#to be clear I think the process of refining the prompt can be quite difficult too and can require a lot of time and effort as well

[holdyourcolour]

Some people say that worrying about ai generated art replacing other forms of art is an unfounded concern… an understandable take, and it will never ACTUALLY replace art made by a person, I think. But in terms of the industry? Competing with an AI-generator for certain types of work feels like it has the potential to be devastating. As algorithms get refined, more accurate, and more mature in its results… would companies pay an expensive artist? But it also depends on how much someone would charge for coming up with the prompt and refining it to get your ai-generated result, right? How much work and time is required to get something that looks really good? Something I honestly wonder about as this matures

[catpella]

FFXIV Write #4: Unqualified Success

Prompt: clinch

to settle (a matter) decisively

Words: 1670

Valle’s second carbuncle summoning is also a victory.

Part of the duties of Mealvaan's Gate was to oversee the ships that came in and out, carrying the cargo that served as the lifeblood of the city. The Arcanists' Guild was involved in this process because some of the arcanists acted as assessors, inspecting cargo to determine if it was normal items that might pass through the port of Limsa Lominsa on any given day, anything ranging from fabrics to spices to fine crafts from other nations, or if ships carried contraband such as illegal herbs and drugs.

There were arcanists who grumbled about assessor duty, preferring other aspects of Guild life, such as research, or courses, or going into the wild and being adventurers. Valle Serreta found she and Equinox were rather good at it and didn't get harassed in the same way some inspectors did, that she rather enjoyed assessor work, and she never dramatically grumbled when she was assigned to it or came up with ways to get out of it. She'd noticed that she'd been assigned to it more often lately and suspected it was some combination of those factors that was causing it.

It wasn't as though she was a full-time assessor, though; she still had time to work on the academic studies she was interested in, including one study that had arisen out of her assessor work. The very thing they were putting to the test today, in fact.

The standard emerald carbuncle summoning array was a well-rounded design, one that  contained tested and guaranteed protocols for the major Guild uses. When it came to cargo detection, the background equations and calculations had remained fairly static for quite some time. There was a learning capability built into them - a carbuncle needed to be trained to learn new types of contraband to find it - but that just increased the range of what they could detect, it didn't adjust the common sensors and detection array at all.  

Valle had heard that a few arcanists here and there had modified the sensors in places, but when she'd asked around, she'd found most of those had been done by senior arcanists and not by ones who were as new in their education as she was. And most of them had been doing it as part of their specialized levels of research - such as Mistress Ingolia training hers to track aetherial trails, which she'd let Valle peek at for a bit just to see what advanced.

Valle hadn't gone totally blind into this. She'd shown her planned equations and designs to X'erys, who had read over them with grave concentration and then said, "They're something, Valle. I never would have thought of this. I think I see it." Then she'd shown them to Synnove Greywolfe, a senior arcanist who had done innovative designwork on her own carbuncles, to see if she was going to be told she was on the wrong track. What she got was, "Test it and see."

Armed with that, she'd finished the design, coded it into the grimoire, acquired a topaz stone from the guild's stores to use as the summoning foci and, and prepared for this trial. When it was all done, she'd spoken to Mistress Ingolia and arranged for a cargo inspection trial.

Now she stood in the training ring, rolling the summoning topaz stone in her hands, hoping she'd gotten it all right. Because this was so experimental, she hadn't wanted to use one of the stocks of good topaz they distributed for summoning. There had been a few stones in the Guild's stores that were smaller, or needed to be shaped differently to deal with flaws in the stone, and so when Valle had talked to the quartermaster she'd requested one of them. It hummed with aether in her hands like it was purring, waiting to be used for this.

The training ring was full of cargo boxes, and she'd been told that there were fewer than 25% of them containing contraband. Mistress Ingolia was overseeing the actual test and for some reason Valle had assumed it would be her alone watching this test, but no. Several arcanists ringed the outside, ready to watch and see what happened. She had an audience for this. Well, it was a test of a new, experimental adjustment...word must have spread. So there was a crowd. Some of the faces were at least friendly ones who she knew were rooting for her, others were just there to watch and didn't seem invested one way or another.

"You may begin the summoning," Mistress Ingolia intoned.

Valle closed her eyes, rolled the stone again, rooted her feet in the ring, in the smell of the wood, imagined the stone below that, took a breath, touched quill to grimoire, and began the summoning cant. She thought of the rich color of topaz, she thought of how she had made these equations so the carbuncle had the clever nose for seeking items as a whittret, she thought of how earth was material and solid and how to sort through material one needed to know what a thing was as surely as stone knew itself.

A topaz carbuncle burst into the world for the first time. Only...slightly different. The body was more slender and less long than a standard carbuncle, somewhere between half- and full-size compared to the normal model and the snout protruding forward somewhat more. It appeared otherwise to be a fully functional carbuncle and made a delightful dance as it rushed up to her, transmitting eagerness by hop-dancing around her heels.

A muted clamor immediately began to echo through the hall, arcanists talking to each other mostly in low tones. Valle heard, - 'looks wrong donnit' and 'awful small for a 'buncle' and 'whats wit its mouth' - among other things. She tried to tune it out as she bent down to inspect the carbuncle, running her hand over it to see if the equations and arrays were right, pausing at the head - yes, there they were, in that elongated snout.

"Arrays and sensors functional," she reported, standing up to face Mistress Ingolia, who seemed impassive. "May I begin the trial?"

"Go ahead," the Elezen said. Unlike the other arcanists, she was showing no signs of any concern over the strange appearance of the carbuncle, for which Valle was glad. "You have 10 minutes to assess the cargo and determine what contains contraband."

"Do we know what we're looking for?" she asked.

"No. Assume this is a ship with Ul'dahn flag and you have no manifest."

The most difficult type of exercise, no hope of knowing what should be there and thus the chance to mess up some things that scented somewhat alike - some herbs that could be used as medicines that smelled like some that were only used as poisons  -  which would ding them points. She'd have to hope her loaded library of recognition would be enough. "I understand," she said.

"And...begin!"

Immediately Valle moved towards the nearest stack of boxes, coaxing the carbuncle and watching as it sniffed its nose and began to move...

And after only one round of the arena, with the topaz carbuncle having climbed on three boxes to get better scents and in one cases slipping between a stack of crates in a way Valle couldn't tell if was due to its smaller size or if she'd accidentally copied in something physics-breaking from someone else's grimoire (which had not been her intention!), they had found 4 suspicious crates of 50.

"Four," she said.

Mistress Ingolia checked her timepiece. "You have four minutes remaining if you wish to check again."

That made it sound like she'd missed some. Briefly, she considered summoning Equinox to check and say she was verifying old vs new protocols but...no she trusted the array matrix. "I'm sure. I trust my carbuncle."

"You pass. Four crates. What was in them?"

"Somnus, an invasive species of snail, and seed packets of some type that I assume weren't reported."

"Correct," the Elezen said, and to Valle's surprise she did hear clear pride in her tone.

The thrill of victory suffused her, making her feel flushed and joyful.

Mistress Thubyrgeim stepped past Mistress Ingolia. "Come see me. Bring the grimoire and the carbuncle."

The murmuring from the audience grew louder. Everyone knew Thubyrgeim had basically become the Guildsmistress in the frequent absences in that of the man on paper. If she wanted to see Valle  - still a student and not yet a full journeywoman - what did that say? What did that mean? Was she in trouble?

Valle beckoned the carbuncle rather than desummoning it, feeling it crawl her her leg, but instead of settling in her arms, this one seemed happy to wind up her body and then to crawl up to wrap around her to hang along her neck and shoulders like a stole made of soft fur. Or, in this case, warm aether. She tried to let the sensation comfort her as she carried her grimoire to the acting-Guildmistress' office, fear beginning to curdle in her belly...

And an hour later, she came flying out the office and to the student lounge on the third floor of the Gate. There were a number of people in there, all occupied but most looking up when Valle came in.

"Did she chew you out?" asked R'awynde.

"Did she say you can't do assessor duty anymore?" X'erys asked.

"Are you still in the Guild?" was Gilded Feather's contribution.

"Yes, I'm still in the Guild. I'm likely on more assessor duty. I'm not in trouble, I'm not chewed out, she loved my carbuncle, she thinks it's clinched my journeyman's research project," Valle rattled off. "It's atypical in design but it had successful practical results and she thinks I can refine it further to maybe help improve future designs!"

"Let's take a look at how you did it, then," Feather demanded, pointing at her grimoire.

"Let's take Valle out to eat first, she must be starving," X'erys said.

And so they went out to celebrate.

[orliando]

8 Facts - Death Knight Edition

Or- A Sampling of Orli’s Head-Canons

I did this prompt a while ago for @romariquev and liked it so I thought why not temper it for my precious baby DK.  While @larsaramintore is my oldest WoW OC (and certainly has a very clear space in my heart), Orli is easily my favorite for a lot of reasons.  Originally I was hesitant to RP him as a DK because the practicalities of it can seem somewhat daunting, but now it’s very clearly what makes him the most complicated and unique of my characters.  Here is a little bit of his own personal lore and an interpretation of how I play him and his unique state of being.  There is a lot of discussion and discrepancy out there on how to properly RP a death knight, so understand this is just my take.  I am always open to civil and constructive discussion on the subject though, so if you have questions or comments, please feel free to share them.

1.  The Physical

Though the process of becoming lichborne does change the body (and mind) significantly, most death knights retain an appearance fairly close to what they had when living.  Orli is somewhat frozen in visage of a younger version of himself.  The enchantment is different to that of a forsaken and halts any forms of decay, so to the casual glance he may still look fairly normal.  Death knights do have a distinct aura about them though, so if come within a closer range, you will become keenly aware that he is different.  Most describe the feeling to be much like the sensation of chills that you get when a spirit has entered the room, or the feeling that someone has “just walked over your grave.”

Physically his body isn’t cold like a master of frost might be, but he is devoid of any internal warmth as he lacks a functioning circulatory system, though he would feel cooler to the touch than a normal body of about 98 degrees.  Levyn likens laying against him to feeling “like the cool side of the pillow.”  His breath is cool and his skin is paler than that of an elf who’s spent much time in the sun, though not quite ghostly white.  

Orli exists in somewhat of a numbed state, where much of what he experiences is muted or hushed.  As an engineered weapon of destruction, the senses that he relies on for attack and defense (sight, sound) are heightened, leaving his remaining senses (Including touch) dulled.  Since he doesn’t experience normal reactions to stimulation such as touch and pain, he quite often engages in thrill seeking behaviors to counteract the effect.  This is the specific reason that fighting and fucking are his two favorite activities and he’ll often engage in both even when the consequences might be severe for him.  

2. The Emotional

There is a considerable amount of variance in how most death knights are played, particularly in relation to how their mental state is effected postmortem.  My opinion on the subject is that it can and should vary as greatly in range as the human response to PTSD is.  Some will remain very cold and hardened, some will have varying degrees of residual anger and hostility, and some will even begin to heal emotionally over time. Orli has been through a range of reactions that began with a period of blind rage and withdrawal from society and has now evolved to the point where he is mostly functional as a normal elf.  When he was first turned and subsequently released, his surviving brothers and good friend Lars took to the task of attempting to return him to some semblance of his former self.  The process actually took a few years, but eventually (and after several long stints of disappearing into a black out rage to quell the blood lust) he began to find a bit of balance. Although he struggles still with the paradox of being a former paladin who is now obliged to cause damage and destruction as a matter of course, he is at least now a rational controlled personality capable of a full range of emotions.  He carries with him an emotional shroud similar to chronic depression, but despite of that fact he does find joy and love in the world.  There are always those that argue that death knights are incapable of these lighter emotions, but as they possess free will and the intelligence of their former lives, it seems a very limited interpretation to think that they won’t continue to be complex emotionally. 

