Tag Archive for: Funk Butcher

project maven

Project Maven

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Google have announced that they have a part in ‘Project Maven’. A project in which as Gizmodo are reporting, ‘helping the Pentagon build AI for drones’ CRAZY NEWS!

The project began in 2017 as a pilot program to simply speed up the United States military’s implementation of the most up to date technology of artificial intelligence.

It’s a relatively cheap programme too! Project Maven is said to cost less than $70M in it’s first year. Focusing solely on integrating machine learning in it’s drones. Why would the Pentagon want to invest in improving AI in drones? To improve it’s intelligence when it comes to targeting drone strikes.

Project Maven: Peace

Google released a statement on Tuesday of last week, claiming it’s part in Project Maven. Stating that it’s involvement in the project was simply a peaceful one. Stating that Project Maven was “Specifically scoped to be for non-offensive purposes.”

Since then many sectors of Google itself have called upon it’s CEO to pull them out of the project. With the Verge reporting that 3,100 employees have signed a letter urging the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, to re-evaluate it’s involvement. Stating that Google should not be in ‘the business of war’ – With Diane Green head of Google’s cloud operations also emphasizing Google’s peaceful stance. Stating that their tech will not be used to fly drones, nor will it launch any weapons.

Details on what Google are actually doing working on Project Maven aren’t very clear. A Google spokesperson did confirm to the Verge that they have given the department of defence access to software (TensorFlow) that is used to help machine learning apps understand contents of photos.

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One Punch Man

One Punch Man: The greatest anime

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One Punch Man sounds exactly like it is, a guy who has incredible super powerful strength. This particular anime has a guy who, without suprise, has a super punch.

One Punch Man: Plot

The story of Saitama, a hero who is a hero just for fun & can defeat his enemies with a single punch.

That is as crazy as it is, the story follows Saitama through his journey as a superhero saving people around the world!  It’s not a super serious anime and is mainly just for fun. I mean with a title of “One Punch Man” who’d expect anything less?

To download Netflix please click here Apple / Android

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Episode 274 Remel London

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Auctioneer Beats

Auctioneer Beats: Music Creativity 100

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First of all. This is AMAZING! Auctioneer Beats are back on Instagram and we couldn’t be happier! Don’t know what Auctioneer Beats are? Well you’re about to find out something super super cool & if you love music, you’ll love this! Plus it combines two things you didn’t think could be merged together. But as they say, accidental inventions are the best inventions! (Cookies one of them!)

So, Auctioneer Beats, takes livestock auctioneers (you know those guys who talk really really fast and no-one can understand them) and puts a beat underneath it. The result? Your next favorite rap artists.

Auctioneer Beats first started on Vine and has since made the transition over to Instagram. Consequently, showcasing the best there is in the underground scene of Livestock country twang x hip hop cross over you never knew existed.

Auctioneer Beats: Instagram

The crazy Instagram account has grown to over 40 thousand followers with just over 40 posts. That’s 1K followers per Instagram post! We don’t know about you, but we’re super impressed that this account exists. We didn’t even know you could transform country patter into rough, urban sounding hip hop and it sound GOOD!

You know what this reminds us all of? The fact that the internet is a very cool place, full of intelligent people. Where their creative limits have no bounds, who knows we may have the next country x rap album on the horizon! All courtesy of a very popular Instagram account!

So, do we have any rapping country music fans as followers? If you do send us your very own Auctioneer Beats hip hop track! We’re @howtokillanhour on all social platforms!

You can follow Auctioneer Beats on Instagram by clicking here!

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Listen to the latest podcast (EP274) by clicking here!

 

cambridge analytica

Cambridge Analytica: How to tell if your data was shared

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You may have heard about the Facebook data breach by Cambridge Analytica the past couple of weeks. Now Facebook are about tell us Brits if your data has been compromised in the data breach.

This week, more than 1 million British people will receive a detailed message on their news feeds. Within this post it will tell users if they are one of the huge 87 million users that have had their data breached. Therefore, used improperly, Facebook will then go one step further to help their users.

So, what is this help? All of Facebook’s 2.2 Billion users, that’s billion with a B! Will receive a notice from them that’s called ‘Protecting your information’. Within this notice will be a link that sends them to a page which tells users which apps have access to their data. Furthermore this page will tell them what information they have shared with said apps. From here users are able to go through the apps and deny access to their data if they wish. You can even go one step further and block any third parties from accessing this data.

