Old Book Illustrations
February 14, 2020
A useful collection of illustrations from “old books” is now available at this link. The service says:
Old Book Illustrations was born of the desire to share illustrations from a modest collection of books, which we set out to scan and publish. With the wealth of resources available online, it became increasingly difficult to resist the temptation to explore other collections and include these images along with our own. Although it would have been possible to considerably broaden the time-frame of our pursuit, we chose to keep our focus on the original period in which we started for reasons pertaining to taste, consistency, and practicality: due to obvious legal restrictions, we had to stay within the limits of the public domain. This explains why there won’t be on this site illustrations first published prior to the 18th century or later than the first quarter of the 20th century.
Like many other collections of images, locating an image can be an interesting exercise. DarkCyber entered a query for the word “factory.” The system respond with two pages of thumbnails. One of the “factory” items as this image:
Old Book Illustrations provides documentation for use of the retrieval system. The Navigation How To includes diagrams and explanations for the user.
DarkCyber points out that locating images by key words or concepts makes clear the limitations of today’s information retrieval technology. This is not a criticism of Old Book Illustrations. Our observation is intended to make sure that the tens of millions of “search experts” recognize the limitations of finding technology and perhaps their own understanding of the issues involved when looking for digital information in services that cannot pay for subject matter experts to index using controlled vocabularies and well crafted classification systems.
How advanced is a more mature system like Google’s, for instance? Go to Google Images and try to locate a specific image in the Time Life images stored on Google. How’s that working out?
Image recognition is at the heart of facial recognition systems. There are worries about facial recognition, but image recognition and meaningful mapping to terms remains a very difficult task. Many problems must be solved before image recognition’s accuracy eliminates most of the manual work still required even with today’s most sophisticated systems.
Kudos for those who try. However, the journey is a long one. Travelers will have manual scanning of images in a database to occupy their idle hours.
Stephen E Arnold, February 13, 2020
Map Economics: Useful Content and One Major Omission
February 13, 2020
DarkCyber spotted a paper called “The Economics of Maps.” The authors have presented some extremely useful and interesting information about depicting the real world.
One of the most useful aspects of the article is the list of companies providing different types of mapping services and data. The list of firms in this business includes such providers, vendors, and technology companies as:
Airbus
Farmers Edge
Mapbox
Pitney Bowes
There are some significant omissions; for example, the category for geo-analytics for law enforcement and intelligence applications; for example, the low profile Geogence and investigative tools like those available from Verint.
Worth reading and tucking into one’s intelligence folder in our opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, February 13, 2020
Paris Museums: More Art Online. Search Means Old Fashioned Hunting Around
February 5, 2020
Oh, boy—it is a collection of art from the many Paris Museums available online at Paris Musées Collections. This artist’s daughter is delighted!
Unfortunately, the site’s search functionality disappoints. Unless your goal is either to find a specific work or to aimlessly browse the 150,213 public domain images, it is another almost unusable collection. I suppose trusting to serendipity has its place, but most of us are looking for something a bit more specific, even if we don’t have a particular title or artist in mind.
There is a section titled “Thematic Discovering,” which might be useful to some. They have put together 11 preconfigured themes that span museums, like “Sport, Jeux Olympiqes et Paris” (Sports, Olympic Games, and Paris) or “Elements: Air, Terre, Feu, Eau” (Elements: Air, Earth, Fire, Water). They do make for interesting guided tours. There are also a highlighted Virtual Exhibition and a few suggested works at the bottom of the page.
I was excited to find this resource—it really is a valuable collection to have at our fingertips. If only it were easier to navigate. Check it out if you feel persistent.
And for those who think search is really great. None of the visual art collections feature a search which delivers what most users seek.
Cynthia Murrell, February 5, 2020
Amazon and New, Quite Real Twitch Opportunity
January 14, 2020
In my lectures, I discuss Twitch. I won’t go into the examples of Twitch content in this blog. You can look for me at one of my law enforcement lectures this year.
I do want to call attention to “Twitch’s Non Gamers Are Finally Having Their Moment.” The write up includes an interesting factoid, which – like most Wired information – is super credible. Here’s the statement:
A new report from stream management site StreamElements indicates that in December, Twitch viewers watched 81 million hours of “Just Chatting,” Twitch’s category for streamers who do exactly that, plus any number of other grab-bag activities. That was a solid 7 million hours more than the first game listed, League of Legends, and 23 million more than the second, Fortnite. The popularity of “Just Chatting” is bleeding into January, too, and according to StreamElements, nongaming may be Twitch’s number two category in 2020.
