January 26, 2025
Deep learning super sampling (DLSS) is a family of real-time deep learning image enhancement and upscaling technologies developed by Nvidia that are available in a number of video games. The goal of these technologies is to allow the majority of the graphics pipeline to run at a lower resolution for increased performance, and then infer a higher resolution image from this that approximates the same level of detail as if the image had been rendered at this higher resolution. This allows for higher graphical settings and/or frame rates for a given output resolution, depending on user preference.
All generations of DLSS are available on all RTX-branded cards from Nvidia in supported titles. However, the frame generation feature is only supported on 40 series GPUs or newer and multi-frame generation is only available on 50 series GPUs. Nvidia has also introduced Deep learning dynamic super resolution (DLDSR), a related and opposite technology where the graphics are rendered at a higher resolution, then downsampled to the native display resolution using an artificial intelligence-assisted downsampling algorithm to achieve higher image quality than rendering at native resolution. Continue reading →
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January 7, 2025
The Outrage Industrial Complex (OIC) is a combination of forces including media outlets, social media influencers, political fundraising messaging, and individuals in media, political leadership or advocacy that in the late 20th and early 21st centuries exploited differences of opinion and what was termed a culture of contempt drawn along political and social lines, increasing distrust of institutions and society, to advance their own desires for fame, wealth, higher office, or for geopolitical reasons.
The OIC creates and distributes outrage media, digital or print content specifically intended to provoke anger or outrage among its consumers to increase engagement. The complex includes media outlets, social media influencers, political fundraising messaging, and individuals in media, political leadership or advocacy who call out ‘outrages,’ hoping to generate what Richard Thompson Ford, writing for ‘The American Interest,’ calls a sense of ‘righteous indignation’ and rage borne of frustration in their readers or listeners, often for their own purposes of attracting advertisers or fame or to intentionally cause social disruption in a country or region. Continue reading →
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December 29, 2024
A meme coin is a cryptocurrency that originated from an Internet meme or has some other humorous characteristic. It is often used interchangeably with the term shitcoin, which typically refers to a cryptocurrency with little to no value, authenticity, or utility.
It may be used in the broadest sense as a critique of the cryptocurrency market in its entirety—those based on particular memes such as ‘doge coins,’ celebrities like Coinye, and pump-and-dump schemes such as BitConnect—or it may be used to make cryptocurrency more accessible. The term is often dismissive, comparing the value or performances of those cryptocurrencies to that of mainstream ones. Supporters, on the other hand, observe that some memecoins have acquired social currency and high market capitalizations. Continue reading →
Posted in Drugs, Humor, Money, Technology |
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December 23, 2024
AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol, also known as the DeepMind Challenge Match, was a five-game Go match between top Go player Lee Sedol and AlphaGo, a computer Go program developed by DeepMind, played in Seoul, South Korea between 9 and 15 March 2016. AlphaGo won all but the fourth game; all games were won by resignation. The match has been compared with the historic chess match between Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov in 1997. Kasparov’s loss to Deep Blue is considered the moment a computer became better than humans at chess.
AlphaGo’s victory was a major milestone in artificial intelligence research. Most experts thought a Go program as powerful as AlphaGo was at least five years away; some experts thought that it would take at least another decade before computers would beat Go champions. Most observers at the beginning of the 2016 matches expected Lee to beat AlphaGo. With games such as checkers, chess, and now Go won by computer players, victories at popular board games can no longer serve as significant milestones for artificial intelligence in the way that they used to. Deep Blue’s Murray Campbell called AlphaGo’s victory ‘the end of an era… board games are more or less done and it’s time to move on.’ Continue reading →
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December 16, 2024
In quantum computing, quantum supremacy or quantum advantage is the goal of demonstrating that a programmable quantum computer can solve a problem that no classical computer can solve in any feasible amount of time, irrespective of the usefulness of the problem. The term was coined by Caltech theoretical physicist John Preskill in 2011, but the concept dates to Russian mathematician Yuri Manin’s 1980 and theoretical physicist Richard Feynman’s 1981 proposals of quantum computing.
Conceptually, quantum supremacy involves both the engineering task of building a powerful quantum computer and the computational-complexity-theoretic task of finding a problem that can be solved by that quantum computer and has a superpolynomial speedup over the best known or possible classical algorithm for that task. Continue reading →
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December 9, 2024
SpinLaunch is a spaceflight technology development company working on mass accelerator technology to move payloads to space.[3] As of September 2022, the company has raised US$150 million in funding, with investors including Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Airbus Ventures, ATW Partners, Catapult Ventures, Lauder Partners, John Doerr, and the Byers Family.