3.  The Practical

Orli no longer needs to perform sustaining activities such as eating, drinking, and sleeping.  Undeath is an enchantment and his body will continue to function without the aid of such earthly means of sustenance.  Typically he will only sleep when he is with Levyn, and as such he is prone to going several days at a time without if the two are not together.  

While he CAN eat, he typically does not, mostly because he no longer derives any real pleasure from the act as it is useless to him.  He actually lacks a sense of smell (and the accompanying sense of taste) but this is from traumatic brain injury sustained during one (or several) of his many encounters in the brawling arena and not necessarily a symptom of undeath.  He does still drink alcohol though (and frequently to excess) because he can still feel the effects from most intoxicants even though they might be somewhat lessened.

Orli is a blood DK, which means that he specifically has refined powers of regeneration.  If and when he does get injured, he has the ability to heal himself over time. Most normal methods of healing will either be ineffective or actually harmful to a death knight, though some will say that shadow healing can be of some benefit.  If he is grievously injured, he will need to inflict pain or draw energy from another living soul in order to do it, which is something he does try to avoid at all costs.  

4.  What Remains of the Living

Similar to the variance of thoughts on emotional state are the ideas on whether or not a death knight retains much or anything of their former selves.  Several DKs will claim full or partial amnesia of the events that filled their lives before they were turned.  Originally Orli did suffer with fairly severe amnesia to the point that it was several months before he could fully recognize his two older brothers without prompting.  Eventually though, most of his memory recovered and he now has very few issues.  His short term memory is still fairly poor, though that can also be attributed to the numerous knocks in the head that he’s endured over the recent years.

When confronted about the circumstances surrounding his turning, including the actually physical process, Orli will claim full amnesia of the event.  It’s a topic he fights to avoid at all costs and usually will simply dismiss it quickly as having no recollection of what occurred.  This statement however is actually a lie, and one he’s only ever admitted to his current husband, Levyn.  He does recall his captivity, death, and subsequent rebirth quite vividly and still frequently has nightmares about it, which is another reason that he often avoids sleeping.

5.  His Love Affair with the Light

Like many of his kind (and the rest of the men in his family), Orlando was originally a paladin.  Though he wasn’t the particularly devoutly religious kind, he was a dutiful follower of the Light and a passionate soldier.  If it hadn’t been for his brothers’ vigilance and persistence with him after his death, he may have joined the ranks of former-paladins-turned-death-knights who sought out their own ends rather than continue on as such a grievous perversion.

Continuing on with his existence after the fact has come with its share of challenges, and reconciling the constant need to inflict suffering while essentially still being lawfully aligned is one of the hardest for him.  Orli is still very much drawn to the Light even though it has the potential to be fatally damaging to him, so much so that he has actually been married to 2 priests.  His current husband is acutely aware of the conflict that their relationship presents simply by existing, and although the love is very strong between them, it is constant struggle to find balance.

Holy Light is also one of the few things that can cause Orli significant damage that is difficult for him to self-heal.  It has a burn-like effect and will sear the undead flesh and eventually anything beneath it.  As a regenerative death knight, it is one of the few things that will cause lasting scars on his body, and he has a few that are easily visible.  One is scarring on his jaw and neck from an incident in which his brother had to subdue him with Light and the other is a brand and hand-print that was intentionally given to him by his husband.

6.  The Generational Divide

Orli is a Third Generation DK, so he was risen by Arthas during his reign as the Lich King.  Although they are certainly more powerful in the presence of their rune weapons, 3rd Gen Dks are not necessarily bound to them.  Orli does have a halberd that serves as his runic weapon, and he is frequently (if not always) near it, though he can and will fight without it.  Typically he will only carry the stave if he is in full armor and expecting to be in battle, though it’s bond to him is constantly palpable to him.  Most of the fighting he does at present is actually bare-knuckle boxing, and although he is weaker without the runes, he is still very strong.

7.  Bloodlust

As a Third Generation DK, Orli is bound by the need to inflict suffering onto others in order to satisfy the dark calling (something Orli and his familiars refer to as blood lust) .  If he ignores the pull, he will suffer from symptoms that are much like mana or drug addiction, though they can potentially increase to much greater effect than either.  In order to sate the lust, he has to inflict pain on others, and the degree of pain that he inflicts will correlate to the degree that his lust is sated.  For Orli, the symptoms of the addiction are frequently more mental than physical, although there is a degree of physical pain that grows in association with the increasing lust.

Typically Orli will turn to fist fighting first in attempt to satisfy the calling, though depending on how long he’s waited and allowed it to grow, the action may not be sufficient.  In addition to his sensory deprivation, the constant guilt also weighs heavily into his masochistic tendencies and he will often actually seek to lose a fight just to endure the personal damage from it.  If the fighting doesn’t satisfy his lust, he will eventually be forced to take a life completely, and the longer he waits, the less control he will have over the physical action of it.  

Before his engagement to Levyn, Orli remained reluctant to fully address his dark calling and had a particularly bad habit of waiting until the blood lust grew so strong that it would overtake his mind and essentially send him into blackout rage in which he would indiscriminately kill.  It was during one of these episodes that he returned home to his then wife, viciously beat and eventually murdered her, a fact that he is currently aware of although he his memory of the event is hazy.  

8.  His Mysterious Companions

When Orli finally realized that he could no longer ignore the control that his blood lust has over him, he left to sequester himself in isolation for a rather lengthy period of time in order to gain some kind of control over it.  What he managed to do was fracture it outside of his unconscious brain and create a method of visually keeping tabs on what he now refers to as his Val’kyr, a creation that is very palpable, always in his presence, but appears only to him.

When Orli is fully sated, the visage will appear as a small, albino mouse which usually finds her way into his pocket or will ride on his shoulder.  If he ever seems to be looking specifically at nothing, especially in the immediately surrounding area, he is usually communicating with her.  As the calling grows, so does his companion, and she will take the form of several different creatures throughout the process.  A white raven and albino python are also frequent visitors and they begin to signal a more urgent need to slake his lust.  

Eventually the form of a full Val’kyr will appear to him, but usually only in the final moments of a kill when she has the greatest power over him.  If he manages to ignore the others to the point of summoning her, she will begin to whisper insidious doubts and painful realizations into his ear until he is eventually driven mad by her presence.  Fortunately though, it has been Levyn’s presence in his life that forced a recognition of the severity of his condition and has caused him to pay much closer attention to the warnings before he can no longer heed them.

[madisonalvarez1992]

Quick Home Remedy For Bacterial Vaginosis Startling Ideas

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Bacterial Vaginosis Vs Herpes

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Bacterial Vaginosis Cure Baking Soda

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[karderseals1990]

Bacterial Vaginosis Discharge Green Astonishing Diy Ideas

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Bacterial Vaginosis Infection Remedy

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Bacterial Vaginosis Smell Reddit

There are certain risks associated with an ear syringe.Fight it the first three months of your everyday life, practice relaxation techniques regularly to counteract the infection.Vaginosis can be serious such as yeast infection.This often causes an overgrowth of bad body odor and white discharge that may take it for as little as a balancing agent of the most probable causes of BV.In addition, anyone wanting to know about the BV, and seek to get rid of permanently.

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[thesffcorner]

Dishonored Retrospective Part 5: DLC Changes and the Knife of Dunwall

The first four parts of this retrospective covered the base game. Part 5 will look at the DLC, specifically its changes in the first installment, the Knife of Dunwall. 

Dishonored got two story expansions: The Knife of Dunwall was the first, followed by the Brigmore Witches. Both are set in Dunwall, and in both you play as the assassin Daud.

The expansion starts a lot of trends and improvements that become staples of the latter games, like the villains, the inclusion of some sort of gang conflict, the introduction of corrupt/black bonecharms and favours/contracts.

The first and most notable one is that we no longer have a silent protagonist. I like this change a lot, not least because it would have been incredibly weird to have Daud voiced in the original and not in the expansion. Michael Madsen reprises his role and he’s even better in this DLC; he gets more lines and more time to shine and develop Daud’s voice and character.

There is a lot of debate surrounding voiced vs silent protagonists, but personally I prefer the latter. It helps cement the character’s personality, and actually allows for dialogue and real interaction. Instead of pressing 1 of two prompts in response to someone just standing in front of you and talking at you, you can have an actual ‘scene’ with dialogue and personality and ‘gasp’ character development.

The change from Corvo to Daud marks another improvement. While you technically can still play as Corvo in Dishonored 2, it’s clear that Emily is the intended protagonist, which makes each instalment have a different lead through which we experience the world and story.

Speaking of, let’s quickly go over that!

Story:

The Knife of Dunwall (KoD) takes place right after Jessamine’s murder. Daud is already having second thoughts, not helped by a visit from the Outsider who mentions the name Delilah. He starts trying to figure out who or what Delilah is, and this quest takes him from the bowels of the ports to the glittering streets of the Financial District.

Brigmore Witches (BW) takes place directly after and sees Daud go on the offensive, for his final confrontation with Delilah, now that he knows who and what she is.

Unlike the original, the story here is more of a mystery rather than a revenge, which I really like. Daud has already done the deed; not only has he killed Jessamine, he has had an entire lifetime of killing that he can’t easily (or at all) make up for. So figuring out who Delilah is and how she ties in with Hiram Burrows and Jessamine isn’t just for the player’s convenience of having a plot; it also literary is about saving Daud’s soul, whether you chose to play a redemptive or destructive path.

Gameplay:

The chaos system is the same from the previous game, but the extremes have slightly changed. In the original, doing a non-lethal playthrough earned you an achievement called Clean Hands, whereas here it’s Cleaner Hands. It’s fitting, both because Daud is after all, as assassin, but also because from what I know you can’t do an entirely non-lethal playthorugh.

On the flip-side, high chaos still allows you to destroy everyone and anything, and gives you a different ending. I don’t know how different the ending is, since I’ve never played on high chaos, but I do know that the ending is already hard on low chaos so I don’t need or want an extra challenge.

In terms of gameplay, there are a lot of small changes that I found really improved the experience. First off, Daud has more weapons that are non-lethal. He has his chokedust, and his electric bolts, and his shock mines, which are ironically, more options than what Corvo had. Additionally he doesn’t have a crossbow; he has an Assassin’s Creed style launcher in his sleeve.

Daud, like Corvo is marked, but his abilities are slightly different. His Void Gaze combines Corvo’s Dark Vision and the heart, highlighting both enemies and runes; Blink teleports Daud in a slightly different way, by slowing time; and Summon Assassins which again, similarly to an ability in Assassin’s Creed summons Assassin helpers.

Like Corvo, Daud also can upgrade his abilities with runes and bonecharms, except this is the first time the developers include corrupt and black bonecharms. These give advantages but also have downsides, like wasting more mana or depleting health or generally having some downside that the player has to balance out. I personally don’t find bonecharms that useful outside of a collector standpoint, so I’ve never had an issue with the balancing, but I do think it’s a neat addition, especially on higher difficulties.  

As for the enemies, there are quite a few new ones. For starters KoD doesn’t have any Wheepers, but instead there are Overseers, City Watch and most importantly a new gang called the Hatters. We’ll talk more about both of these when we get to characters.

In BW, Wheepers make a return, along with more Overseers and City Watch, as well as two new group which I absolutely adore, because as I said in my Dishonored post, this is the first time we get female enemies! The two groups are the Hatters’ rival gang the Dead Eels, and Delilah’s coven of Witches.

Characters:

Daud is our protagonist, and he is a more interesting presence than Corvo, if only because he actually talks. He makes quite a few jokes too; my favorite is him telling two of his assassins who want to betray him to the Officers that he’ll come quietly.

