Janelle Shane, who in her day job creates computer-controlled holograms for studying the brain, collected genuine messages printed on the heart-shaped sweets to use as training data. She then fed them to a neural network so that it could learn the patterns behind the words. The messages it produced ranged from the endearing “LOVE BUN” to the frankly insulting “MY HAG”. — Janelle Shane (@JanelleCShane) February 11, 2020 Shane could only find about 360 authentic messages to use as training data, so she decided to perform a follow-up that added her favorite ones produced by the neural network....

Trying to launch an online business is not as simple as building a website and setting it live. Sure, that may be where it all begins, but if you really want this endeavor to take off and fly, there are so many factors you have to consider. Do you have your marketing plan squared away? What’s your answer for handling customer relations? How does invoicing work? And do you have a structure in place to conceive, staff, and track progress on your new company’s biggest projects?...

If you need an app to edit some photos or manage passwords or track your finances on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, where do you turn? If you plunge into the Apple App Store and start searching, there’s a decent chance you might find an app that could suit your needs. But…did you really? Once you’ve downloaded and installed an app, it isn’t uncommon to discover it might not do the specific job you hoped it would — or it might not do that job very well....

There’s a blatant double standard when it comes to sexual wellness products for women and men — and it’s not just on the subway. Both Facebook and Instagram are making it harder for companies like Dame to promote their products with their advertising policies. In response, Dame and Unbound, a sexual wellness company that has also faced censorship, are working together to tackle these double standards. Together, they have arranged a protest today outside Facebook’s NYC headquarters to raise awareness of its policies that favor male sexual wellness products rather than women’s....

If you’ve ever founded a startup, used your expertise to grow a company, or even just been part of a workplace, then you’ve got thousands of stories to tell and plenty of advice to share. And we’d love to have them on our site — only the good ones though! So what are we looking for? Well, Growth Quarters is a media brand by TNW that strives to go beyond generic ‘fortune cookie advice’ and provide real actionable guidance to help our readers grow professionally....

Microsoft’s Live Labs team have introduced an experimental prototype application aimed at simplifying interactions with massive amounts of data, codenamed “Pivot”, during its Professional Developer Conference. The standalone .NET application prototype is currently available by invitation only from Microsoft’s download site. While we could try to describe the experience in what would become a very lengthy post, you might just want to check out the YouTube video and head over to the Pivot site afterwards, to absorb all the technical details:

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with cycling indoors. On one hand, it’s a great way to stay fit through winter, but on the other hand, it’s so boring I’d rather stab myself in the thigh with a rusty compass. But thanks to modern technology, it’s getting a lot more exciting. Perhaps to the point where I only need to slap myself with a spatula to keep things interesting....

Being the right person to see a project through from ideation to successful completion isn’t about being a world-class leader. And it doesn’t require dark arts, strange alchemy or any amount of persuasion, mysticism or hardball military or political tactics to make it happen. Project management in 2020 isn’t about feel or flying by the seat of your pants. It’s about knowing and understanding your game plan before you hit the field, then executing on that plan....

Rather than perform an investigation, the police ran the footage through a facial recognition system that determined Williams was the suspect. The police then printed the image from Williams’ driver’s license and placed it in a “photo lineup” with other Black men’s faces. The police showed the lineup to a security guard at the store where the crime occurred. Despite having not witnessed the crime, the guard decided the individual in the surveillance footage was Williams....

When the TON blockchain network launches, the associated wallet app won’t be part of its messaging app. There’s been much speculation over Telegram’s plans for its TON blockchain and cryptocurrency tokens called Grams. In terms of service from October 2019, Telegram had suggested that its messaging app and wallet would work together or would be a standalone app. With this news things look a little more certain, for now. The company and three of its employees, including CEO Pavel Durov, are currently awaiting deposition regarding an ongoing case with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)....

There are many types of developers out there – those who use the terminal for everything, even coding, and those like me who use IDEs built on Java, which is resource-intensive. Plus, there are web developers, desktop developers, game developers… you get my point. Because there are so many preferences and styles, we will focus this article on multiple purpose developers, nothing too specific, so laptops that will help most of us enjoy our work and produce fantastic value....

The big data advancement, facilitated by the deployment of numerous sensors, internet connectivity and hardware and software improvement in computational power, communication abilities and digital storage, have enabled AI to scale from small academic research projects to large enterprise production applications. Essentially, big data required sophisticated AI models to analyze and derive knowledge and insights, while the AI models needed the critical mass of big data for training and optimization....

When you first stumbled across the celebrated Java the Hut coffeehouse joke in The Simpsons, did you ever figure you’d be compiling Java code in a café (in a hut by the beach) yourself? Although the hut part might be a stretch, that’s the way things role in Barcelona. The vivacious Catalonian city — home to beaches galore — is loaded with coworking spaces and cafés for newly arrived devs to settle in quickly....

Midboss and Valve are collaborating on an event known as Summer of Pride, which is, among other things, celebrating Pride month by offering a sale on several games that portray LGBTQ+ relationships or characters. The games on offer are exceptional, and I encourage anyone to try as many of them as possible. Just about everything that could be in here is, including some more carefree options, such as the buoyant Pride Run, and more tearful subject matter, like the classic Gone Home....

You might not have noticed it because services like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, and smaller ones all stayed up. But a bug in an open-source tech called Log4j was (and still is) causing panic amongst the infosec community across the world. While the bug has affected billions of devices, and companies are scrambling to apply fixes, the open-source community has a raging debate going on about funding volunteers that maintain projects like Log4j....

However, my favorite feature is called Center Stage — powered by the new ultra wide-angle front camera. Here’s what it does: when you’re video calling someone and move slightly to the side, the camera will pan towards you. Because of the 120-degree field of view and some machine learning magic from the M1 chip, the iPad can recognize that you’re slightly out of the frame and adjust the stream of your camera....

Fans noticed yesterday that the Japanese Nintendo website listed all 3DS family consoles — which include the 3DS LL, the 2DS, and the 2DS LL — as “not in production.” The Nintendo of America site no longer has any mention of the 3DS on its store or information pages. So it seems that, almost 10 years after it launched in 2011, Nintendo is winding down production on one of its most popular handhelds....

The P1 is capable of delivering a 120″ projection from “inches” away with a 0.25:1 throw ratio. It puts out a 3,000 ANSI Lumens image with 4K resolution and is compatible with HDR10. At that brightness, it should be viewable with most indoor conditions, especially if you have an ALR (ambient-light-rejecting) screen. It also supports Optoma’s SmartFIT technology for automatic geometry correction that makes it easy to properly align your projection with your projector screen using your smartphone....

The Pentagon’s so-called “mad science” wing is seeking their support for its Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program. ACE aims to build the trust of fighter pilots in automated combat by testing algorithms in close-range aerial battles — better known as dogfights. But before they’re dodging enemy jets for real, the algorithms need to be trialed in simulations. Read: Pentagon unveils toothless ethical principles for using AI in war Lieutenant Colonel Dan Javorsek, who also goes by the cuddly nom de guerre of “Animal,” envisions the algorithms guiding an aircraft’s maneuvers so human pilots can focus on the “higher-level context intent and sentiment challenges” of future battles....

These results have raised many questions and concerns. Can our dogs really catch the virus? Should we be worried about our pets getting sick? Could dogs spread coronavirus between people? A positive test for coronavirus in this dog simply means that a small piece of viral genome was detected in a sample. PCR (a test used to detect genetic material) is a highly sensitive method of testing but is unable to tell whether coronavirus was replicating in the dog or whether the dog had simply licked contaminated surfaces in the home....