SpinLaunch’s projected cost per kg of payload is approximately $1,250 – $2,500. This projection is significantly less expensive than SpaceX’s current price per kg of payload on the Falcon 9 of $6,000. SpaceX’s projected cost per kg on Starship, however, is less than $1,000 per kg. What real costs and prices for either SpinLaunch or Starship remains to be seen. Continue reading →
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December 2, 2024
Video nasty is a colloquial term popularized by the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association (NVALA) in the United Kingdom to refer to a number of films, typically low-budget horror or exploitation films, distributed on video cassette in the early 1980s that were criticized by the press, social commentators, and various religious organisations for their violent content.
These video releases were not brought before the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) due to a loophole in film classification laws that allowed videos to bypass the review process. The resulting uncensored video releases led to public debate concerning the availability of these films to children due to the unregulated nature of the market. Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Politics, World |
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November 13, 2024
The Buffett Indicator, named after Warren Buffett, measures market valuation by dividing a country’s total stock market value by its GDP. A ratio of 100% suggests fair market. For example, if stocks are worth $50 trillion and GDP is $25 trillion, a 200% ratio would suggest the market is overvalued.
It was proposed as a metric by Buffett in 2001, who called it ‘probably the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment,’ and its modern form compares the capitalization of the US Wilshire 5000 index to US GDP. It is widely followed by the financial media as a valuation measure for the US market in both its absolute, and de-trended forms. The indicator set an all-time high during the so-called ‘everything bubble,’ crossing the 200% level in February 2021; a level that Buffett warned if crossed, was ‘playing with fire.’ Continue reading →
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October 22, 2024
The crayon-eating Marine is a humorous trope (or meme) associated with the United States Marine Corps, emerging online in the early 2010s. Playing off of a stereotype of Marines as unintelligent, the trope supposes that they frequently eat crayons and drink glue.
In an instance of self-deprecating humor, the crayon-eater trope was popularized by Marines through social media and in Maximilian Uriarte’s comic strip ‘Terminal Lance.’ The joke’s ubiquity has led to real-life humorous consumption of crayons and has been referenced by the Marine Corps itself in celebration of National Crayon Day. Multiple products have capitalized on the trend, including two lines of edible crayons created by former Marines and a coloring book by Uriarte. Continue reading →
Posted in Humor, War |
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October 11, 2024
Slop is low-quality media—including writing and images—made using generative artificial intelligence technology. Coined in the 2020s, the term has a derogatory connotation akin to ‘spam.’ It has been variously defined as ‘digital clutter,’ ‘filler content produced by AI tools that prioritize speed and quantity over substance and quality,’ and ‘shoddy or unwanted AI content in social media, art, books and, increasingly, in search results.’ Jonathan Gilmore, a professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, describes the ‘incredibly banal, realistic style’ of AI slop as being ‘very easy to process.’
After Hurricane Helene, an AI-generated image of a girl holding a puppy while sitting in a boat floating on flooded waters circulated among Republicans, who used as evidence of failures or the Biden administration to respond to the disaster. U.S. Senator Mike Lee posted the image of the girl on social media before later deleting it. The image apparently originated on the Trump-centered Internet forum Patriots.win.
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September 29, 2024
Tariff engineering refers to design and manufacturing decisions made primarily so that the manufactured good is classified at a lower rate for tariffs than it would have been absent those decisions. It is a loophole whereby an importer pays a lower tariff by changing the intended import such that the importer has a lesser tariff burden.
In contrast to tariff evasion, tariff engineering configures the design, material, or construction to legally achieve the desired classification rather than illegally misclassifying the product or good. For tariff engineering to be legal, the good being imported must be a ‘commercial reality,’ which means any tariff engineering must be a ‘genuine step in the manufacturing process’ or have a commercial use or identity as imported. Continue reading →
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August 14, 2024
A reverse search warrant is a type of search warrant used in the U.S., in which law enforcement obtains a court order for information from technology companies to identify a group of people who may be suspects in a crime. They differ from traditional search warrants, which typically apply to specific individuals. Geofence warrants, which seek data on mobile phone users who were in a specific location at a given time, and keyword warrants, which request information on users who searched specific phrases, are two types of reverse search warrants.
Reverse location warrants were first used in 2016, and have become increasingly widely used by law enforcement. Google reported that it had received 982 reverse location warrants in 2018, 8,396 in 2019, and 11,554 in 2020. A 2021 transparency report showed that 25% of data requests from law enforcement to Google were geofence data requests. Google is the most common recipient of reverse location warrants and the main provider of such data, although companies including Apple, Snapchat, Lyft, and Uber have also received such warrants. Continue reading →
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