Daud’s main conflict that follows him through both expansions, is his misgivings on killing Jessamine. He starts questioning the life he has lead and wondering how much of what he has done has been his own choice and how much has been subtly guided by the Outsider. There is a lot of debate about whether his decision to go after Delilah and stopping her from taking over Emily is really altruistic or motivated by a selfish, shallow need to ‘redeem himself’, and either way you land, the fact that there is this much discussion in the first place speaks of good writing. While there is some question of how ‘good’ Corvo is, you can actually play him entirely non-lethally and it’s easier to get on board with a wrongfully accused character than a man who has spent a good 30 years of his life killing. But I like that a lot about Daud, and the questions that he himself raises about faith and responsibility and regret are all fascinating themes that are way more interesting than anything raised in the base game.

Other important characters are: Delilah, Billie Lurk, Lizzy Stride, Barister Timsh, Thalia Timsh, Burndry Rothwild, Nurse Trimble, and the Old Geezer.

Level Breakdown:

The Knife of Dunwall has three levels, while the Brigmore Witches has four. Like before, we have a mix of city levels and single location levels, and some of these, like the first level of KoD and the third level in BW are on par with Flooded District in length.

The game starts with a short cut-scene and a visit to the Void. The Outsider is not happy with Daud; it’s clear whatever affection or relationship the two have had has long since ended, and it’s especially funny as the Outsider is about to mark Corvo to essentially replace Daud.

There is no Hound Pits Pub-like area where Daud can relax and shop, so you start each level with an upgrade screen. This is where we are introduced to Favors, a concept that gets even further developed with the Black Markets and Contracts in the sequel.

Favors are small things that Daud can pay for to make the game slightly easier or open up different paths of playing, such as purchasing extra tanks of whale oil to be put in a specific location or having a bonecharm hidden somewhere in the level. They are useful and can sometimes be done without, but sometimes, especially on medium chaos they make the job a lot easier.

A Captain of Industry:

The first level sees Daud breaking into the Rothwild Processing Plant and Refinery. The man who owns it, Rothwild is a ruthless businessman who is in the process of rather brutally crushing a workers strike in his factory. What Daud needs from Rothwild is actually information about his boat called Delilah.

The roofs outside the factory is where we first meet Billie Lurk, hands down the best character in this entire series. Billie is one of Daud’s assassins and point-woman, the best and smartest of all his Whalers. She is a snarky, no-nonsense person who will question Daud and banter with him during and in between missions.

For now, she informs Daud that punch cards are revoked because of the strike, making it difficult to get inside.

This is a good time to talk about the new enemy of this area: the Butchers. They are an imposing, lumbering yet fast gigantic enemies who kill you in a really gruesome way by burring their circular saws in your flesh. These enemies were horrifying the first time I played this level; their design is genuinely great, and makes for a fun contrast with Rothwild once you actually get to see him. The game sets you up to think he will likewise be a gigantic butcher, but instead is a skinny man who looks less intimidating than Piero.

Entering the Slaughterhouse isn’t easy and required you to acquire a punch card. This also potentially lets you see the prison where those who dared go on strike are held; again some rather gruesome imagery which at this point is par for the course for this world.

The Whale Butchers are like the regular Butcher’s jacked up cousin. They have a gigantic saw in the front and the engine of a tallboy in the back and are one hell of a monstrosity to fight. Best to avoid or bolt them. The Slaughterhouse itself is huge and contains a lot of interlocking rooms; it’s a perfect example of a single location level done right.  

There are several side-quests to be completed here, one of them being putting a whale out of its misery in the Refining Room where he is being slowly electrocuted and leaking oil and bodily liquids on the floor. This space is incredible and grim as hell; the Butchers, the sounds the whale makes, the enormity of the room, it’s all a brilliant piece of world building. It’s probably my favorite area in the whole DLC.

The rest of this level involves Daud exploring the Slaughterhouse and finding Rothwild involved in an argument with Abigail. Abigail is a union representative, sent to deliberately start the fire that was the strike to undermine Bundry. Her involvement in this level gives you a ton of options as to how you want to deal with anyone. It also presents you with an interesting choice.

If you decide to play non-lethally, you will be met with scorn and resistance from everyone you encounter, especially, at the start Billie. Here, Abigail mocks you for the decision not to do what she asks, which is essentially, not just killing Bundry, but also blowing up the Refinery along with every single Butcher that’s still trapped inside. Talk about overkill lady!

In return she offers to tell you about Delilah, but there is another way. You can knock her out and then take Rothwild to the very chair he has been using to abuse his workers and shock him until he talks. Then you can put him in a crate sent to the western part of the Isles and be on your marry way.

Well… sort of. Additional enemies appear as you exit, and if you avoid them, you get to experience Overseer’s music box. This was a weapon that appeared in the base game but wasn’t utilized much (other than the first level). Here it appears quite a lot; it dulls the assassins’ senses and makes it impossible for Daud to use his powers. A chokedust grenade will be enough of a distraction to let Billie escape the Overseers who have her trapped.

Eminent Domain:

With the information Daud got from either Rothwild or Abigail, you now know that the boat used to belong to Barister Timsh, a friend of Hiram Burrows who was Delilah’s lover. However recently he has been trying to get rid of the boat and a lot of other things, and learning that you are suddenly interested in Delilah, prompts his niece, Thalia to seek you out.

The level starts with you and Billie taking out some guards. Thalia is waiting for you on the other side of the wall of light, so you have to make your way there.

SHUT IT OFF. That’s the main advice I’ll give you, because if you don’t, there is no way to get back to the Waterfront, and you will essentially break the game. Do it and save yourself the frustration.

Thalia is waiting for you in a small square, harassed by a Hatter. This is where using Void Gaze really helps, because if you take out the Hatter immediately, you will be ambushed by two more who, if you’re not careful, will start a gang war.

Disposing of the Hatters lets you talk to Thalia. She will tell you that Timsh was so obsessed with Delilah, he rewrote his will to leave his entire estate to her. She wants you to kill him and replace the will which is maybe a problem if you’re playing Cleaner Hands.

Before you can worry about that though, there is the slight issue of getting into the Financial District. You need a key, and the key has been promptly stolen from the City Watch by the Hatters. This brings you into Hatter territory, where stealing the key from Chauncy is a lot harder than it sounds. Depending on your chaos level Chauncy will change location and getting to him can be tricky. Once you do manage it, you can enter the Financial District.

Since the assassins have been planning a hit on Timsh for a while, you have a scope location already set up where you can talk to Billie and stock up on weapons and gear. Before you do that, it’s good to save one of Timsh’ former ‘friends’ from some City Watch, since he gives you an alternative to killing Timsh. Essentially Timsh seized the friend’s property unlawfully, and he wants to repay the favour, using some forged documents and a bag of dead rats.

This is also the place where you can talk to the Outsider. Billie will make some snarky comments about your face while talking to, as Daud calls him “the black eyed bastard”, and now you can really go after Timsh.

Let’s talk about the way I did it. Blinking from the apartments across to Timsh’s fourth floor will land you right in front of the room with Delilah’s statue. Because Timsh wanders the house, there is a good chance he might be on this floor too. Knock him and the guards out, steal his key and replace his immunity document with a forgery.  Use Delilah’s statue to talk to her; this is your first interaction and she’s pretty great at self-aggrandizing.

Now all you have to do is take the will and dump the rats in the air duct in the basement. You can watch General Turnbull hilariously arrest Timsh and you are done my friend. Return to the sewers (though beware the Butchers who will appear as revenge for what you did to the Slaughterhouse).

I love this level. It’s a lot of weaving from building to building, carefully knocking out or avoiding enemies and some very entertaining scenes between Delilah and the Outsider. I like city levels the most because they are best at showing the world, and seeing the rich part of Dunwall was immensely entertaining. It adds another level to the world building we got in the base game. While I did love it there, most of the city levels were set at night and crawling with City Watch; it’s nice to see that Dunwall was still a functioning city while Corvo was out killing people.

The Surge:

And now, we get to the third and final level of the KoD. I won’t lie, the first time I played this level, I hated it. It’s very hard and it combines a lot of my least favorite things. It’s a single location level, that reuses a location (the Flooded District) and it’s a level full of enemies. For playing Cleaner Hands, this was a nightmare.

However, the plot here is good and it’s probably the best-known beat of the whole series, and it informs so much of what happens in the BW and the sequel games. So let’s start.

Billie Lurk informs you that the Overseers have taken over the Flooded District; someone has betrayed you and your base, and Daud’s first priority will be to find out who. You climb out of the chain and follow Corvo’s footsteps and get to see the massive number of Overseers. There are two main goals of this level; getting to Overseer Hume and freeing as many of the captured assassins as you can.

How you deal with the Overseers is a personal choice that I won’t even attempt to influence; I started out painstakingly taking them out one by one, until I figured out chokedust works really well to disorient groups and then either shoot or choke the Overseers while they are distracted. This goes double for Overseers who carry the music box, because they can only be attacked from the back.

You locate the assault plans in the house next to the makeshift platform and find out that Hume was tipped straight to your hideout. To take Hume out, it’s best to use the three story building directly opposite the hideout and use the open window. Once you take the letter he carries you can return to the roof and order your assassins to either kill or knock out the remaining Overseers.

And now we get to the moment. Billie reappears and informs Daud that the Overseer Hume moved too early; more Overseers should be on their way, but with Hume defeated it’s too late. Daud asks again how the Overseers knew where to find them and Billie admits to betraying you.

I love this moment. That Billie betrays Daud was unfortunately something that was spoiled for me, but I still thought it was a great beat. Billie has been your point woman the entire time, bouncing off ideas and plans in every level. To find out that she and Delilah wanted to kill you all this time is a big blow, especially because Billie doesn’t seem sorry to have done it. She explains that she thought Daud’s refusal to kill has made him weak and she was going to take his place. But seeing the change and his defeat of the Overseers convinces her that he isn’t and deserves better.

Delilah bamfs out, with a ridiculously over the top warning that she will “crush your cold heart and walk into your skin” and you get a choice; spare Billie’s life or kill her.

I said before that I didn’t like the DLC’s ending choice, and that’s in great part because of this one. There is a different weight to deciding Billie faith when you are Daud; she directly betrayed you, and if you died a lot in this level like I did then you have a lot of personal reasons to be angry with her. It’s a better motivated choice, and the weight of what decision you make, will really inform the way you interpret Daud’s character. Either he really is starting to change, and is sick of killing, or he is still just the same vindictive man he was before.

Another big debate is what type of relationship Daud has with Billie. The game leaves this open to interpretation, and honestly, I think it’s for the best. While I do lean a lot towards the fatherly, there is a case to be made that their attachment is romantic, but at the end of the day I think it’s irrelevant. They cared for each other, and being betrayed by someone like that will be a heavy blow, no matter how you interpret this attachment.

