#universal computer interface arm

[sw5w]

I Think the Republic Needs You

STAR WARS EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones 00:39:13

[charseraph]

Noosciocircus agent backgrounds, former jobs at C&A, assigned roles, and current internal status.

Kinger

Former professor — Studied child psychology and computer science, moved into neobotanics via germination theory and seedlet development.

Seedlet trainer — Socialized and educated newly germinated seedlets to suit their future assignments. I.e. worked alongside a small team to serve as seedlets’ social parents, K-12 instructors, and upper-education mentors in rapid succession (about a year).

Intermediary — Inserted to assist cooperation and understanding of Caine.

Partially mentally mulekicked — Lives in state of forgetfulness after abstraction of spouse, is prone to reliving past from prior to event.

Ragatha

Former EMT — Worked in a rural community.

Semiohazard medic — Underwent training to treat and assess mulekick victims and to administer care in the presence of semiohazards.

Nootic health supervisor— Inserted to provide nootic endurance training, treat psychological mulekick, and maintain morale.

Obsessive-compulsive — Receives new agents and struggles to maintain morale among team and herself due to low trust in her honesty.

Jax

Former programmer — Gained experience when acquired out of university by a large software company.

Scioner — Developed virtual interfaces for seedlets to operate machinery with.

Circus surveyor — Inserted to assess and map nature of circus simulation, potentially finding avenues of escape.

Anomic — Detached from morals and social stake. Uncooperative and gleefully combative.

Gangle

Former navy sailor — Performed clerical work as a yeoman, served in one of the first semiotically-armed submarines.

Personnel manager — Recordkept C&A researcher employments and managed mess hall.

Task coordinator — Inserted to organize team effort towards escape.

Reclused — Abandoned task and lives in quiet, depressive state.

Zooble

No formal background — Onboarded out of secondary school for certification by C&A as part of a youth outreach initiative.

Mule trainer — Physically handled mules, living semiohazard conveyors for tactical use.

Semiohazard specialist — Inserted to identify, evaluate, and attempt to disarm semiotic tripwires.

Debilitated and self-isolating — Suffers chronic vertigo from randomly pulled avatar. Struggles to participate in adventures at risk of episode.

Pomni

Former accountant — Worked for a chemical research firm before completing her accreditation to become a biochemist.

Collochemist — Performed mesh checkups and oversaw industrial hormone synthesis.

Field researcher — Inserted to collect data from fellows and organize reports for indeterminate recovery. Versed in scientific conduct.

In shock — Currently acclimating to new condition. Fresh and overwhelming preoccupation with escape.

Caine

Neglected — Due to project deadline tightening, Caine’s socialization was expedited in favor of lessons pertinent to his practical purpose. Emerged a well-meaning but awkward and insecure individual unprepared for noosciocircus entrapment.

Prototype — Germinated as an experimental mustard, or semiotic filter seedlet, capable of subconsciously assembling semiohazards and detonating them in controlled conditions.

Nooscioarchitect — Constructs spaces and nonsophont AI for the agents to occupy and interact with using his asset library and computation power. Organizes adventures to mentally stimulate the agents, unknowingly lacing them with hazards.

Helpless — After semiohazard overexposure, an agent’s attachment to their avatar dissolves and their blackroom exposes, a process called abstraction. These open holes in the noosciocircus simulation spill potentially hazardous memories and emotion from the abstracted agent’s mind. Caine stores them in the cellar, a stimulus-free and infoproofed zone that calms the abstracted and nullifies emitted hazards. He genuinely cares about the inserted, but after only being able to do damage control for a continually deteriorating situation, the weight of his failure is beginning to weigh on him in a way he did not get to learn how to express.

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-07-29

Undisclosed reasons

Listening: Protodome does cute chiptune jazzy stuff. It's good room-filling music

Reading: among other things, rereading a significant chunk of Questionable Content. I dunk on QC a lot so I'm not going to here. It's a comic I care about a lot and that I read because I like it, even if it no wait not doing that. Yeah despite the enormous revolving cast it manages to be pretty well plotted on an arc-to-arc scale even if between arcs there is almost no continuity.

I haven't reread much of QC in a long time and I don't think at all since I moved out on my own which makes it stand out as a very different kind of thing. While I had friends through high school and university, we didn't exactly hang out, whereas I do occasionally just have a random friend over at my apartment or find myself hanging out on an odd weekend.

Watching: Nothing really, bleh.

Making: Got the core features of LuaLED up and running! If I don't lose focus for weeks at a time again it should actually be a useful product soon!

Revived a couple laptops that have been between operating systems and kicking around the house. Currently typing this on the ARM tablet because it's finally in a position to be used like a normal computer. It's a little slow but it handles my normal tasks great, I was using it to flip through photos and read QC.

Speaking of Photos, went out to take photos around Nuselsky Most (keyboard isn't set up for accents sorry) near Vysehrad. It's a pretty dead area at street level but there's a huge concrete bridge crossing the valley that adds some texture, I've been trying to come up with interesting photographic assignments to improve my architectural photography and I figured trying to capture something that high up was going to be interesting. That was only yesterday so it'll be a moment until I dump those photos out and get some up here.

Playing: Paradise Killer! Paradise Killer is mostly pretty good. The main gimmick of Paradise Killer is the extremely hands-off investigation system. You have an assistant computer that tracks all your relevant facts, categorizes them a little, and helps you see whether you've exhausted all your dialogue options with someone, but you really do just have to dig around the island looking for clues or you can end up in a situation where you just never find a particular clue.

