Daily Archives: May 9, 2021

Vin Diesels break-dance video brings the internet as Ken guesses him to be Yeti on TMS – Republic TV

Posted: May 9, 2021 at 11:05 am

American actor Vin Diesel's old video, in which he can be seen performing breakdance, resurfaced again on the internet as comedian-actorKen Jeong speculated that the celebrity behind The Masked Singer's Yeti is the Fast and Furious actor. Interestingly, in theMay 5 episode, The Spicy 6 The Competition Heats Up!, Ken brought up the actor's nameafter noting that a pacifier in the Yeti's clue segment was a possible link to Diesel's filmThe Pacifier.However, when Jeong second-guessed himself, stating that Diesel isn't "much of a dancer," hostNick Cannonreminded Jeong and viewers of the actor's break dancing skills.

As the episode progressed further, Nick added that Vin Diesel is a great dancer while saying that the actor was a breakdancing champion."Look it up. I'm trying to help you out, this could be Vin Diesel!", he was heard saying in the episode. Post that, a section of viewersrevisited the below old YouTube video, which resurfaces often when Fast & Furioussequels' releases are around the corner.

However, the 53-year-old actorhaddiscussed his break dancing pastwith Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan. He had told that the above video dated backto the '80swhen heused to break-dance at Columbus Circle in NYC. Hecalled it his first gig while adding that he alsoused to break-dance at Washington Square Park. On the other hand, the upcoming episodes will only reveal how accurate Ken Jeong's guess is.

Interestingly, in February 2021,hehad told hostKelly Clarkson that he is thedumbest judge onThe Masked Singer, during his appearance onThe Kelly Clarkson Show.Some of Jeongsfamously wrong guesses include Celine Dion being Miss Monster, White Tiger being Fabio, andFlower being Bjrk, among many others.

TheFox realityshow, in which costumed celebrities perform and seek to avoid going home and thereby having to reveal their identity, is currently in its third season. Jeong has been a panellist forall three seasons with Robin Thicke, Nicole Scherzinger, and Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg. In the recent episode of the show, which aired on May 5,Cannon announced that Robopine was eliminated and he was revealed to beactor, singer, and former modelTyrese Gibson.

IMAGE: VIN DIESEL, THE MASKED SINGER INSTAGRAM

Get the latest entertainment news from India & around the world. Now follow your favourite television celebs and telly updates. Republic World is your one-stop destination for trending Bollywood news. Tune in today to stay updated with all the latest news and headlines from the world of entertainment.

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Fake news, conspiracy theories and a deadly global pandemic and that was in 1918 – Salon

Posted: at 11:04 am

As the truism observes, history does not repeat itself, but itrhymes.

Almost 600,000 people have died from the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of these deaths were preventable. The Trump regime, through willful negligence if not outright criminality, committed democide against the American people. The country's economy was devastated. While the Biden administration has made great strides in its vaccination program, decreasing the rate of death and resuscitating the economy, much work remains to be done.

The American people are traumatized. The economy is not recovering equally for all Americans. A culture of narcissism and selfishness, manifested in widespreadrefusal to wear masks, be vaccinated or otherwise behave in a socially responsible manner threatens to derail the country's recovery from the COVID-19 plague. The Republican Party and broader right-wing movement continue to encourage (and profit from) such antisocial and anti-human behavior.

The rage and grief from the COVID-19 plague and the Age of Trump will not disappear into the ether. The nation badly needs a reckoning and catharsis in order to processsuch an extendedseason of death and all the misery it has wrought.

One way to make sense of such great loss and trauma is to locate one's experience relative to the past. This is a way of creating a system of meaning, a kindof anchor when one feels adrift and alone both individually and as part of a community or society. In the United States the most visible anchor is the influenza epidemic of 1918-19(commonly known as the "Spanish flu") and thedecade that followed, known as the "Roaring Twenties."

A new article in the Journal of the American Medical Association puts forward evidence thatthere have been 522,368 "excess deaths" from March 1, 2020 to Jan.2, 2021, as compared to annual averages from 2014 to 2019.

A new analysis from The New York Times ties the mortal coil of the COVID-19 present to the century-old past of the 1918 flu. Denise Lu's article"How Covid Upended a Century of Patterns in U.S. Deaths" explains:

A surge in deaths from the Covid-19 pandemic created the largest gap between the actual and expected death rate in 2020 what epidemiologists call "excess deaths," or deaths above normal....

Since the 1918 pandemic, the country's death rate has fallen steadily. But last year, the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted that trend, in spite of a century ofimprovements in medicine and public health. ...

In 2020, a record 3.4 million people died in the United States. Over the last century, the total number of deaths naturally rose as the population grew. Even amid this continual rise, however, the sharp uptick last year stands out.

Combined with deaths in the first few months of this year, Covid-19 has now claimedmore than half a millionlives in the United States. The total number of Covid-19 deaths so far is on track to surpass the toll of the1918 pandemic, whichkilled an estimated 675,000nationwide.

It shouldbe noted that while there are more surplus deaths from the pandemic, the per capita number of deaths from the 1918 flu was much higher.

Some have speculated we could see a21st-century Roaring Twenties, driven byfrivolity, freedom, hedonism, reinvigorated music, artand culture an enthusiastic release of pent-up energies. This represents thehope that all the pain of the COVID-19 pandemicwill be followed by some "reward."There are also projections that the U.S.economy will rebound strongly although the national jobs report released Friday was a major disappointment.

Any attempt to turnthe 1918 pandemicinto a "usable past" for the present is largely a function of distance in time and a lack of organized and coherent cultural memory about that era. Seductivestories about 1918 and its place in the American popular imagination will be anchors for creating meaning in our own time.