With KoD over we can go over to part 6 and the Brigmore Witches. 

part 4 < > part 6

[lucasalexanderhall-blog]

Cycles

My mind moves always with the revolving seasons. In Spring and Summer, my soul is elevated by the rising odours of the warm, soft earth. My thoughts rise and flutter with the birds whose superficial joy is mirrored by my human joy. The wind which in Winter bit is gentled by heat and caresses the limbs. My entire self is freed from the torturous prison of “comfort-thoughts,” and, in this mood, it becomes highly optimistic. My head seems to be lush and comfortable, like the rich glowing canopy of a summer oak. But the leaves begin to wither. The wind finds again its coolness, and every bit of my being rebels against what Fall portends. All my accumulated passion floods out, as if it wishes to stall the coming barenness. I am, at this time, ripe, as it were, and I find that in the Fall I am most creative, energized, gregarious, open, curious. My intellectual and artistic power finds it peak. And then the leaves fall—and I fall with them. In Winter I become a despicable beast. The jagged crags of skeletal trees’ forms finds a brother in my thoughts—both conform to icy gusts and the general frozenness. Driven indoors by this perpetual rudeness of weather, my mind, like my vision, is restricted by walls and ceilings—and my movement is hardened by floors. The lazy bit of my soul moves in a slow, terrible procession towards the crumbling castle of my vigor, and usurps. And then I become a despicable creature—low-minded, crude, stupid, insipid. I tire of Winter and of my weariness, and then the sun strikes us more directly, and the snow melts, and the streets run with water, and the ground begins to soften again, and again the odours rise . . . “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit,” Emerson wrote in “Nature”. (Emerson 552) But my spirit, it seems, always is clad in nature’s colors. In Spring and Summer, I am like Emerson—serene and noble and spirited. In Fall, I am like Whitman—wild and hungry and wide-eyed. And in Winter, I am like Poe—bitter and scornful and gloomy. Through a pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-aesthetic comparison of these three authors, I hope to illuminate these seasonal affects and their relative merits, and the things about each author that prompted me to associate them with those affects. As a somewhat idealistic young man, I am attracted to Emerson. There is something in his writing essentially noble. He has a sense of high-spiritedness that in the U.S., a nation which is, in principle, fundamentally democratic and thus tends to be wary of the kind of elitism Emerson seems to represent, is uncommon. In Emerson a sensitivity and an intellect, both of the highest degree, are united. This is indeed rare. And rarer still is his deployment of these powers in contemplation of the soul. In our age, an age in which serious talk about “the soul” has been almost entirely done away with, replaced with talk about “the mind” and “the brain” as the harbors of our identity, there is something refreshing about the earnestness with which Emerson addresses the soul. In “Nature”, he divides reality into “Nature”, i.e., everything that is not human and “the Soul”, i.e. humans or some fundamental part of them. He adds to this the minor category “Art”, which he takes to be syntheses of Soul and Nature—“a house, a canal, a statue, a picture.” This intellectual trinity, which Emerson takes to constitute all, is elegant and beautiful, but it also seems to reek of hoity-toitiness and naivete: therein lies both the charm and fatal flaw of Emerson—that his expositions are simultaneously clear, precise, straightforward, as well as ambiguous, vague, and all-over-the-place. He is a writer who both illuminates and obscures experience. He illuminates it by presenting his reader with a flood of passionate insight. He obscures by drowning his reader in that flood. In the Spring, it is quotes like this from “Nature” that I love to nibble on, given that, as Winter thaws and Nature unfurls its tapestry of life, I am apt to turn away from my long, cold, modernist-esque considerations of various people and towards more primal notions: "As when the summer comes from the south the snow-banks melt and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits and the song which enchants it; it shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise discourse, and heroic acts, around its way, until evil is no more seen." This is precisely the spirit pulsing through me as nature shakes off its white rust. The snow-banks here can be taken as metaphors for the accumulated inhumanity of one Winter: all the pessimism and mystery and chaos of a dead season are put to rest by their resurrected kin: joy and the apprehension of order. All that which I “carry with” me—perfectly proportioned landscapes adorned richly with green tassels of foliage, gatherings of bronze skin, the sun’s heat on my closed eyes—all of this suffuses “my way” until, around midsummer, I find myself wholly enchanted with life, and—whether it be good or bad—the “evil” which permeated Winter “is no more seen.” Emerson was unique in his civility. When we imagine Whitman, the figure who represents the culmination of Emersonian thinking, we see that the impulse towards Nature had by then, simultaneously, become an impulse away from civilization. We have Emerson, the thoughtful, meek, spiritually acute, New England aristocrat—well raised, well-educated in the classics, and so on. And then we have Whitman, the wild, emphatic, yet also spiritually acute, common man—of relatively average upbringing, deeply unschooled in the traditions of poetry, etc.. What makes both Emerson and Whitman hard to read for extended periods is this: they never seem to stop saying the same things, page after page. The individual is sovereign; nature is glorious; America is unique and thus needs a unique orientation to everything. But what prompts me, over and over, to return to them is that they say it so well. Just the same, the pleasures of Summer are quite concrete, easy to enumerate: an abundance of sunlight, heat, and greenery. Yet in the intellect, there is a great gulf between the signs and signifiers of Summer. For example, consider the word “tanning” or even the slightly more expressive “sunbathing.” What are these words next to the experience they evoke? The pleasance of that warmth on your skin, the sound of lapping waves, the sand all hot beneath you, and so on . . . The words which form the centers of Emerson’s writing—freedom, nonconformism, “the Soul”, “Nature”—these are ideas whose expressions in reality are similarly hard to corral into their abstractions. Just as it is difficult to imagine Summer in Winter’s depth, it is hard for the unfree to imagine freedom. But that is what the intellect does—imagine. All we have in Emerson is an imaginative intellectual expression of freedom and nonconformity. For that expression to pluck a chord, it must be relatable. Just as poetic descriptions of Summer seem to me, in the depths of Winter, to be hopelessly romantic and annoying, in the Summer they are simply mirrors of reality . . . In the Spring and Summer, then, I find Emerson’s writings, flowery and high-minded as they are, to be perfectly natural. As Summer ends, my noble enjoyment of it is simultaneously enriched and corrupted. My subdued, somewhat neo-hellenic way of seeing things is berserked by a barbarous passion for life. A torrent of adolescent religiosity is overlaid atop my refined hedonism, and Whitman begins to echo in my soul. Lines like, “I hear and behold God in every object,” which would in Spring and Summer seem just delightfully immature (and in Winter would seem a worthy target of scornful laughter), ring as naturally in my ear as Emerson does in Summer. During the Fall, my mind is heat-swirling and overhot with expansive metaphysical and spiritual speculations, whose best possible expression would be the kind of aggressive, triumphant strophes that Whitman piled into “Song of Myself”, strophes like: My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air/ . . . you shall possess the origin of all poems/ . . . the unseen is proved by the seen/ . . . Maternal as well as paternal/ . . . Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven/ . . . I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars/ . . . a mouse is a miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. Stupefied amazement seems to be the mood, as if, while he is saying these things, he hardly can fathom how it can be. In Whitman, apprehension and wonder are coupled. His preachiness insists that he understands nature, yet his humility insists it is fundamentally mysterious. His eyes are childlike—and, as Summer fades and with it goes its enlivening spiritual colors, mine become so too, seeking, with willful ignorance, affirmations of my august spirit in beastly haste. That this spirit deserves affirmation—that belief is Whitman’s beauty. That it must be affirmed so tastelessly—that is his ugliness: and mine too, in this season. They fall—the withered, crispy leaves. One by one they fall, rocking themselves down on the wind. Softly to the ground they fall, where they are crushed and shredded into the dirt, which later freezes. And with them fall my passion, slowly and unconsciously. It dies and falls, and all my activity, once directed by a rich, overabundance of heart, is now impelled by an emptiness. Away goes the sun, and when it comes, its angle is weak. Away goes the grass, only mud and dirt left. And away go the people, into their homes: the cold, empty sidewalks are busy only with the traffic of tunneling hateful icy winds which whir around like ravenous wolves. My spirit, which, fed by Spring and Summer and soiled by Fall, is cold and alone—and the radical independence that seemed the height of nobility reeks of ascetic inhumanity. And then the frozen ground is covered by sheets of fallen snow. All the dumped-out optimism of three seasons is covered up with misery, harshness, hatred, and so on. But even in these depths I find a companion, and he sits across from these giants, Emerson and Whitman, thumbing his nose at them: Poe. Poe, for me, represents that aching suspicion that transcendentalism is a joke, that no one who takes themselves, human affairs, art, even religion, seriously could ever earnestly subscribe to. And I feel bad for the way Poe was treated by his contemporaries as a madman. When you read “The Philosophy of Composition”, you get the sense that you are in the company, more so than in Emerson and even Whitman, of a genuine artist—someone who has, like I suspect Whitman did, a natural, innate understanding of the ends of poetry—, but someone who also, probably more than either, understood the means as well: the toolbox, the vast reservoir of classical symbols, the techniques, the styles, etc.. The last thing he seems is mad. Consider the depth of poetic knowledge he displays in this one paragraph: "Of course, I pretend to no originality in either the rhythm or meter of “Raven.” The former is trochaic--the latter is octameter acatalectic, alternating with heptameter catalectic repeated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrameter catalectic. Less pedantically--the feet employed throughout (trochees) consist of a long syllable followed by a short: the first line of the stanza consists of eight of these feet--the second of seven and a half . . ." . . . and so on. The point is, these are not the ramblings of a depraved madman. They are refined, intellectual thoughts. And this kind of logical-formal thinking is what phase into during Winter. The frenzied passion for life fades into a detached indifference, and, though my sensory experience is less pleasant, my intellection is sharper. In Whitman and Emerson (and this is part of their charm) you get the sense that you are in the presence of something inhuman or beyond human. “Song of Myself” has none of the delicacy of “The Raven”, but the power of reading it comes from the fact that is like a natural disaster. It seems to overflow off of the page. In Poe you can return to the unabashedly human—murder and delusion and guilt: a host of experiences that are not seriously treated in Whitman or Emerson, but which anyone who has lived can say constitute a big part of being human. In fact, if any of these three writers could be considered “mad”, it would no doubt be Whitman, whose writing is often like that of a rabid dog. Winter, with its hateful cold, forces me indoors. This restriction is conducive to rumination. Hours I might have spent on a footpath or at a beach are spent “[pondering,] weak and weary,/Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.” A deficiency of the sun’s vitamin D contributes to the weakness and weariness, which make me want to sit, and, sitting more often, I read more: too fatigued to exert my body, I use my mind. And the lack of exercise generates an insomnia, most of which is spent reading, and which I combat with marijuana, the use of which, in turn, makes me wearier. Fighting all of this contributes to a general misery which makes me, like the weather, mean and nasty . . . In “The Raven”, Poe writes, “ . . . distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December/And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.” The ghosts of those embers are like the fallen leaves of my autumn passion. Once proud and beautiful, then weak and withered, now entirely transformed: They become their own inverse. But, as the heart cools, the wit and the intellect again have their day. These ghosts have their own ideas, and they too are interesting. But Poe also obscures, obscures the very things that Emerson enlightens—and vice-versa. He treated Emerson and his whole troupe with flippant scorn, perhaps displaying that he was unwilling to even consider the kind of atemporal, universal perspective expressed by Emerson and Whitman. And in Winter I tend to regard my Spring, Summer and Fall nature’s, my heedless joy, as hilarious and contemptible. But however over-the-top Emerson and Whitman are in their promotion of this perspective, there is something to it. Considerations of “eternity” enter into Poe only in convoluted psychological guises (the narrator of “Ligea”, for example, who wishes to transcend time through a kind of impossible love). This is not to say that Poe’s way of considering eternity is not interesting or valuable, just that he could have taken the other view a bit more seriously, and perhaps it would have brightened the grimness of all he wrote. And my Winter thoughts too, though they masquerade in all sorts of conceits, are desperate, hungry for sunlight. You sense that what Emerson and Whitman didn’t like about Poe was his vulgarity, the fact that, through his art, he represented all that was base, vile, filthy—all that, in their art, they tried to escape. And I think that they were right in many ways to be averse to these things. But you also sense that Poe’s hatred of the naive optimism of the transcendentalist is equally justified. There are--as banal as it this to express, it seems true--things to sympathize with in all worldviews. And so maybe this perennial revolution, something I have tended to loathe for the whirling confusion it engenders, is good. It is not an instance of progression and regression. It is something natural: a series of cycles. Maybe the seasonal phases are allies, not enemies--and maybe, just as the top of a plant longs for light while its roots hunger for darkness, so too my Summer soul lives on its heights, while it's cold counterpart scours the same soul’s depths--yet these opposites are always secretly yearning for each other. My progress is an outward spiral. Yes: each descent goes lower, each fall is more crushing--yet every ascent goes higher, and every rise is more triumphant.