Mark Zuckerberg had admitted that he made a huge mistake in realising how much of an affect Facebook had on the outer world. Not fully acknowledging Facebooks wider responsibilities to it’s audience. Facebook’s responsibility is so huge, that, he’s set to testify in front of Congress next week.

Cambridge Analytica: How?

The number of those affected was originally reported as 50Million, however, that number has said to have risen to 87million people. So, how did they get so much data? A personality quiz app called ‘This Is Your Digital Life’ created by Aleksander Kogan is said to be the culprit behind the breach. Kogan allegedly paid 270,000 people to take the quiz. As a result, all of the data of those that took part was breached. But this isn’t the worse part. Due to Facebook’s loose restrictions, data from the friends of the 270,000 people was too breached. Including data which was set to ‘only me’

As a result of this lapse of judgement, Facebook cracked down and limited the data that apps can access. Yet it seems that the damage has already been done.

To download Facebook please click here Apple / Android

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GTA 5

GTA 5: Money Maker

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Despite being 5 years old, Grand Theft Auto 5 is still going strong. How strong? 90million units strong. Yes, that’s right. GTA 5 has gone 90 times platinum! The game has been released on previous generation consoles PS3, Xbox 360 as well as current generation consoles. Xbox One, Playstation 4. Not forgetting it’s PC release!

According to Market Watch GTA 5 is the most profitable entertainment product of ALL TIME! According to Market Watch the game generated $6billion in revenue since it’s release. So how big is $6billion dollars? Bigger than Star Wars and feature film Gone With The Wind. Both generation $4billion dollars.

To put this into perspective, the highest grossing movie of all time is Avatar, which earned $2.79 billion theatrically.

Again, this game is 5 years old. FIVE YEARS OLD! It allegedly makes $5M a day. It was the 6th biggest selling game of the year last year and it done even better in Europe. Finishing third biggest in terms of sales.

GTA V: Profits

GTA Online Multiplayer Mode. The single reason why it grosses so much money. In game purchases – may also be the reason why GTA 6 isn’t here yet. Who can blame them either!

While all this is impressive. GTA V is third behind Minecraft which has sold 144million units and good old Tetris coming in at 170million units.

Purchase GTA 5 by clicking here!

 

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Sims

Sims Mobile: It’s addictive!

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We had Remel London on the show this week and we had a really good discussion about The Sims! Remel enjoys the game so much and discussed about how much this game has taken over her life! She even has a baby in the game and was surprised that her baby, once becoming a teenager, jumped out the crib and walked out the house!

Sims: More info

Create your characters, give them unique personalities, and customize their world with more detail than ever before on mobile. Experience different lives as they choose careers, party with friends, and fall in love.

CREATE AMAZING SIMS
Customize with distinct appearances, hairstyles, outfits, makeup, and personality traits.

BUILD A FANTASTIC HOME
Personalize layouts and designs, choosing from a variety of furniture, appliances, and decorations. 

SHAPE YOUR SIMS’ LIFESTYLE
Guide the stories of your character’s lives from careers and hobbies to relationships and families – even Risky Actions! Start a family and pass down powerful Heirlooms. 

PLAY TOGETHER
Host and attend parties with other characters to socialize, earn rewards, and develop romantic relationships. You can even move in with other people’s characters.

(Google Android Play Store)

 

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To download Sims mobile please click here Apple / Android

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Cloud Gaming

Xbox Cloud Gaming

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In what has seemingly sneaked under the radar. Microsoft recently announced that it’s launching a cloud gaming division. Marking out to the rest of the gaming industry that they’re entering the world of game streaming. They’re taking it seriously too.

The verge are reporting that it’s something that’s been building up for quite some time. Recently the huge computing giant acquired small gaming focused cloud companies. PlayFab who focus on game development in the cloud are now a Microsoft company. Will we see an Xbox that’s solely focused on cloud gaming?

Microsoft basically have something similar with Xbox Game Pass. Think Netflix but for gaming. However, instead of streaming the games you download them, keeping the license for x amount of months until you stop paying the £15 a month. There aren’t many good games on there at the moment, but that will soon change. Microsoft recently announced that alongside catalogued games, games like Sea Of Thieves, State of Decay 2 and Crackdown 3. All HUGE titles for Microsoft are being made available on their subscription service.

