Actually, this identity-protected critter is just “collateral protection” thanks to Google’s overachieving face recognition algorithm.  In fact, I’ve heard of Google Street View’s algorithm protecting the privacy of plenty of non-humans, from people in billboards to even Colonel Sanders on the KFC logo.  Recently discovered a new one that’s a little more interesting; an elephant!

Take a look:

You can check it out for yourself in Google Street View if you don’t believe me.

My first thought when I saw this was, how cool is it that they were able to catch an Elephant by the side of the road in South Africa?  My second thought was did Google really blur out that elephant’s face?

It made me wonder what other kind of faces  Google’s Street View algorithm might be blurring.

In Google’s own words:

We have developed cutting-edge face and license plate blurring technology that is applied to all Street View images. This means that if one of our images contains an identifiable face (for example that of a passer-by on the sidewalk) or an identifiable license plate, our technology will automatically blur it out, meaning that the individual or the vehicle cannot be identified. If our detectors missed something, you can easily let us know. [source]

It seems their face-blurring algorithm must focus primarily on the eyes, right? The mouth and nose on the elephant don’t look anything like a human’s or even a dog’s, yet its face was blurred.  The way I understand it, most face recognition software uses a large database of face images to compare “landmark features” to one another – things like the eyes, nose and mouth – and generate rules for what these things should look like.  It looks at things like distances apart, color, contrast  and a whole host of other variables and does it’s best to guess what’s going on in the photo you’re asking it to find a face in.

With that in mind, it doesn’t seem quite so odd that a dog staring straight into the camera might trigger enough matches to convince Google it’s a weird-looking human face…  But an elephant?   What about a dolphin, whale or turtle?

Anyone knowledgable about face-blurring out there care to chime-in?

Also, if you find any interesting examples of non-human faces being blurred-out on Google Street View, you should submit them to my Flickr Group I started for this very occasion – Collateral Privacy.

Now it appears Newsweek has implemented in a really funny way. When you enter the code on the front page^**, all of the headlines and story abstracts are replaced with stories about zombies. Even more hilariously, if you look through the code you can see they tried to hide all of the obvious variables under the guise of building an object for debugging their advertisements. Now that’s dedication to an Easter Egg!

It would appear a lot of people have caught wind of this one too. I have a feeling somebody’s in trouble. That’s too bad.

UPDATE via NPR: A spokesperson did send the New York Observer a statement. They said, “”It’s true that our programmers had a bit of fun and hid the Konami Easter egg in the site,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “It does not affect the rest of the site’s functionality. Now that we’ve all had a laugh, we will be removing it.”

So no one’s “in trouble.” Good.

* I realize the counter says something like 3,800 right now. It was approaching 10,000 a while ago, but I accidentally deleted the files and the counter was somehow reset.

** It seems they may have taken this down. No fret though! If you type this into your URL bar while viewing the front page, you should still see the zombification: javascript:adDebugContent.render()

Here he is talking about confusion.

To make it a little more interesting though, we would have box folding “races” between the employees – sometimes with stacks of 100 or more. Sure enough, when pitted against one another, the boxes were made faster and employees involved were generally laughing (Or cursing, if losing. But a good-natured cursing.) by the end of it.

Never under estimate the allure of bragging rights and the appeal of turngin anything into a game – even regarding with something as trivial as assembling boxes.

I was reminded of this when I caught this link on kottke.org talking about Target cashiers.

Here’s a view of the cashier screen at Target. The comments explain it pretty well, but the system basically tracks how quickly you can check a customer out and gives you a score. The goal is to check out customers as quickly as possible.

Sounds like less fun than pizza boxes to me, but it’s interesting. Do other corporations implement games at various levels? Does CostCo or Walmart have a “game-like” system in place?

It’s hard to tell, but she’s playing tic-tac-toe. via The Library of Conress.

On October 9th, 2009 we took up arms against our lunar brethren and preemptively attacked the moon.  It knows what it did.  Its insolence would not stand, thus, we acted.

In a distinctly American act of commemoration, I present to you, a means to immortalize this event through tacky t-shirts and coffee mugs:

F*** THE MOON COFFEE MUG

F*** THE MOON T-SHIRT

I think it reads very nicely and admire his unique approach in releasing the font under a public license. At his site you can find Cantarell available in TTF and EOT formats, so you should be able to find a way to embed it in your web pages and have it render across most modern browsers – even IE7!

You can view additional fonts from the 2009 class at typefacedesign.org.

If Baskin Robbins won’t take it on as their 32nd flavor, maybe he could sell the idea to Ben & Jerry’s under a funny name. Because liquid nitrogen always makes me think of that scene in Terminator 2, I’m thinking you just add some chocolate to this recipe and call it “Fudgement Day.”