Several observations:
- Microsoft and the GOOG are working hard to poach gamers from Twitch. This seems like a contentious issue for Amazon, and it will be interesting to see how the Bezos legal eagles respond to the talent drain. Maybe terminate their Prime accounts?
- The surge in Just Chatting viewing points to Twitch becoming the go to source for in real life streaming programs. Most programs are experimental, but a few of them – for example, BadBunny and the Raj thing – are starting to develop into a shotgun marriage of radio talk, live listener feedback, and visual content.
- Traditional content producers like the people who create TV game shows and wanna bes like Apple and Netflix, look a bit old fashioned when compared to content generated by Awkwards_Travel, who may be the future of travel information.
There are downsides. If you are interested in our Amazon briefing which expands on the Twitch innovations and their downside, write darkcyber333 at yandex dot com.
Net net: Twitch started with egames, but it is now on a path to create something which complements games and creates a fresh approach to video.
Stephen E Arnold, January 14, 2020
Free and Legal Movies Online
January 9, 2020
We have found a handy resource—Fossbytes lists “20 Free Movie Download Sites for 2020 [Legal Streaming].” It can be difficult to pick out the legit sites from the illegal sources in search results, and I’m sure all our gentle readers prefer to be on the up-and-up. While he is at it, writer Adarsh Verma links to his publication’s lists of free and legal music downloads and sports streaming, as well.
Verma provides a screenshot from each site and a paragraph or two describing its content. You may want to bookmark it so you can take your time exploring all 20 options. Some entries, like Netflix and Hulu, are only free for the extent of their trial periods. Still, one could get some mileage out of that. Several fill very specific niches, like the Korean Film Archive (classic Korean films), Le CiNéMa Club (Indie films), and Open Culture (international films). Others are more general-purpose, like The Internet Archive, Pluto TV, and Vimeo.
Here is what the write-up says about one of our favorite Googley properties, YouTube:
“In an earlier version of this article, YouTube was listed a lot lower in this list. However, thanks to some recent changes and the company’s growing inclination towards free, ad-supported content, I’ve decided to list it as the #1 source of free movies on the web. Now, YouTube offers more than 100 complete feature-length films on its platform. It’s also mentioned on our latest list of best movie streaming sites. This makes YouTube a perfectly free movie website for those who can’t afford to spend a premium for accessing Netflix and Hulu content. You can simply visit this link and watch movies like Zookeeper, Legally Blonde, The Terminator, Flawless, Kung Fu Killer, IP Man, and more. Moreover, YouTube also has plans to make its original shows and movies free from 2020. It’s worth noting that these movies for streaming are currently only available in the USA.”
Some options, like YouTube, are supported by interruptive ads. Most of the sites are available anywhere in the world, though several are only available in the U.S. Check out the article for the rest of the list.
Cynthia Murrell, January 9, 2020
Trouble Ahead for Deep Fakes and Fancy Technology?
January 3, 2020
At a New Year’s get together, a person mentioned a review of the film “Cats.” I don’t go to movies, but the person’s comments intrigued me. I returned home and tracked down “How Cats Became a Box Office Catastrophe.”
I noted one sentence in the write which was:
We probably don’t need to remind you of the backlash the internet unleashed upon Cats the moment the Cats trailer dropped. Viewers gasped in horror as Universal’s vision of adding cat fur and features to the proportions of a human body was finally revealed. It was uncomfortable to look at, a clear example of the uncanny valley, where viewers are unsettled by artificially constructed beings that are just shy of realism.
The write then added:
Beyond subjective opinions, critics highlighted several issues including glitchy and unpolished CGI that could have been a result of its rushed production, that took place within a single year. In contrast, this year’s photo-realistic Lion King movie began work in 2016.
Two points: Backlash for the context and the “unpolished CGI.”
What happens when the rough hewn nature of other fantastical technology, swathed in investor hype and marketers’ misrepresentations, is understood?
Exciting for some in 2020.
Stephen E Arnold, January 3, 2020
Another Google Gaffe?
December 30, 2019
Censorship is an intriguing job. A human — chock full of failings — has to figure out if an object is offensive, defensive, or maybe-sive.
If true, the BBC story “YouTube Admits Error over Bitcoin Video Purge” documents a misstep. DarkCyber loves the GOOG, and the research team doubts any anecdote suggesting a Google gaffe took place. For example:
Many video-makers have complained that YouTube’s current systems let so-called “copyright trolls” make false claims on their videos, while its automated detection tools often fail to understand when material has been legally used.
