they shut down since it went so well the last time they did it.
In an interview a few weeks later, Musk said that they would consider it again:
“It’s possible that we would be interested if [GM] are going to sell a plant or not use it that we would take it over.”
Britain: Large Drone Repeatedly Flown Over Gatwick Airport, Thousands of Travelers Stranded, Army Deployed
December 20th, 2018The French Air Force has trained eagles to attack drones:
In a battle between ancient arts and modern technology, France’s army is teaching birds of prey to bring down remote-controlled drones when they enter no-go urban airspace.
Four golden eagles are getting military training for combat against battery-charged drones that just about anybody can buy in a local store, and fly into security-sensitive zones such as presidential palaces, wittingly or not.
“These eagles can spot the drones several thousand meters (yards) away and neutralize them,” Jean-Christophe Zimmerman, a French air force general, told reporters.
The idea, he says, was inspired by Dutch police trials.
Via: Daily Mail:
The Army has been called in to help locate and bring down a drone being flown over Gatwick Airport today as almost 800 flights were axed and 110,000 people left stranded as they tried to get away for Christmas.
Police are in a cat-and-mouse game with the rogue pilot who has not yet been found despite causing chaos at Britain’s second busiest airport since 9pm last night.
Armed officers carrying Heckler & Koch sniper rifles are dotted along the runway ready to shoot down the drone and end the most disruptive airport trespass in UK history.
Today 760 flights were grounded over fears a drone could take down a passenger jet if it was sucked into an engine or smashed through its fuselage with Gatwick’s runway set to be closed until the manhunt ends.
Passengers have been warned the disruption will run into Friday and Saturday – the busiest days of the Christmas getaway – because so many planes are grounded at Gatwick or scattered across Britain and Europe after being diverted.
Almost 24 hours into the crisis the police has approached the Ministry of Defence for help and they could send spotters as well as vehicles and helicopters to help search for the saboteur.
Soldiers could test the Army’s new weapon – known as a ‘Drone Dome’ or ‘kill-jammer’ – which can ‘soft kill’ a drone by knocking out its communications or a ‘hard kill’ by shooting it down with a laser from up to two miles away.
The shutdown at Gatwick today has renewed calls for the use of anti-drone technology at British airports including frequency jammers and early warning systems now common near US runways.
Google’s Earth: How the Tech Giant Is Helping the State Spy On Us
December 20th, 2018Via: Guardian:
The purchase of Keyhole was a milestone for Google, marking the moment the company stopped being a purely consumer-facing internet company and began integrating with the US government. When Google bought Keyhole, it also acquired an In-Q-Tel executive named Rob Painter, who came with deep connections to the world of intelligence and military contracting, including US Special Operations, the CIA and major defence firms, among them Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. At Google, Painter was planted in a new dedicated sales and lobbying division called Google Federal, located in Reston, Virginia, a short drive from the CIA’s headquarters in Langley. His job was to help Google grab a slice of the lucrative military-intelligence contracting market. Or, as Painter described in contractor-bureaucratese, “evangelising and implementing Google Enterprise solutions for a host of users across the intelligence and defence communities”.
