Just discovered you can take '3D' pictures with Google Camera

Depthy extracts the depth map made by Google Camera Lens Blur photos allowing you to view them with a 3D parallax effect and changing of focus.

The picture in the post is just a shitty GIF export, it's way more awesome to play around with it yourself. Here is an example I made. Be sure to check out all the options in the settings.

Here is the Depthmap generated by the software, pretty impressive.

Google is now applying this tech to allow you to make 3D panoramas to view in Cardboard/VR: https://googleblog.blogspot.nl/2015/12/step-inside-your-photos-with-cardboard.html

I guess it's just a matter of time before we can get miniature drones that use this to automatically capture whole scenes in full 3D for you.

We're on the cusp of a revolution that will change the world as much as computers did

Most people do not yet understand the potential impact of our newfound ability to edit and eventually rewrite genetic code, the blueprint for life itself.
At least, so say a number a number of experts in genetics and genomics. That idea was the major common thread in a series of interviews with some of the leading researchers in the field.

Full article... 

Please read the article so you are not 'most people'. I also truly believe this will be big. This is the technology that allows a gene drive that could exterminate a mosquito species for example.

My personality according to IBM Watson Personality Insights

I inputted a total of nearly 6000 words of my own original writing from my longer Reddit submissions to /r/futurology and dream report on my website. It seems like a pretty good result to me and gives way more insight than any four letter Myers-Briggs personality test (i.e. INTJ) I've taken before. Though I do spot some huge misses too, like Curiosity 31%?

I'm gonna try and compare it with inputting my MSc thesis next. I'm guessing there will be quite some difference. Maybe not, according to the research you need self reflective words and it was trained on social media such as twitter, blog posts, and forum posts. Makes sense. Gonna be harder to pull another 6000 words out of the Reddit hat.

You can try it for yourself here.
.

IBM Watson advert: Bob Dylan & IBM Watson on Language

Now that there are advertisements rolling out I hope we might finally start seeing some results from Watson too, I've been waiting long enough, with growing skepticism.

About Watson singing, I made him sing a Reggie Watts song some time ago, think it worked out okay :)

 

Europe's highest court rejected the 'safe harbor' agreement used by American tech companies

"The European Court of Justice has just ruled that the transatlantic Safe Harbour agreement, which lets American companies use a single standard for consumer privacy and data storage in both the US and Europe, is invalid.
...
Companies such as Facebook and Twitter may now face scrutiny from individual European countries' data regulators — and could be forced to host European user data in Europe, rather than hosting it in the US and transferring it over."

read more...

Global Fishing Watch

Global Fishing Watch is  a technology to show all of the trackable fishing activity in the ocean. It was created to recognize the patterns of fishing boats and in this way to to detect them from other boats.
Nice use of data technology to identify illegal fishing, so it can be stopped. 

More information: http://globalfishingwatch.org/

G-Force simulators for the home

Do want! But screw those screens, this seems tailor made for an Oculus :)




Maybe for the arcades?

Laser drones!! The future is now.

One of the coolest things I saw at Psy-Fi.

I contacted the creator on Facebook, he used a DJI Spreading Wings s1000 with a 2W laser.
Take-off weight: 6Kg~11Kg
Should be more than enough for our movie plans :) $3,299 on Amazon.

Special glasses that can fix color blindness in many cases

Company website

Here are some non-promotional videos of people reacting to them that really gave me the feels: 1 - 2 - 3

The Sony Alpha A7s allows you to turn night into day with its ridiculously high 409,600 ISO sensitivity

Almost unbelievable that this video was captured at night with only the moon for illumination. My brain just can't seem to process it, as its light sensitivity is so vastly better than my night vision, and its in full color too!

 

Super awesome, though a bit unsettling that while you might think you are hidden privately in the dark someone with this camera could clearly see you. I don't think the girl in the video knew she could be filmed like that :)

Here is another impressive video with some more variation and comparison between ISO settings.

High end smartphone cameras are approaching the quality of compact cameras

Just came across this article comparing the Galaxy S6 camera to the Sony RX100, a €350 compact. It's not quite there yet, especially when you zoom to 100%, but I'm very impressed with how close the results are. It's amazing how quickly these things have improved, though maybe not so surprising considering it is one of the prime features of smartphones being carried around by nearly two billion people.

With so much funding behind it engineers have managed to make all kinds of innovations tackling some of the seemingly impossible obstacles inherent in having a smaller camera. I'm convinced they will keep doing so and the gap will be negligible in a few years.

Even at this point I don't think I will be buying a compact camera again but will go for a high end smartphone instead. Besides the much better form factor a smartphone can also do things like GPS tagging, timelapses, 4K video, slow motion video, HDR burst. And there is a large choice of apps allowing you to get your favorite interface and features.

A top of the line expensive smartphone now also looks like a much better deal to me as it saves me from buying a compact.

Some CSI-level photo manipulation

A Computational Approach for Obstruction-Free Photography

Blender to WebGL

I just found out about Blend4Web, a great addon for Blender that lets you convert Blender scenes to embeddable WebGL relatively easy. Here is demo of a simple model I made for a previous project. You can rotate, pan, and zoom with mouse controls around the interactive model below:

Here is a more impressive example from a somewhat more complex project I did, big file (24MB)

As you can see from the online demos it's capable of much more impressive scenes and even interactive apps.

Holy fuck, this is terrifying

Complete car hacking and takeover is entirely possible now, even without ever having physical access to the car. You would think the manufacturers could have seen this coming and done something about security before it got to this point.

Full article here.

Makes the conspiracy theory about the journalist Michael Hastings being killed by remote car hack more plausible.

Global electricity network

Europe,

The Netherlands, wind turbines as red dots,

Interactive map, http://www.itoworld.com/map/

WANT! Spray all the things!

WANT!

Amazing Interactive 360 degree video from a helicopter flying over the active Plosky Tolbachik Volcano

See it here

Bloody amazing

360 video, Plosky Tolbachik Volcano, Kamchatka, Russia, 2012
In early 2011 we developed a method for filming and editing 360 video shot by 4 Canon DSLR cameras and posted an article with technical details on our website.
Here you can see our first 360 video tests.
Something that was impossible for many years is now happening on your screens.
Now we would like to show the unique 360 video of the Plosky Tolbachik volcano eruption, Kamchatka, Russia which has been taken in December 2012.
Please note that in order to view 360 video online you need a powerful computer and fast Internet connection.

"Broccoli" patent hearing cancelled

Taking into account the ruling of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO that methods for the production of plants which comprise conventional breeding steps as well as technical ones are not patentable under the applicable European patent law, the patentee has proposed to limit its original patent by excluding the breeding methods. Thus, only the broccoli plants as such remain protected.

[...]

French company Limagrain and Swiss group Syngenta filed notices of opposition to the patent in 2003 and maintained their challenge in subsequent appeals. They allege, among other things, that the patent protects an essentially biological method of breeding plants excluded from patentability under the European Patent Convention (EPC) binding on the EPO. The technical board of appeal hearing the two appeals stayed the proceedings and referred questions to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) with a view to obtaining clarification of the term "essentially biological processes for the production of plants (or animals)" and the associated exception to patentability.

'Broccoli' patent found here, same issue with the 'Tomato' patent.

Intel's roadmap to 4K displays

I guess we'll have to wait another year to get those sweet 8 megapixel screens