The BBC reports:
YouTube said in a statement that it had “made the wrong call” and confirmed that any content mistakenly removed would be restored. “With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call,” it said.”When it’s brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it.” It said there had been no changes to its polices, and insisted there would be “no penalty” to any channels that were affected by the incident.
I liked the idea that Googzilla is an it, very 2020. And the individuals who depend on YouTube for some money.
Yeah, well, you know, err.
Stephen E Arnold, December 30, 2019
YouTube Supplied Music Leads To Massive Video Demonetization
December 10, 2019
YouTube cheats its content creators. The video sharing platform is constantly changing its rules, demonetizing videos without notice, and deleting videos for “offensive” content. YouTube claims it loves its creators and offers tools and services for assistance. One of these services is offering royalty free music for videos, but content creators beware of video platforms offering free music. Torrent Freak reports on how, “‘Royalty Free’ Music Supplied By YouTube Results In Mass Video Demonetization.”
Matt Lowne is a popular game streaming YouTuber, think Pewdiepie except he only has 56 million views. To avoid copyright strikes which lead to demonetization, YouTubers avoid copyrighted content such as music and video clips. Lowne used a track called “Dreams” by Joakim Kraud from YouTube’s audio library for his video introductions. Lowne posted a video, then he was barraged with emails stating that he used SonyATV, PeerMusic, Warner Chappell, LatinAutor, and Audiam material.
Now all of Lowne’s profit from ads are split between the claimant companies and he gets the crumbs. Composer Joakim Karud allows anyone to use his music royalty free which makes him a popular artist on YouTube. Lowne filed a claim to contest the copyright violation, but he only did it for one of his videos. If he filed a claim on every one of his videos, he could get three strikes and be suspended indefinitely from YouTube. Lowne is not the only YouTuber with this problem and the companies filing the copyright claim may have legitimate grounds:
“Sure enough, if one turns to the WhoSampled archive, Dreams is listed as having sampled Weaver of Dreams, a track from 1956 to which Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC and Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. own the copyrights. If the trend of claims against ‘Dreams’ continues, there is potential for huge upheaval on YouTube and elsewhere. Countless thousands of videos use the track and as a result it has become very well-known.”
To make matters even worse, YouTube issued an authorized statement that said “Dreams” was never listed in its official audio library. “Dreams” was listed as a royalty free music on an unofficial channel that claimed to be the YouTube audio library. Oh boy! It is even more important to double check if music is royalty free. Maybe it would be better to use music in the public domain or hire someone to compose original music?
Whitney Grace, December 10, 2019
TikTok Messaging
November 29, 2019
Is TikTok a platform for anti-nation state propaganda? (If you don’t know about TikTok, this write up will make no sense. Stop reading.)
The answer is, “Yep.”
A good explanation of what young people are doing with short videos appears in “Teen Who Went Viral with TikTok Hair Tutorial Tells ITV News People Need to Know about China Threat to Uighur Muslims.”
This is important for several reasons:
- TikTok is a China based outfit. DarkCyber thinks that Chinese officials will be talking about TikTok and coming up with some creative ideas to prevent hair tutorial type information from going global.
- Teens and other TikTok users may be difficult to guide down the path of truth and justice. More meetings will be necessary.
- More attention on the Uighur matter may not be desirable. More meetings will ensue.
Net net: TikTok may be invited to some meetings and given an opportunity to be re-educated. Just a thought. Russia re-educated Apple about Crimea. China and Russia may share ideas when their joint military exercise with Iran takes place.
Worth monitoring.
Stephen E Arnold, November 29, 2019
Microsoft Buys AnyVision: Why?
October 30, 2019
We noted “Why Did Microsoft Fund an Israeli Firm That Surveils West Bank Palestinians?” The write up stated:
Microsoft has invested in a startup that uses facial recognition to surveil Palestinians throughout the West Bank, in spite of the tech giant’s public pledge to avoid using the technology if it encroaches on democratic freedoms. AnyVision, which is headquartered in Israel but has offices in the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore, sells an “advanced tactical surveillance” software system, Better Tomorrow. It lets customers identify individuals and objects in any live camera feed, such as a security camera or a smartphone, and then track targets as they move between different feeds.
The write up covers the functions of the firm’s technology. The contentious subject of facial recognition is raised.
However, one question was not asked, “Why?” Microsoft took action despite employee push back on certain projects.
The answer is, “Possess a technology that gets Microsoft closer to Amazon’s capabilities in this particular technical niche.
Microsoft has to beef up in a number of technical spaces. It may have a demanding client and a major project which requires certain capabilities. Marketing is one thing; delivering is another.
Stephen E Arnold, October 30, 2019
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