Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 87
September 5, 2017
Girl, 7, finds 4ft sword in same lake where King Arthur hurled Excalibur
A seven-year-old girl has found a 4ft sword in the same lake where King Arthur’s Excalibur was said to have been hurled.
Matilda Jones was paddling waist-deep in Dozmary Pool on Bodmin Moor when she came across the blade while on a family holiday.
According to legend, the lake is believed to be the spot where King Arthur is said to have returned Excalibur after being fatally wounded in the Battle of Camlann.
The story of how the legendary Excalibur and how it started and ended with the Lady in the Lake
Ironically, dad Paul Jones, 51, had recounted the famous folklore of King Arthur to Matilda and her four-year-old sister Lois just before the recovery, the Mirror reports.
Matilda found the sword in Dozmary Pool while paddling on a family holiday (Image: SWNS)
Paul, of Doncaster, said: “It was a blistering hot day and Matilda asked if we could go for a paddle. She was only waist deep when she said she could see a sword.
“I told her not to be silly and it was probably a bit of fencing but when I looked down I realised it was a sword. It was just there laying flat on the bottom of the lake.
Paul and Matilda Jones with the sword (Image: SWNS)
“The sword is 4ft long – exactly Matilda’s height.”
Legend has it that King Arthur was first given Excalibur from the Lady of Lake in Dozmary Pool after rowing out to receive it.
After being mortally wounded in the Battle of Camlann he asked to be taken there so he could return the sword to her.
After three attempts, his loyal follower Bedivere cast it into the water and the Lady of the Lake’s arm rose to receive it.
Putin says the country that perfects AI will be ‘ruler of the world’
Forget the arms race or space race — the new battle for technological dominance revolves around AI, according to Vladimir Putin. The Russian President told students at a career guidance forum that the “future belongs to artificial intelligence,” and whoever is first to dominate this category will be the “ruler of the world.” In other words, Russia fully intends to be a front runner in the AI space. It won’t necessarily hog its technology, though.
Putin maintains that he doesn’t want to see anyone “monopolize” the field, and that Russia would share its knowledge with the “entire world” in the same way it shares its nuclear tech. We’d take this claim with a grain of salt (we wouldn’t be surprised if Russia held security-related AI secrets close to the vest), but this does suggest that the country might share some of what it learns.
Not that this reassuring long-term AI skeptic Elon Musk. The entrepreneur believes that the national-level competition to lead AI will be the “most likely cause of WW3.” And it won’t even necessarily be the fault of overzealous leaders. Musk speculates that an AI could launch a preemptive strike if it decides that attacking first is the “most probable path to victory.” Hyperbolic? Maybe (you wouldn’t be the first to make that claim). It assumes that countries will put AI in charge of high-level decision making, Skynet-style, and that they might be willing to go to war over algorithms. Still, Putin’s remarks suggest that his concern has at least some grounding in reality — national pride is clearly at stake.
China, Russia, soon all countries w strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 imo.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2017
Source:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/04/putin-says-ai-leader-will-rule-the-world
Facebook AI learns human reactions after watching hours of Skype
There’s something not quite right about humanoid robots. They are cute up to a point, but once they become a bit too realistic, they often start to creep us out – a foible called the uncanny valley. Now Facebook wants robots to climb their way out of it.
Researchers at Facebook’s AI lab have developed an expressive bot, an animation controlled by an artificially intelligent algorithm. The algorithm was trained on hundreds of videos of Skype conversations, so that it could learn and then mimic how humans adjust their expressions in response to each other. In tests, it successfully passed as human-like.
To optimize its learning, the algorithm divided the human face into 68 key points that it monitored throughout each Skype conversation. People naturally produce nods, blinks and various mouth movements to show they are engaged with the person they are talking to, and eventually the system learned to do this too.
The bot was then able to look at a video of a human speaking, and choose in real time what the most appropriate facial response would be. If the person was laughing, for example, the bot might choose to open its mouth too, or tilt its head.
The Facebook team then tested the system with panels of people who watched animations that included both the bot reacting to a human, and a human reacting to a human. The volunteers judged the bot and the human to be equally natural and realistic.
However, as the animations were quite basic, it’s not clear whether a humanoid robot powered by this algorithm would have natural-seeming reactions.
Additionally, learning the basic rules of facial communication might not be enough to create truly realistic conversation partners, says Goren Gordon at Tel Aviv University in Israel. “Actual facial expressions are based on what you are thinking and feeling.”
Source:
Bitcoin Price Falls Sharply After Reaching $5,000 High
The value of bitcoin fell sharply Monday, not long after the cryptocurrency crossed the $5,000 mark on Friday. At one point, the price dipped below $4,400 in value, representing a drop of around 12% since the Friday evening high.
Ethereum, meanwhile, traded Monday morning at around $312, down around 20% from the $391 it commanded Friday. And Litecoin, another virtual currency that recently hit headlines due to its strong performance, was down around 23% over the same period.
Quoted by Coindesk, cryptocurrency analyst Ronnie Moas of Standpoint Research suggested that large traders had deliberately started dumping bitcoins in order to depress the price and then buy more of them.
Either way, this correction has to be viewed in the context of bitcoin’s rapid appreciation in value during 2017. At the start of this year, bitcoin was around the $1,000 mark.