But1918 was very different from 2021. The Roaring Twenties were largelythe result of the end of World War I, the fact that younger rather than olderpeoplewere hit hardby the flu pandemic, expanding industrialization, a shift in population from the country to the cities, and other great social forces, including the suffragist movement and the first Great Migration of Black Americans fleeing the Jim Crow South.

In an effort to make sense of the similarities and differences between the 1918 influenza pandemic and COVID-19, and their relative impact on American society, I recently spoke to historian John Barry. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller"The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History"and has writtenseveral other books, including"Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America."

Barry is also a professor at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans and is a much sought out expert on influenza and how societies can better prepare to combat it.

In this conversation, Barry explains that comparisons between the two pandemics are fraughtwith challenges and should be approachedcarefully. Specifically, Barry recounts thatthe 1918 pandemic spread much more rapidlyand was more virulent than COVID-19, a factthat contours America's divergent experiences with the two pandemics.

He also discusses the ways"fake news" and conspiracy theories createa type of connective tissue between America's experiences with COVID-19 and the 1918 flu andwarns that the politicalization of the COVID-19 pandemic is a deeply troubling difference between the Age of Trump and theflu pandemic early in the previous century.

Given the pandemic and all the societaldevastation it has caused, how are you feeling?

I almost have survivor's guilt. After Hurricane Katrina, there was water in the street outside my house, it got up to the curb but didn't get over it. I had friends who lost everything. I had survivor's guilt then, and I feel like that now. My book "The Great Influenza" has done extraordinarily well in the last year. I hate for that to be the reason people bought my book. I couldn't really celebrate. I've been busy. I have to tried to help in indirect ways. Through op-eds and other means, I have tried to have a positive impact as we struggle through the pandemic.

Time feels broken because of the coincidence of the Trump regime and its assaults on reality and then the pandemic, which amplifiedthose distortions. It's all very disorienting.How does our sense of time compare to what happened with the 1918 flu?

That is one of the things that the 1918 pandemic is not a precedent for. One of the biggest differences is time. The 1918 pandemic was much more intense and much more violent in terms of the actual experience of the illness. It was also much briefer. In any given community, the pandemic would sweep through over a period of weeks, six to 10weeks, generally. Worldwide, probably two-thirds of the deaths occurred over a period of 12 or 13 weeks. The intensity and the speed with which the 1918 influenzamoved is totally different from what we're going through now with COVID-19. When it was over, things went back to normal very quickly.

How do you think a culture deals with slow disasters, versusfast disasters?

People tend to ignore disasters. I am very well aware that Louisiana could do everything right and New Orleans could still go underwater. YetI still live here. I am very aware of that fact. Every time I leave the city, I'm thinking that there may not be anything to come back to. I'm still living here even given my knowledge of that reality. I believe that the vast majority of the population in New Orleans does not think about how it could be gone through a major storm. I really believemost people just ignore it.

How did the 1918 fluand its immediate aftermath impact American culture?

It is so hard to separate the 1918 flu pandemicfrom World War I and what happened to American culture in the immediate aftermath. There's very little literature about that question. People who lived through it were scarred. I base that on very anecdotal evidence. For my book "The Great Influenza," I did interview some elderly people. Everyone who was old enough to have formed memories of that period remembered it very vividly. We also saw the idea of sickness being used as metaphor for many things. The pandemic was very much in the collective consciousness, even if serious novelists were not writing about it.

What aboutpublic memory?

The press did not treat the 1918 fluseriously during the outbreak, for reasons that are very different than today. There was real fake news coming out of the U.S. government about the 1918 flu. As a general rule, the media was extremely complicit with the U.S. government in telling those lies. It would be hard for media of that era to go back a few months later and say, "No, we lied to you.This is what really happened."There were certainly no congressional investigations. Of course, the federal government hardly did a thing anyway, it was a very different structure then. There was no partisan division over the 1918 flu. It was to no one's political benefit to try to expose the truth about the pandemic then. What we in America are going to encounter, in terms of what we learn about the pandemic and the response to it, in the next few years is very different on all those grounds.

How do we compare those questions of public trust and government transparency, with the 1918 flu and COVID-19 today?

There are a good number of similarities in terms of how the U.S. government responded, today with the Trump administration and back in 1918,but the motivations werevery different. With the coronavirus pandemic, it was political self-interest. In 1918, there was an obsessive focus on the war. Today's pandemic also began in a moment where lies are omnipresent in the culture and politics. Also, in 1918there was nobody like Dr. Fauci, certainly not at a national level.

The other thing that is different is that this time around there is a significant minority of the population that believed the lies, largely because of political partisanship. In 1918, nobody believed the media because the virus was too virulent, too frighteningand too omnipresent. No matter how many times a newspaper headline would say "This is ordinary influenza by other names,"those claims convinced no one. The public saw people dying, 12 hours after the first symptoms, across the street or in their own house. They were not convinced by a newspaper headline. It was at variance with their lived experience. Today of course, particularly early on when the virus was not geographically widespread, it was easier to believe that COVID-19 was really nothing.

Were there conspiracy theories about the origins of the 1918 flu?

The dominant conspiracy theory and I do not know how widespread it was, in terms of having a large number of believers was that the 1918 flu was a form of germ warfare. The connection there was made between "germ" and "Germany."That conspiracy theory was used to stir up more intense patriotism.

Reviewing the Trump administration's response to the pandemic, how do you separate incompetence from criminality?

In my opinion, incompetence always explains a lot more than conspiracy. As much as I possess disdain and hatred for Trump, I'm not sure that his behavior would rise to the level of criminality. I believe it is more stupidity and incompetence. But there is certainly liability there for how he and his administration responded to the pandemic.