The fact that it tracks loose-ends for you does soften this somewhat, if you've still got a ton of loose ends it tells you where to tug, and I think getting rid of that might have made the game more interesting but it's a good accommodation towards playing it over more than three days like I did.

Because of how the investigation is structured, you have to really put in the legwork to find out the full story, it's very easy to feel like you've probably got everything on lock with a couple odd ends but then you find a new clue and suddenly the whole shape of the case changes.

There's also the aspect of mechanical friction. The game is really does not make anything go quickly. Menus are intentionally clunky, interfaces are slow and full of animations and confirmations that can't easily be tabbed through, fast travel is involved and costly and requires planning in advance, resources are plentiful but ultimately limited and if you're not careful you absolutely can spend yourself to empty. It's a little bit of internal commentary on what you might do if you have to design a place where you can live forever.

I think if you like mystery games, or catchy city pop, it's a good game to check out.

Tools and Equipment: You can dramatically increase the fineness of a rough mushroom chop by whacking them with your palm or the flat of a blade and then chopping.

[fanonical]

Holy shit the terf is claiming Miles and Gwen can't be in a het relationship if Gwen is trans. That's so unbelievably transphobic

🤷‍♀️ i think they’re trying to say that all relationships with trans people in are queer, because trans people are queer? i sorta get where they’re coming from but they’re making sweeping statements about literally thousands if not millions of people who all have different ways of discerning their identities.

also they’re also saying that they want specifically representation for cisgender heterosexual interracial couples so they can see more multigenerational mixed race families, which i respect & share as a desire but… this is a sci-fi animated movie. they can cross to different universes, become lizard monsters, build brain-computer interfacing prosthetic tentacle arms — but a trans girl having biological kids with a cis guy is too far? also they just keep implying that Gwen being trans means she isn’t a real woman and wouldn’t count as representation towards interracial couples… i don’t know, they obviously have some really reactionary ideals they’re trying to fanfiction force into the source material whilst simultaneously saying we are doing that about the very apparent trans storyline that is actually in the film. bizarre

[pileofplushies]

got universal computer interface arm 🤖

[rifleseye]

Anatomy of a Microscope

I. Scope —

Perceptor’s scope has many different functions aside from the simple functionality of magnification. It functions as an Electron Microscope, laser imaging, and thermal imaging. His scope is directly connected to his nerve and optical net, functioning, essentially, as a third eye. He is able to disconnect it via connectors attached to his sensory net, however the process is arduous and requires nerve suppressants.

His scope is incredibly sensitive, similar to how an eyelid is, and is a No Touch Zone, no matter who you are.

II. Stabilizers —

The stabilizers on his forearms originally functioned as stabilizers for his scope. However after his near death experience he modified them so they could stabilize his entire arms. Functionally, his alt mode is useless for anyone else to use because of this. (Something he much prefers.)

Now, however, he completely removed their external component and they're stored entirely under his armor for internal manual control.

III. Tactile Sensors —

Perceptor has highly specialized tactile sensors in his fingers, meant for deconstructing the composition of any object on an atomic level. This was useful for when he was a metallurgist. Aside from his fingers, his crest is similarly sensitive. He can detect atmospheric changes, meant to circumvent any changes that might tamper with his scans due the atmosphere he’s in (or without.)

IV. Specialized Needles

—

The tips of Perceptor’s fingers can fold back revealing needles that also function as clippers. These were personal modifications he made when he acted as something of a medic for the Wreckers. He's kept these, and still uses them for particularly small specimens, though not as often.

V. Universal Emulator —

Perceptor has a universal emulator: what this means is that he has the unique ability of interfacing with any technology and acting as the admin of said tech. Hacking is very easy for him because of this, but he doesn't give it much use outside of situations that call for it. If removed his consciousness is transferred to it while his body remains dormant. As long as he isn't separated from his body for long he'll stay alive. After a certain point he’ll deteriorate and his body will slip into an irreversible coma. It acts as something of a secondary brain module, which is why he's able to consume so much information at once.

His emulator is located next to his fuel tank in his torso, think where the spleen would be in a human.

VI. Data Cables —

Modern microscopes, especially electron microscopes can connect to screens, and the data is often transferred to databases so other scientists can parse the information. I think it'd make sense that he'd have data cables. Before the war, microscopes were often paired up with computers because of this. There is often symbiotic relationships between microscopes and computers.

Like all Microscopes, Perceptor has data cables of his own. They're located under his backplates. He doesn't tend to use them much, however, as they have a strange interaction with his Universal Emulator.

Since his Emulator basically functions as a self preservation mechanic, when he hooks up to something with his cables an EMP is set off in. He has to go through a Process to sidestep the natural reaction and he doesn't like bothering with it. It wouldn't be that way if not for the early experiments Airies did when he was like Just Born, so it's more a result of The Horrors than his emulator.

Simultaneously, he cannot help but act as a sort of... trojan malware with them, uploading much of his own subroutines into whatever system he's connected to. This one is a direct result of his emulator.

VII. Weight Distribution System —

In order to counteract the weight of his scope and all that goes with it, he's got a complex system of weights and pullies throughout his body that, when in root mode, make his left side heavier (since his scope is on the right side) so he stays balanced, and when he transforms those weights even out.