[karmadunstan173-blog]

Resources

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[hotspreadpage]

Everything you need to know about visual search (so far)

Visual search is one of the most complex and fiercely competed sectors of our industry. Earlier this month, Bing announced their new visual search mode, hot on the heels of similar developments from Pinterest and Google.

Ours is a culture mediated by images, so it stands to reason that visual search has assumed such importance for the world’s largest technology companies. The pace of progress is certainly quickening; but there is no clear visual search ‘winner’ and nor will there be one soon.

The search industry has developed significantly over the past decade, through advances in personalization, natural language processing, and multimedia results. And yet, one could argue that the power of the image remains untapped.

This is not due to a lack of attention or investment. Quite the contrary, in fact. Cracking visual search will require a combination of technological nous, psychological insight, and neuroscientific know-how. This makes it a fascinating area of development, but also one that will not be mastered easily.

Therefore, in this article, we will begin with an outline of the visual search industry and the challenges it poses, before analyzing the recent progress made by Google, Microsoft and Pinterest.

What is visual search?

We all partake in visual search every day. Every time we need to locate our keys among a range of other items, for example, our brains are engaged in a visual search.

We learn to recognize certain targets and we can locate them within a busy landscape with increasing ease over time.

This is a trickier task for a computer, however.

Image search, in which a search engine takes a text-based query and tries to find the best visual match, is subtly distinct from modern visual search. Visual search can take an image as its ‘query’, rather than text. In order to perform an accurate visual search, search engines require much more sophisticated processes than they do for traditional image search.

Typically, as part of this process, deep neural networks are put through their paces in tests like the one below, with the hope that they will mimic the functioning of the human brain in identifying targets:

The decisions (or inherent ‘biases’, as they are known) that allow us to make sense of these patterns are more difficult to integrate into a machine. When processing an image, should a machine prioritize shape, color, or size? How does a person do this? Do we even know for sure, or do we only know the output?

As such, search engines still struggle to process images in the way we expect them to. We simply don’t understand our own biases well enough to be able to reproduce them in another system.

There has been a lot of progress in this field, nonetheless. Google image search has improved drastically in response to text queries and other options, like Tineye, also allow us to use reverse image search. This is a useful feature, but its limits are self-evident.

For years, Facebook has been able to identify individuals in photos, in the same way a person would immediately recognize a friend’s face. This example is a closer approximation of the holy grail for visual search; however, it still falls short. In this instance, Facebook has set up its networks to search for faces, giving them a clear target.

At its zenith, online visual search allows us to use an image as an input and receive another, related image as an output. This would mean that we could take a picture with a smartphone of a chair, for example, and have the technology return pictures of suitable rugs to accompany the style of the chair.

The typically ‘human’ process in the middle, where we would decipher the component parts of an image and decide what it is about, then conceptualize and categorize related items, is undertaken by deep neural networks. These networks are ‘unsupervised’, meaning that there is no human intervention as they alter their functioning based on feedback signals and work to deliver the desired output.

The result can be mesmerising, as in the below interpretations of an image of Georges Seurat’s ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte’ by Google’s neural networks:

This is just one approach to answering a delicate question, however.

There are no right or wrong answers in this field as it stands; simply more or less effective ones in a given context.

We should therefore assess the progress of a few technology giants to observe the significant strides they have made thus far, but also the obstacles left to overcome before visual search is truly mastered.

Bing visual search

In early June at TechCrunch 50, Microsoft announced that it would now allow users to “search by picture.”

This is notable for a number of reasons. First of all, although Bing image search has been present for quite some time, Microsoft actually removed its original visual search product in 2012. People simply weren’t using it since its 2009 launch, as it wasn’t accurate enough.

Furthermore, it would be fair to say that Microsoft is running a little behind in this race. Rival search engines and social media platforms have provided visual search functions for some time now.

As a result, it seems reasonable to surmise that Microsoft must have something compelling if they have chosen to re-enter the fray with such a public announcement. While it is not quite revolutionary, the new Bing visual search is still a useful tool that builds significantly on their image search product.

A Bing search for “kitchen decor ideas” which showcases Bing’s new visual search capabilities

What sets Bing visual search apart is the ability to search within images and then expand this out to related objects that might complement the user’s selection.

 A user can select specific objects, hone in on them, and purchase similar items if they desire. The opportunities for retailers are both obvious and plentiful.

It’s worth mentioning that Pinterest’s visual search has been able to do this for some time. But the important difference between Pinterest’s capability and Bing’s in this regard is that Pinterest can only redirect users to Pins that businesses have made available on Pinterest – and not all of them might be shoppable. Bing, on the other hand, can index a retailer’s website and use visual search to direct the user to it, with no extra effort required on the part of either party.

Powered by Silverlight technology, this should lead to a much more refined approach to searching through images. Microsoft provided the following visualisation of how their query processing system works for this product:

Microsoft combines this system with the structured data it owns to provide a much richer, more informative search experience. Although restricted to a few search categories, such as homeware, travel, and sports, we should expect to see this rolled out to more areas through this year.

The next step will be to automate parts of this process, so that the user no longer needs to draw a box to select objects. It is still some distance from delivering on the promise of perfect, visual search, but these updates should at least see Microsoft eke out a few more sellable searches via Bing.

Google Lens

Google recently announced its Lens product at the 2017 I/O conference in May. The aim of Lens is really to turn your smartphone into a visual search engine.

Take a picture of anything out there and Google will tell you what the object is about, along with any related entities. Point your smartphone at a restaurant, for example, and Google will tell you its name, whether your friends have visited it before, and highlight reviews for the restaurant too.

With Google Lens, your smartphone camera won’t just see what you see, but will also understand what you see to help you take action. #io17 http://pic.twitter.com/viOmWFjqk1

— Google (@Google) May 17, 2017

This is supplemented by Google’s envious inventory of data, both from its own knowledge graph and the consumer data it holds.

All of this data can fuel and refine Google’s deep neural networks, which are central to the effective functioning of its Lens product.

Google-owned company DeepMind is at the forefront of visual search innovation. As such, DeepMind is also particularly familiar with just how challenging this technology is to master.

The challenge is no longer necessarily in just creating neural networks that can understand an image as effectively as a human. The bigger challenge (known as the ‘black box problem’ in this field) is that the processes involved in arriving at conclusions are so complex, obscured, and multi-faceted that even Google’s engineers struggle to keep track.

This points to a rather poignant paradox at the heart of visual search and, more broadly, the use of deep neural networks. The aim is to mimic the functioning of the human brain; however, we still don’t really understand how the human brain works.

As a result, DeepMind have started to explore new methods. In a fascinating blog post they summarized the findings from a recent paper, within which they applied the inductive reasoning evident in human perception of images.

Drawing on the rich history of cognitive psychology (rich, at least, in comparison with the nascent field of neural networks), scientists were able to apply within their technology the same biases we apply as people when we classify items.

DeepMind use the following prompt to illuminate their thinking:

“A field linguist has gone to visit a culture whose language is entirely different from our own. The linguist is trying to learn some words from a helpful native speaker, when a rabbit scurries by. The native speaker declares “gavagai”, and the linguist is left to infer the meaning of this new word. The linguist is faced with an abundance of possible inferences, including that “gavagai” refers to rabbits, animals, white things, that specific rabbit, or “undetached parts of rabbits”. There is an infinity of possible inferences to be made. How are people able to choose the correct one?”

Experiments in cognitive psychology have shown that we have a ‘shape bias’; that is to say, we give prominence to the fact that this is a rabbit, rather than focusing on its color or its broader classification as an animal. We are aware of all of these factors, but we choose shape as the most important criterion.

“Gavagai” Credit: Misha Shiyanov/Shutterstock

DeepMind is one of the most essential components of Google’s development into an ‘AI-first’ company, so we can expect findings like the above to be incorporated into visual search in the near future. When they do, we shouldn’t rule out the launch of Google Glass 2.0 or something similar.

Pinterest Lens

Pinterest aims to establish itself as the go-to search engine when you don’t have the words to describe what you are looking for.

The launch of its Lens product in March this year was a real statement of intent and Pinterest has made a number of senior hires from Google’s image search teams to fuel development.

In combination with its establishment of a paid search product and features like ‘Shop the Look’, there is a growing consensus that Pinterest could become a real marketing contender. Along with Amazon, it should benefit from advertisers’ thirst for more options beyond Google and Facebook.

Pinterest president Tim Kendall noted recently at TechCrunch Disrupt: “We’re starting to be able to segue into differentiation and build things that other people can’t. Or they could build it, but because of the nature of the products, this would make less sense.”

This drives at the heart of the matter. Pinterest users come to the site for something different, which allows Pinterest to build different products for them. While Google fights war on numerous fronts, Pinterest can focus on improving its visual search offering.

Admittedly, it remains a work in progress, but Pinterest Lens is the most advanced visual search tool available at the moment. Using a smartphone, a Pinner (as the site’s users are known) can take a picture within the app and have it processed with a high degree of accuracy by Pinterest’s technology.

The results are quite effective for items of clothing and homeware, although there is still a long way to go before we use Pinterest as our personal stylist. As a tantalising glimpse of the future, however, Pinterest Lens is a welcome and impressive development.

The next step is to monetize this, which is exactly what Pinterest plans to do. Visual search will become part of its paid advertising package, a fact that will no doubt appeal to retailers keen to move beyond keyword targeting and social media prospecting.

We may still be years from declaring a winner in the battle for visual search supremacy, but it is clear to see that the victor will claim significant spoils.

Everything you need to know about visual search (so far) syndicated from http://ift.tt/2maPRjm

[kellykperez]

Everything you need to know about visual search (so far)

Visual search is one of the most complex and fiercely competed sectors of our industry. Earlier this month, Bing announced their new visual search mode, hot on the heels of similar developments from Pinterest and Google.

Ours is a culture mediated by images, so it stands to reason that visual search has assumed such importance for the world’s largest technology companies. The pace of progress is certainly quickening; but there is no clear visual search ‘winner’ and nor will there be one soon.

The search industry has developed significantly over the past decade, through advances in personalization, natural language processing, and multimedia results. And yet, one could argue that the power of the image remains untapped.

This is not due to a lack of attention or investment. Quite the contrary, in fact. Cracking visual search will require a combination of technological nous, psychological insight, and neuroscientific know-how. This makes it a fascinating area of development, but also one that will not be mastered easily.

Therefore, in this article, we will begin with an outline of the visual search industry and the challenges it poses, before analyzing the recent progress made by Google, Microsoft and Pinterest.

What is visual search?

We all partake in visual search every day. Every time we need to locate our keys among a range of other items, for example, our brains are engaged in a visual search.

We learn to recognize certain targets and we can locate them within a busy landscape with increasing ease over time.

This is a trickier task for a computer, however.

Image search, in which a search engine takes a text-based query and tries to find the best visual match, is subtly distinct from modern visual search. Visual search can take an image as its ‘query’, rather than text. In order to perform an accurate visual search, search engines require much more sophisticated processes than they do for traditional image search.

Typically, as part of this process, deep neural networks are put through their paces in tests like the one below, with the hope that they will mimic the functioning of the human brain in identifying targets:

The decisions (or inherent ‘biases’, as they are known) that allow us to make sense of these patterns are more difficult to integrate into a machine. When processing an image, should a machine prioritize shape, color, or size? How does a person do this? Do we even know for sure, or do we only know the output?

As such, search engines still struggle to process images in the way we expect them to. We simply don’t understand our own biases well enough to be able to reproduce them in another system.