What does America's new "normal" look like after the pandemic?

That depends on the virus. We do not know yet. If we stay ahead of the variants, then sixor so months from now people are back at football stadiums without restrictions. Perhaps by March of 2022, during March Madness, there will be stands full of basketball fans. People have very short memories. We in America will be going back to a pre-pandemic normal faster than many expect.

Other societal changes will be extensions of things that were already in process, such as telemedicine and working from home.

But ultimately, if there is something worse out there than the South African or the Brazilian variant of COVID-19, if it can happen, it will happen.

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Reflecting on the 2020-21 Candidates Part 1 – Chessbase News

Posted: at 11:03 am

Opening Developments in Yekaterinburg

One of the most interesting aspects of a tournament at the highest level is the plethora of new and creative opening ideas displayed by each player. Each of the eight candidates spent months preparing their repertoires and created specific ideas for one another, while not being afraid to show their best analytical work.

The first part of my reflection focusses on opening ideas from the first half of the tournament (Rounds 1-7), especially ones by Giri and Caruana because these two unleashed several remarkable ideas in their games. These ideas have contributed significantly to the development of theory in the Catalan, Classical Slav, and 6Bc5 Ruy Lopez in particular. As we will see in our analysis of the games below, some of these ideas are strong enough to completely overwrite past conclusions from opening theory.

Lighting up the Symmetrical English

Right from the start of the tournament against Nepomniachtchi, Giri made it clear how much effort had been invested into his Candidates preparation. His concept began with a new idea on move 12 and the ensuing complications were filled with double-edged positions and exchange sacrifices. Nepomniachtchi demonstrated great resilience by heading straight for the critical line of Giris preparation and then successfully calculated his way out of danger. Suddenly the initiative passed to Nepomniachtchi, who eventually won a difficult endgame which was on the verge of becoming a fortress.

Anish Giri vs Ian Nepomniachtchi, Round 3 | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Caruanas Double Pawn Sacrifice

Caruanas repertoire with the Black pieces (Classical Slav and 6Bc5 against the Ruy Lopez) would have been very difficult to predict before the tournament began. In his Round 3 game against Ding Liren, Caruana not only surprised his opponent by playing the Classical Slav, but also unleashed a shocking novelty on move 9 based on a double pawn sacrifice. Similarly to the game between Giri and Nepomniachtchi, Ding responded by heading for one of the most critical lines in Caruanas preparation and successfully calculated his way out of danger. Unfortunately for Caruana, he mixed up the move order in his preparation and ended up with insufficient compensation for the two pawns after Ding found a way to consolidate.

The result doesnt diminish the impact of Caruanas new idea, and I am especially interested in seeing how the theory develops in this line after 10.e4, where the resulting positions are extremely messy and full of sharp ideas.

Ding Liren | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Giris h5-h4 in the Catalan

The Catalan is a staple in the repertoire of many elite players, especially Ding Liren, who plays closed openings almost exclusively with the White pieces. Facing Ding Lirens Catalan in Round 4, Giri employed a rare system with 4a5!? and reached a position that looks favourable for White because of Blacks hanging pawns. However, Giri had prepared some very deep ideas involving h5-h4 which not only make this system fully playable, but also give Black excellent chances to fight for the initiative in some lines (see Vidit Giri in the annotations below).

Considering that Giri had enough confidence in the 4a5 system to employ it against one of the worlds leading experts on the Catalan, I would not be surprised if it eventually becomes as mainstream as some of the other, more established ways of meeting the Catalan.

Anish Giri fighting the Catalan | Photo: Lennart Ootes

AlphaZero-Inspired Play Against the Grunfeld

I should mention that each of the ideas discussed in this article were certainly analyzed extensively by the players and their neural network engines (Leela Chess Zero and recent versions of Stockfish, among others). However, this game in particular contains clear parallels to AlphaZeros famous h-pawn advance in the Grunfeld. Caruana plays the Classical Exchange Variation with 7.Bc4 against Nepomniachtchis Grunfeld and goes for a modern idea involving h4-h5 to put pressure on Blacks kingside dark squares. Nepomniachtchi reacts well and finds a way to simplify the game, leading to a slightly worse endgame which he holds comfortably.

New Ideas in the 6Bc5 Ruy Lopez

Caruana defended one of the most critical lines (10.a5) in the 6Bc5 Ruy Lopez twice in the first half of the Candidates. In both games, Caruana showed deep knowledge of the arising positions and had several new ideas in store. Especially in the game we are about to examine, Caruanas 12th move likely came as a complete shock to Grischuk because this move was previously thought to be tactically flawed. In fact, exploiting the tactical flaw could easily backfire on White as Black seizes a powerful initiative and obtains dangerous kingside attacking chances (see the note to Whites 13th move).

Alexander Grischuk and Fabiano Caruana analyse their game | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Nepomniachtchis French Defence

We have already discussed some surprising changes in Caruanas Black repertoire for the Candidates, but arguably the most shocking repertoire change in the event was Nepomniachtchis decision to deviate from his usual Najdorf and play the Winawer French in Rounds 3 and 7. In an extremely important Round 7 matchup between MVL (3.5/6 points) and Nepomniachtchi (4.5/6 points), MVL went for a relatively new and critical setup against the Winawer and obtained a very comfortable position immediately out of the opening.

This was the only game in the Candidates where Nepomniachtchis calculation abilities and resilience in defence were not enough to survive against deep, targeted preparation and strong middlegame play by his opponent.