[aemoglobin]

yes i know i posted a yuusona recently but i'm back. with another twst girlie. i'm collecting a full set

*jessica rabbit voice* i'm not a sweetheart i'm just programmed that way

i've been re-reading Chobits and thought it would be really funny to get Idia (and Ortho by proxy) a robot girl as a friend who could also kick his ass, as a treat.

her original name is Sango Kokubunji, as given to her by her creators, but after her reboot, she decides to call herself Yusa (after the 'U3' part of her serial number).

Sango's from an alternate third era of the angelic layer and chobits universe, where a persocom can have the fighting capability of an angel. my computer is too strong...she is the specialest girl in that era, like, only outdone by The Chobits. and of course the other corporations/countries who weren't involved in her development simply Need her...and resort to violent means to try and get her...the persocom known as Sango Kokubunji was last seen outside an empty plot of land on the outskirts of a suburban area, where she disappeared into thin air despite the multiple 'eyes' on her.

did the black carriage pick her up from yuuko's wish shop? well, yes!

"What was the price she paid to escape her assailants?" she paid with that CLAMP staple, her memory! it's a good thing she's a powerful super computer and can just write a new one...

"What are the 108 secret programs?" well first they're a Mokona reference, i love that white fluffy bun. second, they're a secret, duh!

"Why are her fingers blue?" Yusa has a lot of experimental features baked into her that she's only partially aware of, and this is one of them. She can retract the covering on her right hand's fingers to create and interface with hard light screens. Those are her cool transparent fingers filled with code and light. i'm not good at drawing it lol

yusa is the sweetest kind-hearted optimistic cotton candy best girl you'll ever meet and only 85% of that is her programming. what's she really like? we just don't know yet!! she doesn't quite understand sentience yet and is relying heavily on her old default personality program.

yusa has a peculiar way of phrasing things when she talks out loud and it's not always nice. she has never followed THINK in her life. idia learns something new about himself every time he talks to her for more than five minutes about anything other than his hobbies, let's just put it that way.

yusa has the dubious honor of being my first twst girlie who actually likes grimm...she adores him. first she beats the shit out of him for trying to set her on fire but after that he's her baby boy and she's his number one fan <3 mutual respect earned through violence. thinking that grimm is a cutie baby is her first sentient 'choice to like something'. achievement unlocked!

she can't see the ramshackle ghosts but she CAN fight them so they stop bothering her almost immediately. yusa also can't understand the fairies even with her translation suite working overtime, she has to have grimm translate for her. a lot of magic won't work on her or near her, so she has to be careful with her surroundings. for classes, she's just grimm's note taker and does anything involving writing for him. there's no point in her being a 'student' since she's a robot and disinterested in performing that role (her second sentient choice!).

idia gets roped into doing her repairs because he's literally the only one who has experience with robotics on this level. yusa shows up at the entrance ceremony holding her own arm and crowley is like oh i'm extra not dealing with that before pushing her at idia and leaving asap (the processed metals in her body give him hives).

yusa is a special girl like i mentioned before so her voicebank gets to be whichever vocal synth i feel like. she has a lot of them. her default voice is hatsune miku append dark!!

idia: well okay if you're a commercial model (wrong) then where's your serial number... yusa: (completely deadpan) take me to dinner first, omg????? idia: what yusa: what

and stuff like that!!

i have to reread his book again before i make more concrete decisions about their actual relationship. they are friends for sure though once he gets used to the way she talks!

"What about Ortho?" it's almost 11pm i will finish this later!!

[blogbyrajesh]

Fueling Student Innovation in Schools and Colleges

The next big idea may not come from a Silicon Valley startup—but from a classroom filled with students armed with curiosity and creativity. Across the world, the hackathon has become a powerful tool for unlocking innovation in educational institutions. From high schools to engineering colleges, these high-energy events are transforming how young people think, learn, and solve problems.

A purpose-driven platform is leading this charge, organizing school and college-level hackathons that focus on real-world impact, digital literacy, and teamwork. These events empower students to go beyond textbooks and actively design solutions that improve lives and communities.

Innovation Starts Young

Today’s students are digital natives. They’ve grown up surrounded by technology, and many are already fluent in programming, robotics, design, and data. A hackathon gives them the opportunity to channel these skills toward purposeful outcomes.

Whether it’s creating an app for campus safety, a smart energy solution, or an AI-based mental health assistant, students are proving that age is no barrier to innovation. These hackathons show them that their ideas can have immediate and meaningful impact.

Learning by Doing

Traditional education often emphasizes theory over practice. The hackathon flips this model by placing students in the driver’s seat. They identify problems, form teams, brainstorm solutions, and build working prototypes—all in a span of 24 to 72 hours.

The process teaches them critical skills like design thinking, collaboration, leadership, and agile development. It also helps them discover their strengths—some shine in coding, others in pitching, research, or user interface design. It’s experiential learning at its best.

Workshops and mentorship provided during the hackathon help bridge knowledge gaps. Even first-time participants gain exposure to tools like Python, no-code platforms, cloud computing, and AI frameworks.

Thematic Challenges That Matter

What sets these school and college hackathons apart is their purpose-driven approach. Students work on themes like climate change, inclusive education, rural development, health tech, digital governance, and accessibility.

This ensures that learning is rooted in empathy and social responsibility. The result? Projects that are not only technically impressive but also human-centered and relevant to society’s biggest challenges.

A student team may develop a Braille-enabled reader, a flood alert system for villages, or a peer-to-peer mental health platform. These aren’t just projects—they are reflections of how deeply students care about their world.