There has been a lot of progress in this field, nonetheless. Google image search has improved drastically in response to text queries and other options, like Tineye, also allow us to use reverse image search. This is a useful feature, but its limits are self-evident.

For years, Facebook has been able to identify individuals in photos, in the same way a person would immediately recognize a friend’s face. This example is a closer approximation of the holy grail for visual search; however, it still falls short. In this instance, Facebook has set up its networks to search for faces, giving them a clear target.

At its zenith, online visual search allows us to use an image as an input and receive another, related image as an output. This would mean that we could take a picture with a smartphone of a chair, for example, and have the technology return pictures of suitable rugs to accompany the style of the chair.

The typically ‘human’ process in the middle, where we would decipher the component parts of an image and decide what it is about, then conceptualize and categorize related items, is undertaken by deep neural networks. These networks are ‘unsupervised’, meaning that there is no human intervention as they alter their functioning based on feedback signals and work to deliver the desired output.

The result can be mesmerising, as in the below interpretations of an image of Georges Seurat’s ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte’ by Google’s neural networks:

This is just one approach to answering a delicate question, however.

There are no right or wrong answers in this field as it stands; simply more or less effective ones in a given context.

We should therefore assess the progress of a few technology giants to observe the significant strides they have made thus far, but also the obstacles left to overcome before visual search is truly mastered.

Bing visual search

In early June at TechCrunch 50, Microsoft announced that it would now allow users to “search by picture.”

This is notable for a number of reasons. First of all, although Bing image search has been present for quite some time, Microsoft actually removed its original visual search product in 2012. People simply weren’t using it since its 2009 launch, as it wasn’t accurate enough.

Furthermore, it would be fair to say that Microsoft is running a little behind in this race. Rival search engines and social media platforms have provided visual search functions for some time now.

As a result, it seems reasonable to surmise that Microsoft must have something compelling if they have chosen to re-enter the fray with such a public announcement. While it is not quite revolutionary, the new Bing visual search is still a useful tool that builds significantly on their image search product.

A Bing search for “kitchen decor ideas” which showcases Bing’s new visual search capabilities

What sets Bing visual search apart is the ability to search within images and then expand this out to related objects that might complement the user’s selection.

 A user can select specific objects, hone in on them, and purchase similar items if they desire. The opportunities for retailers are both obvious and plentiful.

It’s worth mentioning that Pinterest’s visual search has been able to do this for some time. But the important difference between Pinterest’s capability and Bing’s in this regard is that Pinterest can only redirect users to Pins that businesses have made available on Pinterest – and not all of them might be shoppable. Bing, on the other hand, can index a retailer’s website and use visual search to direct the user to it, with no extra effort required on the part of either party.

Powered by Silverlight technology, this should lead to a much more refined approach to searching through images. Microsoft provided the following visualisation of how their query processing system works for this product:

Microsoft combines this system with the structured data it owns to provide a much richer, more informative search experience. Although restricted to a few search categories, such as homeware, travel, and sports, we should expect to see this rolled out to more areas through this year.

The next step will be to automate parts of this process, so that the user no longer needs to draw a box to select objects. It is still some distance from delivering on the promise of perfect, visual search, but these updates should at least see Microsoft eke out a few more sellable searches via Bing.

Google Lens

Google recently announced its Lens product at the 2017 I/O conference in May. The aim of Lens is really to turn your smartphone into a visual search engine.

Take a picture of anything out there and Google will tell you what the object is about, along with any related entities. Point your smartphone at a restaurant, for example, and Google will tell you its name, whether your friends have visited it before, and highlight reviews for the restaurant too.

With Google Lens, your smartphone camera won’t just see what you see, but will also understand what you see to help you take action. #io17 pic.twitter.com/viOmWFjqk1

— Google (@Google) May 17, 2017

This is supplemented by Google’s envious inventory of data, both from its own knowledge graph and the consumer data it holds.

All of this data can fuel and refine Google’s deep neural networks, which are central to the effective functioning of its Lens product.

Google-owned company DeepMind is at the forefront of visual search innovation. As such, DeepMind is also particularly familiar with just how challenging this technology is to master.

The challenge is no longer necessarily in just creating neural networks that can understand an image as effectively as a human. The bigger challenge (known as the ‘black box problem’ in this field) is that the processes involved in arriving at conclusions are so complex, obscured, and multi-faceted that even Google’s engineers struggle to keep track.

This points to a rather poignant paradox at the heart of visual search and, more broadly, the use of deep neural networks. The aim is to mimic the functioning of the human brain; however, we still don’t really understand how the human brain works.

As a result, DeepMind have started to explore new methods. In a fascinating blog post they summarized the findings from a recent paper, within which they applied the inductive reasoning evident in human perception of images.

Drawing on the rich history of cognitive psychology (rich, at least, in comparison with the nascent field of neural networks), scientists were able to apply within their technology the same biases we apply as people when we classify items.

DeepMind use the following prompt to illuminate their thinking:

“A field linguist has gone to visit a culture whose language is entirely different from our own. The linguist is trying to learn some words from a helpful native speaker, when a rabbit scurries by. The native speaker declares “gavagai”, and the linguist is left to infer the meaning of this new word. The linguist is faced with an abundance of possible inferences, including that “gavagai” refers to rabbits, animals, white things, that specific rabbit, or “undetached parts of rabbits”. There is an infinity of possible inferences to be made. How are people able to choose the correct one?”

Experiments in cognitive psychology have shown that we have a ‘shape bias’; that is to say, we give prominence to the fact that this is a rabbit, rather than focusing on its color or its broader classification as an animal. We are aware of all of these factors, but we choose shape as the most important criterion.

“Gavagai” Credit: Misha Shiyanov/Shutterstock

DeepMind is one of the most essential components of Google’s development into an ‘AI-first’ company, so we can expect findings like the above to be incorporated into visual search in the near future. When they do, we shouldn’t rule out the launch of Google Glass 2.0 or something similar.

Pinterest Lens

Pinterest aims to establish itself as the go-to search engine when you don’t have the words to describe what you are looking for.

The launch of its Lens product in March this year was a real statement of intent and Pinterest has made a number of senior hires from Google’s image search teams to fuel development.

In combination with its establishment of a paid search product and features like ‘Shop the Look’, there is a growing consensus that Pinterest could become a real marketing contender. Along with Amazon, it should benefit from advertisers’ thirst for more options beyond Google and Facebook.

Pinterest president Tim Kendall noted recently at TechCrunch Disrupt: “We’re starting to be able to segue into differentiation and build things that other people can’t. Or they could build it, but because of the nature of the products, this would make less sense.”

This drives at the heart of the matter. Pinterest users come to the site for something different, which allows Pinterest to build different products for them. While Google fights war on numerous fronts, Pinterest can focus on improving its visual search offering.

Admittedly, it remains a work in progress, but Pinterest Lens is the most advanced visual search tool available at the moment. Using a smartphone, a Pinner (as the site’s users are known) can take a picture within the app and have it processed with a high degree of accuracy by Pinterest’s technology.

The results are quite effective for items of clothing and homeware, although there is still a long way to go before we use Pinterest as our personal stylist. As a tantalising glimpse of the future, however, Pinterest Lens is a welcome and impressive development.

The next step is to monetize this, which is exactly what Pinterest plans to do. Visual search will become part of its paid advertising package, a fact that will no doubt appeal to retailers keen to move beyond keyword targeting and social media prospecting.

We may still be years from declaring a winner in the battle for visual search supremacy, but it is clear to see that the victor will claim significant spoils.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/07/05/everything-you-need-to-know-about-visual-search-so-far/ from Rising Phoenix SEO http://risingphoenixseo.blogspot.com/2017/07/everything-you-need-to-know-about.html

[alanajacksontx]

Everything you need to know about visual search (so far)

Visual search is one of the most complex and fiercely competed sectors of our industry. Earlier this month, Bing announced their new visual search mode, hot on the heels of similar developments from Pinterest and Google.

Ours is a culture mediated by images, so it stands to reason that visual search has assumed such importance for the world’s largest technology companies. The pace of progress is certainly quickening; but there is no clear visual search ‘winner’ and nor will there be one soon.

The search industry has developed significantly over the past decade, through advances in personalization, natural language processing, and multimedia results. And yet, one could argue that the power of the image remains untapped.

This is not due to a lack of attention or investment. Quite the contrary, in fact. Cracking visual search will require a combination of technological nous, psychological insight, and neuroscientific know-how. This makes it a fascinating area of development, but also one that will not be mastered easily.

Therefore, in this article, we will begin with an outline of the visual search industry and the challenges it poses, before analyzing the recent progress made by Google, Microsoft and Pinterest.

What is visual search?

We all partake in visual search every day. Every time we need to locate our keys among a range of other items, for example, our brains are engaged in a visual search.

We learn to recognize certain targets and we can locate them within a busy landscape with increasing ease over time.

This is a trickier task for a computer, however.

Image search, in which a search engine takes a text-based query and tries to find the best visual match, is subtly distinct from modern visual search. Visual search can take an image as its ‘query’, rather than text. In order to perform an accurate visual search, search engines require much more sophisticated processes than they do for traditional image search.

Typically, as part of this process, deep neural networks are put through their paces in tests like the one below, with the hope that they will mimic the functioning of the human brain in identifying targets:

The decisions (or inherent ‘biases’, as they are known) that allow us to make sense of these patterns are more difficult to integrate into a machine. When processing an image, should a machine prioritize shape, color, or size? How does a person do this? Do we even know for sure, or do we only know the output?

As such, search engines still struggle to process images in the way we expect them to. We simply don’t understand our own biases well enough to be able to reproduce them in another system.

There has been a lot of progress in this field, nonetheless. Google image search has improved drastically in response to text queries and other options, like Tineye, also allow us to use reverse image search. This is a useful feature, but its limits are self-evident.

For years, Facebook has been able to identify individuals in photos, in the same way a person would immediately recognize a friend’s face. This example is a closer approximation of the holy grail for visual search; however, it still falls short. In this instance, Facebook has set up its networks to search for faces, giving them a clear target.

At its zenith, online visual search allows us to use an image as an input and receive another, related image as an output. This would mean that we could take a picture with a smartphone of a chair, for example, and have the technology return pictures of suitable rugs to accompany the style of the chair.

The typically ‘human’ process in the middle, where we would decipher the component parts of an image and decide what it is about, then conceptualize and categorize related items, is undertaken by deep neural networks. These networks are ‘unsupervised’, meaning that there is no human intervention as they alter their functioning based on feedback signals and work to deliver the desired output.

The result can be mesmerising, as in the below interpretations of an image of Georges Seurat’s ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte’ by Google’s neural networks:

This is just one approach to answering a delicate question, however.

There are no right or wrong answers in this field as it stands; simply more or less effective ones in a given context.

We should therefore assess the progress of a few technology giants to observe the significant strides they have made thus far, but also the obstacles left to overcome before visual search is truly mastered.

Bing visual search

In early June at TechCrunch 50, Microsoft announced that it would now allow users to “search by picture.”

This is notable for a number of reasons. First of all, although Bing image search has been present for quite some time, Microsoft actually removed its original visual search product in 2012. People simply weren’t using it since its 2009 launch, as it wasn’t accurate enough.

Furthermore, it would be fair to say that Microsoft is running a little behind in this race. Rival search engines and social media platforms have provided visual search functions for some time now.

As a result, it seems reasonable to surmise that Microsoft must have something compelling if they have chosen to re-enter the fray with such a public announcement. While it is not quite revolutionary, the new Bing visual search is still a useful tool that builds significantly on their image search product.

A Bing search for “kitchen decor ideas” which showcases Bing’s new visual search capabilities

What sets Bing visual search apart is the ability to search within images and then expand this out to related objects that might complement the user’s selection.

