Daily Archives: 2019-11-08

Trippy T-Shirt Makes You Invisible To AI

Source: Slashdot

Article note: This was a plot point in a William Gibson novel some years ago (End of Zero History? It was one of the two pattern recognition sequels.). At the time I found it implausible that we'd widely adopt surveilence technology that stupid, but here we are.

In modern cities, we're constantly surveilled through CCTV cameras in both public and private spaces, and by companies trying to sell us shit based on everything we do. We are always being watched. But what if a simple T-shirt could make you invisible to commercial AIs trying to spot humans? Motherboard reports: A team of researchers from Northeastern University, IBM, and MIT developed a T-shirt design that hides the wearer from image recognition systems by confusing the algorithms trying to spot people into thinking they're invisible. Adversarial designs, as this kind of anti-AI tech is known, are meant to "trick" object detection algorithms into seeing something different from what's there, or not seeing anything at all. In some cases, these designs are made by tweaking parts of a whole image just enough so that the AI can't read it correctly. The change might be imperceptible to a human, but to a machine vision algorithm it can be very effective: In 2017, researchers fooled computers into thinking a turtle was a rifle. A T-shirt is a low-barrier way to move around the world unnoticed by AI watchers. Previously, researchers have tried to create adversarial fashion using patches attached to stiff cardboard, so that the design doesn't distort on soft fabric while the wearer moves. If the design is warped or part of it isn't visible, it becomes ineffective.

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Netflix is dropping support for older Samsung smart TVs in December

Source: Engadget

Article note: Regularly scheduled reminder that TVs (or cars, or other durable items) with built-in short-lived technology are a dumb fuckin' idea. Buy a _display_ and attach a gadget.
If you have an older Samsung or Vizio smart TV, you may have noticed a message from Netflix pop up on your screen. This week, Netflix began notifying customers that it will no longer support Samsung smart TVs, circa 2010 and 2011, or Vizio smart TV m...
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Why more than 168,000 Valentine’s day text messages arrived in November

Source: Ars Technica

Article note: In addition to the near fight with the girlfriend due to a 9 month old message appearing annoyance, that's some exceptional ineptitude from what is theoretically serious infrastructure.
Why more than 168,000 Valentine’s day text messages arrived in November

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)

Did you get a Valentine's Day text message on November 7? If so, you can blame a company called Syniverse, which provides text-messaging services to major mobile carriers.

Syniverse helps deliver text messages via its intercarrier messaging service and boasts that it is "Connected to more than 300 operators" and processes 600 billion messages per month.

Syniverse says it delivers 99.8% of messages within one second. But a server failure caused many messages—exactly 168,149, according to The Washington Post—to be delivered nearly nine months late. (Update: Syniverse later acknowledged that the actual number of late messages was higher, but isn't saying exactly how many there were. See the update later in this article for more.)

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