With "Scanner Darkly" vibes, folks at Georgia Tech have apparently created software that can confuse AI facial-recognition, while maintaining good image quality. They are calling the system "Chameleon" for the way it obfuscates identities.

www.livescience.com/technology/a...

Icebreaker, by @odpomery.bsky.social

Does your phone feel like a vortex? It turns out that it might actually contain one. A new study from the University of Buffalo posits that "evidence of primordial black holes may be hiding in planets, or even everyday objects here on Earth."

www.buffalo.edu/news/release...

I ordered a book from the 1930s about Antarctica. When it arrived, I opened it, and all of these small papers fell out. Someone back then was clipping ads for home objects. They wrote indecipherable words beside each photo, making the collection even more personal and mysterious.

Public library energy is the best energy. Like here is all the knowledge we could find, it's been meticulously organized and vetted and it will cost you nothing today, welcome to the absolute pinnacle of human civic evolution, feel free to pull up any bean bag chair you like

In the spirit of the old days / new days of social media, I wrote a *completely-non-political-escapist-mainly-rooted-in-the-17th-century* story for the New Yorker last week. Enjoy! www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

AI agents like ChatGPT are designed to communicate with human beings in our own languages. But how should they communicate with one another? Researchers propose an artificial language, called "Droidspeak," that can "accelerate inter-agent communication" by up to 2.78 times.

arxiv.org/pdf/2411.02820

In 2009, I wrote a long feature in @newyorker.com about a deployment in Iraq that would help shape Pete Hegseth's view of the rules of engagement, a core military issue. He makes a cameo in it, if you're curious to see where his views were then:

www.newyorker.com/magazine/200...

Hello, Bluesky...