 A user can select specific objects, hone in on them, and purchase similar items if they desire. The opportunities for retailers are both obvious and plentiful.

It’s worth mentioning that Pinterest’s visual search has been able to do this for some time. But the important difference between Pinterest’s capability and Bing’s in this regard is that Pinterest can only redirect users to Pins that businesses have made available on Pinterest – and not all of them might be shoppable. Bing, on the other hand, can index a retailer’s website and use visual search to direct the user to it, with no extra effort required on the part of either party.

Powered by Silverlight technology, this should lead to a much more refined approach to searching through images. Microsoft provided the following visualisation of how their query processing system works for this product:

Microsoft combines this system with the structured data it owns to provide a much richer, more informative search experience. Although restricted to a few search categories, such as homeware, travel, and sports, we should expect to see this rolled out to more areas through this year.

The next step will be to automate parts of this process, so that the user no longer needs to draw a box to select objects. It is still some distance from delivering on the promise of perfect, visual search, but these updates should at least see Microsoft eke out a few more sellable searches via Bing.

Google Lens

Google recently announced its Lens product at the 2017 I/O conference in May. The aim of Lens is really to turn your smartphone into a visual search engine.

Take a picture of anything out there and Google will tell you what the object is about, along with any related entities. Point your smartphone at a restaurant, for example, and Google will tell you its name, whether your friends have visited it before, and highlight reviews for the restaurant too.

With Google Lens, your smartphone camera won’t just see what you see, but will also understand what you see to help you take action. #io17 pic.twitter.com/viOmWFjqk1

— Google (@Google) May 17, 2017

This is supplemented by Google’s envious inventory of data, both from its own knowledge graph and the consumer data it holds.

All of this data can fuel and refine Google’s deep neural networks, which are central to the effective functioning of its Lens product.

Google-owned company DeepMind is at the forefront of visual search innovation. As such, DeepMind is also particularly familiar with just how challenging this technology is to master.

The challenge is no longer necessarily in just creating neural networks that can understand an image as effectively as a human. The bigger challenge (known as the ‘black box problem’ in this field) is that the processes involved in arriving at conclusions are so complex, obscured, and multi-faceted that even Google’s engineers struggle to keep track.

This points to a rather poignant paradox at the heart of visual search and, more broadly, the use of deep neural networks. The aim is to mimic the functioning of the human brain; however, we still don’t really understand how the human brain works.

As a result, DeepMind have started to explore new methods. In a fascinating blog post they summarized the findings from a recent paper, within which they applied the inductive reasoning evident in human perception of images.

Drawing on the rich history of cognitive psychology (rich, at least, in comparison with the nascent field of neural networks), scientists were able to apply within their technology the same biases we apply as people when we classify items.

DeepMind use the following prompt to illuminate their thinking:

“A field linguist has gone to visit a culture whose language is entirely different from our own. The linguist is trying to learn some words from a helpful native speaker, when a rabbit scurries by. The native speaker declares “gavagai”, and the linguist is left to infer the meaning of this new word. The linguist is faced with an abundance of possible inferences, including that “gavagai” refers to rabbits, animals, white things, that specific rabbit, or “undetached parts of rabbits”. There is an infinity of possible inferences to be made. How are people able to choose the correct one?”

Experiments in cognitive psychology have shown that we have a ‘shape bias’; that is to say, we give prominence to the fact that this is a rabbit, rather than focusing on its color or its broader classification as an animal. We are aware of all of these factors, but we choose shape as the most important criterion.

“Gavagai” Credit: Misha Shiyanov/Shutterstock

DeepMind is one of the most essential components of Google’s development into an ‘AI-first’ company, so we can expect findings like the above to be incorporated into visual search in the near future. When they do, we shouldn’t rule out the launch of Google Glass 2.0 or something similar.

Pinterest Lens

Pinterest aims to establish itself as the go-to search engine when you don’t have the words to describe what you are looking for.

The launch of its Lens product in March this year was a real statement of intent and Pinterest has made a number of senior hires from Google’s image search teams to fuel development.

In combination with its establishment of a paid search product and features like ‘Shop the Look’, there is a growing consensus that Pinterest could become a real marketing contender. Along with Amazon, it should benefit from advertisers’ thirst for more options beyond Google and Facebook.

Pinterest president Tim Kendall noted recently at TechCrunch Disrupt: “We’re starting to be able to segue into differentiation and build things that other people can’t. Or they could build it, but because of the nature of the products, this would make less sense.”

This drives at the heart of the matter. Pinterest users come to the site for something different, which allows Pinterest to build different products for them. While Google fights war on numerous fronts, Pinterest can focus on improving its visual search offering.

Admittedly, it remains a work in progress, but Pinterest Lens is the most advanced visual search tool available at the moment. Using a smartphone, a Pinner (as the site’s users are known) can take a picture within the app and have it processed with a high degree of accuracy by Pinterest’s technology.

The results are quite effective for items of clothing and homeware, although there is still a long way to go before we use Pinterest as our personal stylist. As a tantalising glimpse of the future, however, Pinterest Lens is a welcome and impressive development.

The next step is to monetize this, which is exactly what Pinterest plans to do. Visual search will become part of its paid advertising package, a fact that will no doubt appeal to retailers keen to move beyond keyword targeting and social media prospecting.

We may still be years from declaring a winner in the battle for visual search supremacy, but it is clear to see that the victor will claim significant spoils.

from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/07/05/everything-you-need-to-know-about-visual-search-so-far/ from Rising Phoenix SEO https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/162629666550

[sheilalmartinia]

Everything you need to know about visual search (so far)

Visual search is one of the most complex and fiercely competed sectors of our industry. Earlier this month, Bing announced their new visual search mode, hot on the heels of similar developments from Pinterest and Google.

Ours is a culture mediated by images, so it stands to reason that visual search has assumed such importance for the world’s largest technology companies. The pace of progress is certainly quickening; but there is no clear visual search ‘winner’ and nor will there be one soon.

The search industry has developed significantly over the past decade, through advances in personalization, natural language processing, and multimedia results. And yet, one could argue that the power of the image remains untapped.

This is not due to a lack of attention or investment. Quite the contrary, in fact. Cracking visual search will require a combination of technological nous, psychological insight, and neuroscientific know-how. This makes it a fascinating area of development, but also one that will not be mastered easily.

Therefore, in this article, we will begin with an outline of the visual search industry and the challenges it poses, before analyzing the recent progress made by Google, Microsoft and Pinterest.

What is visual search?

We all partake in visual search every day. Every time we need to locate our keys among a range of other items, for example, our brains are engaged in a visual search.

We learn to recognize certain targets and we can locate them within a busy landscape with increasing ease over time.

This is a trickier task for a computer, however.

Image search, in which a search engine takes a text-based query and tries to find the best visual match, is subtly distinct from modern visual search. Visual search can take an image as its ‘query’, rather than text. In order to perform an accurate visual search, search engines require much more sophisticated processes than they do for traditional image search.

Typically, as part of this process, deep neural networks are put through their paces in tests like the one below, with the hope that they will mimic the functioning of the human brain in identifying targets:

The decisions (or inherent ‘biases’, as they are known) that allow us to make sense of these patterns are more difficult to integrate into a machine. When processing an image, should a machine prioritize shape, color, or size? How does a person do this? Do we even know for sure, or do we only know the output?

As such, search engines still struggle to process images in the way we expect them to. We simply don’t understand our own biases well enough to be able to reproduce them in another system.

There has been a lot of progress in this field, nonetheless. Google image search has improved drastically in response to text queries and other options, like Tineye, also allow us to use reverse image search. This is a useful feature, but its limits are self-evident.

For years, Facebook has been able to identify individuals in photos, in the same way a person would immediately recognize a friend’s face. This example is a closer approximation of the holy grail for visual search; however, it still falls short. In this instance, Facebook has set up its networks to search for faces, giving them a clear target.

At its zenith, online visual search allows us to use an image as an input and receive another, related image as an output. This would mean that we could take a picture with a smartphone of a chair, for example, and have the technology return pictures of suitable rugs to accompany the style of the chair.

The typically ‘human’ process in the middle, where we would decipher the component parts of an image and decide what it is about, then conceptualize and categorize related items, is undertaken by deep neural networks. These networks are ‘unsupervised’, meaning that there is no human intervention as they alter their functioning based on feedback signals and work to deliver the desired output.

The result can be mesmerising, as in the below interpretations of an image of Georges Seurat’s ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte’ by Google’s neural networks:

This is just one approach to answering a delicate question, however.

There are no right or wrong answers in this field as it stands; simply more or less effective ones in a given context.

We should therefore assess the progress of a few technology giants to observe the significant strides they have made thus far, but also the obstacles left to overcome before visual search is truly mastered.

Bing visual search

In early June at TechCrunch 50, Microsoft announced that it would now allow users to “search by picture.”

This is notable for a number of reasons. First of all, although Bing image search has been present for quite some time, Microsoft actually removed its original visual search product in 2012. People simply weren’t using it since its 2009 launch, as it wasn’t accurate enough.

Furthermore, it would be fair to say that Microsoft is running a little behind in this race. Rival search engines and social media platforms have provided visual search functions for some time now.

As a result, it seems reasonable to surmise that Microsoft must have something compelling if they have chosen to re-enter the fray with such a public announcement. While it is not quite revolutionary, the new Bing visual search is still a useful tool that builds significantly on their image search product.

A Bing search for “kitchen decor ideas” which showcases Bing’s new visual search capabilities

What sets Bing visual search apart is the ability to search within images and then expand this out to related objects that might complement the user’s selection.

 A user can select specific objects, hone in on them, and purchase similar items if they desire. The opportunities for retailers are both obvious and plentiful.

It’s worth mentioning that Pinterest’s visual search has been able to do this for some time. But the important difference between Pinterest’s capability and Bing’s in this regard is that Pinterest can only redirect users to Pins that businesses have made available on Pinterest – and not all of them might be shoppable. Bing, on the other hand, can index a retailer’s website and use visual search to direct the user to it, with no extra effort required on the part of either party.

Powered by Silverlight technology, this should lead to a much more refined approach to searching through images. Microsoft provided the following visualisation of how their query processing system works for this product:

Microsoft combines this system with the structured data it owns to provide a much richer, more informative search experience. Although restricted to a few search categories, such as homeware, travel, and sports, we should expect to see this rolled out to more areas through this year.

The next step will be to automate parts of this process, so that the user no longer needs to draw a box to select objects. It is still some distance from delivering on the promise of perfect, visual search, but these updates should at least see Microsoft eke out a few more sellable searches via Bing.

Google Lens

Google recently announced its Lens product at the 2017 I/O conference in May. The aim of Lens is really to turn your smartphone into a visual search engine.

Take a picture of anything out there and Google will tell you what the object is about, along with any related entities. Point your smartphone at a restaurant, for example, and Google will tell you its name, whether your friends have visited it before, and highlight reviews for the restaurant too.

With Google Lens, your smartphone camera won’t just see what you see, but will also understand what you see to help you take action. #io17 pic.twitter.com/viOmWFjqk1

— Google (@Google) May 17, 2017

This is supplemented by Google’s envious inventory of data, both from its own knowledge graph and the consumer data it holds.

All of this data can fuel and refine Google’s deep neural networks, which are central to the effective functioning of its Lens product.

Google-owned company DeepMind is at the forefront of visual search innovation. As such, DeepMind is also particularly familiar with just how challenging this technology is to master.

The challenge is no longer necessarily in just creating neural networks that can understand an image as effectively as a human. The bigger challenge (known as the ‘black box problem’ in this field) is that the processes involved in arriving at conclusions are so complex, obscured, and multi-faceted that even Google’s engineers struggle to keep track.

