Chinese Burner

Although Mr. Miao and Mr. Yang might have been let down by the Burning Man Festival, I trust that this experience opened them up to new ways of thinking. Mr. Miao gradually came to accept the idea that people can walk around naked or make out with strangers if they are willing. Mr. Yang made friends with one neighbor who was sharing marijuana cookies and had a long conversation with another, who happened to be an IT engineer. I also met some founders of leading Chinese tech companies who thought more deeply about these issues after experiencing the festival. “In this utopian community, we can experience cultures or principles that have been discarded or distorted in the civilized world. If you take certain things back with you, they’ll make your daily life more creative and more powerful.”

Dog Bunny

Puppy noticed bunny was getting treats every morning and started wanting a handful of lettuce too. Now they eat lettuce together every day. Kitty started getting curious about what the pupper and bunny are up to and has started to investigate the green leafy stuff. This has become a morning ritual for all 3 pets.

Violet

East Village restaurant Violet does a good job at representing the grilled pizza of Rhode Island — although some pies may be a little too similar to the ones found at Al Forno, the restaurant from which chef Matt Hyland (Emily, Emmy Squared) pulls inspiration

State of Realtime Rendering

Astonishingly Photorealistic Real-Time Rendered Scene

To prepare for the project, Quixel spent 1 month in cold and wet locations in Iceland, scanning all kinds of objects found in the natural environment using. The team returned with over 1000 scans that captured the details of the landscape. Using the scans — a part of Quixel’s Megascans library — a team of 3 artists at Quixel created the 1:45 cinematic film in real-time using the power of the Unreal Engine 4 game engine.

Mastercard Digital ID

In December, Mastercard announced that it was working to develop an international digital identity scheme which could be used as a flexible verifier for financial transactions, government interactions, or online services. The idea of a secure, decentralized, universal ID has become a sort of holy grail in the age of rapid digital interactions and rampant identity fraud.

The Evolution of Cycling

Cycling in the City: A 200-Year History, “reveals the complex, creative, and often contentious relationship between New York and the bicycle” and examines the important role of cycling as the city faces challenges due to climate change, energy scarcity, and population growth. This new exhibit marks the 200th anniversary of the introduction of the bicycle to New York City in 1819.

Utah Digital Privacy

Utah Just Became a Leader in Digital Privacy

Utah legislators voted unanimously to pass landmark legislation in support of a new privacy law that will protect private electronic data stored with third parties like Google or Facebook from free-range government access. The bill stipulates that law enforcement will be required to obtain a warrant before accessing “certain electronic information or data.”

Deep Space 9 remastered

It took me 2 days to get everything extracted, upscaled and put it back together in a way that was pleasing. This resulted only in the first 5 minutes of the episode being done (the episode recap, the opening scene, and the intro). Still pretty good time for a mid-to-high end PC with software that isn’t just available to professionals. The result left me pretty awestruck. It looked better than I had hoped. No weird issues or anything. It looked pretty much like an HD version of DS9. Since (moving) pictures are worth more than 1000 words, here are 2 comparison videos that show off the improvement I was able to get with this machine learning based upscaling technique. Imagine what a real team could do, with more powerful equipment, custom trained neural networks … and access to the original SD files instead of a DVDRip like me.