It takes 2 million photos to create a simulation of San Francisco
Today’s 22.2.22, which makes me drunk from looking at it.
Musicvideos have their own Newsletter now: GOOD MUSIC. All killers and absolutely zero fillers. The latest issues featuring Health, Jack White, DFA1979, Moderat, Kadhja Bonet, Idles, Dälek and many more.
GOOD INTERNET ELSEWHERE // Twitter (Newsletter) / Twitter (Links) / Facebook (Newsletter) / Facebook (Links) / Instagram (Pics and Memes) / Reddit (Links) / Telegram (Links)
SUPPORT // Substack / Patreon / Steady / Ko-Fi / Paypal / Spreadshirt
2 Million photographs to create San Francisco in newschool-CGI
There is a new technique in town to create CGI-Objects from photographs. If you remember Microsofts Photosynth, imagine that but on steroids pumped up with neural networks and machine learning.
The authors of the paper (entitled Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis) used 2.8 million images to create the largest neural scene ever attempted – a series of neighborhoods in San Francisco.
Results are mighty impressive and while I am skeptical of a use case for actual movies in the near future because you can’t really edit specific details to control the imagery -- the technique might be good enough for The Asylum-movies which don’t give a shit, but not for any new PTA-movie —, this surely makes sense for applications like Google Streetview and stuff like this. And there is no reason why a gaming engine shouldn’t be able to use of this technique (computing power for realtime rendering aside). Imagine GTA 8, based on real life neighborhoods. Intel experimented with AI-techniques to improve GTA-graphics already and stuff like GAN Theft Auto exists.
This technique, if the computing power issues can be overcome, might be a milestone on the development of next level CGI.
Sonantic creates AI-voices and they clearly sound like they want to fuck with you right now, which is a sight audio to behold. The demos in their promo-video are very impressive, the raw outputs they sent to The Verge are not, especially when you listen to the weird hickup at the “cheerful”-soundbit. I just bought a 1 month subscription to a service, that summarizes books in 20 minute soundbits that are generated with artificial intelligence. While I haven’t used the service much yet, I can clearly hear that the voice is not a human voice. I can just hope that this does not impact the usefulness of the service too much.
The Apocalypse Jacket is the ultimate prepper fashion item and it’s made to resist extreme heat at least up to 1300°C, “the same temperature as black lava”. It’s made from Polybenzimidazole, which was invented at NASA and “was so revolutionary it wasn’t just used to replace cotton in the Apollo cabin crew’s clothing and sleeping bags. It was used to coat its spacecraft too. When Skylab fell to Earth in 1979 the part that survived re-entry was the part coated in PBI. I think preppers are among the most stupid people on earth and the more of them buy a 1200 dollar jacket, the sooner they go bankrupt and dispense with their stupid shit, so sure, go ahead, buy a 1200 dollar jacket that makes you lava-resistant. I beg you. Also, nobody will play “the floor is lava” with you, idiot.
Paperholm still creates the most elaborate papercraft artworks besides Zim and Zou.
Cockhands, badly photoshopped famous people with penisses on their hands. I mean, what do you expect.
I think I already blogged this podcast from 2017 about RAW and his Operation Mindfuck - Robert A. Wilson und die Paranoia der USA, but even with a closing pandemic coming to its end (fingers crossed), the paranoid style is still going strong.
Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. Mäh. 🐑
OK Computer but everything is my voice in which you will listen to the Radiohead-classic completely rendered in someones voice. Remarkably listenable and he does this all the time. Here’s The Strokes, Everything is in its right place, Korn and Blurs Song 2. I’m a fan.
For some reason the past weeks saw some cool new horror-docs on the Youtubes: SRF Kultur - Im Bann des Horrors – die grosse Lust an der Angst, The Hills Have Eyes | Anatomy of a Franchise and The Dark Philosophy of Cosmicism - H.P. Lovecraft.
Mondo is releasing the score for Cronenbergs Videodrome on vinyl for the first time, which, if I had any money and wouldn’t live in a homeless shelter, would totally buy.
Mondo, Backlot Music, and Howe Records are proud to present the a soundtrack nearly 40 years in the making: the complete restored score album to David Cronenberg's 1983 masterpiece VIDEODROME.
Restored from the original session masters, and supervised by Howard Shore himself, this is the first time the original score has ever been released in its original form (on Vinyl through Mondo, on CD through La-La Land, and digitally through Back Lot Music).
Produced by Howard Shore and Alan Frey. Featuring original artwork by Rich Kelly, and liner notes by Annete DiGiovonni, and pressed on 180 Gram color vinyl (also available on 180 Gram black vinyl).
Also: This guy.