The eventual tournament winner Ian Nepomniachtchi | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Pros and Cons of Deep Preparation

One of the key themes seen throughout this article was the use of deep, original preparation. Perhaps the most attractive reason to employ such preparation is that the opponent will be forced to think over the board while the prepared player can rely on remembering and understanding their home analysis. This leads to an advantage on the clock as well as a psychological advantage because the player on the receiving end of the preparation may be concerned with traps set by the opponent. For example, Grischuk remarked after his game with Caruana that it was very unpleasant to play half of the game against a computer (i.e., Caruanas preparation).

It may be the case that certain players react better to their opponents deep preparation. In the first two games of the article, we saw how Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren both managed to calculate their way out of opening problems, seize the initiative, and eventually take the full point over Giri and Caruana respectively. Especially in the case of Nepomniachtchi, who usually employs a double-edged and narrow repertoire with the Black pieces (Grunfeld and Winawer or Najdorf), this ability to calmly calculate when faced with the opponents deep preparation is extremely important.

As a further warning of relying heavily on deep preparation, we saw in the Ding Liren Caruana game that it is impossible to memorize every detail (17Ng6 instead of 17Rc8!) and that the engine can sometimes provide a false sense of knowledge and security. In reality, the position may be just as dangerous (or even more so) for the side employing the preparation, but this is only realized over the board.

Clearly deep preparation will remain an important component of top-level chess, but I think that it is useful for players of all strengths to recognize its limitations and understand the risks involved for both sides, so they can be addressed and diminished before it is too late during a game.

The first game in my second article will be another piece of deep preparation by Caruana, which eventually brings him a very important victory.

The second part of this 2020-2021 Candidates reflection will focus on opening ideas from the second half of the tournament (Rounds 8-14).

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AI Is Harder Than We Think: 4 Key Fallacies in AI Research – Singularity Hub

Posted: at 11:03 am

Artificial intelligence has been all over headlines for nearly a decade, as systems have made quick progress in long-standing AI challenges like image recognition, natural language processing, and games. Tech companies have sown machine learning algorithms into search and recommendation engines and facial recognition systems, and OpenAIs GPT-3 and DeepMinds AlphaFold promise even more practical applications, from writing to coding to scientific discoveries.

Indeed, were in the midst of an AI spring, with investment in the technology burgeoning and an overriding sentiment of optimism and possibility towards what it can accomplish and when.

This time may feel different than previous AI springs due to the aforementioned practical applications and the proliferation of narrow AI into technologies many of us use every daylike our smartphones, TVs, cars, and vacuum cleaners, to name just a few. But its also possible that were riding a wave of short-term progress in AI that will soon become part of the ebb and flow in advancement, funding, and sentiment that has characterized the field since its founding in 1956.

AI has fallen short of many predictions made over the last few decades; 2020, for example, was heralded by many as the year self-driving cars would start filling up roads, seamlessly ferrying passengers around as they sat back and enjoyed the ride. But the problem has been more difficult than anticipated, and instead of hordes of robot taxis, the most advanced projects remain in trials. Meanwhile, some in the field believe the dominant form of AIa kind of machine learning based on neural networksmay soon run out of steam absent a series of crucial breakthroughs.

In a paper titled Why AI Is Harder Than We Think, published last week on the arXiv preprint server, Melanie Mitchell, a computer science professor at Portland State University currently at the Santa Fe Institute, argues that AI is stuck in an ebb-and-flow cycle largely because we dont yet truly understand the nature and complexity of human intelligence. Mitchell breaks this overarching point down into four common misconceptions around AI, and discusses what they mean for the future of the field.

Impressive new achievements by AI are often accompanied by an assumption that these same achievements are getting us closer to reaching human-level machine intelligence. But not only, as Mitchell points out, are narrow and general intelligence as different as climbing a tree versus landing on the moon, but even narrow intelligence is still largely reliant on an abundance of task-specific data and human-facilitated training.

Take GPT-3, which some cited as having surpassed narrow intelligence: the algorithm was trained to write text, but learned to translate, write code, autocomplete images, and do math, among other tasks. But although GPT-3s capabilities turned out to be more extensive than its creators may have intended, all of its skills are still within the domain in which it was trained: that is, languagespoken, written, and programming.

Becoming adept at a non-language-related skill with no training would signal general intelligence, but this wasnt the case with GPT-3, nor has it been the case with any other recently-developed AI: they remain narrow in nature and, while significant in themselves, shouldnt be conflated with steps toward the thorough understanding of the world required for general intelligence.

Is AI smarter than a four-year-old? In most senses, the answer is no, and thats because skills and tasks that we perceive as being easy are in fact much more complex than we give them credit for, as Moravecs Paradox notes.

Four-year-olds are pretty good at figuring out cause and effect relationships based on their interactions with the world around them. If, for example, they touch a pot on the stove and burn a finger, theyll understand that the burn was caused by the pot being hot, not by it being round or silver. To humans this is basic common sense, but algorithms have a hard time making causal inferences, especially without a large dataset or in a different context than the one they were trained in.

The perceptions and choices that take place at a subconscious level in humans sit on a lifetimes worth of experience and learning, even at such an elementary level as touching hot things will burn you. Because we reach a point where this sort of knowledge is reflexive, not even requiring conscious thought, we see it as easy, but its quite the opposite. AI is harder than we think, Mitchell writes, because we are largely unconscious of the complexity of our own thought processes.

Humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize non-human things, from animals to inanimate objects to robots and computers. In so doing, we use the same words wed use to discuss human activities or intelligenceexcept these words dont quite fit the context, and in fact can muddle our own understanding of AI. Mitchell uses the term wishful mnemonics, coined by a computer scientist in the 1970s. Words like reading, understanding, and thinking are used to describe and evaluate AI, but these words dont give us an accurate depiction of how the AI is functioning or progressing.

