January 2023 blogspot

Buyers of high-end smart devices could find their shiny new appliances losing some of their capabilities or becoming a security risk after only a few short years if manufacturers fail to provide software updates according to Which?

Revelations by the ever questioning consumer rights organisation suggest the problem could affect various domestic appliances such as washing machines and dishwashers and even smart TVs. These are devices that householders could reasonably expect to have a useful lifetime of a decade or more, but which might actually stop working as well as the manufacturer's marketing claims after a couple of years, or become vulnerable to security threats, warns the report. For its research, Which? said it approached dozens of manufacturing brands about hundreds of smart devices. Only about half responded and many said support was provided only for two years, regardless of the expected lifetime of the device itself.
Read the report

Still Blurry After All These Years - Early Digital Cameras Return
Decades-old digital cameras are Gen Z’s new favourite gadget, says The New York Times and our own Daily Mail online newspaper, which is widely read in the USA. Teenagers love their digital cameras' slightly blurry, over-lit photos, and are following alleged A-listers like Kylie Jenner and Bella Hadid in posting their poor-quality pictures on Instagram. On eBay, demand for “point-and-shoot” models jumped 10 per cent last year, with searches for uber-aesthetic Nikon COOLPIX cameras soaring by 90 per cent. It’s not just the grainy, over-exposed snaps that appeal. For many, digital cameras are a way to capture memories without being shackled to their smartphones. “I feel like we’re becoming a bit too techy,” says one nostalgic snapper. “To go back in time is just a great idea". Gen-Z favourite’s app, TikTok, has more than 184million views featuring the hashtag #digitalcamera, and the fashionista's favourite magazine, Vogue, has also featured the 20 year old range of standalone cameras.
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Guess Me Quick Movie Quiz
Moviedle is an online game where you have to identify a film running at high speed and cut into short clips as little as one second long. After each failed guess, you can make the clips one second longer and have another go - but you only get six tries per day. Moviedle has risen to popularity in the wake of the monster success quiz known as Wordle. It borrows the same basic principles, but with a filmic twist. The game starts with several scenes from a film compressed into just one second. With every new showing, the clips become longer and slower. You don’t have to make a guess each time - you can simply skip - until you think you know the answer, but skips do count towards the half dozen limit. If Moviedle turns out to be showing mostly the kind of films you don't like to watch, other film quiz challenges are available. You might prefer Framed (framed.wtf) instead, which shows stills from films rather than speed clips. (The screenshots get less obscure the more clues you need).
Try it out

AI Art Generators Up For Judgement
Art made by AI is being taken seriously and appreciated by critics as well as being put together for fun by online users with time to spare. But not everyone is happy with what Artificial Intelligence produces and where it gets the source material it needs to work with. Which is why three all-human creative artists are suing Midjourney, Stability AI, and DeviantArt for their use of an AI art-generating tool called Stable Diffusion. The artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz allege the tool violates millions of artists' copyrights. Stable Diffusion has been fed billions of images clipped from the Internet in order to train its AI on how to do things like identify objects and environments so that when a user types "apples and pears on a table by a window" into an AI art generator that uses Stable Diffusion, it can create new works based on the accumulation of images it has analysed. The critical court case claims that Stable Diffusion cobbles together pieces of copyrighted images, which is undeniable, but creators of AI art-generating tools argue that the use of existing pictures to train AI so that it can make new images is covered by “fair use” doctrine, which allows the limited use of copyrighted materials for “transformative” purposes.
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Search Engine of the Month
PimEyes is "a search engine of faces" and tool for reverse image and facial recognition that invites you to upload photos and find out where similar images might have been published. The online face searching engine goes through the Internet to find pictures containing the faces you might want to check on. PimEyes uses face recognition search technologies to perform a reverse image search. Its face finder helps you find a face that might be yours and help you to protect your privacy when its recognition system makes a match, helping you to defend yourself from scammers, identity thieves, or people who use your image illegally. Results can be impressive and surprising, for example being able to find a recent in-profile photo based on a 10 year old full-face picture of what - to most human eyes - would seem to be two different people. "PimEyes is a photo search engine available for everyone", say its designers as well as a "great tool to audit copyright infringement, reclaim image rights or monitor your online social media presence".
Try it out