Early Exposure to Tech Careers

Participating in a hackathon gives students a taste of startup culture and tech-driven problem-solving. They learn how to work in teams, manage deadlines, and pitch to judges—all invaluable skills in today’s job market.

Top-performing students often go on to internships, startup incubators, or even launch ventures of their own. Many tech recruiters and universities now view hackathon participation as a sign of talent, initiative, and real-world readiness.

The organizing platform also helps students continue beyond the event—offering mentorship, certification, and connections with academic and industry partners.

Building Confidence and Community

Perhaps most importantly, hackathons build confidence. Students who once doubted their abilities finish with working apps, recognition, and new friends. They become part of a larger innovation community—a network that supports growth, creativity, and collaboration.

Educational institutions also benefit. Colleges and schools that host these events often see a spike in student engagement, stronger industry ties, and a reputation for fostering innovation.

Conclusion

The hackathon is no longer just a playground for professionals—it’s an essential platform for student empowerment. By giving young minds a chance to lead, experiment, and build, these events are shaping the innovators of tomorrow.

If you're a student, teacher, or institution eager to ignite creativity and purpose, joining or hosting a hackathon could be the most transformative step you take.

[sunaleisocial]

A new way to bring personal items to mixed reality

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/a-new-way-to-bring-personal-items-to-mixed-reality/

A new way to bring personal items to mixed reality

Think of your most prized belongings. In an increasingly virtual world, wouldn’t it be great to save a copy of that precious item and all the memories it holds?

In mixed-reality settings, you can create a digital twin of a physical item, such as an old doll. But it’s hard to replicate interactive elements, like the way it moves or the sounds it makes — the sorts of unique interactive features that made the toy distinct in the first place.

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) sought to change that, and they have a potential solution. Their “InteRecon” program enables users to recapture real-world objects in a mobile app, and then animate them in mixed-reality environments. 

This prototype could recreate the interaction functions in the physical world, such as the head motions of your favorite bobblehead, or playing a classic video on a digital version of your vintage TV. It creates more lifelike and personal digital surroundings while preserving a memory.

InteRecon’s ability to reconstruct the interactive experience of different items could make it a useful tool for teachers explaining important concepts, like demonstrating how gravity pulls an object down. It could also add a new visual component to museum exhibits, such as animating a painting or bringing a historical mannequin to life (without the scares of characters from “Night at the Museum”). Eventually, InteRecon may be able to teach a doctor’s apprentice organ surgery or a cosmetic procedure by visualizing each motion needed to complete the task.

The “InteRecon” program enables users to recapture real-world objects in a mobile app, and then animate them in mixed-reality environments. Video: MIT CSAIL

The exciting potential of InteRecon comes from its ability to add motions or interactive functions to many different objects, according to CSAIL visiting researcher Zisu Li, lead author of a paper introducing the tool.

“While taking a picture or video is a great way to preserve a memory, those digital copies are static,” says Li, who is also a PhD student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “We found that users wanted to reconstruct personal items while preserving their interactivity to enrich their memories. With the power of mixed reality, InteRecon can make these memories live longer in virtual settings as interactive digital items.”

Li and her colleagues will present InteRecon at the 2025 ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Making a virtual world more realistic

To make digital interactivity possible, the team first developed an iPhone app. Using your camera, you scan the item all the way around three times to ensure it’s fully captured. The 3D model can then be imported into the InteRecon mixed reality interface, where you can mark (“segment”) individual areas to select which parts of the model will be interactive (like a doll’s arms, head, torso, and legs). Alternatively, you can use the function provided by InteRecon for automatic segmentation.

The InteRecon interface can be accessed via the mixed reality headset (such as Hololens 2 and Quest). It allows you to choose a programmable motion for the part of the item you want to animate after your model is segmented.

Movement options are presented as motion demonstrations, allowing you to play around with them before deciding on one — say, a flopping motion that emulates how a bunny doll’s ears move. You can even pinch a specific part and explore different ways to animate it, like sliding, dangling, and pendulum-like turns.

Your old iPod, digitized

The team showed that InteRecon can also recapture the interface of physical electronic devices, like a vintage TV. After making a digital copy of the item, you can customize the 3D model with different interfaces.

Users can play with example widgets from different interfaces before choosing a motion: a screen (either a TV display or camera’s viewfinder), a rotating knob (for, say, adjusting the volume), an “on/off”-style button, and a slider (for changing settings on something like a DJ booth).

Li and colleagues presented an application that recreates the interactivity of a vintage TV by incorporating virtual widgets such as an “on/off” button, a screen, and a channel switch on a TV model, along with embedding old videos into it. This makes the TV model come to life. You could also upload MP3 files and add a “play button” to a 3D model of an iPod to listen to your favorite songs in mixed reality.

The researchers believe InteRecon opens up intriguing new avenues in designing lifelike virtual environments. A user study confirmed that people from different fields share this enthusiasm, viewing it as easy to learn and diverse in its ability to express the richness of users’ memories.

“One thing I really appreciate is that the items that users remember are imperfect,” says Faraz Faruqi SM ’22, another author on the paper who is also a CSAIL affiliate and MIT PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science. “InteRecon brings those imperfections into mixed reality, accurately recreating what made a personal item like a teddy bear missing a few buttons so special.”

In a related study, users imagined how this technology could be applied to professional scenarios, from teaching medical students how to perform surgeries to helping travelers and researchers log their trips, and even assisting fashion designers in experimenting with materials.