Anyway, here’s the video:

UPDATE: Here’s a more in-depth video about Science Foo Camp 2009:

College kept us apart most of the year, so we mostly played in the summers, and every June we could look forward to the annual tradition of trying to remember the old tunes while adding a few more to our repertoire. And, every year, our tastes would change, so we’d throw one or two songs out of the mix as we brought in the new ones. For the better part of a decade we only had 15 songs, but by the end we were only playing 2 of the songs we had written during our first year together. Back when we were all 17 or 18. Man, time flies.

While a lot of these elements may have kept us from being as prolific as we should have been, it did do one thing – it made us really good at playing with each other.  We knew one another so well we could changes songs on a dime, extend and twist sections beyond recognition and create a synergy that the crowd really fed off of.  I think we had lots of fun playing with each other and that feeling was infectious – people came to watch us because we looked like we were having fun.  The music hardly mattered.

We’re playing together again, for the first time in four years, this Sunday at the Someday Lounge.   We managed to get everyone together for two rehearsals over the past couple weeks – also the first time in four years we’ve all been in the same room, let alone playing music together – and the energy’s still there.  I think it’s a going to be special.

Do you live in Portland, OR?

Come down and see us on Sunday, August 16th, 2009 @ 7pm @ The Someday Lounge.  There’s a $5 cover.

In June I put up a post about how I thought an Emperor Gum moth had found its way from Australia to my parent’s porch in Portland, OR.  Lots of people chimed in on the comments from all over the U.S. saying that they too had found moths that looked like this.

So what was the deal here?  Are they a relatively common occurrence in the U.S. but somehow not officially documented or recognized as indigenous?  Like some kind of expatriate of insect world?

Thanks to Mirranda Haan, who found one of her own and is evidently a better bug researcher than me,  there’s a less spectacular but far more likely explanation: these moths aren’t Emperor Gum moths.  They’re Antheraea Polyphemus moths, which, to my clearly untrained eye, look almost exactly like Emperor Gum moths.

]]> http://www.georgemandis.com/2009/08/my-emperor-gum-moth-is-actually-a/feed/ 1 http://www.georgemandis.com/2009/07/vibram-five-fingers-sprint-shoes-review/ http://www.georgemandis.com/2009/07/vibram-five-fingers-sprint-shoes-review/#comments Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:44:25 +0000 George Mandis http://www.georgemandis.com/?p=501 I recently bought a pair of Vibram Five Fingers shoes after reading positive reviews online. The timing was also just right: It’s summer, so the idea of going around nearly barefoot holds its appeal, and I’d literally worn holes into the soles of my current walking shoes.  One way or the other, it was time for something new to cover my feet.

So far I’ve been wearing the Vibram Five Fingers SPRINT model for about a week.  My original choice was the KSO (Keep Stuf Out) model, but they didn’t have any in my size.  Here are some general observations:

• They’re comfy!
• Your toes are forced to be slightly separated from one another which, depending on your foot and the flexibility of your toes, can vary from “mild discomfort” to “torturous pain.”  My toes are abnormally tactile (Ask my Mom – she tell you stories about how I used to pick things up with my feet as a kid.) so it felt like a very mild stretch.
• They’re sturdier than they appear.   I do a lot of walking  and after each outing I’ve checked the soles for signs of wear and tear.  Each time I been pleasantly surprised.  Even on the couple occasions I stepped on a sharp rock  - an experience you will be profoundly aware of- I didn’t notice any cuts or marks on the sole.
• You have to get used to walking in them.  Actually, to be more accurate, you have to get used to walking around barefoot.  Thunderous heel-strikes and shuffling your feet are just two of the bad walking habits you’ll be forced to leave behind.
• Walking on soft, natural surfaces like grass, dirt trails and, surprisingly, even gravel is a much nicer experience than walking on concrete…
• …However, after a week of using these as my day shoes, my feet feel quite a bit tougher and the concrete doesn’t bother me anymore.
• You may not think of your feet as being asymmetrical, but when you’re wearing identical, tight-fitting gloves on each of them you become much more aware.  My pink toe completely fills out the right root but leaves some noticeable space on the left.
• Previous observation aside, the sizing chart on the Vibram website is very helpful and quite accurate.
• I’ve only done actual running in these things once and even then only on the trails.  I won’t lie – it hurt.  I’m an avid jogger but never attempted any barefoot running before.  The good news?  Ouchiness aside, there weren’t any lingering “bad” pains the next day.   In fact, I could tell that certain muscles in my feet and ankles were getting more burn than they usually do, which is a big selling point on the Vibram website.  You have to use a slightly different technique, and for me this made my run considerably slower, but I could see myself getting used to this and running regularly with them without issue.
• Don’t think I could “sneak up” on someone is I tried.  A week in I can avoid the heel-strikes, and I am stepping softly/gingerly/differently than I was before, there’s a noticeably “fwap” when my feet hit the ground.  When I was running, it was quite loud.  In shoes I’m actually a soft-stepper, but it hasn’t translated with my Vibrams yet.  Maybe as my foot strength builds it will happen.
• These things are delightfully funny looking and people will notice. Especially if you get them in bright red, like I did.