Just Be The Best You

Scene: An airplane, with its engines engulfed in flames, is plummeting towards a hospital.

New Hero: Shit. What do I do? There’re so many people are going to die. What do I do? What do I do? Calm down. “Just think about saving one person,” that’s what he said right? Okay, I can do this.

*whizz* *craaak* *wooft*

Scene: The plane, with the fire now extinguished, sits carefully, but securely on the hospital’s roof. All the passengers and patients are safe.

Reporter: Wow Hero! You really saved the day. Weren’t you scared?

New Hero: I just imagined my mom was on the plane, and so I just knew I had to try.

Reporter: Did you know that the plane was full of time travelers, including Baby Hitler?

New Hero: Wait. What? What are you saying?

Bystander: HEY! THIS ASSHOLE JUST SAVED BABY HITLER!

Crowd: BOO! BOO!

New Hero: I-i-it’s not like that! I… I just saved like a thousand people!

Crowd: BOO! HITLER SAVER!

Howard The Duck: I think you this milkshake is for you.

CV Dazzle Updated

Adam Harvey has updated CV Dazzle
with all new patterns. (Previously.) The new patterns are aimed at defeating newly developed face detection algorithms from a variety of vendors including OpenCV, VeriLook, and Apple.

His main suggestions are:

  1. Use contrasting makeup, light colors on dark skin, and vice versa.
  2. Obscure the nose bridge.
  3. Partially obscure an eye.
  4. Modify the contrast, tonal gradients, and spatial relationships of light and dark areas of the face.
  5. Try obscuring the shape of the head.
  6. Make the face appear asymmetrical.

General Organa, Hero of the Alliance

Leia Organa: A Critical Obituary

While detailed, I’m deeply troubled that there is no mention of the General being an avowed anti-Wookiee bigot. While influential in Alliance to Restore The Republic, her frequent use of anti-Wookiee slurs such as referring to the members of the enslaved species as “walking carpets”, troubled many. As was her pointed refusal to acknowledge the contributions and sacrifices made by Wookiee members of the Alliance. Due to her bigotry and influence on the Alliance Cabinet as the sole daughter of one of the rebellion’s founders, it is believed that liberation of Kashyyyk was delayed by at least three years.

One of the few Wookiees that knew the General well — who agreed to only be interviewed on background in order to speak freely — characterized her relationship with him as “frequently strained” to the point of being “barely tolerated”. When asked if he ever spoke up about her treatment, he said, “She was Bail Organa’s daughter. Everyone in the Alliance knew her. Senator from Alderaan. Early leader in the Alliance. She had her allies. Me? I wasn’t exactly known, and what was known wasn’t exactly a sparkling reputation. But what it really came down to was loyalty. Loyalty to my friend. That and the harsh pragmatism that we were going to need her if we were to have any hope to overthrowing the Emperor, and his regime. So I put up with it. When I couldn’t, I’d make my remark, but she never got it, because he never did bother learn to understand me, but my friend, he knew. She though. She became a real source of friction between me and my friend, so we just kind of stopped talking about it, just to stay friends you know? But after the war, I made it clear I wasn’t going to be in the same room with her.”

Suffering Robots

Via Slate:

According to Lance Gharavi, an associate professor of theater at Arizona State University, the question of free will rapidly resolves into a problem of desire. Steering the conversation into philosophical terrain, he observed that we can’t even say definitely whether humans have free will. But, he continued, if a robot has desires, even if those desires just involve the need to appropriately serve its master, then it can suffer. And if it can suffer, we have an ethical responsibility toward it. For Hartzog, on the other hand, the ethical stakes of human-like robots have more to do with the ways that we relate to humans.

Previously.