Cloud Gaming Direction

Consequently, Microsoft’s announcement almost proves that they want to move away from their users downloading their games to streaming them. As that was a major criticism of many users. Not enough up to date games available on the Game Pass. The two recent announcements could hint at the direction Microsoft are taking.

While OnLive a cloud game streaming service, failed. Other platforms game streaming is alive and kicking. Playstation Now From Sony allows users to play PS4 games on their PC’s and Nvidia has GeForce Now (Beta) Microsoft obviosly isn’t saying anything to anyone. However Kareem Choudhry Corporate VP of Xbox hints that they want users to play content on any device.

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AI

AI could have common sense? We’re Doomed.

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Ready to be scared by AI? Well you may just be about to be scared silly.

Virtual assistants and chatbots aren’t the most intelligent beings around at the moment. That’s because they lack the common sense that us humans have. Most of us anyway. These types of machine learning programmes rely on specific situations that they’ve encountered previously. Thus they react accordingly to the data you input.

However, this may be about to change. Researchers at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) have come up with a brand new test. This test is called Arc Reasoning Challenge (ARC). This test will determine whether artificial intelligence has the ability to ‘learn’ common sense. By testing it’s understanding of the way that our world operates.

The easiest way to explain why machines don’t have common sense is as follows. Human’s see a problem or are faced with a problem. Humans then use common sense to fill in the gaps of any problems that they are faced and then act on that problem accordingly. Machines only act on the data that’s put in to them. They can’t see a problem, pull information from their memory and then solve it. They have to be told ‘this is the way to solve this problem’ ‘solve it’ (execute programme)

AI Test

The researchers will throw basic multiple choice questions at the machines. These questions will put their general knowledge to the test. One of the questions is “Which item below is not made from a material grown in nature?” The answers are ‘cotton shirt, wooden chair, plastic spoon, grass basket’ If researchers from the Allen Institute can make the machine pull information from previously learned data. This will prove that the system can grasp common sense. Which no other AI technology can do.

So, what does this say about the future of AI if it can learn? What will it be taught is right and wrong? Will we see a Terminator?

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social ranking

Social ranking: Black Mirror predicting the future again!

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Black Mirror continues it’s eery trend of predicting the future. This time with the terrifying episode of ‘Nosedive’ With Social ranking.

For those who haven’t seen Black Mirror or Nosedive, the episode explores how we’re all obsessed with ‘likes’ The episode delves into the way that we use social media in our daily lives and how what we do is determined by how many ‘likes’ we get. Including how upset we get when our online popularity takes a ‘nosedive’

The episode’s plot revolves around how people are rated out of five after every interaction that they have with one another. Thus each person has a real social ranking, that we can all see. Furthermore, ratings of a ‘person’ are affected by where you live, who your friends are and how you travel. So kinda like we all do now, but with a tangible element to it. Whether you like it or not, do it consciously or not, we all make prejudgements based on the above.

In the episode we see Lacie a young woman who is looking to climb to the top of her social ladder. We won’t spoil the episode too much. However, she does a lot to impress others and make her rating better. Until, you guessed it, things go from bad to worse and her social ranking takes a ‘nosedive’ If you have instagram mixed with an Uber rating, this is how your ratings are shown to others in this world.

Social Ranking: Real Life

This nightmare of all prejudging others may become a reality in China. Soon. 2020. Soon.

According to the Telegraph, it’s citizens will be given a ‘score’ the lowest of these scores being 350, highest being 950. To get a higher score, citizens can give blood, do charity work or by sending positive messages about China on social media. Cancelling a reservation for something having friends with unsavory people. Boom. Ratings nosedive.

Being a good member of society gets you bonuses! Cheaper public transport, free gym membership. Plus you may even get a fast pass for waiting times in hospitals. (My words not theirs, I just thought it sounded funny, really call it fast pass) All you lowly people at the bottom of the totem pole. SLOWER INTERNET SPEEDS! So if one day you realise your internet is super slow. Blame you. Not the ISP. Go out an give blood and maybe, just maybe, your internet will get faster.

 

 

 

 

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