Even learning is a misnomer, Mitchell says, because if a machine truly learned a new skill, it would be able to apply that skill in different settings; finding correlations in datasets and using the patterns identified to make predictions or meet other benchmarks is something, but its not learning in the way that humans learn.

So why all the fuss over words, if theyre all we have and theyre getting the gist across? Well, Mitchell says, this inaccurate language can not only mislead the public and the media, but can influence the way AI researchers think about their systems and carry out their work.

Mitchells final point is that human intelligence is not contained solely in the brain, but requires a physical body.

This seems self-explanatory; we use our senses to absorb and process information, and we interact with and move through the world in our bodies. Yet the prevailing emphasis in AI research is on the brain: understanding it, replicating various aspects of its form or function, and making AI more like it.

If intelligence lived just in the brain, wed be able to move closer to reaching human-level AI by, say, building a neural network with the same number of parameters as the brain has synaptic connections, thereby duplicating the brains computing capacity.

Drawing this sort of parallel may apply in cases where intelligence refers to operating by a set of rules to work towards a defined goalsuch as winning a game of chess or modeling the way proteins fold, both of which computers can already do quite well. But other types of intelligence are far more shaped by and subject to emotion, bias, and individual experience.

Going back to the GPT-3 example: the algorithm produces subjective intelligence (its own writing) using a set of rules and parameters it created with a huge dataset of pre-existing subjective intelligence (writing by humans). GPT-3 is hailed as being creative, but its writing relies on associations it drew between words and phrases in human writingwhich is replete with biases, emotion, pre-existing knowledge, common sense, and the writers unique experience of the world, all experienced through the body.

Mitchell argues that the non-rational, subjective aspects of the way humans think and operate arent a hindrance to our intelligence, but are in fact its bedrock and enabler. Leading artificial general intelligence expert Ben Goertzel similarly advocates for whole-organism architecture, writing, Humans are bodies as much as minds, and so achieving human-like AGI will require embedding AI systems in physical systems capable of interacting with the everyday human world in nuanced ways.

These misconceptions leave little doubt as to what AI researchers and developers shouldnt do. Whats less clear is how to move forward. We must start, Mitchell says, with a better understanding of intelligenceno small or straightforward task. One good place AI researchers can look, though, is in other disciplines of science that study intelligence.

Why are we so intent on creating an artificial version of human intelligence, anyway? It has evolved over millions of years and is hugely complex and intricate, yet still rife with its own shortcomings too. Perhaps the answer is that were not trying to build an artificial brain thats as good as ours; were trying to build one thats better, and that will help us solve currently unsolvable problems.

Human evolution took place over the course of about six million years. Meanwhile, its been 65 years since AI became a field of study, and its writing human-like text, making fake faces, holding its own in debates, making medical diagnoses, and more. Though theres much left to learn, it seems AI is progressing pretty well in the grand scheme of thingsand the next step in taking it further is deepening our understanding of our own minds.

Image Credit:Rene Bhmer on Unsplash

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Google Photos unlimited free storage offer ends this month, and here are few things you should keep in mind – India Today

Posted: at 11:02 am

Google Photos is one of the best photo storage platforms available on the Internet. One of the reasons it shot to fame was the unlimited free storage for high-quality photos and videos. This meant that you could keep your Google Photos settings at high-quality uploads, and your Android phone would continue uploading unlimited photos and videos that won't count against your Google account storage of 15GB. But, like everything, the free ride is finally coming to an end.

Back in November, Google announced that it was ending the free unlimited storage on June 1, 2021, which means starting next month, any photo or video uploaded on the photo storage service will count against the 15GB of free Google account storage. However, this doesn't apply to Pixel users globally. If you own a Pixel device, then hold it tight and continue the free ride.

For those unaware, Google Photos launched at Google IO 2015 and was a standalone app basically pulled out of Google+ service. It came with some handy tools for editing photos and videos. The app hit the 500 million users mark by May 2017 and hit 1 billion app downloads by June 2017.

One of the biggest questions raised soon after Google announced to change the Google Photos high-quality free tier to a paid one back in November was what happens to the existing photos and videos. It's worth noting that all photos and videos uploaded in high quality before June 1 2021, won't count towards users' 15GB of Google account storage.

This should come in as relief for a lot of users, especially considering that the last few months, in any case, haven't been great for holidaying thanks to the pandemic, which means fewer recent photos and plenty of old memories that will be safe in Google Photos.

Google Photos, since 2015, has been offering backup options in two ways - Unlimited high-quality storage for free and Original quality storage for free up to 15GB.

Starting June 1, 2021, high-quality content will be saved but counted towards your Google account storage. And, this means that once you've reached your storage limit, you can either subscribe to Google One for additional cloud storage or delete content to continue with the free storage option in Photos. The primary reason is simple that your Google account storage is shared across Drive, Gmail and Photos.

If some users fear losing Google account storage space by saving original quality images in the Photos app and want to change the tier, they should do it now. The photos backed up in original quality and then compressed to high quality after June 1 2021, will count towards your Google account storage. This means that if you want to switch your tier to high quality from your current original quality, then do it right away.

The good thing is, Google Photos is giving users an estimate on how long a user's storage may last based on how often they back up photos, videos, and files.

Google has also confirmed that it will roll out a new storage management tool for existing Google Photos users from June. The Google Photos page says, "In June, you will be able to access a new free tool that lets you find and review blurry, dark and other low-quality photos to help you stay within your 15GB of account storage."