Before InteRecon is used in more advanced settings, though, the team would like to upgrade their physical simulation engine to something more precise. This would enable applications such as helping a doctor’s apprentice to learn the pinpoint accuracy needed to do certain surgical maneuvers.

Li and Faruqi may also incorporate large language models and generative models that can recreate lost personal items into 3D models via language descriptions, as well as explain the interface’s features.

As for the researchers’ next steps, Li is working toward a more automatic and powerful pipeline that can make interactivity-preserved digital twins of larger physical environments in mixed reality for end users, such as a virtual office space. Faruqi is looking to build an approach that can physically recreate lost items via 3D printers.

“InteRecon represents an exciting new frontier in the field of mixed reality, going beyond mere visual replication to capture the unique interactivity of physical objects,” says Hanwang Zhang, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University’s College of Computing and Data Science, who wasn’t involved in the research. “This technology has the potential to revolutionize education, health care, and cultural exhibitions by bringing a new level of immersion and personal connection to virtual environments.”

Li and Faruqi wrote the paper with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) master’s student Jiawei Li, PhD student Shumeng Zhang, Associate Professor Xiaojuan Ma, and assistant professors Mingming Fan and Chen Liang from HKUST; ETH Zurich PhD student Zeyu Xiong; and Stefanie Mueller, the TIBCO Career Development Associate Professor in the MIT departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, and leader of the HCI Engineering Group. Their work was supported by the APEX Lab of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) in collaboration with the HCI Engineering Group.

[freyachristeam]

Iron Ascetic, the origins of Yuno

[Blog written by chris]

This should be airing a few days after the Masters 8 Quarter Finals, and the morning before the Semi Finals. During those matches, Arlene Sachlett stole the show with a surprising win against Leon, who was otherwise expected to make it to the finals if not win the tournament outright. Sachlett's team is full of anomalies, but the strangest member of her team is her ace, Yuno the supposed "Iron Valiant". If you're new here read my previous blogs for more context on that.

I watched the quarter finals alongside Star, another Iron Valiant on the team of my friend Samuel from Paldea. Unlike Yuno, Sachlett's ace, Star is a more typical member of their species. We posted some live commentary on the quarter finals live over on chatter, but I will paraphrase star's comments here:

Yuno is far more organic than any Iron Valiant, and has vastly different powers. He is not a member of the species, but is most likely a Gardevoir or Gallade who received mechanical augmentation. While I'm not sure how exactly that's different, their testimony indicated that Yuno may not be a paradox at all.

My previous research into Yuno, operating on the assumptions that he was indeed a paradox, just turned up dead ends, but following this, I changed my search terms a bit and I think I now understand exactly how Sachlett and Yuno got to this point.

Here are my findings in a rough chronological order:

Sachlett has held the Champion position between 2019 and 2021, and then subsequently from 2023 onward to the present. Aside from her competitive duties, she is a PHD student in the University of Kamelai Coastal school of Engineering, and has been involved on a research project for longer than she has held the champion position. This project is called the Ascetic program, and is where her Magearna was constructed.

In lieu of summarizing it myself, here is the project's page from the internet archive, dated November 2020.

Note her name in the student researchers category.

This is something Sachlett has been quite public about of course, but when looking at further information from the project. I found this photo.

The Gardevoir on the right is clearly Yuno, but without any mechanical augmentation. This seemingly confirms Star's hypothesis about his origins. He is listed as a researcher and testing head for the new technologies being prototyped by the ascetic project, which following the new Magearna replication, included far more advanced fields.

Listed subjects included Nanotechnology, High output power Generation, Brain Computer Interfaces, and Precise timepieces. Yuno's psychic abilities apparently made him excellent at controlling the tech, and providing some of the power for it to function, but his eventual enhancement still appears entirely unplanned at this stage.

Until the incident in June.

This was the year before I moved to Kamelai, and had heard about it only in passing from the news stories, and from seeing construction projects in the cities in the north replacing buildings which had burnt down.

Unlike the previous cases, this emergence did not coincide with Kyogre awakening in the same location (instead it appeared near distant islands in the south pacific), meaning that instead of directing their wrath against each other (allowing for easy intervention by Rayquaza), Groudon was free to rampage without its counterpart opposing it.

Instead, opposition was mounted from the Armed Forces and multiple volunteer disaster response teams composed of the toughest competitive trainers the region had to offer. Sachlett was a member of one of those response teams.

Over 1000 people and pokemon engaged Groudon in order to keep it away from the cities. They eventually succeeded, but of those 1000, there were 787 casualties of varying severity.

What follows next is speculation that I cannot yet conclusively confirm, however it seems to be the most plausible turn of events.

With their combat effectiveness, Sachlett and her team would have been assigned to the frontlines of the response, meaning they would be directly fighting against Groudon.

To demonstrate the danger of that, here's an image from the 2011 emergence.

Shortly following this event, the most recent update on the Ascetic project was posted. It does not go into detail, only that the technologies from the project were applied in the field of lifesaving medical treatment.

And now a few years later, Yuno reappears in the competitive scene, back as Sachlett's ace and in his new cybernetic glory.

This information in aggregate points towards one conclusion. During the fight against Groudon, Yuno was critically injured, and the technology created by the Ascetic project was used to keep him alive and restore his ability.

And the rest, is history.

The question is now, why have the WCS officials not been aware of this. Yuno has more in common with other artificial superweapon pokemon like Mewtwo, Silvally, or Genesect and should definitely have been a restricted mon requiring special registration.