The bitcoin ecosystem continues to attract significant investment. On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Sequoia Capital and IDG Capital were putting money into China’s Bitmain Technologies, which makes equipment for bitcoin miners and conducts its own mining of the cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin miners are essential hardcore data-processing operations that race one another to verify parts of the bitcoin blockchain, which is the currency’s distributed ledger of transactions. Whichever mining operation completes a block first gets fresh bitcoins as its reward.
Source:
http://fortune.com/2017/09/04/bitcoin-price-fall-5000/
September 3, 2017
September 1, 2017
Hurricane Harvey may have destroyed 1 million cars—and changed the U.S. used auto market
As Harvey moved on and patches of blue sky finally appeared over Houston on Thursday, hundreds of car dealerships began reopening across the rain-soaked region — and at least a few were doing a brisk business.
By noon on Thursday, AutoNation Ford in Katy, Tex., had sold 30 new vehicles, mostly pickup trucks to contractors and other tradesmen who were scrambling to get to work repairing the devastation caused by the torrential rains and flooding.
“We have stores where the phone is ringing off the hook,” said Michael J. Jackson, chief executive of AutoNation, the country’s largest auto retailer, which owns 17 showrooms in the Houston area.
South of Houston, in Alvin, the Ron Carter group of four dealerships had customers coming in shortly after the doors opened at 7 a.m. “There are some people looking to buy,” said Cary T. Wilson, the owner of the franchises. “But you’re also going to have a long list of service work for people whose cars have water damage and need to get back on the road.”
[image error]
Harvey destroyed or damaging tens of thousands homes across hundreds of square miles in the Houston area and ruined a vast number of vehicles in a region that relies heavily on them.
As many as 500,000 vehicles — already on the road or still on dealer lots — will need to be replaced, according to an estimate by Cox Automotive, a research firm. That estimate, if confirmed, would be more than are typically sold in all of Texas in a year and exceed the combined losses from Hurricane Sandy (250,000) and Hurricane Katrina (200,000).
At McRee Ford in Dickinson, Tex., the entire stock of 500 new and used cars and trucks was damaged by water, according to a notice posted on the franchise’s website. “The inventory displayed here on our website and other sites on the web are no longer available for sale,” the notice said.
In a message on Facebook, the dealership’s owners said they were “beyond grateful” for the messages of concern they had received. “We have been in the facility today trying to get a grasp of the damage, and to be honest it’s a bit overwhelming,” the message said.
Source:
Why Hurricane Harvey’s Destruction Has Unleashed an Army of Drones
Drones will be flying over Texas and Louisiana to help survey property damage by Hurricane Harvey.
The top two property insurance companies in Texas — State Farm and Allstate (ALL) — will be using the portable aircraft to take pictures of the damage done by the hurricane that has damaged an estimated 100,000 homes in Texas and Louisiana, according to the White House. Allstate said it’s expecting to make at least a thousand drone flights a week to assess the damage. While a person doing insurance survey work could do about three houses per day, a drone can get through about three houses per hour.
In addition, AT&T (T) announced Wednesday that it will use a fleet of 25 drones to survey cell phone towers for antenna or cable damage in southeastern Texas.
This is an important test for drones because it’s the second big hurricane since the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) relaxed its rules for drones, allowing insurance companies to fly them over houses to survey property damage. THe other major hurricane was Hurricane Matthew, which ripped through the eastern Caribbean and the southeastern U.S. last September and into early October.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said that nearly 96,000 people in Texas are eligible and have been approved for financial aid to help with damages. Hurricane Harvey is expected to hit $30 billion in damages, analytics firm Enki Holdings told Slate.
The drone sector growth forecast has been positive, according to experts. Worldwide drone unit sales grew by an estimated 60% last year, to 2.2 million units, which represents $4.5 billion in sales, according to research firm Gartner. For 2017, the firm sees drone production increasing by 39% year-over-year, to 3 million drones and $6 billion in sales. By 2020, sales are projected to hit $11.2 billion.
The third top property insurer in Texas, Farmers Insurance, has already received more than 14,000 claims reports, a spokesperson told the New York Times on Wednesday. “Our fleet of drones and the claims professionals who will be operating them are currently on standby and ready to deploy when conditions make it safe to do so,” the company said in a statement.
Source:
https://www.thestreet.com/story/14290568/1/fleets-of-drones-survey-damage-of-hurricane-harvey.html
Facebook’s new video hub is coming to everyone in the US
Facebook’s new video platform is rolling out to all users in the US over the next few days, the company announced today. The platform, called Watch, will have hundreds of original shows for people to choose from.
Facebook is priming the platform by paying creators to make 20- to 30-minute shows. But eventually, Facebook plans to open up content-making privileges to everyone. The platform was initially announced in early August and will replace the current video tab in Facebook on mobile, desktop, and TV.
For Facebook, this is a golden opportunity for luring in ad revenue, especially for a company that has run out of advertising space on its packed News Feed. Billions of people already watch and share Facebook videos regularly, so it’s easy to imagine them simply tapping one tab over to continue doing so.
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/31/16233036/facebook-watch-video-tv-ad-dollars-media-partnerships