Considering the new changes that go into effect from June 1, 2021, existing Google Photos users should upload all their images and videos in high quality right away. Why? Google says, "Any photos or videos you've uploaded in high quality before June 1, 2021, will not count towards your 15GB of free storage. This means that photos and videos backed up before June 1, 2021, will still be considered free and exempt from the storage limit."

The high-quality tier offered in Google Photos is one of the best you can get on any photo-storing platform. It allows you to save photos up to 16-megapixels and videos up to 1080p resolution.

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Google Photos unlimited free storage offer ends this month, and here are few things you should keep in mind - India Today

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Here’s how to touch of death with 2 combos as Gill, Rose and Ibuki in Street Fighter 5: Champion Edition as showcased by LPN – EventHubs

Posted: at 11:02 am

LPN has been uploading videos highlighting touch of death sequences in Street Fighter 5: Champion Edition. These videos showcase how to deal insane amounts of damage with Gill, Rose and Ibuki.

Keep in mind that these touch of death sequences actually consist of two combos, but the first combo will always provide a mix up opportunity to allow the second combo. As expected, the opponent gets stunned part way through the second combo, which enables the touch of death sequence to happen.

The first character highlighted by LPN is Gill. Though Gill is sometimes referred to as being one of Street Fighter 5's weaker characters, his Retribution system enables unique juggles. LPN takes advantage of the Retribution system to get the most out of punishing Akuma for his EX reversal attempt.

Rose gets access to powerful juggles from her EX Soul Spark. While a bar of meter is burned at the start of the first combo, Rose is able to build up enough meter during the first and second combo to regain that bar. In the end, Rose uses three bars of meter, but gains one back throughout this touch of death sequence.

Finally, LPN demonstrates how Ibuki can delete the opponent's life bar thanks to the buffed V-Trigger 1 bombs thrown bombs cause hitstun now. This setup by be a little bit impractical as Ibuki needs time during the opponent's stun animation to recollect the needed kunai. Still, it's a pretty flashy combo to watch.

Check out all three touch of death sequences in the videos below:

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Here's how to touch of death with 2 combos as Gill, Rose and Ibuki in Street Fighter 5: Champion Edition as showcased by LPN - EventHubs

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Feel Better Yoga in Burlington launched online-only memberships in response to COVID – Burlington Times News

Posted: at 11:02 am

Editor's note: This story is part of an ongoing series taking a look at how local businesses have adapted to the COVID-19 crisis. Check back regularly for more stories highlighting local businesses who have shifted to e-commerce, analysis from officials on how this has changed the local economy and more.

As health and wellness facilities across Alamance County scrambled to support their clientele in the wake of COVID-19 shutdowns last year, Feel Better Yoga in Burlington was one of the first to start offering services online.

More than a year later, the hot yoga studio is still embracing the changes brought on by the pandemic, offering online-only memberships and changing up the studio space to meet practitioners needs.

The studio closed down about a week beforeGov. Roy Coopermandated it and started uploading pre-recorded class videos to Vimeo. The content was free and sharable.

According to owner Shelley Roupas, this tactic kept many long-time studio members engaged.

More: Burlington studio brings yoga to your living room

They were able to continue their practice at home and I think they just felt that it was a needed response for them because it happened so fast, and then the more we added videos, it was like then they were able to see, 'Like, OK, we can do yoga at home. We prefer to be in the studio, but you know we can do it at home and it's OK,' Roupas said. I feel like it was a really good move on our part for them.

The free videos also brought in some new yogis.

We have people from all over the country doing our videos because … a lot of places were sharing yoga videos but you had to pay for them. So we found that a lot of people were just sharing them … with, you know, their mom in a different city or their college roommate in a different city or whatever, Roupas said.

Seeing the success of the videos, Roupas started thinking about charging for them, but said that idea just didnt sit right with her.

Our mission has always been to share yoga because we believe in it so muchand ... it just seemed like the right thing to do is to just keep that free, she said. I believe in the power of reciprocity, where what you give, you get.

More: Burlington Beer Works embraces online engagement during COVID-19

Instead of charging for videos, the studio has started offering an online-only monthly membership for $39. This option allows clients to continue their yoga practice at home in live classes held over Zoom if theyre not yet ready to return to the studio.

The live classes have the element of presence and community and connection because it's a live class so there are actually people in the class and on Zoom. Every class we teach now is in person, and on Zoom, Roupas explained.

The response to the online offering has been positive, with Roupas saying many long-time, in-person members have started taking advantage of it.

We get a lot of people that are just continuing to do the (online classes). They might have elderly parents and so they just don't want to take a chance or they don't have their second vaccine yet and they want to keep up their practice ...for their mental health, so they just keep doing it at home, she said.

Free pre-recorded videos will continue to be uploaded on top of the online live classes. The studio is also offering a buy-one, give-one special, where clients can nominate a friend or family member to receive a free online membership.

More: "We're going to keep fighting": Protesters, organizers speak about this week's arrests in Graham, protest ordinance

The adaptations spurred on by the pandemic dont stop there.

Oh my gosh, I mean everything is different, Roupas said.

In addition to the online classes, the in-studio experience has also changed. Pre-COVID, the studio held up to 75 people at a time. Now, Roupas said FBY has cut class sizes down to 34 to give clients more space for their practice.

A blessing of all this is ... I don't think that then I would have ever just said, 'Hey let's just cut our space availability down by, you know, 70% because that doesn't really make sense financially.' However, people love it. They love all the space they get, and so I don't think we're going to shift from this for a while, she said.

Roupas said the changes made during the pandemic were unexpected, but essential in keeping the studio and its members going through unprecedented times.

It showed us that ...to survive, you have to be willing to take risks and you have to be willing to not just talk about doing the thing, you have to actually do the thing. So that means you offer free yoga or ... create this new model of sharing yoga, and it's just taught me more than ever that you got to be willing to actually do it and not just think about it, she said.