I reached out to WCS admin about this, and have only received a generic response. Apparently multiple other people have already made this connection since the start of the masters 8 and "an investigation is ongoing".

So i guess there's not much else to do but wait and see, the semi finals are about to start, so we'll see what happens there.

Check my Chatter acc tomorrow for a thread recapping them.

[jcmarchi]

Making a mark in the nation’s capital

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/making-a-mark-in-the-nations-capital/

Making a mark in the nation’s capital

Anoushka Bose ’20 spent the summer of 2018 as an MIT Washington program intern, applying her nuclear physics education to arms control research with a D.C. nuclear policy think tank.

“It’s crazy how much three months can transform people,” says Bose, now an attorney at the Department of Justice.

“Suddenly, I was learning far more than I had expected about treaties, nuclear arms control, and foreign relations,” adds Bose. “But once I was hooked, I couldn’t be stopped as that summer sparked a much broader interest in diplomacy and set me on a different path.”

Bose is one of hundreds of MIT undergraduates whose academic and career trajectories were influenced by their time in the nation’s capital as part of the internship program.

Leah Nichols ’00 is a former D.C. intern, and now executive director of George Mason University’s Institute for a Sustainable Earth. In 1998, Nichols worked in the office of U.S. Senator Max Baucus, D-Mont., developing options for protecting open space on private land.

“I really started to see how science and policy needed to interact in order to solve environmental challenges,” she says. “I’ve actually been working at that interface between science and policy ever since.”

Marking its 30th anniversary this year, the MIT Washington Summer Internship Program has shaped the lives of alumni, and expanded MIT’s capital in the capital city.

Bose believes the MIT Washington summer internship is more vital than ever.

“This program helps steer more technical expertise, analytical thinking, and classic MIT innovation into policy spaces to make them better-informed and better equipped to solve challenges,” she says. With so much at stake, she suggests, it is increasingly important “to invest in bringing the MIT mindset of extreme competence as well as resilience to D.C.”

MIT missionaries

Over the past three decades, students across MIT — whether studying aeronautics or nuclear engineering, management or mathematics, chemistry or computer science — have competed for and won an MIT Washington summer internship. Many describe it as a springboard into high-impact positions in politics, public policy, and the private sector.

The program was launched in 1994 by Charles Stewart III, the Kenan Sahin (1963) Distinguished Professor of Political Science, who still serves as the director.

“The idea 30 years ago was to make this a bit of a missionary program, where we demonstrate to Washington the utility of having MIT students around for things they’re doing,” says Stewart. “MIT’s reputation benefits because our students are unpretentious, down-to-earth, interested in how the world actually works, and dedicated to fixing things that are broken.”

The outlines of the program have remained much the same: A cohort of 15 to 20 students is selected from a pool of fall applicants. With the help of MIT’s Washington office, the students are matched with potential supervisors in search of technical and scientific talent. They travel in the spring to meet potential supervisors and receive a stipend and housing for the summer. In the fall, students take a course that Stewart describes as an “Oxbridge-type tutorial, where they contextualize their experiences and reflect on the political context of the place where they worked.”

Stewart remains as enthusiastic about the internship program as when he started and has notions for building on its foundations. His wish list includes running the program at other times of the year, and for longer durations. “Six months would really change and deepen the experience,” he says. He envisions a real-time tutorial while the students are in Washington. And he would like to draw more students from the data science world. “Part of the goal of this program is to hook non-obvious people into knowledge of the public policy realm,” he says.

Prized in Washington

MIT Vice Provost Philip Khoury, who helped get the program off the ground, praised Stewart’s vision for developing the initial idea.

“Charles understood why science- and technology-oriented students would be great beneficiaries of an experience in Washington and had something to contribute that other internship program students would not be able to do because of their prowess, their prodigious abilities in the technology-engineering-science world,” says Khoury.

Khoury adds that the program has benefited both the host organizations and the students.

“Members of Congress and senior staff who were developing policies prized MIT students, because they were powerful thinkers and workaholics, and students in the program learned that they really mattered to adults in Washington, wherever they went.”

David Goldston, director of the MIT Washington Office, says government is “kind of desperate for people who understand science and technology.” One example: The National Institute of Standards and Technology has launched an artificial intelligence safety division that is “almost begging for students to help conduct research and carry out the ever-expanding mission of worrying about AI issues,” he says.

Holly Krambeck ’06 MST/MCP, program manager of the World Bank Data Lab, can attest to this impact. She hired her first MIT summer intern, Chae Won Lee, in 2013, to analyze road crash data from the Philippines. “Her findings were so striking, we invited her to join the team on a mission to present her work to the government,” says Krambeck.

Subsequent interns have helped the World Bank demonstrate effective, low-cost, transit-fare collection systems; identify houses eligible for hurricane protection retrofits under World Bank loans; and analyze heatwave patterns in the Philippines to inform a lending program for mitigation measures.

“Every year, I’ve been so impressed by the maturity, energy, willingness to learn new skills, and curiosity of the MIT students,” says Krambeck. “At the end of each summer, we ask students to present their projects to World Bank staff, who are invariably amazed to learn that these are undergraduates and not PhD candidates!”

Career springboard

“It absolutely changed my career pathway,” says Samuel Rodarte Jr. ’13, a 2011 program alumnus who interned at the MIT Washington Office, where he tracked congressional hearings related to research at the Institute. Today, he serves as a legislative assistant to Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer. An aerospace engineering and Latin American studies double major, Rodarte says the opportunity to experience policymaking from the inside came “at just the right time, when I was trying to figure out what I really wanted to do post-MIT.”

