Wednesday, October 07, 2020

The Rise of Remote Work Can Be Unexpectedly Liberating

Don’t waste words on people who deserve your silence. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is nothing at all.


Subject: A New Tool for Detecting Deepfakes Looks for What Isn’t There: an Invisible Pulse
Source: Gizmodo
https://gizmodo.com/a-new-tool-for-detecting-deepfakes-looks-for-what-isnt-1845214263

In the endlessly escalating war between those striving to create flawless deepfake videos and those developing automated tools that make them easy to spot, the latter camp has found a very clever way to expose videos that have been digitally modified by looking for literal signs of life: a person’s heartbeat.If you’ve ever had a doctor attach a pulse oximeter to the tip of your finger, then you’ve already experienced a technique known as photoplethysmography where subtle color shifts in your skin as blood is pumped through in waves allows your pulse to be measured. It’s the same technique that the Apple Watch and wearable fitness tracking devices use to measure your heartbeat during exercise, but it’s not just limited to your fingertips and wrists….

filed Artificial Intelligence


 

Winners and losers from budget 2020 - Financial Review

Australian Financial Review (AFR) by Finbar O'Mallon

Tuesday 6 October 2020

The government has opened the cheque book to taxpayers and businesses creating a lot of winners in the middle of a global recession.

 

 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict offers insight into the new art of war SCMP


How the IRS Was Gutted ProPublica.



It is time to prosecute Julian’s persecutors – The Belmarsh Tribunal Yanis Varoufakis


How a Police State Starts Craig Murray


How The Meritocracy Has Separated Us

Looking back at the last four decades, it’s clear that the divide between winners and losers has been deepened, poisoning our politics and driving us apart. This has partly to do with deepening inequality of income and wealth. But it’s about more than that. It has to do with the fact that those who landed on top came to believe that their success was their own doing, the measure of their merit — and by implication that those left behind had no one to blame but themselves. – Chronicle of Higher Education



Revealed: Key Assange prosecution witness is part of academic cluster which has received millions of pounds from UK and US militariesDeclassified UK


John Pilger: Eyewitness to the Agony of Julian Assange Consortium News


Iron Man comes to The Lakes


An emergency jet suit paramedic defying gravity, zipping across the Langdale Pikes in search of a party of walkers simulating a casualty scenario.  Mission accomplished within minutes, not the normal hours.

 

A tip of the hat to inventor Richard Browning, the Great North Air Ambulance Service, Gravity Industries 



How Big Tech Corrupted The Idea Of Creative Destruction

There is an odd tension in the concept of disruption: it suggests a thorough disrespect towards whatever existed previously, but in truth it often seeks to simply rearrange whatever exists. Disruption is possessed of a deep fealty to whatever is already given. It seeks to make it more efficient, more exciting, more something, but it never ever wants to dispense altogether with what’s out there. This is why its gestures are always radical, but its effects never really upset the apple cart. – The Guardian


The world has gone absolutely insane! The Vineyard of the Saker 


The Rump Professional Class and Its Fallen Counterpart Benjamin Studebaker

 

Growing Through Sabotage: Energizing Hierarchical Power (PDF) Review of Capital as Power. From the abstract: “[H]ierarchical power is sought for its own sake; that building and sustaining this power demands strategic sabotage; and that sabotage absorbs a significant proportion of the energy captured by society. From this standpoint, capitalism grows, at least in part, not despite but because of – and indeed through – sabotage.” Sounds like Veblen.

 VT Fall Foliage 2020

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Union President Mike Fuoco Resigns Following Investigation Into Alleged Misconduct Editor and Publisher. Thanks to Payday Report.

 

What CEOs Really Think About Remote Work WSJ

 

The Rise of Remote Work Can Be Unexpectedly Liberating NYT

 

What is ‘friluftsliv’? How an idea of outdoor living could help us this winter National Geographic


Palantir Grabs $21 Billion Valuation, but Debut Comes With a Hiccup WSJ


Scars, Tattoos, And License Plates: This Is What Palantir And The LAPD Know About YouBuzzfeed