More: Burlington mill makeover to bring jobs to Alamance County, manufacturing from overseas to US

I think over the past year we've seen very clearly that people need yoga and yoga is about seeing the stories and the stress and the anxiety that is very real, but we make it way bigger than it is with what we tell ourselves ... in our mind. … Over the past year, our team has needed yoga, we've seen that people really need a way to deal with stress and anxiety and what-ifs, she added.

In an effort to continue providing space for that practice, Roupas said the online classes and additional space in the studio will stick around for quite a while.

Really that is the practice of yoga," she said. "It's about figuring out life as life is happening."

Thank you for being a subscriber! Its your support that keeps The Times-News going.

Elizabeth Pattman is the trending topics reporter for the Times-News in Burlington, covering business, COVID-19 and all things trending.Contact Elizabeth (she/her) at epattman@gannett.com. I'm also available on social media @EPattmanTN on Twitter or @burlingtontimesnews on Instagram.

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Sinn Fin hopes to use controversial voter database for Dublin byelection – The Irish Times

Posted: at 11:02 am

Senior Sinn Fin TD Eoin Broin has said he is hopeful the party will be able to use its Ab voter database for the upcoming Dublin Bay South byelection.

He said its a good system and it helps us win elections.

The database has been at the centre of controversy after reports that party members are encouraged to add information on voters including their perceived level of support for the party.

Sinn Fin has denied that it uses data-mining from social media to update the database.

The Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) has raised questions about the database and is engaging with Sinn Fin.

In recent weeks, party leader Mary Lou McDonald said that when the database was set up the party had a data compliance officer but not a data protection officer and it has since employed one.

Mr Broin was asked about the database by reporters on Tuesday and said he uses it during elections and when he is out canvassing.

Asked if the database will be used for the upcoming Dublin Bay South byelection he replied: I can see no reason why not, other than if there are any other issues which the Data Protection Commissioner asks us to address we will obviously have to address those because thats the appropriate course of action.

But I would be quite hopeful that well be able to use the system.

Its a good system. I dont believe it is in serious contravention of data protection regulations and it helps us win elections.

Asked if canvassers in the constituency will be able to mark the Ab system with whether households support Sinn Fin or other parties, he said: Thats what all political parties do with their canvass returns whether they keep them with paper on individual constituency databases or a facility like ours.

So well do what weve always done in elections. But again, I just want to emphasise, if the DPC has any other concerns, we will respond to those fully and as quickly as is required.

Sinn Fin has yet to announce a candidate for the byelection. Party leader Mary Lou McDonald confirmed in recent weeks that Sinn Fin had appointment a data protection officer after its engagement with the DPC.

It previously had a data compliance officer. The party is also now carrying out a data protection risk assessment.

Mr Broin had previously said that he believed the party was complaint with data protection regulations though he said that he also noted that if the DPC raised issues it would respond immediately.

On Tuesday he said: The issue of the data protection officer and the audit, they were serious oversights.

The Data Protection Commissioner has brought them to our attention and weve rectified them. And keep in mind were continuing to engage with the DPC and if she brings other matters to our attention well address that.

He insisted that Sinn Fin didnt think it was above the law, adding: We feel that the core of the system is compliant.

Mr Broin said that the central contention that some people are making... that we have been taking information surreptitiously from social media sources, uploading it onto an online system... isnt true.

He said that a party training manual that suggested this is what was happening is really, really badly worded.

Asked how he knew people were not doing this, given that the training manual told them to do it Mr Broin said: because the system doesnt allow it.

I use the system during elections. I was the director of election for Mark Ward during the byelection. I know what the system can do and cant do.

And I firmly believe, when the Data Protection Commissioner concludes her work, that the core allegations being made against our party will be proven to be not the case because I know its not possible in the system.

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Dogs at polling stations are the real stars of the Scottish Parliament election – The National

Posted: at 11:02 am

IT'S the election tradition that unites voters from all parties and none dogs at polling stations.

Social medial users taking their pets to the polls have been uploading cute snaps for years using the hashtag #dogsatpollingstations and 2021 is no exception.

Candidates also got in on the act in what's become a much-loved part of election day for many of us.

Cartoonist Neil Slorance was out with his family dog Molly.

While Highlands and Islands independent candidate Andy Wightman shared this snap of a black and white pal.

Border terrier Roky Boyd cut a dash in a Saltire scarf.

And there was no guessing who this Musselburgh pupper was pulling for.

Meanwhile, Ruth Davidson took her Conservative canine Wilson out with her.

Humza Yousaf of the SNP didn't have a dog of his own with him, but he managed to borrow one and get in on the action anyway.

And Labour's Monica Lennon, seeking votes in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse,got to hang out with German Shepherd Loki.

Of course, this is no ordinary election and there are more postal voters than ever before.

With that in mind, Amy Callaghan MP came up with a plan to get the pups of postal voters involved.

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Dodie on growing up on YouTube and her new album Build a Problem: I didnt have any boundaries – iNews

Posted: at 11:02 am

Dodie is a very modern kind of famous: a megastar to some, a nobody to others. The singer-songwriter first began uploading her music to YouTube in 2011 when she was 16; her ukulele covers, short self-written songs tackling big, taboo topics, everyday messing about and easy familiarity had Gen Z subscribing in their droves.

On YouTube, where she goes by doddleoddle, 1.95 million people subscribe to her channel. On Instagram, she has 1.1 million followers. Looking through celebrity accounts often feels like your eye is up against a grimy keyhole through which you can see an oasis of privilege and beauty, but younger stars who have grown up filming their every move tend to have accounts that are an extension of themselves.