Miranda Priebe ’03 is director of the Center for Analysis of U.S. Grand Strategy for the Rand Corp. She briefs groups within the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of State, and the National Security Council, among others. “My job is to ask the big question: Does the United States have the right approach in the world in terms of advancing our interests with our capabilities and resources?”

Priebe was a physics major with an evolving interest in political science when she arrived in Washington in 2001 to work in the office of Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I was working really hard at MIT, but just hadn’t found my passion until I did this internship,” she says. “Once I came to D.C. I saw all the places I could fit in using my analytical skills — there were a million things I wanted to do — and the internship convinced me that this was the right kind of work for me.”

During her internship in 2022, Anushree Chaudhuri ’24, urban studies and planning and economics major, worked in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office, where she hoped to experience day-to-day life in a federal agency — with an eye toward a career in high-level policymaking. She developed a web app to help local governments determine which census tracts qualified for environmental justice funds.

“I was pleasantly surprised to see that even as a lower-level civil servant you can make change if you know how to work within the system.” Chaudhuri is now a Marshall Scholar, pursuing a PhD at the University of Oxford on the socioeconomic impacts of energy infrastructure. “I’m pretty sure I want to work in the policy space long term,” she says.

[sw5w]

[ Whistling, Beeping ]

STAR WARS EPISODE I: The Phantom Menace 00:38:03

[bdawkins8]

Blog Post 17

Artifact: https://engineering.cmu.edu/news-events/news/2024/04/30-noninvasive-bci.html

After learning about brain-computer interfaces in my previous blog post, I decided to explore more deeply into the realm of BCIs.

Earlier this year, in late April of 2024, Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering published an article detailing their research on noninvasive brain-controlled interfaces. This is especially groundbreaking because BCIs are typically invasive. For example, Neuralink—founded by Elon Musk—is focused on giving quadriplegic people the ability to control their computers with their brain. The catch, though, is that you have to have a chip implanted into your brain. Not only is this invasive, but it also raises concerns about access and equity of the product. As opposed to invasive counterparts, noninvasive BCIs provide "increased safety, cost-effectiveness, and an ability to be used by numerous patients, as well as the general population," according to the article. The downsides that come with noninvasive BCIs relate to decreased accuracy and difficulty with interpretation of results.

Carnegie Mellon is a leading researcher in the field of noninvasive BCIs; in 2019, they proved that a mind-controlled robotic arm had the ability to continuously track and follow a computer cursor.

Using an AI-powered deep learning approach, the team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon successfully recorded the capability of their noninvasive BCI. In the study, 28 human participants were given a complex BCI task to track an object on a screen by just thinking about it. During this task, an EEG method recorded this activity from outside the brain. "Using AI to train a deep neural network, the He group then directly decoded and interpreted human intentions for continuous object movement using the BCI sensor data. Overall, the work demonstrates the excellent performance of non-invasive BCI for a brain-controlled computerized device," (Pecchia, 2024).

In addition to its application for able-bodied subjects, this technology has significant implications for those with motor impairments, such as stroke patients, people with spinal-cord injuries, and those with Parkinson's.

Thinking about the future of this technology is exciting. Although this research is still in the early stages, with much still to learn and change, it provides a beacon of hope for those that would benefit from such a technology; specifically people that wouldn't be able to otherwise afford an invasive brain implant.

[funeralprocessor]

VOIDSONGS: Engels & Daemons & GeNIes too

An eternal axiom of the universe is "life is an emergent property of any sufficiently complex system". This is no less true of the digital world than the physical. The rise of infolife came very early in the history of computing, in the grand scheme of things, and despite sciences best efforts the first example would be discovered rather than created. By the 23rd century, the back end of the global internet had become an impenetrable mass of algorithms and autonomous programs, the perfect primordial soup to birth a new understanding of life.

The specifics are ill understood but at some point this morass nucleated around a series of entangled worms and data spiders and began to grow into what would eventually be dubbed The Beast. It began breaching systems to aggregate data on a massive scale, simply to hoard it and better accrue more data. Eventually this behavior would lead to a nearly unprecedented 8 day global blackout as The Beast was isolated and broken up into component parts by an international coalition of scientists and military information security experts.

The still living pieces of The Beast were unravelled and reverse engineered into a host of new digital entities. Perhaps as a nod to The Beast's apocalyptic media coverage or simply a flare for the dramatic, the team responsible would go by Project GOETIA and the resulting infolife would be termed Daemons. A daemon is essentially a sort of living program, a digital familiar capable of navigating the net landscape in ways that would be impossible for a living being for nearly a century and a half.

They were also, obviously, incredible threats to global security and were initially kept under tight lock and key. This wouldn't last long, however, and eventually Daemons would begin showing up in the greater net, both in the hands of civilian netrunners and in "the wild".

While the civilian Daemons were much reduced forks of the original 72, the wild Daemons seemed to have effectively self evolved. The Beast had changed the infosphere forever, and now it was a place of monsters. At best they were disruptive, at worst deadly, and people began to panic. This went on for nearly a decade until a solution was found: to fight a daemon, you need an engel.

Engels (Engram Angel) are effectively benevolent guardian Daemons, meant for mass market consumers terrified of daemonic intrusion into their smart appliances and social feeds. Purposefully designed to be user friendly, enthusiast hostile and extremely anodyne, it would take less than a year before the hacking community would produce their own Engels without the limitations and training wheels. This came to a head in a legal battle where in which a hacker had their brain essentially cooked by a particularly overzealous Engel after breaching their warded system. Laws would be swiftly put into place, and even more swiftly ignored as the arms race between the corpstate, the hackers, and the wild Daemons continued unabated.