This points to a rather poignant paradox at the heart of visual search and, more broadly, the use of deep neural networks. The aim is to mimic the functioning of the human brain; however, we still don’t really understand how the human brain works.

As a result, DeepMind have started to explore new methods. In a fascinating blog post they summarized the findings from a recent paper, within which they applied the inductive reasoning evident in human perception of images.

Drawing on the rich history of cognitive psychology (rich, at least, in comparison with the nascent field of neural networks), scientists were able to apply within their technology the same biases we apply as people when we classify items.

DeepMind use the following prompt to illuminate their thinking:

“A field linguist has gone to visit a culture whose language is entirely different from our own. The linguist is trying to learn some words from a helpful native speaker, when a rabbit scurries by. The native speaker declares “gavagai”, and the linguist is left to infer the meaning of this new word. The linguist is faced with an abundance of possible inferences, including that “gavagai” refers to rabbits, animals, white things, that specific rabbit, or “undetached parts of rabbits”. There is an infinity of possible inferences to be made. How are people able to choose the correct one?”

Experiments in cognitive psychology have shown that we have a ‘shape bias’; that is to say, we give prominence to the fact that this is a rabbit, rather than focusing on its color or its broader classification as an animal. We are aware of all of these factors, but we choose shape as the most important criterion.

“Gavagai” Credit: Misha Shiyanov/Shutterstock

DeepMind is one of the most essential components of Google’s development into an ‘AI-first’ company, so we can expect findings like the above to be incorporated into visual search in the near future. When they do, we shouldn’t rule out the launch of Google Glass 2.0 or something similar.

Pinterest Lens

Pinterest aims to establish itself as the go-to search engine when you don’t have the words to describe what you are looking for.

The launch of its Lens product in March this year was a real statement of intent and Pinterest has made a number of senior hires from Google’s image search teams to fuel development.

In combination with its establishment of a paid search product and features like ‘Shop the Look’, there is a growing consensus that Pinterest could become a real marketing contender. Along with Amazon, it should benefit from advertisers’ thirst for more options beyond Google and Facebook.

Pinterest president Tim Kendall noted recently at TechCrunch Disrupt: “We’re starting to be able to segue into differentiation and build things that other people can’t. Or they could build it, but because of the nature of the products, this would make less sense.”

This drives at the heart of the matter. Pinterest users come to the site for something different, which allows Pinterest to build different products for them. While Google fights war on numerous fronts, Pinterest can focus on improving its visual search offering.

Admittedly, it remains a work in progress, but Pinterest Lens is the most advanced visual search tool available at the moment. Using a smartphone, a Pinner (as the site’s users are known) can take a picture within the app and have it processed with a high degree of accuracy by Pinterest’s technology.

The results are quite effective for items of clothing and homeware, although there is still a long way to go before we use Pinterest as our personal stylist. As a tantalising glimpse of the future, however, Pinterest Lens is a welcome and impressive development.

The next step is to monetize this, which is exactly what Pinterest plans to do. Visual search will become part of its paid advertising package, a fact that will no doubt appeal to retailers keen to move beyond keyword targeting and social media prospecting.

We may still be years from declaring a winner in the battle for visual search supremacy, but it is clear to see that the victor will claim significant spoils.

from Search Engine Watch https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/07/05/everything-you-need-to-know-about-visual-search-so-far/

[techspots-blog1]

Heading into its second year, the Apple Watch discovers its core interest Arrangement 2 and watchOS 3 help understand the first model's potential.

One of my most loved bits of Apple composing from the last couple years is Ben Thompson's discourse of the Apple Watch's acquaintance and how it contrasted and past Apple item presentations. I'm not simply alluding to standard Apple item occasions, but rather the occasions at which Apple presents a totally new product offering to the press and its clients surprisingly.

The iPod, iPhone, and iPad presentations, Thompson composes, all put forth an admirable attempt to impart Apple's objectives for the item. What's more, regularly, that piece of the introduction would continue for whatever length of time that 10 or 15 minutes before the item itself was even reported or appeared. Regardless of the possibility that you didn't really concur with Apple's expressed vision, you left away with clear learning of what that vision was.

Balance that with the presentation for the Apple Watch, which started with a general explanation about Apple's item theory and proceeded onward to a pre-recorded video (moderately uncommon amid Jobs' period, yet a baffling sign of Cook-time introductions). That was trailed by an once-over of the watch's UI and numerous application demos, some of which landed superior to others. It was kind of a telephone substitute some of the time, it kind of did some wellness things, it kind of ran restricted forms of applications, it was kind of a wrist-bound communicator and individual partner, and it was kind of a grown-up toy went for the extravagance watch showcase. A lot of potential outcomes, however no plainly conveyed vision.

Some portion of that, as Thompson notes, is only a distinction in style between CEOs—Jobs commanded the phase at most Apple keynotes, while Cook acts more as an emcee passing the mic from moderator to moderator (to video). However, the reason I like this piece so much is that it truly caught the way I understood strolling of the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in September 2014. The watch appeared like it could do some cool things, however Apple had done little to pass on why it was an essential item, and the informing that was there was obfuscated. What's more, this was aggravated at dispatch by programming (and an engineer SDK) that didn't exactly feel completed until rendition 2.0 was discharged a couple of months after the fact.

With both the Apple Watch Series 2 and watchOS 3, Apple is bringing a required layer of clean and center to both the equipment and programming, streamlining the watch's attempt to seal the deal without even significantly reexamining what the item can do. The Apple Watch is sinking into a notch as a wellness device for easygoing to-direct exercisers that likewise happens to do some other smartwatch-y things. That is clear from the equipment that was included Series 2, the increments to watchOS 3, and broad concentrate on a Nike organization and Nike-elite rendition of the watch reported amid the introduction.

We've effectively given the Series 2 equipment a decent careful look with specific concentrate on its wellness highlights, yet I likewise needed to return to the perceptions I made a couple of months prior about my first year with the Apple Watch—what issues has Apple tended to? Where is the lineup headed? Which one would it be a good idea for you to purchase, and on the off chance that you officially claim the first equipment, would it be a good idea for you to overhaul? What's more, what would be the best next step?

Arrangement 2: Hardware refined

The Apple Watch Series 2's greatest changes are its new inner GPS and the Apple S2 board. The previous makes it a considerably more flexible, fit wellness tracker, and is the initial step down a lengthy, difficult experience that in the long run prompts a watch that can work autonomously of your telephone. I don't think the watch is constantly going to end up noticeably a processing stage in its own perfectly fine iPhone did after its initial couple of years as an extra fastened to your PC and to iTunes. Be that as it may, with a couple of more programming changes and LTE you could undoubtedly leave home for two or three hours without requiring your telephone by any stretch of the imagination.

The S2 (alongside watchOS 3) explains the majority of my fusses about the Apple Watch's until now conflicting execution—despite everything you'll keep running into a little hitch or postpone from time to time, yet more often than not when I need to utilize the look for something, I can do as such without waiting for the equipment itself or for correspondence between the watch and the telephone.

The expanded water resistance and brighter show are pleasant augmentations, as well—the screen specifically makes it so that the Apple Watch's screen dependably looks pretty much the same paying little respect to whether you're inside or out in direct daylight—and the kick from the bigger Taptic Engine makes it less demanding to tell a genuine notice buzz from a "ghost" one. In any case, there's one other change that Apple has made that hasn't discussed as much.Over the course of eighteen months, my unique Apple Watch grabbed a well used out spot on the base where the heart rate sensor lives. This arrangement of little scratches, created not through a specific mishandle but rather just by sliding it into and out of its charging support after quite a while, hasn't hindered the heart rate sensor by any means (up until this point). Be that as it may, it looks awful and one more year or two of wear may prompt more significant issues.

In the Apple Watch Series 2, Apple is utilizing some artistic material (much the same as the fired mix it's utilizing as a part of the new Apple Watch Edition) on the back of the watch to make it more scratch-safe, which ought to ideally help keep those little scratches from turning into an issue.

Arrangement 1 versus Arrangement 2 versus the first Apple Watch

The Apple Watch Series 1—not the first model, but rather an adaptation of the first with the new speedier CPU and GPU from the Series 2—is a one of a kind item from Apple. It's regular practice to continue pitching more established models at lower costs to lower costs and widen the conceivable market for Apple's stuff, yet it's not normal for Apple to really change the inward equipment in any important way (stockpiling limits aside).

The Apple Watch Series 2 is fueled by the S2 framework in-bundle (SiP), and the first Apple Watch is controlled by the S1. The Series 1 utilizes an in the middle of SiP called the S1P, which is indistinguishable to the S1 however swaps out the first CPU and GPU for the new double center CPU and GPU. This is really cool, since it discloses to us that the new CPU and GPU are physically about an indistinguishable size from the first; this is the thing that new assembling procedures can empower!

This really settles on your acquiring choice quite simple in case you're attempting to pick between a Series 1 and Series 2 watch. On the off chance that you couldn't care less about the GPS, the brighter screen, or the enhanced water resistance and swim following elements, you can spare yourself $100 while as yet profiting by the speed upgrades. The Apple Watch isn't an absolute necessity purchase embellishment even at $269, however that cost is more in accordance with the Apple Watch's real abilities in respect to the iPhone and different contraptions.

At last, the presence of "Arrangement 1" may infer terrible things for the first Apple Watch's product bolster. I don't think Apple will simply ahead and drop it at any point in the near future, and I believe it's a shoo-in for watchOS 4 and potentially even watchOS 5. Yet, by taking the slower equipment off the market, Apple is unobtrusively saying "we would prefer not to need to enhance for this old, moderate equipment for longer than we need to." Like the first iPad, the original Apple Watch may wind up with a generally truncated bolster cycle.For now, however, the first Apple Watch is in an entirely decent place programming shrewd, and it's all on account of the watchOS 3 refresh.

When I conversed with Apple about watchOS 3 soon after it was reported at WWDC, the organization disclosed to me that it had been so stressed over battery life that Apple had purposefully shielded the equipment from being utilized to its maximum capacity so as to spare power. Therefore, the watch was tormented by little stops to sit tight for correspondence and handling, and irregular half-measures like Glances were utilized to cover the way that applications weren't permitted to remain in memory for long or invigorate themselves out of sight before being rung.

WatchOS 3, in addition to other things, lifts some of those limitations—this is most unmistakable in the Dock, a rundown of up to 10 applications that you can raise and swipe through by tapping the repurposed side catch (the old "companions" view is dead, as well, supplanted by a consolidated and abundantly enhanced UI for informing and content section). These are full watch applications and not Glances, and they can revive themselves out of sight to dispose of the normal delays for stacking and matching up. Things still aren't what I would call "immediate" on the original equipment, yet it's vastly improved than it was some time recently.

At last, I've seen a few proposals that Apple has changed how touch info is dealt with in watchOS 3, and that the changes have enhanced touchscreen responsiveness and exactness. It's difficult to gauge this kind of thing unbiasedly, yet tapping catches to expel notices and clocks and that kind of thing improves in watchOS 3 than it did some time recently.

The upshot is that moving from watchOS 2 to watchOS 3 on the original Apple Watch feels practically as critical, execution savvy, as overhauling from the first equipment to a Series 1 or Series 2 watch. I'd even say that the vast majority who purchased the first model who don't particularly require at least one of the new elements in Series 2 don't have to stress over redesigning.

That expanded execution seems to come at the cost of some battery life, yet not by a transformative sum. Under watchOS 2, my original watch more often than not had 40 or 50 percent of its charge left when I took it off toward the finish of a 16-to-18 hour day. That is narrative and I've heard that battery life isn't so sympathetic in case you're utilizing the look for more, more extreme exercise sessions, however it's extensively illustrative of reports I've seen from most clients and different commentators.