Dodie has used her platform to come out as bisexual (in song), share bouts of poor mental health, answer fans questions some searingly personal and generally lark about. But having been so open for a decade I just didnt have any boundaries she is starting to reckon with what she wants to keep private, for herself.

Your guide to what to watch next - no spoilers, we promise

Dodie whose full name is Dorothy Clarke grew up just outside London and now lives with two musicians in a flat in west London. She began experimenting with YouTube with a friend, and her early songs are either quiet and emotional or bedroom beats finding silliness in the mundane a 40-second track on her first EP is called I have a hole in my tooth (and the dentist is closed).

As she has grown older, dealing with the lineation between the self and the screen has become an ongoing project. Aged 25 when she wrote her first album Build a Problem, which is out on Friday, she was dealing with a lot: family issues, her diagnosis of dissociative disorder (an unsettling condition that leaves you feeling not quite present in your body) and just being a young woman finding her way in the world.

She worried she had shared too much of herself and wasnt sure what was left behind. She worried about her trauma being turned into something someone might mindlessly whistle as they walk down a hallway. Now, she says, when we meet over video chat, she has let it go.

Having sat on it for a while, Ive realised that Im further away from where I was when I wrote it. Thats a bit of protection.

She is 26 now; she geared herself up for release early this year, but the album was pushed back, then pushed back again, by vinyl manufacturing delays. It was tough.

I felt like I couldnt really move on from that time. It ties me to the past when Im so used to trying to give something love and blowing it away.

Build a Problem is a gorgeous album. Full of sweeping orchestral arrangements and intimately sung confessions, in places it feels almost primal. It is staggeringly accomplished for a woman who has previously been thought of as a YouTuber with a ukelele.

Pizzicato strings meld with swooning violins to create a kind of distant storm effect, and deep harmonies contrast with Dodies quiet, conversational vocals.

She wrote and conducted the string sections herself sometimes through tears, as the sheer magnitude of what was coming together in front of her was overwhelming.

That was one of those moments in life where I was like, Damn, Im on the right path here. Like, I dont know how this happened but Im so glad and grateful that I managed to get here, because this is exactly what I want to be doing.

It is easy to get wrapped up in adoration when you receive it daily endless social media likes and a million-strong community with its own in-jokes and buzzwords built around you just being you. We all get an addictive dopamine hit every time someone interacts with us online; imagine receiving admiring messages from millions of people you dont know.

In Taylor Swifts Netflix documentary Miss Americana, she talks about how she measured her self-worth in terms of applause and adoration and how ultimately that became a very unhealthy way to live. It is something to which Dodie can relate.

So much of my mental health is entwined with what people think of me, she says. And thats not great when that number [of people] is so big. And I think, with every number comes everyones life and baggage and opinion. Its just impossible to carry. Ive had to sort of ignore that for a while and work on myself.

A lot of Build a Problem delves deep into her psyche via tiny, seemingly inconsequential moments. Hate Myself unravels an argument over nothing that spirals into something major. One folds their arms, the other tries to fill the silences and makes things worse. A night out gone wrong, and her constant tripping up of her own relationships are frequent subjects: she was going through a bit of a crisis when she wrote it.

There is a devastating trio of tracks in the middle of the record two instrumentals named after punctuation marks that sandwich a song called Four Tequilas Down, on which she sings hauntingly about drinking too much and making bad and hurtful choices in her relationships. She feels particularly nervous about sharing it now.

Talking about it, she explains, gives her a rumble of apprehension. That is the danger of being a songwriter in 2021: you want to explore a moment in your life, then everyone who hears the song wants to dissect it, too.

Sometimes, it feels like my life is looked at through a magnifying glass, she says.

I dont think I want to look at it like that: I just want to present the songs and walk on by.

It all sounds very serious and heavy, but Dodie has a lightness to her that finds the absurd in her trauma. Never seeming to be watching herself or worrying about what her hair is doing, she has a light, conspiratorial air that I imagine turns most acquaintances into confidantes with little effort, like the girl you meet in the toilets a few drinks in, who instantly becomes your bestfriend.

Her songs arent all doom. In fact, many are upbeat (not least the irresistibly catchy single Hate Myself) and lyrics are littered with jokes and asides. She is someone who is seeking out the weirdness in life after our call, she says, she is going to make a video where she and her housemates harmonise with their electric toothbrushes.

The next round of Dodie songs might be stressful to release in a very different way. After a long year of lockdown, there is one topic stalking her current work: God, all my songs now are so horny! Theyre all about wanking or people I miss, touchy-feelystuff. Im clearly just very lonely, because its coming out subconsciously in my writing. You can always tell what is bubbling in your subconscious, because it will just sort of rumble up in your dreams and your songs.

She likens writing in lockdown to the delightful image of a cat shitting: you have to let it happen naturally. If you focus too closely on it, it just wont go.

Although Build a Problem has built its own problems in Dodies mind, it is fulfilling in a way that her earlier works havent quite been. She mentions that she wishes she could have called this album Human, a title she already used on her last EP, in 2019, an accomplished album that felt quite safe both musically and thematically.

I think this is the first time Im really going to put something out there and be like: this is me. It feels truly like, me, and my life and my music.

The problems may not all have been solved lockdown has been tough to weather, mentally and she may still have work to do on herself and her relationships, but when I ask whether shes happy, she thinks for a moment and says: Right now, Ill say yes. I feel very proud of myself. And Im happy with who I am. But then ask me again in two days and Ill be like, oh goddammit!

If she is looking for a marker of normality, I think she might have just found it.

Build a Problem is released on Friday

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