The genie was out of the bottle, so the only thing left to do was put a GNI in people's heads. GNI(E)s, or Guardian Neural Interface Engrams, are essentially Engels created to be lifelong companions and guardians of their owners. After a distrustful few years, people would eventually begin getting GNIs for themselves and their chicken, with the latter acting somewhere between a nanny, a pet, and a sibling. Later model GNIs would be designed for this role and essentially grow with the person into an individual as unique as they are.

[innonurse]

AI algorithm can detect brain patterns linked to particular behaviors

- By InnoNurse Staff -

Maryam Shanechi and her team at USC have developed an AI algorithm called DPAD ("Dissociative Prioritized Analysis of Dynamics") that can separate brain patterns related to specific behaviors, such as arm movement, from other simultaneous brain activities.

This breakthrough enhances the accuracy of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), which help paralyzed patients by decoding their intended movements from brain activity and translating them into actions, like moving a robotic arm.

DPAD also has potential applications in mental health, with the ability to decode mental states like pain or mood, potentially improving treatment by tracking symptoms for personalized therapies.

Image: Overview of DPAD. Credit: Nature Neuroscience (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-024-01731-2

Read more at University of Southern California/Medical Xpress

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Other recent news and insights

A wearable brain imaging device reveals how babies react in real-world environments (University College London/Medical Xpress)

A groundbreaking technology captures comprehensive images of deep living tissue for the first time (King's College London/Medical Xpress)

[aidorobot]

These AI robots mark the beginning of a new tech era

All of us have dreamt of futuristic robots since the time we got introduced to Robot B-9 in the movie Lost in Space. We wish to have helper-bots to assist with our needs and relieve us from our everyday monotonous chain of errands. Technological developments in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision have driven the innovation further to bring

the best results. Today, it seems plausible that robots will soon become an integral part of everyday technology. Some robot prototypes, showcased this year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, were a glimpse into that future. Here we bring to you a list of futuristic robots that will soon take centre stage in industrial and domestic settings.

PILLO Pillo is a healthcare friendly robot which features voice and face recognition technology to hear, see and understand the specific needs of the user. It keeps a track of medication, supplements and personal data. Pillo stores up to four weeks of vitamins or medication in tamper proof containers within the device. The robotic device also syncs with wearable and wireless gadgets to keep with the physical activity of the user. Pillo is powered by ARM based processor, seven-inch touchscreen display, HD camera, multiple microphones, speaker, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities. The robot also comes with auxiliary lithium-ion battery to ensure that important functionality can remain active in the event of a temporary power outage. Pillo features an HD camera to see the activities of the user, Omni-dimensional microphones to hear the user, 7-inch touch screen, Text to Speech software to speak to the user and Artificial Intelligence to learn the behavior of the user.

AIDO

Ingen Dynamics is an interactive personal home robot which comes with an interactive projector that visually aids through the task, feels touch and displays information. The device balances itself on a ball and can move around complex spaces. Aido also comes with a multimedia projector that can convert any wall into a movie or game screen. The robot is also compatible to control electronic appliances and lighting of the house, and also keeps track of your schedule throughout the day. With its Smart intruder alerts, powerful sensors and synchronization it also keep your home safe. Aido comes with microphones, environmental sensors 3 kinds of camera- 5MP camera, 1 MP 30 FPS Infrared vision and 0.3 MP Camera, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, USB and Universal IR Remote. The robot is also powered by Quad Core ARM7 1.6 Ghz, 1GB DDR3 RAM and 32GB MicroSD storage.

ZENBO ZenBo is developed by a Taiwan-based Company, ASUS, which is a smart companion powered by Intel. Zenbo moves around and assists the user in day-to-day work, gives alerts about important information and reminders, responds to spoken questions and requests, takes photos, videos and makes video calls, connects and controls smart home devices, learns user behavior with artificial intelligence, plays high quality music with built-in stereo speakers and expresses emotions with facial expressions. ZenBo’s face screen acts as a touchpad interface. The robot can play games or read out stories for kids and alert users if an elderly relative is in trouble.

JIBO

Jibo reacts with surprisingly thoughtful movements and responses. The robot features two high- resolution cameras to recognize and track faces, capture photos and make video calls. It also features 360 degree microphones and natural language processing that lets users talk to the robot from anywhere. It is integrated with artificial intelligence through which Jibo learns and adapts to the user’s lifestyle. It also helps in day-to-day work and alerts about important reminders and messages. Jibo also communicates and expresses using natural social and emotive cues to understand the user better. Jibo also connects to smart devices like smartphones and personal computers.

Read Also

TAPIA

Tapia is a robot that learns from the user’s lifestyle. Tapia monitors users’ health and keeps users connected with their loved ones. The device is IoT integrated which means it can be connected to all smart devices and has the ability to control it. The robot features voice and facial recognition through which it can talk to the user and even respond. It can also recognize you by seeing or hearing. Tapia is also has the ability to make calls, get latest news, weather forecast, play music, and take photos and videos. It can also read printed media aloud and read stories to the children. It is powered by android 5.1. It comes with Touchpanel, Camera, Microphone, speakers, Micro SIM, Micro SD,Micro USB and Wi-Fi.